Twin brothers Amed and Aziz live in the peaceful shade of their family's orange grove. But when a bomb kills the boys' grandparents, the war that plagues their country changes their lives forever. Blood must repay blood, and, in order to avenge their grandparents' deaths, one brother must offer the ultimate sacrifice. Years later, the surviving twin -- now a student actor in a wintry Montreal -- is given a role which forces him to confront the past. Tremblay, an actor and director himself, poses the difficult question: can art ever adequately address suffering? Both current and timeless, written with the sharp purity of desert poetry, The Orange Grove depicts the haunting inheritance of war and its aftermath.

The A List edition of one of the major achievements in recent Quebec literature - Roch Carrier's La Guerre trilogy is a vital, moving, and assured portrait of life in Quebec. This volume includes: La Guerre, Yes Sir! A surrealist fable set in rural Quebec during WWI. Canadian Literature greeted its first appearance in these terms: "It is the French-Canadian writer Roch Carrier who comes closest to the significance, power, and artistry of Faulkner at his best ... He might well be able to do for French Canada what Faulkner did for the American South." Floralie, Where Are You? In the second installment, Carrier reaches back to the wedding night of the Corriveau parents, whom we first meet in La Guerre, Yes Sir!. Once again, a single night expands until it becomes a world in itself. But this time it is a very different concoction, mingling desire and guilt, nightmare and fantasy, as Anthymo drives Floralie back to his village through the forest. Is It the Sun, Philibert? In the final installment, Young Philibert hitchhikes down to Montreal to make his fortune, and meets a different world. As he scrambles from job to job, he discovers a new Quebec - urban, industrial, and dedicated finally to the death of the person. In this moving trilogy, Roch Carrier's savage vision comes across with great urgency and Sheila Fischman's fluid translations sing with vivacity and grace.

War takes no prisoners. It involves everyone - even children.Twin brothers, Amed and Aziz, live in the peaceful shade of their family's orange grove. But when a bomb kills the boys' grandparents, they become pawns in their country's civil war. Blood demands more blood and, at the command of a local militant group, either Ahmed or Aziz must strap on a belt of explosives and make the ultimate sacrifice. Years later, the surviving twin works as an actor in wintry Montreal. A theatre director gives him a role that forces the young man to reconsider his decisions. Will Ahmed - or is it Aziz? - release himself from the past?

<div>La Guess, Yes Sir! is a wedding, a funeral, and best of all, a full company of Carrier's joyful, blaspheming, vigorous characters.</div>

Frederick Langlois could be that geeky 17-year-old found in every high school the one who closely clutches his poem-filled notebook, who feels a bit too deeply, who s just a little too old for his years. But Frederick isn t in high school. He s in a hospital ward with other critically ill adolescents, dying of bone cancer. Mercury Under the Tongue chronicles his short stay there, from his distant but friendly relationship with his therapist through comic moments in the ward and his emergent friendships with other teenage patients. Some survive, others are lost, and at the end, Frederick must make a final reckoning with himself and his family, one that is at once dispassionate and deeply felt. Avoiding both misty stoicism and made-for-TV bathos, the book exposes the fallible body as the humanizing factor that grounds spirited adolescent talk, creating a believable, likable protagonist while weaving a compelling, lyrical story."

The first volume in the beloved novelist Marie-Claire Blais' prize-winning novel cycle - acclaimed as one of the greatest undertakings in modern Quebec fiction - reissued in a handsome A List edition, featuring an introduction by Lisa Moore. Originally published in 1995 under the title Soifs, the first novel in Marie-Claire Blais' masterful series won the Governor General's Award for French Fiction and was hailed by critics around the world as a tour de force, comparing Blais to such literary greats as Virginia Woolf, Dante, Sophocles, and Shakespeare. In this dazzling rendering, These Festive Nights, celebrated translator Sheila Fischman brings Blais' novel to life for English-speaking readers. A sun-drenched paradise in the Gulf of Mexico surrounded by the glimmering blue sea; Renata is convalescing on this island poised between two worlds: between great wealth and extreme poverty, between the past and an uncertain future, between the beauty of the world and the horrors of history. During her time here, Renata becomes tormented by thirst - for justice, for pleasure, for intoxication - while all around her, festivities are going on in joint celebration of the birth of baby Vincent and the end of the twentieth century. Over the course of three days and three nights a flock of characters assembles - an entire spectrum of humanity is depicted in the grip of doubt and suffering. In this swirling, baroque fresco, Marie-Claire Blais captures the essence of our apocalyptic age, rendering it in powerfully evocative prose.

An Amazon.ca Best Book of 2013Romain was born with a silver spoon in his mouth. At 18, he leaves his family for a home in the forest, learning to live off the land rather than his family's wealth. elena flees a house of blood and mayhem, taking refuge in a monastery and later in the rustic village of Riviere-aux-Oies. One day, while walking in the woods, elena hears the melody of a clarinet and comes across Romain, who calls himself Starling and whom elena later renames Douglas, for the strongest and most spectacular of trees. Later a child named Rose is born. Fade to black. When the story takes up again, Douglas has returned to the forest, Rose is in the village under the care of others, and elena is gone. From these disparate threads, Christine Eddie tenderly weaves a fable for our time and for all times. As the years pass, the story broadens to capture others in its elegant web -- a doctor with a bruised heart, a pharmacist who may be a witch, and a teacher with dark secrets. Together they raise this child with the mysterious heritage, transforming this story into an ode to friendship and family, a sonnet on our relationship with nature, and an elegy to love and passion. The Douglas Notebooks was originally published in French as Les carnets de Douglas. This edition was translated by Sheila Fischman.

Told from multiple points of view, "The Fugitives" is the labyrinthine story of four generations of women trying to escape the legacy of their families. The women, and men, of the related dysfunctional Saint-Arnaud and Dumont families are at various stages of rebelling against familial bonds and obligations in order to fulfill their destinies.

Set against a backdrop of family secrets that include rape, rumours of murder, incest, adultery, and false identities, "The Fugitives" is a highly original contemplation on how families can go bad. Suzanne Jacob's seventh novel is rendered in an unusual multi-dimensional series of fractal-like episodes that capture the emotional and psychic complexities of kinship. The family here is a ground that can be murderous as one father is accused of molesting a minor, a mother has fainting spells and seems to go crazy, a sister fakes her death, another sister wants to be a boy and contemplates poisoning her family, a great-grandmother has a lesbian affair, and each relative has his or her own version of the truth. Carried forward with the use of various interior monologues, a veritable tornado of lies and secrets is unleashed that cuts through the four generations. In the background are the seductive couple Francois and Catherine Piano who in their own pernicious way have set this storm in motion.

"The Fugitives" evokes the mysterious, often cruel, ways that knowledge is passed down from parents to children. Most important, the novel shows us how the sins of the mothers and fathers that plague the generations can be released. "The Fugitives" is a breathtaking literary masterpiece of family drama.