The Shipton history is--well--complicated. Some families have a guardian angel. The Shiptons have a guardian ancestor, one who jumps right in, boots first, whenever one of her girls has a problem. Of course, Mother Shipton's girls aren't always limited by blood ties. They're connected by power, shared and used wisely. That power needs to get busy, too, or Katherine's oilman fiancé is going to disappear for good in the Gulf of Mexico, Katherine's best friend Sylvia is never going to reconnect with her childhood soul mate, and cousin Irene's wedding plans to world champion saddle bronc rider Matt Dillon (yep, that's his real name) will end up down the drain. It's a good thing Mother has family troubleshooter Lillian to help her in this century. These girls get themselves into more trouble than a time-jumping family guardian can handle all by herself

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You're gonna love Mother Shipton! Hold on to your hat, you're in for a wild ride!

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Winner, 2018 Amazon Canada First Novel Award

Winner, 2018 McNally Robinson Book of the Year

Winner, 2018 Margaret Laurence Award for Fiction

Shortlisted, 2017 Governor General's Award for Fiction

Shortlisted, 2018 Eileen McTavish Sykes Award for Best First Book

A National Post Best Book of 2017

A Walter Scott Prize Academy Recommended Historical Novel of 2017

On CBC Books' list of writers to watch in 2018

The Leung family leads a life of secluded luxury in Hong Kong. But in December 1941, the Empire of Japan invades the colony. The family is quickly dragged into a spiral of violence, repression, and starvation. To survive, they entomb themselves and their friends in the Leung mansion. But this is only a temporary reprieve, and the Leungs are forced to send their children away.

The youngest boy, Chung-Man, escapes with some of his siblings, and together they travel deep into the countryside to avoid the Japanese invaders. Thrown into a new world, Chung-Man befriends a young couple who yearn to break free of their rural life. But their friendship ends when the Japanese arrive, and Chung-Man is once again taken captive. Unwittingly and willingly, he enters a new cycle of violence and punishment, until he finally breaks free from his captors and returns to Hong Kong.

Deeply scarred, Chung-Man drifts along respectfully and dutifully, enveloped by the unspoken vestiges of war. It is only as he leaves home once again — this time for university in America — that he finally glimpses a way to keep living with his troubled and divided self.

Written in restrained, yet beautiful and affecting prose, The Water Beetles is an engrossing story of adventure and survival. Based loosely on the diaries and stories of the author's father, this mesmerizing story captures the horror of war, through the eyes of a child, with unsettling and unerring grace.

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"Kaan is able to balance the bloodshed with beautiful imagery and detail."

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"Twelve-year-old Chung-Man transports the reader from the halcyon days of upper-class life in pre-war Hong Kong into the brutality of the Japanese occupation where cruelty has no limits. Written in clean, elegant prose, The Water Beetles is a powerful and gripping account of a young boy’s coming of age during that most harrowing of times. A most impressive debut."

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"I could not put this book down."

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"Michael Kaan’s spider-silken debut demands second read. [A] high-wire act of literary derring-do."

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"Kaan has succeeded in producing a work of lasting power. Introduced on these pages is a writer as skilled at crafting prose as he is at revealing the sufferings of war and lapsed time."

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"It is an understatement to say Kaan’s novel is an impressive debut. It immediately enters into the canon of coming-of-age stories, as powerful as any you can name."

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"Kaan has created a narrator who reveals his dramatic tale with such anguish and ironic restraint that truth-revealing consequences — the prickly truths of being inescapably human — are driven deeper into a reader’s heart. A work most deserving of serious attention."

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The return of the western — with a definite Canadian twist. The man, the myth, the gun-toting legend.

The man, the myth, the one-eyed legend: a frontier epic for fans of Ron Rash and Cormac McCarthy.

In 1876, the fabled lawman Strother Purcell disappears into a winter storm in the mountains of British Columbia, while hunting down his outlawed half-brother. Sixteen years later, the wreck of Purcell resurfaces – derelict, homeless and one-eyed – in a San Francisco jail cell. And a failed journalist named Barrington Weaver conceives a grand redemptive plan. He will write Purcell's true-life story. All it requires is a final act…

What unfolds is an archetypal saga of obsession, lost love, treachery, and revenge, told in Ian Weir's trademark funny, fast, wickedly intelligent style. A deadpan revisionist Western, refracted through a Southern Gothic revenge tragedy, The Death and Life of Strother Purcell is a novel about two cursed brothers, a pair of eldritch orphans, the vexed nature of truth, and the yearnings of that treacherous sonofabitch the human heart.

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"A fascinating and insightful commentary on how stories are built and on our determination to see them come to light. Strother strides on the page — epic and tragic — a man trapped in the myths of manhood and gunslinging, a man of a bygone era who cannot allow bygones to be just that."

