New Releases by Gail Anderson-Dargatz

Charlotte is going to prove her grandma is right—the lake monster is real! When Charlotte gets a drone for her fourteenth birthday, she’s determined to get footage of Dottie, the elusive lake monster of Dorothy Lake. Her grandma, who has dedicated her life to searching for the monster, is the joke of the town. But when Charlotte manages to capture a video of the monster and posts it online, she’s the sudden target of a media storm. Now everyone is making fun of her too. Worse, droves of monster hunters arrive in her town, crowding the lake. When their boat propellers threaten to hurt Dottie, Charlotte is faced with a difficult choice. This short novel is a high-interest, low-reading level book for middle-grade readers who are building reading skills, want a quick read or say they don’t like to read! The epub edition of this title is fully accessible.

Seventeen-year-old Jen is shocked to discover that the dad she grew up with is not her biological father. Jen loves to sing. But the rest of her family can’t carry a tune. When a stranger named Mike gives her roses at her concert and reveals that he is her birth father, Jen''s world flips upside down. Mike is a musician, just like Jen, and now she understands why she looks nothing like Steve, the only dad she’s ever known. When Steve learns the truth Jen''s mom has been hiding all these years, he moves out, and Jen can''t help but feel responsible. Worse, she doesn’t know who she is anymore. It feels like her whole life has been a lie. Is Steve still her dad? What about Mike? When it feels like her family is falling apart, Jen doesn''t know where she belongs. The epub edition of this title is fully accessible.

National Bestseller If the man you love went missing, how far would you go to find him? Someone is watching Piper, and she thinks she knows who it is: the bushman. But there’s more than one danger lurking in this temperate rainforest. Poachers are taking down old growth trees and jeopardizing plans for a park, a project Piper is passionate about. When she pressures her husband, Ben, a natural resources officer, to identify the culprits, he takes his drone into the wilderness to track them down. And then, just as a snowstorm hits, he goes missing. Refusing to believe her husband is gone, Piper begins a desperate search for him, one that continues long after the rescue team has given up. But as she begins to uncover what really happened to Ben, Piper is pursued by a stalker who may have taken her husband’s life and now threatens to take hers.

Key Selling Points On a camping trip, a young teen starts to suspect his family is being followed by the mythical Bigfoot. Themes of self-worth and responsibility are explored. Like the Loch Ness Monster and the Abominable Snowman, the appeal of this mythical creature is eternal. The author is the international-award-winning author of The Cure for Death by Lightning and several other bestselling novels. She also mentors up-and-coming writers. The author has also written a number of short novels for striving readers, including The Ride Home, which was nominated for the BC and Yukon Book Prize. Enhanced features (dyslexia-friendly font, cream paper, larger trim size) to increase reading accessibility for dyslexic and other striving readers.

Marc est un garçon de la ville qui est allé vivre chez sa grand-mère à la campagne pendant que sa mère est en cure de désintoxication. Pour la première fois de sa vie, il doit voyager en autobus scolaire. Le long trajet dans un véhicule bruyant n’a rien à voir avec les transports en commun de la ville : il y a un genre de code secret pour savoir où on peut s’asseoir, les jeunes crient sans arrêt et quelqu’un essaie même de mettre le feu au siège de Marc. Marc juge rapidement que tous ces jeunes sont fous et qu’il doit tout faire pour les éviter. Toutefois, lorsqu’un accident survient, il apprend qu’il a plus de points en commun avec ces ados de la campagne qu’il ne le croyait. Cet ouvrage en format ePub est entièrement accessible. Également disponible sous le titre The Ride Home en anglais.

If you almost had everything that you wanted, how hard would you fight to protect it? Kira is engaged to the man of her dreams: he’s charming, handsome, wealthy, and a great dad to their baby, Evie, and his thirteen-year-old daughter, Olive. Having grown up with a troubled relationship with her mother and mostly estranged from her father, Kira craves a close family and secure home, and with Aaron, Evie and Olive, she almost has it. The only problem is Aaron’s ex-wife, Madison, who’s out of control and trying to get to Olive. When Kira takes the girls out of town to her childhood summer home and finds out that Madison has followed them, she panics. Between the beach and the forest on Manitoulin Island, Kira fights to protect Olive, Evie and her fiancé, until a dark secret threatens to unravel the life that is almost hers. With the future she has built hanging in the balance, and her past haunting her at every turn, Kira must choose who to believe and who she wants to be.

