One morning, Mel Toews put on his coat and hat, walked out of town, and took his own life. A loving husband and father, a faithful member of the Mennonite church, and an immensely popular schoolteacher, Mel was a pillar of his close-knit community. Yet after a lifetime of struggling with bipolar disorder, he could no longer face the darkness that clouded his world. In this moving meditation on illness, family, faith, and love, Mel's daughter, critically acclaimed novelist and reporter Miriam Toews, recounts her father's life as he would have told it, in his own voice, right up to the day of his final walk.

"Swing Low" is a bold, gracefully written, and compassionate recounting of one man's heartbreaking battle with depression.

Between 2005 and 2009, in a remote Mennonite colony, over one hundred girls and women were raped by what many thought were ghosts or demons. Their accounts were dismissed as 'wild female imagination'.

Women Talking is an imagined response to these real events. When the women learn the truth, they meet secretly to discuss how to protect themselves and their daughters from future harm. But they have just two days to decide, before the rapists are bailed out and brought home.

Shortlisted for the Folio Prize 2015

Shortlisted for the Wellcome Book Prize 2015

Sunday Times Top Choice Summer Read

Elf and Yoli are two smart, loving sisters.

Elf is a world-renowned pianist, glamorous, wealthy, happily married: she wants to die.

Yoli is divorced, broke, sleeping with the wrong men: she desperately wants to keep her older sister alive.

When Elf's latest suicide attempt leaves her hospitalised weeks before her highly anticipated world tour, Yoli is forced to confront the impossible question of whether it is better to let a loved one go.

FROM THE WRITER OF THE OSCAR-WININNG WOMEN TALKING INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLING AUTHOR LONGLISTED FOR THE DUBLIN LITERARY AWARD 'Go Grandma Elvira!' Margaret Atwood 'Wickedly funny and fearlessly honest.' The New Yorker 'Glorious.' Sarah Moss ____________ You are a small thing, and you must learn to fight. Swiv has taken this advice too literally. Now she's suspended from school, in the care of her foul-mouthed, hilarious grandmother. Mom is busy being pregnant, so Grandma gives Swiv a very different education. Swiv learns maths with Amish jigsaws and How to Dig a Winter Grave. Grandma's methods may be unorthodox, but she has faced the worst of life with a wild, independent spirit and this is what she hopes to pass on. Time is running short. Grandma's health is failing and the baby is on the way - can Grandma inspire this fire in Swiv, and ensure it never goes out? Poignant, hilarious and deeply moving, Fight Night is a girl's love letter to the women raising her and a tribute to one family's fighting spirit. 'A love letter to our brave and brilliant matriarchs.' Glamour 'Miriam Toews is a genius.' R. O. Kwon 'As compelling and hilarious and indecently sad as life can be.' Financial Times

'I doubt I'll read a better novel.' Big Issue 'Go Grandma Elvira!' Margaret Atwood 'Wickedly funny and fearlessly honest.' The New Yorker 'Glorious.' Sarah Moss 'A love letter to our brave and brilliant matriarchs.' Glamour 'Miriam Toews is a genius.' R. O. Kwon 'As compelling and hilarious and indecently sad as life can be.' Financial Times ____________ You are a small thing, and you must learn to fight. Swiv has taken her grandmother's advice too literally. Now she's at home, suspended from school. Mom is pregnant and preoccupied - and so Swiv is in the older woman's charge, receiving a very different form of education from a teacher with a style all her own. Grandma likes her stories fast, troublesome and funny. She's known the very worst that life can throw at you - and has met it every time with a wild, unnamable spirit, fighting for joy and independence every step of the way. But will maths lessons based on Amish jigsaws and classes on How to Dig a Winter Grave inspire the same fire in Swiv, and ensure it never goes out? Time is running short. Grandma's health is failing, the baby is on the way, as a family of three extraordinary women prepare to face life's great changes together. Poignant, hilarious and deeply moving, Fight Night is a girl's love letter to the women raising her and a tribute to one family's fighting spirit.

We're Mennonites. As far as I know, we are the most embarrassing sub-sect of people to belong to if you're a teenager.

Sixteen-year-old Nomi Nickel longs to hang out with Lou Reed and Marianne Faithfull in New York City's East Village. Instead she's trapped in East Village, Manitoba: a town with no train station, no bar, and where job prospects consist of slaughtering chickens at the Happy Family Farms abattoir.

