Showing results by narrator "Rebecca Auerbach" in All Categories

In the seaside village of Sechelt, Emma O’Brea prepares a dinner to celebrate six years of marriage: ­a union she has polished to gleaming perfection, along with her showcase home. The next morning her husband leaves for work, never to return. At the same time, in nearby Vancouver, a simple-minded stock boy named Eddie Addison defends his tattered pride against the unwitting slights of a college girl, unleashing his rage in an act that will have far-reaching consequences.

This is how Miranda Newman’s mother described the experience of trying to find an explanation for her daughter’s behaviour. It would be years before Miranda was able to find a diagnosis that explained the complicated way she moved through the world. She would have to advocate for herself in the mental health system while dealing with abuse, being unhoused, survival sex, suicide attempts and hospitalizations.

It's midsummer in British Columbia, and it's hot. Murderously hot, as RCMP Staff Sergeant Karl Alberg finds when his day at the beach with his ex is cut short by the discovery of a fresh corpse. And back in Sechelt, a nuisance call from an eccentric redneck swiftly leads Alberg into a psychological Gordian knot and a second crime a decade old.

Essie has grown up in the public library, raised in secret by the four librarians who found her abandoned as a baby in the children's department. With four mothers and miles of books to read, Essie has always been very happy living there. But now that she is eleven, Essie longs for a little more freedom . . . and maybe a friend her own age.

Lawyer Arthur Beauchamp is facing the most explosive trial of his career: the defence of seven boisterous environmentalists accused of sabotaging an Ontario plant that pumps out a pesticide that has led to the mass death of honeybees. The story zigzags between Toronto, where the trial takes place, and Arthur’s West Coast island home, where he finds himself arrested for fighting his own environmental cause: the threatened destruction of a popular park. The Toronto trial concludes with a tense, hang-by-the-fingernails jury verdict.

Paisley Ratchford is trying to keep it together, but in eight weeks, the Toronto apartment building she lives in will be demolished. A last-ditch effort to reclaim her abandoned childhood home on Amherst Island plunges Paisley into memories of growing up in the tight-knit community, and into the obsessive compulsive disorder that has only ever offered a semblance of control. Her compulsion to count in sets of eight had little effect on thwarting bullies, her father’s bad luck, and her mother’s mental illness—all of which return to haunt her.

The acclaimed author of haunting crime novels of the Pacific Northwest reaches new heights of suspense. Four times in his 10-year search for the perfect woman, Gordon Murphy has been wrong. Now, he's set his sights on Cassandra Mitchell—despite the fact that she's living happily with Staff Sergeant Karl Alberg of the RCMP. Murphy is educated, attractive, wealthy—and a killer.

Nearly twenty years after the death of her infant daughter, Rosy is still reeling from all that she's lost. Desperate to repair the connections to the family she does have—her husband, Desmond, and her eighteen-year-old son, Eddie—she's determined to lay her grief to rest by the twentieth anniversary of her daughter’s death.

Take a journey through notable cases in Canada’s criminal justice history, featuring well known and some lesser known figures from the past. You'll meet Arthur Ellis, Canada’s most famous hangman, whose work outfit was a frock coat and striped trousers, often with a flower pinned to his lapel. And you will also encounter other memorable characters, including the man who was hanged twice and the gun-toting bootlegger who was the only woman every executed in Alberta.

Vancouver's “Sunshine Coast” is famous for its beautiful vistas, but closer inspection reveals a strong dose of dysfunction among its quaint villages. Eliot Gardener is maddeningly sullen as only an angry fourteen-year-old can be. He's also, apparently, a double-murderer, having whacked both of his parents with a machete. At least it’s an open and shut case for Canadian Mountie Karl Alberg. Or is it? Eliot may be guilty, but what drove him to commit such a grisly crime? As Alberg tries to get the troubled boy to talk, he finds himself dealing with dysfunction in his own life.

Stacey MacAindra burns–to burst through the shadows of her existence to a richer life, to recover some of the passion she can only dimly remember from her past. The Fire-Dwellers is an extraordinary novel about a woman who has four children, a hard-working but uncommunicative husband, a spinster sister, and an abiding conviction that life has more to offer her than the tedious routine of her days.

Alison Green, desperate Valedictorian-wannabe, agrees to produce her school’s production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. That’s her first big mistake. The second is accidentally saying yes to a date with her oldest friend, Jack, even though she’s crushing on Charlotte. Alison manages to stay positive, even when her best friend starts referring to the play as “Ye Olde Shakespearean Disaster.” Alison must cope with the misadventures that befall the play if she’s going to survive the year.