Mark is a city kid who has come to a small town to live with his grandmother after his mom goes into rehab. Mark has to take a school bus home for the first time. The long, noisy ride home is nothing like riding city transit. There’s some kind of secret code of knowing where you’re allowed to sit, the kids scream nonstop and someone even tries to set Mark’s seat on fire. He quickly decides that all these kids are too strange and does his best to avoid them. But when tragedy strikes, Mark learns that he has more in common with these country kids than he had ever imagined. The epub edition of this title is fully accessible.

Fourteen-year-old Iggy comes from a famous family. Well, sort of. His dad directs a cheesy sci-fi Web series, his mom writes for it, and his sister has a successful YouTube channel. Iggy doesn’t have the acting bug, so he feels like an outsider. Wanting to prove himself, Iggy starts his own podcast about what interests him: insects. But it’s not until Iggy embarrasses his famous sister on air that his podcast really takes off. He’s thrilled with his own success, until she fires back. Now it’s all-out war. Iggy’s World is an exploration of the age-old problem artists face: when we find inspiration from our real lives, what will our friends and family think? And, of course, just how much of our private lives do we really want to reveal online? This short novel is a high-interest, low-reading level book for middle-grade readers who are building reading skills, want a quick read or say they don’t like to read!

Sadie works as a framer, building houses. Sadie lost her own home in a recent divorce and now lives with her two daughters in a rented bungalow. When her landlady says she needs to move out, Sadie finds there''s a housing crisis in her community. She can''t find a place to live and is forced to move her family into a travel trailer at a local campsite. When her ex-husband finds out, he insists that the girls come live with him in another city. Desperate to keep her daughters with her in their home community, Sadie is forced to rethink her dream of living in a full-sized house. In the short term, she moves her girls into a co-worker''s apartment. Then, with the help of her friends and daughters, she builds a tiny house. In the process she finds living with less has its rewards and that living in a small space brings her family closer together. This short novel is a high-interest, low-reading level book for older teen readers and adults who are building reading skills, want a quick read or say they don’t like to read!

Owning a bakery isn''t just about making dough.

The long-awaited new novel by the two-time Giller-shortlisted author is full of the qualities Gail Anderson-Dargatz''s fans love: it''s an intimate family saga rooted in the Thompson-Shuswap region of British Columbia, and saturated with the history of the place. A bold new story that bridges Native and white cultures across a bend in a river where the salmon run. On one side of the river is a ranch once owned by Eugene Robertson, who came in the gold rush around 1860, and stayed on as a homesteader. On the other side is a Shuswap community that has its own tangled history with the river--and the whites. At the heart of the novel are Hannah and Brandon Robertson, teenagers who have been raised by their grandfather after they lost their mother. As the novel opens, the river is dying, its flow reduced to a trickle, and Hannah is carrying salmon past the choke point to the spawning grounds while her childhood best friend, Alex, leads a Native protest against the development further threatening the river. When drowning nearly claims the lives of both Hannah''s grandfather and her little brother, their world is thrown into chaos. Hannah, Alex, and most especially Brandon come to doubt their own reality as they are pulled deep into Brandon''s numinous visions, which summon the myths of Shuswap culture and tragic family stories of the past. The novel hovers beautifully in the fluid boundary between past and present, between the ordinary world and the world of the spirit, all disordered by the human and environmental crises that have knit the white and Native worlds together in love, and hate, and tragedy for 150 years. Can Hannah and her brother, and Alex, find a way forward that will neither destroy the river nor themselves?

Race Against Time is the third novel in a series of mysteries featuring journalist and sleuth Claire Abbott. Small-town reporter Claire Abbott wakes from a nightmare, convinced a bomb will go off in the local school. And then, strangely enough, there really is a bomb scare. After the school is cleared by police and their sniffer dog, Claire is certain the threat isn''t over. People are behaving strangely. Claire believes a bomber will attack the school. But when? And who is the bomber? Claire must track down the culprit and stop him before the bomb goes off. This short novel is a high-interest, low-reading level book for older teen readers and adults who are building reading skills, want a quick read or say they don’t like to read!