Since her mother and sister have left home, Nomi lives with her father, Ray, a sweet yet hapless schoolteacher. Fighting against the restraints of the town, Nomi's longing for a future of opportunity and hope sets her on course towards a climax at once startling and inevitable.

'Toews's debut is a tart, affectionate look at welfare mothers...Toews is especially good on the "rollicking, happy, impoverished family" of the projects [and] scathing about the humiliations of poverty.' New York Times

Lucy and her eight-month-old son live in a Winnipeg housing project filled with single mothers on the dole. Still dealing with her own mother's sudden death, and new to the ever-multiplying complications of life on welfare, Lucy strikes up a friendship with her neighbour, Lish. On the whole, they're pretty happy . . . But Lucy wants to make sure they stay happy. And she has a plan.

Told with Toews's signature scalding wit and deep compassion, Summer of my Amazing Luck is a brilliantly funny book about the intricacies of friendship, grief, and poverty.

'[A] picaresque account of two welfare moms having loopy adventures and getting by in the city... The novel's voice [is] amused, warm, curious, alive on the page.' The New Yorker

Knute is a twenty-four-year-old single mother who returns home to Algren with her daughter to look after her father Tom, who has suffered a heart attack. Meanwhile, Hosea Funk, a friend of Tom's and the mayor of Algren has a lot on his mind. The prime minister has promised to pay a visit to whichever town in Canada has the smallest population. Algren has held this position for some time but recent baby booms and returning families, like Knute, threaten to tip Algren over the magic 1500 . . .

Hattie, living in Paris, has just been dumped by her boyfriend when she receives a phone call from her eleven-year-old niece, Thebes. Hattie's sister Min is having a particularly dark episode and Thebes asks Hattie to come and look after her and her brother Logan. When Hattie arrives back in Canada, and realises that she is out of her depth, she hatches a plan to find the children's long-lost father. With only the most tenuous lead, she piles Logan and Thebes into the family van and heads south. Hilarious and heart-rending, The Flying Troutmans tells the story of a fractured family on the verge of spinning off its axles and a road trip that might just keep them together.

Jorge said he wasn't coming back until I learned how to be a better wife . . . But before he drove off he gave me a new flashlight with triple C batteries and I'm grateful for it because this is a very dark, pitch-black part of the world . . .

The closeted life of nineteen-year-old Irma Voth, recently married and more recently deserted, is turned on its head when a film crew arrives. They have come to make a movie about the strict Mennonite community in which she and her family live. Against her family's wishes, Irma takes a job on set and glimpses the wider world and a path towards something that feels like freedom.

One morning Mel Toews put on his coat and hat and walked out of town, prepared to die. A loving husband and father, faithful member of the Mennonite church, and immensely popular schoolteacher, he was a pillar of his close-knit community. Yet after a lifetime of struggle, he could no longer face the darkness of manic depression. With razor-sharp precision,Swing Low tells his story in his own voice, taking us deep inside the experience of despair. But it is also a funny, winsome evocation of country life: growing up on farm, courting a wife, becoming a teacher, and rearing a happy, strong family in the midst of private torment. A humane, inspiring story of a remarkable man, father, and teacher.

**READ THE BOOK BEFORE YOU WATCH THE MAJOR FILM STARRING CLAIRE FOY, JESSIE BUCKLEY, ROONEY MARA AND BEN WHISHAW** 'Don't miss this.' MARGARET ATWOOD 'Beautiful. . . a novel for the times.' LISA McINERNEY 'Tender, enraging and brimming with a bitter wit.' The Times 'An astonishment, a volcano of a novel.' LAUREN GROFF In a remote Mennonite colony, over a hundred girls and women were knocked unconscious and violated-by what many thought were ghosts or demons-as punishment for their sins. Their accounts were chalked up to 'wild female imagination.' Women Talking is an imagined response to these real events. When the women learn that they were in fact drugged and attacked by men in their community, they hold a secret meeting in a hayloft. They have two days to make a plan before the rapists are bailed out and brought home: will they dare to escape? 'Profound, affecting stuff.' Sunday Telegraph 'Brave and thoughtful.' Observer