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One Amazing Thing$14.99 add to cart

The calm humdrum of an American visa and passport office is shattered by an earthquake that traps its nine occupants. To prevent panic, graduate student Uma proposes that they each tell a story - "one amazing thing" - about their lives. As the stories unfold, your assumptions about family, courage and love will be challenged. Story brings this group of strangers together, but will this rope of hope hold them together long enough to be rescued?

It's easy to list what books are on my night table. But when I started to compile my list it seemed too obvious a task.

What was of interest to me was what books would be on my characters' bedside tables. The characters from Cul de Sac Moon are avid readers. They read to be inspired, entertained and to learn. It is no mistake that Addie's books are about troubled kids nor is it a surprise that both Sigge and Bernerd pursue their interests through literature. I am very fond of my characters and I really appreciate their literary recommendations. They are three rich and varied lists. I hope you enjoy their suggestions as much as I did.

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Alone In The Classroom$29.99 add to cart

Elizabeth Hay is best known for the complexity and intimate nature of her fiction. She is the author of a collection of stories, Small Change, and the novels A Student of Weather, Garbo Laughs and Late Nights on Air. Of the latter, which won the 2007 Scotiabank Giller Prize, the jury commented, "this extraordinary book is...a dazzling virtuoso praise song to Canada and things Canadian; but ultimately it is a flawlessly-crafted and timeless story, masterfully told."

Her new novel, Alone in the Classroom, opens in 1930 in Saskatchewan where a school principal is suspected of abusing a student. Seven years later a girl picking wild cherries meets a violent end. These are only two of the mysteries in the life of Connie Flood that her niece, Anne, tries to unravel. In doing so, Anne becomes connected with her aunt's past, as aunt, niece, lover; mother, daughter, granddaughter, in a tense, intricate and seductive novel of emotional triangles masterfully told.

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Now that we're seeing some sun and warmer temperatures, I aim to do my reading outdoors; here's four recommendations for the park, lake, beach (or night table, on those rainy evenings):

Slammerkin, by Emma Donoghue (HarperCollins Publishers Ltd).

Donoghue has most recently received wide attention for her novel Room, but her 2000 novel Slammerkin (the word is eighteenth-century vernacular, a noun that refers to both a loose gown, and a loose woman) is also definitely worth putting on your reading list. Donoghue, who holds a PhD in eighteenth-century literature, employs her expertise in this era to create a vivid, breathing account of late 1740's London, and the often-vicious circumstances faced by young women who lacked fortune, titles, or family. Our heroine, Mary, whose poor family casts her out once they deem her "unvirtuous," survives and adapts to the violent, dehumanizing world of mid-century London; the brutalities of Mary's life are simultaneously mitigated and exacerbated by her attraction to luxurious clothing, fabrics, accessories, and the liberty and status that these beautiful things symbolize.

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