Paul rolls into Hope--Population 1001--late at nigh on his thirtieth birthday, on the lam from his wife and a surprise party he has known about for weeks He is trying to escape the Big city and get some serious work done on his second novel, but finds the diversions of Hope no less seductive than those he has fled.One of those diversions is the two-hundred-year-old legendary fish, Ol' Mossback. Paul could hardly pass up the chance to land such a fish. He puts aside his work-in-progress in an attempt to discover the mysteries of Hope, with all its quirky characters, and to finally be able to answer the question, "talked with Ol' Mossback lately?"From the Trade Paperback edition.

After a slow climb out of the strip clubs and flesh pots of Europe, Jurgen and Rudolfo have hit the big time in Las Vegas, headlining a slick and well-oiled magic act. Rudolfo, a true misfit, is content orchestrating the spectacle, but Jurgen, stricken since childhood with the irrational desire to make magic, hungers for more. He finds it in a musty, mysterious collection of old manuscripts and magic cabinetry that once belonged to Houdini. And when he turns into the miracle-working saint of Las Vegas, chaos results. In a narrative that is whimsical, comic and melancholy by turns, Quarrington takes dead aim at the place in the human heart that hopes that doves can bloom from top hats and illusions can come true.From the Trade Paperback edition.

Des Howell is a former rock 'n' roll star who never leaves his secluded oceanfront mansion. Naked, rich and fabulously deranged, he subsists on a steady diet of whiskey, pharmaceuticals and jelly doughnuts and occasionally works on his masterpiece, "Whale Music." One day, upon awakening from his usual drunken stupor, Des discovers on his sofa a young alien from the faraway universe of Toronto. This girl has made the trek to Des' hideaway because she believes in the "Whale Music" and she's crazy enough to think that Des can make a comeback hit with his mad magnum opus--From the Trade Paperback edition.

A musician and writer looks death in the face and reminisces about a life in song Paul Quarrington had a favourite recording as a kid: a boy fashions a banjo from a cigar box, sets off for a contest in the next town, and wins with a song that weaves in the sounds he hears along the way. As a grown-up writer and musician, Quarrington still loved the tale. And after he learned he had stage IV lung cancer, the story took on a whole new meaning for him.  Eclectic, hilarious, and endearingly frank, Cigar Box Banjo tracks a life lived in music and words. Quarrington ruminates on the bands of his childhood; his restless youth, playing bass with the cult band Joe Hall and the Continental Drift; and his incarnation, in middle age, as rhythm guitarist and singer with the band Porkbelly Futures. Ranging through rock’n’roll, the blues, folk, country, and soul, he explores how songs are made and why they affect us so profoundly. Songwriting gave him a way to take in his own experience, Quarrington tells us—road trips, bad whisky, true love, love gone wrong—and music becomes his mainstay after the Dread Diagnosis. Some people with a terminal illness find mountains to climb; Quarrington decides to go out singing. On stage, at sea, and in studios from Newfoundland to Nashville, he celebrates his last year on the planet.