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"Masterfully crafted storytelling, witty and pacy and scratchy with grit. When it comes to the "Canadian Western," Ian Weir thrills and heartbreaks in similar ways as Guy Vanderhaeghe, and if that all sounds like a good time, it is."

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"A literary exegesis on truth disguised as rollicking, tragic Western entertainment. Cain and Abel and the Sisters Brothers got nothing on towering Strother Purcell and his club-footed half-brother. When lies are this well loved, they transform into truth and truth into history."

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"Weir takes every trope in the Western's playbook — the one-eyed avenging lawman, the feckless brother, tarts both with and without hearts, gunslingers, gimps, and gamblers — and makes of them something new and utterly wonderful. This wildly entertaining and witty yarn made me gasp, hoot, and holler."

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Winner, Commonwealth Book Prize, Canada and the Caribbean, Frye Academy Award, and Margaret and John Savage First Book Award

Shortlisted, CLA Young Adult Book Award, Red Maple Award, and University of Canberra Book of the Year

Longlisted, IMPAC Dublin Award and Canada Reads

Living with a weird brother in a small town can be tough enough. Having a spectacular fall through the ice at a skating party and nearly drowning are grounds for embarrassment. But having a vision and narrating it to the assembled crowd solidifies your status as an outcast.

What Ruby Carson saw during that fateful day was her entire town — buildings and people — floating underwater. Then an orange-tipped surveyor stake turns up in a farmer's field. Another is found in the cemetery. A man with surveying equipment is spotted eating lunch near Pokiok Falls. The residents of Haverton soon discover that a massive dam is being constructed and that most of their homes will be swallowed by the rising water. Suspicions mount, tempers flare, and secrets are revealed. As the town prepares for its own demise, 14-year-old Ruby Carson sees it all from a front-row seat.

Set in the 1960s, The Town That Drowned evokes the awkwardness of childhood, the thrill of first love, and the importance of having a place to call home. Deftly written in a deceptively unassuming style, Nason's keen insights into human nature and the depth of human attachment to place make this novel ripple in an amber tension of light and shadow.

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"[A] captivating debut novel ... many flashes of clever humour and felicitous, well-paced storytelling that keeps you engaged throughout."

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"Nason writes with a keen logic and with the kind of wisdom that comes from an astute understanding of what it is to be human. It is a gift, and Nason brings this gift to the book's protagonist fourteen-year-old Ruby Carson ... From the smell of hot chocolate when Ruby regains consciousness from her fall, to the Nesbitt's Orange pop bottle sealed with canning wax, Nason imbues every scene with sensory delight. But anything of the quaint or peculiarly local in this book takes a back seat to the voice of Ruby Carson. She is one of a kind."

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"Charming, wry, and believable ... Nason has a particular gift for introducing supporting characters with memorable anecdotes, each of which reads like a sparkling little gem of a short story ... Ruby's voice, vibrating with contradictory desires, [delivers] shot-to-the-heart moments of real humour and pathos."

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"Fantastic ... I had such an emotional reaction ... The ending is so hopeful and uplifting. Highly recommended."

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"Riel Nason's debut novel establishes her as a writer with a bright future ... Nason's writing is warm and empathetic. She has a lovely ear for dialogue and her townspeople are well drawn. She also does a terrific job capturing the feel of a 1960s rural New Brunswick."

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"This is a lighthearted and well-written book that I would recommend to anyone."

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"The Town That Drowned is not easily forgotten."

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"An impressive first novel."

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"The writing is finely polished, the locale evocative, and her dialogue rings true. In Ruby, she nails the voice of youth."

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"If her debut novel, The Town That Drowned, is any indication, Riel Nason is a writer to watch. This tender tale about a New Brunswick village threatened by the provincial government's plan to build a dam has a ton of soul."

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"[T]his is a vivid, intimate novel that works equally well for adult and young-adult readers. ... Nason's genius in this novel is not just to tell an important historical story that needed to be told but to find exactly the right perspective from which to tell it. ... The Town That Drowned is a warm, intimate story in which every character feels as real as someone you might meet on the street."

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"I loved it. It's Canadian historical fiction with a tiny touch of the paranormal."

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"This is a richly detailed journey through a young woman's perspective, and the story flows like a gentle river as the reader watches a catastrophe unfold in slow motion. ... It's haunting and memorable, and simply a lovely read."

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Fesselnde Familiensaga in farbenfroher exotischer Landschaft

Surinam, 1876: Julie und Jean führen eine glückliche Ehe und bewirtschaften erfolgreich ihre Zuckerrohrplantage. Doch dunkle Wolken ziehen auf: Es drohen wirtschaftliche Sorgen. Als Abhilfe werden indische Arbeiter in das südamerikanische Land geholt. So kommt die junge Inika mit ihren Eltern auf die Plantage und sorgt für erbitterte Rivalität zwischen Julies Sohn und ihrem Stiefenkel ...

