Yann Martel is a writer with a firm but strictly one-handed grip on reality. And the other hand? Conjuring doves, lassoing great beasts, drawing fantastic doodles?

His writing suggests any and all of the above. Martel's first novel, Self, was a largely social realist account of a young person's discovery of the world, maturation as a writer, and search for love, with a magical twist: t... READ MORE

Tess Fragoulis, whose new novel Ariadne's Dream is set in modern day Greece but includes the occasional cameo appearance by the occasional mythical figure, received her first book of Greek mythology when she was six. Her father gave it to her and she remembers him making it clear to her that the stories in the book weren't just any old - emphasis on the old - stories.

"He told me they ... READ MORE

"All happy families are alike: every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way." Leo Tolstoy. In her wonderfully fresh and haunting debut, Sister Crazy, Emma Richler takes the reader along a series of obsessive talkabouts, seven modestly irreverent monologues that destroy any illusion that every happy family is a clone.

Jemima Weiss, middle of five children, loves her family to bits. Th... READ MORE

In the chill of postmodern reality, this novel should warm some hearts. Written in a conversational prose from a son's point of view, it follows the life of Montrealer Louis Fillion from the time of his youth during the Great Depression.

As a boy Louis collects used crates from the port of Montreal and sells them as firewood. He learns that despite his timidity, he is a good salesman. ... READ MORE