Small-town journalist Claire Abbott seeks an arsonist starting fires in this work of crime fiction.

In this work of crime fiction, Claire Abbott, a small-town reporter, uses her sixth sense to find a missing girl.

Annie runs a bed and breakfast, renting rooms to overnight guests. She has lived alone since her husband died five years ago. Now, she wishes for someone to love. One morning, Annie helps her friend Steve fix the kitchen pipes. She couldn''t manage without Steve. But with his old clothes and unshaven face, he''s not Mr. Right.Then Annie hears a man''s voice: Hello? Surprised, she bumps her head on the bottom of the kitchen sink. Jumping up, Annie welcomes Brent, her guest. Her heart skips a beat as she meets him for the first time. Handsome, charming, well dressedwill Brent turn out to be the man of her dreams?A perfect book choice for new readers.

This collection includes All Night, Bed and Breakfast, The Clear-Out, and Love You to Death.

When fifteen-year-old Beth Week’s family is attacked by a grizzly, her father becomes increasingly violent, making him a danger to his neighbors, his family, and especially Beth. Meanwhile, several young children from the nearby Indian reservation have gone missing, and Beth fears that something is pursuing her in the bush. But friendship with an Indian girl connects her to a mythology that enriches her landscape; and an unexpected protector shores up her world. Set on an isolated Canadian farm in the midst of World War II, The Cure for Death by Lightning evokes a life at once harshly demanding and rich in sensory pleasures: the deafening chatter of starlings, the sight of thousands of painted turtles crossing a road, the smell of baking that fills the Weeks’s kitchen. The novel is sprinkled throughout with recipes and remedies from the scrapbook Beth’s mother keeps, a boon to Beth as she learns to face down her demons--and one of many elements that give The Cure for Death by Lightning its enchanting vitality.

"Sara used to be a back-up singer in a band. She left her singing career to raise a family. She is content with being a stay-at-home mom. Then, one Saturday, Sara''s world changes. Sara and her family go to an outdoor music festival. There, on stage, Sara sees Jim, the lead singer from her old band. He invites her to sing with him. Being on stage brings back forgotten feelings for Sara - and for Jim. And Sara''s husband Rob sure doesn''t like what he sees. Sara also sees something else: a coyote. Learn how Coyote, the trickster spirit, turns Sara''s life upside down."--Back cover.

Gail Anderson-Dargatz, the acclaimed and bestselling author of The Cure for Death by Lightning and A Recipe for Bees, brings readers once again into the heart of rural Canada with A Rhinestone Button. As funny as it is tender, it is a novel full of true-to-life characters, natural wonder, and sweet surprises. Despite growing up in the small farming town of Godsfinger, Alberta, Job Sunstrum was always a bit of an outsider. A thin young man with blond, curly hair, he loved baking and cooking, and certainly did not fit in with the rough-and-tumble farm boys around town. Even when Job takes over the farm after his father’s death and his brother’s departure to train as a pastor, his community remains his animals, and perhaps the church women with whom he shares his baking on Sundays. Lonely beyond belief, overwhelmed by religious guilt, and taut with fear at the thought of what life might have in store for him, Job can only turn to God and hope that someday, things will turn around. Only his synesthesia — his ability to see sounds as colours, and feel vibrations as solid forms — provides him with passing moments of solace, but it also reaffirms for him that he experiences the world in a way the other people of Godsfinger could not possibly understand. Then one year, Job’s “tightly coiled” life begins to fall apart, and even the small sureties that got him through the days are torn away from him. The colours even disappear from sounds. Faced with change on every level and not knowing how to live outside the world he was brought up in, Job allows himself to be caught up in the Pentecostal drive of a preacher named Jack Divine, in hopes that clinging to his beliefs, proving his faith, and doing what others expect of him will make everything all right. But when his new-found religious fervour only accelerates his despair and his world continues to crumble, Job is surprised to find that true faith can be found in earthly experiences, and come from the most unlikely of sources. That a world without the familiar colours and shapes of sound is not half-heard, as he feared, but freed to break out in song. Like Anderson-Dargatz’s previous novels, A Rhinestone Button is a loving and magical portrait of small-town life that makes us question what we believe is real, and true.

