Andre Fenton, Worthy of Love signings Thursday, November 29, 12-2pm Coles, Scotia Square, 5201 Duke Street and Friday, November 30, 6-7:30pm Chapters Bayers Lake, 188 Chain Lake Drive Andre Fenton wants readers of his debut novel Worthy of Love to know there’s more to someone than their physical appearance. Having his own struggles with body […]
Novel
Salvage, Stephen Maher’s South Shore murder mystery
When Stephen Maher was living in Halifax in 2003, he was perhaps best known to the public as an editor at the Chronicle Herald. But outside of work, Maher had another passion—sailing. In 2003, he bought his second sailboat: a battered fibreglass 1982 Tanzer, which briefly lived in Chester on the South Shore, and eventually […]
Christy Ann Conlin makes a spirited return with The Memento
“It’s hard to believe this author is just beginning,” wrote Michelle Berry in her four-star review of Heave, the debut novel by Christy Ann Conlin, in the Globe and Mail. “I can’t wait to see what she accomplishes next.” Publish date: January 26, 2002. Fourteen years, a move from the north end to the Annapolis […]
Half-heard, chapter 28
The sunset beams in a kind of aqueous way this time of year, hitting the house and slowly dripping down the walls. And the earlier-than-usual glow of late August’s pre-dusk has a kind of sad Technicolor movie hue to it. The living room can look like it’s front row to a dimming sun’s last gasp […]
Half-heard, chapter 26
For whatever reason, unemployment was the norm for the roommates during the academic off-season in Halifax. Perhaps it was the exhaust-rich air that attenuated the constitutions of the student class, turning them to slugs seeking society’s shade, or an entitlement created by creditors and entertainment industry’s subjects with lives full of upper-urban decadence, constantly entrenched […]
Half-heard, chapter 25
The North End Plant Snatcher was by all official reports an unknown maybe-kleptomaniac/maybe-botanophile who ransacked households mid-soiree, right under the tenants’ own noses. If you asked anyone in the social-circles extending between north-north and north-western parts of the city, a guy named Steve was the culprit and irrefutably so, who could be discovered to be […]
Half-heard, chapter 24
Sarah and Myles conversed a while longer. When Sarah felt distressed she was able to keep herself on stable psychological footing by talking it out. If in stasis she’d probably have let herself jump to the furthest conclusions and plot the most damaging feats for reparations. She’d already be at Gert’s door demanding to see what […]
Half-heard, chapter 23
Sarah revealed that she saw three small tied-off latex baggies of who-knows-what fall out of the backside of Gertraud’s pajama shorts, and Myles’ eyes forwardly displaced themselves a comically gruesome distance out of his sockets, so far out in fact that Sarah would later tell friends that she had only seen that kind of eye-pop […]
Half-heard, chapter 22
“It’s kind of a weird story.” “I got time,” Myles said, awkwardly. He caught himself remembering a detective from a Dick Tracy-type movie saying the same thing to a distressed client at a bar and felt a little embarrassed. Myles waited for her to share. Quiet between people scared Myles. As it—the quiet—lengthens it becomes […]
Half-heard, chapter 21
Myles and Northwood’s stoops were probably 10 feet apart at the most, and though the stoops were about to function as spots for incidental social encounters in citified environments, just the sheer notion of Myles making small-talk with Sarah—this paragon of coolness who just now came outside and sat down with a pack of smokes—terrified […]
Half-heard, chapter 20
Tuesday morning. Sticky, airless heat. The too-dirty house was still recovering from Welnot’s moratorium on the bathrooms. In the air was the damp smell of a vacant cottage and beach towels. Narrow beams of yellow-white morning light shining through greased, dusted and palmed living room windows onto Gertraud and Sarah’s post-adventure pizza box from the […]
Half-heard, chapter 19
“She what?” Will screams. Alex, now shaving but still in the tub, a practice he picked up as a kid when he wanted to take as long as he could in the bathroom to annoy his four older siblings. He’d shave when sitting in there pretending to enjoy humming along to songs on the radio […]

