Short Story Bundle 2

Get more NeWest books for less with our NeWest bundles! This bundle includes: Goth Girls of Banff by John O’Neill John O’Neill’s gothic short stories, set in the Canadian Rockies, are haunted by the violence inherent in nature and humans. The mountains are majestic and impassive. The characters are surprising, bent, but also empathetic. Their survival is tenuous. A two-sister team of goth tour guides offers guided excursions up switchback mountain trails; a paroled convict thumbs his way into the life of a family driving west; and an animal pathologist, while performing a necropsy on a grizzly bear, has an unusual encounter with both technology and humanity. Goth Girls of Banff is a superb collection, sharply written, with plot turns as consequence-laden as those on an iced-over mountain road. Lost Animal Club by Kevin A. Couture In his debut story collection, Kevin A. Couture creates a world where the veneer of humanness stretches thin and often cracks as a menagerie of burdened characters reveal their beast-like traits. In his desperate survival plan, a pre-teen “rescues” dogs in order to sell them back to their well-off owners; a marathon pacesetter reflects on the pace she sets both on and off the race route, as she navigates her imperfect marriage; a man confronts his drive for alcohol and the deadly and isolating consequences that leave him to risk his last scrap of control; and two kids, for different reasons, execute their plan to capture a bear cub. Lost Animal Club combines murky sensibilities with finely rendered, precise prose. The writing is gripping and honest, with metaphors and similes as startling as the harsh choices the characters make. Paper Teeth by Lauralyn Chow Lauralyn Chow's debut, Paper Teeth, follows the lives of the Lees, a Canadian-Chinese family and their friends who reside in Edmonton, Alberta. While playing with time and place, from Edmonton in the 1960s and 70s up to present-day Calgary, Lauralyn Chow creates a world of walking dolls, family car trips, fashion and frosty makeup, home renovations inspired by pop culture, and moving up to big, new houses. The interconnected stories found in Paper Teeth are fun, funny, and heart-warming journeys about the pursuit of identity and the crafting of home. With domestic tomfoolery and through deft observation and prismatic-voiced humour—including ironic asides—Lauralyn Chow reveals how family nourishes hope.