Jack Hodgins

A collection of ten new short stories set in many locales around the world and featuring a wide range of intriguing characters: from a 12-year-old farm boy and a retired Senator to a concert pianist and a tough female logging camp boss.

When a body is discovered in the remote depths of the Highlands, DCI Karen Pirie finds herself in the right place at the right time. Unearthed with someone's long-buried inheritance, the victim seems to belong to the distant past - until new evidence suggests otherwise, and Karen is called in to unravel a case where nothing is as it seems. It's not long before an overheard conversation draws Karen into the heart of a different case, however - a shocking crime she thought she'd already prevented. As she inches closer to the twisted truths at the centre of these murders, it becomes clear that she's dealing with a version of justice terrifyingly different to her own.

It's the summer of 1956, and Rusty Macken is eager to leave rural life on Vancouver Island for the mainland and university. He dreams of graduating to Hollywood and making movies. But escaping his large, rambunctious family will not be easy. First, there's Glory's funeral to endure. This glamorous city girl who fell for the wildest Macken of them all has died in tragic circumstances, leaving behind a widower whose reputation for outrageous behaviour has everyone anxious to see what form his mourning will take. Scores of Mackens and their relatives, neighbours, and friends assemble at the site of the burned-down seaside hotel that was once the family base. Here, at the picnic that follows the service in town (where Toby, the grieving husband, fails to burn down the chapel but manages to stir the entire town into an uproar) the mourners exchange tales of the beautiful city girl who never quite adapted to their country ways. Since many of the Mackens are great storytellers, their conversations revive a good deal of family history, including the time Glory arrived in the midst of an earthquake. But eventually it becomes clear that mere talk will never be enough. Some significant gesture must be made. Being Mackens, however, they don't know when to stop. . Rusty, who has his own reasons for mourning, may wish to escape his family but the demands of reckless Uncle Toby and the seductive events of Glory's funeral will not make it easy. By the time the sun comes up on the following day, Rusty may have participated in something of a miracle. At the very least, he will have been forced to confront the uneasy secrets of his own heart.

"Spit Delaney is a steam locomotive operator at a pulp mill. After decades of rising at 4am to fire up his beloved steam engine, Spit finds himself without a job when the pulp mill replaces "Old Number One" with a modern diesel engine"--

Rappaccini's daughter / Nathaniel Hawthorne -- [The black cat]( / Edgar Allan Poe -- [Bartleby, the scrivener]( / Herman Melville -- [The story of an hour]( / Kate Chopin -- An outpost of progress / Joseph Conrad -- The yellow wallpaper / Charlotte Perkins Gilman -- The open boat / Stephen Crane -- [Araby]( / James Joyce -- The horse dealer's daughter / D.H. Lawrence -- Bliss / Katherine Mansfield -- Rope / Katherine Anne Porter -- [A rose for Emily]( / William Faulkner -- A clean, well-lighted place / Ernest Hemingway -- The lamp at noon / Sinclair Ross -- Why I live at the P.O. / Eudora Welty -- My heart is broken / Mavis Gallant -- The loons / Margaret Laurence -- Dulse / Alice Munro -- Inland passage / Jane Rule -- A & P / John Updike -- Fogbound in Avalon / Elizabeth McGrath -- The conversion of the Jews / Philip Roth -- The motor car / Austin C. Clarke -- The concert stages of Europe / Jack Hodgins -- The resplendent quetzal / Margaret Atwood -- The tenant / Bharati Mukherjee -- Borders / Thomas King -- Everyday use / Alice Walker -- The naked man / Greg Hollingshead -- Cages / Guy Vanderhaeghe -- Two kinds / Amy Tan.