This collection includes 10 titles: New Year''s Eve, Home Invasion, The Hangman, The Day the Rebels Came to Town, Picture This, Missing, In From the Cold, The Stalker, The Picture of Nobody, and Shipwreck.

International Bestseller Shortlisted for the 1998 Giller Prize A Globe and Mail Notable Book of 1998 Over 40,000 copies sold in hardcover In A Recipe for Bees, Gail Anderson-Dargatz gives readers a remarkable woman to stand beside Hagar Shipley and Daisy Goodwin — but Augusta Olsen also has attitude, a wicked funny bone, and the dubious gift of second sight. At home in Courtenay, B.C., Augusta anxiously awaits news of her dearly loved son-in-law Gabe, who is undergoing brain surgery miles away in Victoria. Her best friend Rose is waiting for Augusta to call as soon as she hears. Through Rose, we begin to learn the story of Augusta''s sometimes harsh, sometimes magical life: the startling vision of her mother''s early death; the loneliness of her marriage to Karl and her battle with Karl''s detestable father, Olaf. We are told of her gentle, platonic affair with a church minister, of her not-so-platonic affair with a man from the town, and the birth of her only child. We also learn of the special affinity between Rose and Augusta, who share the delights and exasperations of old age. Just as The Cure for Death by Lightning offers recipes and remedies, A Recipe for Bees is saturated with bee lore, and is full of rich domestic detail, wondrous imagery culled from rural kitchens and gardens, shining insights into ageing, family and friendship. And at its heart, is the life, death and resurrection of an extraordinary marriage

My memories are so like that hat full of butterflies, some already deteriorating the moment they are collected, some breathed back to life now and again, for a brief moment, by the scent on a passing wind–the smell of an orange, perhaps, or a whiff of brown-sugar fudge–before drifting away, just out of my reach. How much of myself flits away with each of these tattered memories? How much of myself have I already lost? (Turtle Valley, p. 289) It is the end of a long, dry summer in Turtle Valley, British Columbia, and when a raging forest fire threatens to destroy Kat’s childhood home, she returns with her son and estranged husband to help her elderly parents prepare for evacuation. Haunted by memories of the relationship she had with a man she loved and left fifteen years before, Kat discovers a ghostly link between her mother’s tragic past and her own quest to find a love that has the power to fulfill and sustain her. Sure to be remembered as one of her most satisfying novels, Turtle Valley is a page-turner filled with the lush descriptions, emotional truths and dark poetry that have made Gail Anderson-Dargatz an international literary sensation.

Après Remède à la mort par la foudre, qui lui a valu une reconnaissance internationale, Gail Anderson-Dargatz donne ici une nouvelle dimension de son talent. Si le livre emprunte son titre aux Géorgiques de Virgile, c''est bien sûr parce qu''il y est question d''insectes hyménoptères de la famille des apidés, mais surtout parce que cette Recette pour les abeilles a une importance capitale dans la vie d''Augusta, le personnage principal. Femme passionnée et indépendante, elle a hérité de sa mère une étonnante force de caractère, un curieux don prémonitoire et l''amour des abeilles. Biens précieux pour l''histoire mouvementée de son couple... Ce roman traite avec une grande sensibilité du sentiment amoureux, de ses espoirs et de ses déboires. Dans la lignée d''Alice Munro et de Margaret Atwood, Gail Anderson-Dargatz nous offre un livre qui est tout à la fois une subtile exploration de la part d''extraordinaire qui vit en chacun de nous et le plus réjouissant des hymnes à la vie.

An extract from an international celebration charting the 20th century - stories of poverty and wealth, work and play, tales of changing environments - both urban and rural, in peace and wartime.

Een oudere boerenvrouw kijkt terug op haar harde leven op het platteland van British Columbia (Canada), toen ze troost vond in een buitenechtelijke relatie en het houden van bijen.