Cry Of The Crow

While caring for a baby crow, Mandy begins to look at her family and herself in a different light.

While caring for a baby crow, Mandy begins to look at her family and herself in a different light.

Investigative reporter Aislinn Cavanaugh needed a break from the big city and decided to escape to the sleepy little town of Clare, Michigan. She had hoped for a quiet vacation with time to spend in the woods in solitary communion with nature, but that wasn't to be the case. While there, a series of grisly murders take place that has the townspeople in shock and fear since they hadn't seen anything of this magnitude in a couple of decades. As much as she had hoped to relax and take in the scenery, she instead finds herself assisting lead detective David Hough with key points of the case. It appeared that someone had a personal vendetta against some of the prominent figures of the community who had habitually had their own crimes overlooked. It seemed the murderer felt that justice needed a helping hand. As their relationship grows, neither one is prepared for what they are about to discover, and Aislinn had no idea that her idea of a quiet vacation could ultimately place her own life in danger.

The story begins in a quiet suburban neighborhood of Detroit, where the Lipinski family lives with their teenage son, Robert, and his younger sister, Sarah-Jane. Suddenly, the family is dealt a huge blow when Robert's parents decide to split up. He is left devastated by his parents' divorce and locks himself away in the attic, spending most of his free time there. His time at school is also rough. A gang of youths in Robert's class constantly teases him and beats him up. One of them is Martin McDermott, who will prove to be a thorn in Robert's side for many years to come. One day Robert encounters a magpie after she flies in through the attic window and into Robert's life. He named the bird Gale. What Robert doesn't realise is that Gale is not an ordinary bird, as the unlikely friendship grows between the teenager and the magpie, eventually leading them both down a path of crime and burglary that spans over a decade and changes Robert's life forever.

Offers insight into crows' ability to make tools and respond to environmental challenges, explaining how they engage in human-like behaviors, from giving gifts and seeking revenge to playing and experiencing dreams.

This Crow will ruffle a few feathers. When Stacey Fortune is diagnosed with three highly unpredictable -- and inoperable -- brain tumours, she abandons the crumbling glamour of her life in Toronto for her mother Effie's scruffy trailer in rural Cape Breton. Back home, she's known as Crow, and everybody suspects that her family is cursed. With her future all but sealed, Crow decides to go down in a blaze of unforgettable glory by writing a memoir that will raise eyebrows and drop jaws. She'll dig up "the dirt" on her family tree, including the supposed curse, and uncover the truth about her mysterious father, who disappeared a month before she was born. But first, Crow must contend with an eclectic assortment of characters, including her gossipy Aunt Peggy, hedonistic party-pal Char, homebound best friend Allie, and high-school flame Willy. She'll also have to figure out how to live with her mother and how to muddle through the unsettling visual disturbances that are becoming more and more vivid each day. Witty, energetic, and crackling with sharp Cape Breton humour, Crowis a story of big twists, big personalities, big drama, and even bigger heart.

“The sun came out after the war and our world went Technicolor. Everyone had the same idea. Let’s get married. Let’s have kids. Let’s be the ones who do it right.” The Way the Crow Flies, the second novel by bestselling, award-winning author Ann-Marie MacDonald, is set on the Royal Canadian Air Force station of Centralia during the early sixties. It is a time of optimism--infused with the excitement of the space race but overshadowed by the menace of the Cold War--filtered through the rich imagination and quick humour of eight-year-old Madeleine McCarthy and the idealism of her father, Jack, a career officer. Ann-Marie MacDonald said in a discussion with Oprah Winfrey about her first book, “a happy ending is when someone can walk out of the rubble and tell the story.” Madeleine achieves her childhood dream of becoming a comedian, yet twenty years later she realises she cannot rest until she has renewed the quest for the truth, and confirmed how and why the child was murdered.. Publishers Weekly, in a starred review, called The Way the Crow Flies “absorbing, psychologically rich…a chronicle of innocence betrayed”. With compassion and intelligence, and an unerring eye for the absurd as well as the confusions of childhood, , MacDonald evokes the confusion of being human and the necessity of coming to terms with our imperfections.