"With the charming and very funny Tink, Krueger has created an unforgettable character whose innocent curiosity busts through the societal conventions of early 1960s Canada. This is a masterful depiction of an atmosphere tense with fear and fuelled by grownup transgressions, where adult morality is contaminated by politics that tear communities apart." — Sheila Murray, author of Finding Edward It's 1961, and Mary Alice (Tink) Parker lives with her parents in a Vancouver suburb where many fathers are traumatized veterans of the Second World War and almost all the mothers are housewives. They believe they've earned secure and prosperous lives after the sacrifices they made during the war. But under the conformist veneer seethe conflicts and secrets that make the serenity of Grouse Valley precarious. This is the story of the unravelling of a neighbourhood. It's told by Tink, an eccentric child who is funny, observant, and impossibly nosy, who has...

MOVING BACK CAN MEAN MOVING FORWARD...AT A PRICEAs card-carrying members of the Sixties counter-culture, seven friends decide to abandon life in the mainstream and move back to the land. Phil and Marina join the unreliable Noah and his ever-changing band of acolytes in living off the grid.But good intentions meet reality—and passion. The commune quickly splinters, with a hard core of originals staying on the land and the rest heading home to the city.In a series of linked short stories, The Necessary Havoc of Love follows the old friends and their growing children from the 1970s through to the pandemic. We meet a national radio host, a human rights worker, a computer mogul and a craftswoman. All are restless seekers, looking for love or fleeing its failure. We follow them from an Indian ashram to a coffee plantation in Panama, from Mexico City to Tasmania and back to Vancouver. Along the way, the old friends face decades of change while struggling to...

A richly atmospheric portrait of women’s agency and the timelessness of love, Time Squared explores the enduring roles of rights, responsibility, and devotion throughout history The game will change when you remember who you are Robin and Eleanor meet in 1811 at the British estate of Eleanor’s rich aunt Clara. Robin is about to leave to fight in the Napoleonic Wars, and her aunt rules out a marriage between them. Everyone Eleanor knows, including Robin, believe they’ve always lived in these times. But Eleanor has strange glimpses of other eras, dreams that aren’t dreams but memories of other lives. And their time jumps start as their romance deepens. Robin fights in the Boer War, the First and Second World Wars, in Vietnam and Iraq. Meanwhile, Eleanor struggles to figure out what’s going on, finally understanding that she and Robin are being manipulated through time. Who is doing this, and why? Arriving in modern times, Eleanor...

A riveting story of talent and the price it exacts, set in a richly imagined Victorian EnglandCalled the most promising artist of his generation, handsome, modest, and affectionate, Richard Dadd rubbed shoulders with the great luminaries of the Victorian Age. He grew up along the Medway with Charles Dickens and studied at the Royal Academy Schools under the brilliant and eccentric J.M.W. Turner.Based on Dadd's tragic true story, Mad Richard follows the young artist as he develops his craft, contemplates the nature of art and fame — as he watches Dickens navigate those tricky waters — and ultimately finds himself imprisoned in Bedlam for murder, committed as criminally insane.In 1853, Charlotte Brontë — about to publish her third novel, suffering from unrequited love, and herself wrestling with questions about art and artists, class, obsession and romance — visits Richard at Bedlam and finds an unexpected kinship in his feverish mind and his haunting...