André Alexis

"Emerging from the landscapes and folklore of Trinidad and Canada, Despair reveals a world both recognizable and shockingly strange: in cities driven by fear and violence, quiet inhabitants lead outwardly banal lives that conceal sinister realities. In "The Third Terrace," a failed artist with beautiful hands is driven by a fetish for injuries. In "Metaphysics of Morals," a man wrestles with his capacity for evil while on an excursion to a bakery. "Horse" focuses on the bizarre experiments of a doctor who has rented space in the house of a grieving man, and "The Night Piece" tells the tale of a boy haunted by a story about a soucouyant, a vampire in the guise of an old woman, who has settled nearby."--BOOK JACKET.

— I wonder, said Hermes, what it would be like if animals had human intelligence. — I'll wager a year's servitude, answered Apollo, that animals – any animal you like – would be even more unhappy than humans are, if they were given human intelligence. And so it begins: a bet between the gods Hermes and Apollo leads them to grant human consciousness and language to a group of dogs overnighting at a Toronto vet­erinary clinic. Suddenly capable of more complex thought, the pack is torn between those who resist the new ways of thinking, preferring the old 'dog' ways, and those who embrace the change. The gods watch from above as the dogs venture into their newly unfamiliar world, as they become divided among themselves, as each struggles with new thoughts and feelings. Wily Benjy moves from home to home, Prince becomes a poet, and Majnoun forges a relationship with a kind couple that stops even the Fates in their tracks. André Alexis's contemporary take on the apologue offers an utterly compelling and affecting look at the beauty and perils of human consciousness. By turns meditative and devastating, charming and strange, Fifteen Dogs shows you can teach an old genre new tricks.

Tancred Palmieri, a thief with elegant and erudite tastes, meets Willow Azarian, an aging heroin addict. She reveals to Tancred that her very wealthy father has recently passed away, leaving each of his five children a mysterious object that provides one clue to the whereabouts of a large inheritance. Willow enlists Tancred to steal these objects from her siblings and solve the puzzle. As Tancred tracks down the treasure, he must enlist the help of Alexander von Wurfel, esteemed copyist, and fend off Willow's heroin dealers, a young albino named "Nigger" Colby and his sidekick, Sigismund "Freud" Luxemburg, a club-footed psychopath, both of whom are eager to get their paws on this supposed pot of gold. And he must mislead Detective Daniel Mandelshtam, his most adored friend.

Emerging from the landscapes and folklore of Trinidad and Canada, the stories in The Night Piece reveal a world both recognizable and shockingly strange: cities of fear and violence, where quiet inhabitants lead outwardly banal lives that conceal sinister realities. A failed artist with beautiful hands is driven by a fetish for injuries in 'The Third Terrace'. In 'My Anabasis', the anxiety of a man lost in his inner world is projected on to everything outside of him. 'Horse' centres on the strange experiments of a doctor who has rented space in the house of a grieving man. In 'The Night Piece', a boy is haunted by a story told to him about a Soucouyant, a vampire in the guise of an old woman who has settled nearby.

Gulliver’s Travels meets The Underground Railroad: a road trip through the countryside – and the psyche – by the author of Fifteen Dogs. Botanist Alfred Homer, ever hopeful and constantly surprised, is invited on a road trip by his parents’ friend, Professor Morgan Bruno, who wants company as he tries to unearth the story of the mysterious poet John Skennen. But this is no ordinary road trip. Alfred and the Professor encounter towns where Black residents speak only in sign language and towns that hold Indigenous Parades; it is a land of house burnings, werewolves, and witches. Complete with Alfred’s drawings of plants both real and implausible, Days by Moonlight is a Dantesque journey taken during the “hour of the wolf,” that time of day when the sun is setting and the traveller can’t tell the difference between dog and wolf. And it asks that perpetual question: how do we know the things we know are real, and what is real anyway?

Like all of us, Ingrid wants to belong, especially to a family. Now, she does have parents whom she loves very much, but she has a sense that there is more to her past than she’s been told. When the opportunity presents itself for her to visit Hungary, Ingrid takes it despite her parents’ objections. What she finds in the old country is enchanting, gorgeous, and terrifying. Her legacy is nothing like she expected. It is a creature that is, by turns, loving and vicious. It is a wolf. Ingrid realizes that she is the caretaker of her unusual inheritance, like it or not. Award-winning author André Alexis delivers his storytelling skills to a new generation of readers in this, his first children’s book.

Stella Raphael, a woman of great beauty and formidable intelligence, is married to Max, a staid and unimaginative forensic psychiatrist. Max has taken a job in a huge top-security mental hospital in rural England and Stella, far from London society, finds herself restless and bored. Then into her lonely existence comes Edgar Stark, a brilliant sculptor confined to the hospital after killing his wife in a psychotic rage. He comes to Stella's garden merely to rebuild an old, Victorian conservatory, but there's an overwhelming physical attraction to this desperate man that Stella is powerless to ignore. Their explosive affair pits them against Stella's husband, her child, and the entire institution. When the crisis comes, Stella makes her decision - one that will destroy several lives and precipitate an appalling tragedy that could only be fueled by illicit sexual love.