The White Angel

Vancouver is in an uproar over the death by gunshot of a Scottish nanny, Janet Stewart. An almost deliberately ham-handed police investigation has Constable Hook suspecting a cover-up. The powerful United Council of Scottish Societies is demanding an inquiry. The killing has become a political issue with an election not far away. The city is buzzing with rumours. Miss Stewart's fellow nannies have accused the Chinese houseboy of murder, capitalizing on a wave of anti-Chinese propaganda led by the Asian Exclusion League and enthusiastically supported by the sensational press--not to mention the Ku Klux Klan, which has taken up residence in upperclass Shaughnessy. The White Angel is a work of fiction inspired by the cold case of Janet Smith, who, on July 26, 1924, was found dead in her employer's posh Shaughnessy Heights mansion. A dubious investigation led to the even more dubious conclusion that Smith died by suicide. After a public outcry, the case was re-examined and it was decided that Smith was in fact murdered; but no one was ever convicted, though suspects abounded--from an infatuated Chinese houseboy to a drug-smuggling ring, devil-worshippers from the United States, or perhaps even the Prince of Wales. For Vancouver, the killing created a situation analogous to lifting a large flat rock to expose the creatures hiding underneath. An exploration of true crime through a literary lens, The White Angel draws an artful portrait of Vancouver in 1924 in all its opium-hazed, smog-choked, rain-soaked glory--accurate, insightful and darkly droll.

A look at soccer superstar David Beckham, the Real Madrid team he joined in 2003, and at how this combination has forever changed the face of the world's most popular sport.

"An outstanding thriller. Be warned: once you begin WHITE ANGEL, it's impossible to put down. Gottesfeld hooks you right from the first paragraph." --Michael Connelly Edgar Award-winning author of Black Echo "She just looked up at the angel and smiled. Maybe she thought it was going to take her to heaven to meet God...." On a storm-swept Hawaiian night, four-year-old Malia Rico witnesses the savage murder of her parents--butchered in their bed, according to the terrified child, by an angel with a flaming sword. Twenty years later, journalist Malia Rico returns to her native Hawaii--and the site of the nightmare that still torments her. She finds herself drawn into the menacing secret life of a charismatic hero who is not what he seems...captivated by a mysterious man from her distant past...and, in the wake of another savage murder, plunged back into a terrifying game of cat and mouse with the thing that killed her parents, and now wants her.... "A UNIQUE, INTELLIGENT SUSPENSE NOVEL. The characters are so well drawn that they pop out of the pages and grab you by the throat, refusing to let go until the last page." --Julie Smith Author of House of Blues

An exhilarating page-turner set in 1920s Vancouver post prohibition, when liquor was the fuel driving big business, big government—and major crime. In this spellbinding follow-up to his mystery The White Angel, John MacLachlan Gray captures the spirit of Vancouver in those gritty, gin-soaked days, as the city was remaking itself between wars. Alcohol is once again legal in Vancouver after the failed experiment of prohibition, but pro-temperance sentiments remain strong. Politicians like Attorney-General Gordon Cunning attempt appeasement by establishing the Liquor Control Board, which oversees supply, from the lofty circles of power down to bleak public drinking factories called “beer parlours.” But when Cunning is found deceased, an empty martini glass at his side, quickly followed by Mrs. Harlan Crombie, the wife of a prominent bureaucrat, who falls dead after an afternoon book club meeting, suspicions are raised. Is it pure coincidence that the deceased were both drinking the same brand of “tonic”? Or is it a spillover from American prohibition, where deliberately tainted booze is killing thousands? Fans of The White Angel will be delighted by the return of straight-shooting constable Calvin Hook, frustrated poet-cum-reporter Ed McCurdy and unpredictable, eavesdropping telephone operator Mildred Wickstram, as they pool their skills in order to get to the truth. The result is a clash between temperance activists, the Klu Klux Klan, the Liquor Control Board and global events on the mean streets of Vancouver—a rough little city on the edge of empire.

Plagues have bedeviled mankind for centuries. Because of the suffering they cause, much effort goes into curing them. But what if there was a terminal disease that didn't cause suffering? One that in fact made the inflicted person feel better? How would this person respond? Or the government? Religious institutions? The medical profession?

Into the lives of two ragged little Negro girls came an angel—a white angel. So it seemed to Veanie and Mingie Bennett, seven-year-old twins in a Florida town, half-savage, motherless, caring for their paralyzed and dying father. Alone they fought for their lives, stole food, and struggled against a hostile world. Then chance led them to the white side of town and the door of Mrs. Rossie Lee. It proved to be the door to a new life. “It was not at first intended to be an autobiography, but I found that I could do it no other way and still reveal and convey my full purpose—to write the story of a most gracious lady—a Southern white lady—to whom my sister and I attribute all that is sweet in our lives. I discovered that my sister and I were so intricately woven into the background, setting, and the story itself that we had to fulfill our inherent parts in this beautiful memory. Thus I ventured to tell the story as we lived it then and remember it now.”—Jessie Bennett Sams (“Veanie”)

The ninth novel in internationally acclaimed author Marie-Claire Blais’s extraordinary Soifs cycle, Songs for Angel is an impassioned interrogation of violence and hate that takes us into the soul of a white supremacist on the verge of a racist attack. In the penultimate installment of the magnificent and ambitious Soifs cycle, widely regarded as one of the most original and ambitious endeavors ever to be undertaken in contemporary literature, renowned novelist Marie-Claire Blais once again marries the highest artistic standards with the most pressing human and political concerns. Revisiting figures from the previous novels in a swirling fresco of more than a hundred characters, Blais also takes us into the soul of “the Young Man,” a white supremacist preparing to attack a Black church and murder its entire congregation. This is an extraordinary portrait of the times that jostles and discomboluates the reader while inviting us to see the world in all its injustice and distress, but also its promise and beauty. Songs for Angel reminds us that Blais is a writer who never ceases to situate us in the world and the roles we play in it, and that reading her is always an unforgettable human experience.

A piercing, unforgettable love story set in Greenwood, Oklahoma, also known as the “Black Wall Street,” and against the Tulsa Race Massacre of 1921.