Linda Belago bei beHEARTBEAT: Lesen Sie auch die Vorgeschichte von Julie und Jean im abgeschlossenen Landschaftsroman "Im Land der Orangenblüten".

eBooks von beHEARTBEAT - Herzklopfen garantiert.

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"Zum Träumen." Lea

"Eine mitreißende Geschichte um Liebe und Familienglück, erzählt vor der traumhaften Kulisse Surinams." Dachauer Nachrichten

Als Michael Graf von Maywald die verwunschene alte Villa seiner verstorbenen Urgroßtante Amalia erbt, wird die Erinnerung an wunderschöne Ferien in seiner Kindheit wach. Was soll er aber nun mit dem halb verfallenen Gemäuer anfangen?

Nachdenklich schaut Michael aus dem Erkerfenster in den an die Villa angrenzenden Schlosspark und erblickt eine bezaubernde junge Frau, eine märchenhafte Schönheit mit zarten Zügen und langen rotbraunen Locken, die von schillernden Blauen Pfauen umkreist wird. Sie kommt ihm vor wie ein Wesen aus einer anderen Welt.

Michael weiß, dass das Betreten des Nachbargrundstückes strengstens verboten ist, aber er muss die "Pfauen-Prinzessin" um jeden Preis kennenlernen. Und er hat auch schon eine Idee, wie er das Verbot vielleicht umgehen kann ...

Juliane von Waldeck schwebt im siebten Liebeshimmel. Schon lange träumt die bildhübsche Flugbegleiterin von einer eigenen kleinen Familie, und nun soll ihr Wunsch in Erfüllung gehen. Ihr Freund Philipp von Dornberg hat um ihre Hand angehalten. Aufgeregt fiebert sie dem ersten Zusammentreffen mit seiner Familie entgegen. Wird man sie herzlich willkommen heißen?

Man tut es nicht. Fürstin Therese mustert Juliane mit kalten Augen und lässt keinen Zweifel daran, dass eine Flugbegleiterin keine akzeptable Partie ist. Einzig Prinz Alexander ist ihr gegenüber freundlich und zuvorkommend. Sehnsüchtig mustert er die Verlobte seines Bruders, und auch Juliane fühlt sich in seiner Gegenwart sofort geborgen ...

Sechzehn Jahre ist sie alt, die glutäugige Mexikanerin Tinka de Freitas, und sie ist sagenhaft reich. Als Hanno Ofterding das verführerisch schöne Mädchen zum ersten Mal sieht, ist es um ihn geschehen. Er vergisst Frau und Kind. Alles will Hanno hinter sich lassen, wenn er Tinka bekommt.

Doch Juan de Freitas, der Ölmillionär, will von einer Ehe seiner Tochter mit dem Geschiedenen nichts wissen. Schließlich fliehen Hanno und Tinka und heiraten heimlich, aber die gegen den Willen des Vaters geschlossene Verbindung bringt ihnen kein Glück.

Juan de Freitas verzeiht dem Verführer seiner Tochter nicht, und die Millionen, die der junge Mann besitzen wollte, werden ihm zum Verhängnis ...

Donata glaubt nicht mehr daran, dass der Ring, den die Großmutter ihr kurz vor ihrem Tode vererbt hat, die Macht hat, ihr das große Liebesglück zu schenken, und so legt sie ihn enttäuscht ab.

"An diesem Ring hängt ein Glücksversprechen, das sich noch nicht erfüllt hat", sagte die Großmutter damals. "Vielleicht ist es dir bestimmt, darum musst du ihn immer tragen."

Ehe Donata am zehnten Todestag ihrer Großmuter zum Friedhof fährt, steckt sie den Ring, einer inneren Stimme gehorchend, noch einmal an den Finger. Während sie an einer Ampel steht, schaut sie versonnen auf ihren Ring und dann auf den Mann im Auto neben sich. Und als sich ihre Blicke für den Bruchteil einer Sekunde treffen, da spürt Donata, dass sich die geheimnisvolle Kraft des Glücksringes entfaltet ...

Alaine Cherno, die weltberühmte Opernsängerin, erhält überall, wo sie auftritt, von einem Unbekannten einen wunderschönen Strauß rosaroter Rosen. Diese Geste eines heimlichen Verehrers erfüllt den Baron Carlo von Burgstaller, der Alaine leidenschaftlich und besitzergreifend liebt, mit glühender Eifersucht.

Und dann, eines Tages, begegnet die große Sängerin ihrem heimlichen "Rosenkavalier". Sie könnte ihn von ganzem Herzen und aus tiefster Seele lieben, wäre da nicht Carlo, den eine schwere Krankheit mittlerweile an den Rollstuhl fesselt ...