New Releases by Diane Schoemperlen

One Monday morning in April, a middle-aged writer walks into her living room to water the plants and finds a woman standing beside her potted fig tree. Dressed in a navy blue trench coat and white Nikes, the woman introduces herself as "Mary. Mother of God.... You know. Mary." Instead of a golden robe or a crown, she arrives bearing a practical wheeled suitcase. Weary after two thousand years of adoration and petition, Mary is looking for a little R & R. She''s asked in for lunch, and decides to stay a week. As the story of their visit unfolds, so does the story of Mary-one of the most complex and powerful female figures of our time-and her changing image in culture, art, history, as well as the thousands of recorded sightings that have placed her everywhere from a privet hedge to the dented bumper of a Camaro. As this Everywoman and Mary become friends, their conversations, both profound and intimate, touch upon Mary''s significance and enduring relevance. Told with humor and grace, Our Lady of the Lost and Found is an absorbing tour through Mary''s history and a thoughtful meditation on spirituality, our need for faith, and our desire to believe in something larger than ourselves.

A brilliant interplay between words and images informs this collection of stories, in which devotion is explored in its many forms.

In this astonishingly inventive novel, Diane Schoemperlen uses the 100 stimulus words from the Standard Word Association Test as a narrative framework for exploring her heroine''s growing understanding of the meaning of love. A tour de force of wit and wordplay, In the Language of Love is a wise and compassionate collage of one woman''s coming of emotional age.

Originally published in a 1990 collection of the same name, and later in the anthology Red Plaid Shirt, "The Man of My Dreams" pulls us into a place where we too wonder what is real and what is dreamed, and how our dreams reflect love, loss, and everyday life. Red Plaid Shirt shines with Diane Schoemperlen''s fresh and often deadpan comedic voice, offering a compulsively readable mix of deeply felt emotion and finely wrought intellect. The collection was shortlisted for the Upper Canada Brewing Company Writers'' Craft Award. HarperCollins brings great works of literature to life in digital format, upholding the highest standards in ebook production and celebrating reading in all its forms. Look for more titles in the HarperCollins short-stories collection to build your digital library.