From one of Canada’s beloved fiction writers comes a tale of love and loss, guilt and forgiveness -- and finding redemption in the eye of a hurricane. Few people seek out the tiny Caribbean island of Dampier Cay. Visitors usually wash up there by accident, rather than by design. But this weekend, three people will fly to the island deliberately. They are not coming for a tan or fun in the sun. They are coming because Dampier Cay is where it is, and they have reason to believe that they might encounter something there that most people take great measures to avoid -- a hurricane. A lottery windfall and a few hours of selfishness have robbed Caldwell of all that was precious to him, while Beverly, haunted by tragedy and screwed by fate since birth, has given up on life. Also on the flight is Jimmy Newton, a professional storm chaser and videographer who will do anything for the perfect shot. Waiting for them at Dampier is the manager of the Water’s Edge Hotel, “Bonefish” Maywell Hope, who arrived at Dampier by the purest accident of all -- the accident of birth. A descendent of the pirates who sailed the Caribbean hundreds of years ago, Hope believes if he works hard enough, he can prevent the inevitable. Until, that is, the seas begin to rise . . . Cinematic and harrowing, spiced with Quarrington’s trademark humour, Galveston shows just how far people will go to feel alive. From the Hardcover edition.Review“It's brilliant; I loved every page of it. It has a lovely lightness, the words and characters, and it manages always to be funny and real.”—Roddy Doyle “Lovely and amazing …. A stylistic tour de force; readers will be — yes — blown away. Galveston is a novel of great compassion; Quarrington does a knockout job of conveying to us the importance of every human breath.”—*Quill & Quire “Paul Quarrington takes readers into the eye of a storm.”—The Ottawa Citizen “Buy Galveston right now, but save it for a rainy day–a really rainy day. Paul Quarrington’s ninth novel (and one of his best) is a terrific, brilliant, near-perfect piece of vacation reading for that inevitable low in every holiday when black clouds gather, the sky turns to thunder, plans fall apart and a paper world is preferable to the real one. Galveston will keep you engrossed page by page until daylight fades, the power goes out or a bottle of wine gets the better of you….”—T.F. Rigelhof, The Globe and Mail “His characters are drawn just to the edge of believability and treated with wry humour and dry wit…. Quarrington expertly creates extraordinarily visual imagery of storms and approaching hurricane, and effortlessly weaves the weather around the turbulent lives of his characters.”—The Calgary Herald*, Sarah Deveau, 15 May 2004 “Quarrington has a dark side…in Galveston, the darkness is more apparent than ever. So while there are times when the catastrophe does get laid on a bit thick, Quarrington, who invariably writes about misfits, writes about them wonderfully here. He lets his characters voice all their screwy and occasionally bang-on pronouncements on fate, luck, regret, loss and God’s silence…. Everyone talks about the wea... From the Inside FlapFrom one of Canada's beloved fiction writers comes a tale of love and loss, guilt and forgiveness -- and finding redemption in the eye of a hurricane.Few people seek out the tiny Caribbean island of Dampier Cay. Visitors usually wash up there by accident, rather than by design. But this weekend, three people will fly to the island deliberately. They are not coming for a tan or fun in the sun. They are coming because Dampier Cay is where it is, and they have reason to believe that they might encounter something there that most people take great measures to avoid -- a hurricane.A lottery windfall and a few hours of selfishness have robbed Caldwell of all that was precious to him, while Beverly, haunted by tragedy and screwed by fate since birth, has given up on life. Also on the flight is Jimmy Newton, a professional storm chaser and videographer who will do anything for the perfect shot. Waiting for them at Dampier is the manager of the Water's Edge Hotel, "Bonefish" Maywell Hope, who arrived at Dampier by the purest accident of all -- the accident of birth. A descendent of the pirates who sailed the Caribbean hundreds of years ago, Hope believes if he works hard enough, he can prevent the inevitable. Until, that is, the seas begin to rise . . . Cinematic and harrowing, spiced with Quarrington's trademark humour, Galveston shows just how far people will go to feel alive.

Selected as the 2008 CBC Canada Reads Winner!"A dazzling display of fictional footwork... The author has not written just another hockey novel; he has turned hockey in a metaphor for magic." Maclean'sPercival Leary was once the King of the Ice, one of hockey's greatest heroes. Now, in the South Grouse Nursing Home, where he shares a room with Edmund "Blue" Hermann, the antagonistic and alcoholic reporter who once chronicled his career, Leary looks back on his tumultuous life and times: his days at the boys' reformatory when he burned down a house; the four mad monks who first taught him to play hockey; and the time he executed the perfect "St. Louis Whirlygig" to score the winning goal in the 1919 Stanley Cup final.Now all but forgotten, Leary is only a legend in his own mind until a high-powered advertising agency decides to feature him in a series of ginger ale commercials. With his male nurse, his son, and the irrepressible Blue, Leary...