The best Montreal books

Odell Moore has it all. Respect as a top African American attorney, Manhattan penthouse, and wealth. He plays by the rules. Always in control. All that's missing is love—until he falls for Dee, the daughter of a prominent Alabama senator. And that is when his life begins to fall apart. Odell's protegé, Jackson Sherman, joins forces with the senator to pull at the strings of the marriage, all driven by Jackson's blind ambition, to do anything and risk everything to join Odell atop the ladder of success.

Love, jealousy, and deceit become interchangeable as Jackson spins a web of intrigue that entangles the two lovers, threatens the marriage, and eventually turns Odell's life upside down. There can only be one outcome: murder in Odell's penthouse. But who did it? Be prepared for shocking revelations to the very last page.

Teas are produced today in more than 65 countries, including the UK, Europe, Oceania, and North America, as well as better known regions such as India, China, Japan, Sri Lanka and East Africa. However, few people ever get to taste the high quality teas from any of those countries but stick instead to cheaper poorer quality teabag blends.

My book explores every single one of the world’s tea producing regions, giving details of each country’s tea history, the area planted with tea, the terrain, altitudes, producing seasons, tea types, and flavour profiles. With colourful maps highlighting the important tea areas, and beautiful colour photographs of the places, people, and tea rituals of the world, the book takes the reader on a fascinating journey and opens their eyes to the magic of tea and opportunities for amazing taste experiences for anyone who dares to try something different.

Looping exultantly through the overlapping experiences of girlhood, Blackness, sex, and personhood in America, award-winning essayist and poet Kendra Allen braids together personal narrative and cultural commentary, wrestling with the beauty and brutality to be found between mothers and daughters, young women and the world, Black bodies and white space, virginity and intrusion, prison and freedom, birth and death. Most of all, The Collection Plate explores both how we collect and erase the voices, lives, and innocence of underrepresented bodies--and behold their pleasure, pain, and possibility

Both formally exciting and a delight to read, The Collection Plate is a testament to Allen's place as the voice of a generation--and a witness to how we come into being in the twenty-first century.

Before Jack the Ripper, before The Devil in the White City’s H.H. Holmes, the world's deadliest serial killer was the Canadian doctor Thomas Neill Cream. He murdered at least nine women and one man in Canada, the United States, and England before he was finally brought to justice in 1892. This is the first complete account of his crimes, his victims, and how Scotland Yard’s best detectives struggled to identify and capture the ruthless “Lambeth Poisoner.” It exposes the flawed police investigations and primitive forensic tests that enabled him to evade suspicion and detection, how he was convicted and imprisoned in the midst of his poisoning spree, and why he was freed to kill again.

An apocalyptic event strikes without warning, wiping out power and communications throughout the world. Against this backdrop, a psychiatric patient with links to Jack the Ripper escapes custody. Leaving a trail of murder in his wake, he heads into the hills above the village of Churchend. 

Meanwhile, on the outskirts of the village, retired hypnotherapist Michael Anderson suffers an extreme reaction to a mosquito bite. The resulting delirium and soul-searching convince him his life is about to change – and then, from high on the hill, he hears the bells of a disused local church ring for the first time in years…

The Coroner's Lunch follows the fortunes of Dr. Siri Paiboum, a Paris-trained Lao doctor, who joined the communist party and has been fighting with the Pathet Lao. Siri is informed that he is now the state's only coroner. With the help of one nurse, Dtui, and Geung, who has Down's Syndrome they shuffle along adequately and happily. Until the wife of an important official turns up dead. The husband claims that his wife died of food poisoning but his vision of the dead woman's spirit convinces Siri that she was murdered. Before he can investigate, he's called upon to perform another autopsy (with serious international consequences), and investigate a series of bizarre deaths. Suddenly it seems to be raining dead bodies for the unqualified coroner and his ill-equipped lab.

Set 200 years in the future, TITAN is a science fiction graphic novel that follows João and Phoebe, a pair of star-crossed lovers from (literally) different worlds who find themselves caught up in a burgeoning worker revolution on the moon of Titan. Together, they must find a way to pull Homestead Station back from the brink of disaster… Or Titan might be the spark that sets the entire solar system ablaze.

A thought-provoking look at love in a time of war, TITAN has received numerous award nominations. Cory Doctorow called it “a gripping, knotty, epic tale of exploitation and solidarity” and the Toronto Star proclaimed “TITAN is one of the best examples of the stellar work being produced in the Montreal comics scene.”

“The sweeping story of two parallel lives – a feisty orphaned girl in England and the son of a poor fisherman in Scotland – who journey separately to the frontier of the New World in search of a better life.

After many adventures along the way, they meet in Victoria on Vancouver Island, fall in love, marry and create a family dynasty and transportation business. Containing hardship, gambling, intrigue, deception, lies and, above all, a great love, Providence will be enjoyed by all who relish historical fiction at its finest. This first book in the trilogy is set against a backdrop of British Columbia’s fascinating history from the 1850s to the 1870s.”

The book presents the story of John Norton, an important war chief and diplomatic figure among the Grand River Haudenosaunee (or Iroquois) who lived north of Lake Erie in the British colony of Upper Canada (now part of Ontario). Their community comprised people from the famous Six Nations: Mohawks, Oneidas, Onondagas, Cayugas, Senecas, and Tuscaroras, along with others who lived with them, such as Delawares. Norton saw more action during the conflict than almost anyone else, being present at the fall of Detroit; the capture of Fort Niagara; the blockades of Forts George and Erie; and a large number of skirmishes and front-line patrols. His memoir describes the fighting, the stresses suffered by Indigenous peoples, and the complex relationships between the Haudenosaunee and both their British allies and other First Nations communities.