COLIN MCADAM

Walt and Judy''s happiness has been blighted by their childlessness; although their marriage seems blissful, Judy feels increasingly empty and Walt longs to make her happy again. So one day he brings home Looee -a baby chimpanzee. Looee, exuberant and demanding, immediately fills the gap in Walt and Judy''s life, and they come to love him as their own son. Like any child, Looee is affectionate and quick to learn, generous and engaging. But he is also a deeply unpredictable animal, and one night their unique family life is changed forever. At the Girdish Institute, chimpanzees have been studied for decades to prove that they are political, altruistic, often angry but also capable of forgiveness. The chimps at the Institute travel a parallel path to Looee''s; they experience friendship, loss and rivalry, just as he does. When these two paths meet, startling truths are revealed about all great apes, captive and free, beloved or abandoned. Told alternately from the perspective of humans and chimpanzees, A Beautiful Truth is a profound and gripping story about the things we hold sacred and the truths of nature we so often ignore.

A masterpiece of adolescent perspective, emotion, impulse, and relationships: the riveting story of two male roommates at a co-ed boarding school and what happens when the girlfriend of one of them goes missing during their final year. From an internationally acclaimed, prizewinning author, whom critics have compared to Dave Eggers and Michael Ondaatje, comes a tour de force: a mesmerizing novel that is at once a spellbinding psychological thriller and a brilliant portrait of adolescence that goes deep into the heads of two very different boys. Awkward Noel thinks he''s been allowed into the inner circle of his elite boarding school when he discovers his senior-year roommate is to be handsome, athletic Julius. Julius, in turn, cares only for the fleeting joys of teenage life: sneaking out to parties, playing pranks with friends, and most of all, spending the night with his girfriend, Fall. As Noel narrates this fateful semester from a perspective of many years, interwoven is Julius''s own in-the-moment experiences of first love and male camaraderie. Always an outsider, Noel develops an unhealthy fascination with Julius, and his crush on Fall begins to border on a dangerous obsession. As Julius experiences all the pleasures of an eighteen-year-old in love, we watch as Noel self-consciously analyzes his interactions with Julius and Fall, convincing himself of a deep connection that might not exist. When Fall disappears close to winter break, Julius and Noel are forced to face their own inner desires, a confrontation that ushers the two boys out of the innocence of adolescence and into adulthood. A tremendous literary page-turner that perfectlycaptures the agonies and delights of adolescence, Fall is the exhilaration and angst of teenage love and friendship and the ultimate transience of those feelings.

A dazzling new novel of obsession, impulse, and adolescent desire from an acclaimed, prize-winning writer. Noel thinks he's been allowed into the inner circle of his elite boarding school when he discovers his senior-year roommate is the handsome and popular Julius. But Noel's unhealthy fascination with Julius and Julius's girlfriend will usher both boys out of adolescence and into the startling realities of adulthood.

Ottawa in the seventies is a field of dreams: a developing city, ripe for the taking. Two men, from different ends of society, see the opportunities: Jerry McGuinty, plasterer-turned-builder, a simple, self-made man, and Simon Struthers, whose inherited wealth and position cannot fill the hollowness inside. As their careers and successes run in parallel - Jerry with his new Irish wife, Kathleen, who likes a drink even more than she likes him, and Simon with his endless affairs and intrigues - we begin to see how love is suffocated by work and the drive to succeed, how individuals are crushed by money and progress. When both men finally understand what they are losing, and go in search of it, their lives start to intersect, and the story spirals to its astonishing conclusion. A thrillingly original novel about ambition and desire, power and corruption, Some Great Thing has the same epic emotional grandeur and sweep as The Great Gatsby. Written with great skill, and with huge compassion for his broken characters and their thwarted dreams, Colin McAdam has created one of the finest first novels of recent years.

Award-winning author Colin McAdams second novel takes place at St. Ebury, an elite Ottawa boarding school. Its a place of privilege and hollow rules, of newly minted traditions and the barely restrained animal instincts of the boys. A handful of girls are also in attendance, among them Fall, a beautiful and elusive figure who becomes the object of fascination for many of the male students, including Noel, a smart, intensely idiosyncratic young man. But Fall ends up dating his roommate Julius, the charismatic son of the American ambassador, whom Noel also fixates upon. Amidst a heady mix of hormones and delusional impulses, Noel gradually loses control of his obsessions.Told from the very different perspectives of Julius and Noel, Fall is a psychologically acute and relentless literary thriller of the first order.

A powerful, poetic, bawdily funny, and tenderly sad novel about class, about love, about drink, about poetics, about land, and about moneya few of the salient things that life and history are made of.O, The Oprah MagazineIn his highly acclaimed debut novel, Colin McAdam depicts the struggle between two men involved in building a citys future: developer Jerry McGuinty, blue collar, selfmade, a master craftsman, and Simon Struthers, a civil servant from a prominent, wealthy background who shapes land-use policy. Jerry has a blind spot for his alcoholic wife, and Simon moves between women, consumed by a frantic emptiness. When their two stories begin to intertwine, their lives and ambitions are set on a collision course. A richly observed story of family, class, love and the individual contributions we make to the bigness of the world, Some Great Thing is a powerful work from one of the most exciting voices of his generation.

Stark and beautiful, horrifying and lyrical, Black Doves pages thrum with flight, transformation, grief, revenge, transcendence, the remorseless power of stories and the very nature of creation. Ever since reading, Black Dove has drifted in and out of my dreams. Helen Macdonald, author H Is For HawkIn a tall and narrow house, on a stained and busy street, live twelve-year-old Oliver and his father, a story-loving writer. Haunted by the ghost of his alcoholic mother, Oliver finds comfort in his fathers impromptu tales: the Black Dove, an elusive flower that gives strength; the girl who consumes it as she battles attackers and yearns for happier realms. Stories where lonely souls keep searching despite their losses and grief.Running from a bully one night, Oliver hides in a junk shop owned by an enigmatic man. Soon, instead of hiding in the janitors closet after school, Oliver spends afternoons in the shop, a cavernous place full of storied oddities and grubby wonders where creatures rise up from the basement. A snake in the shape of a boy. A hunter named Night, part panther, part hound, who proves to Oliver that the world holds invisible wonder.Wanting to forget his mother, afraid of his own genes, constantly harassed by bullies, Oliver joins the shop owner in experimenting with dangerous forms of genetic editing. Meanwhile, he meets the girl from across the street, and their friendship grows in a neighbourhood where magic is real, where murderers gather, and where the darker consequences of fantasies play out.A twisting story of grief and revenge, Black Dove is a thrilling read with its own kind of magic. In rich but tightly reined prose, McAdam celebrates the value and shortfalls of storytelling, finding a light in all the darkness to conjure a tender portrait of childhoods end.

Told simultaneously from the perspective of humans and chimpanzees, set in a Vermont home and a Florida primate research facility, A Beautiful Truthat times brutal, other times deeply movingis about the simple truths that transcend species, the meaning of family, the lure of belonging, and the capacity for survival.Looee, a chimp raised by a well-meaning and compassionate human couple who cannot conceive a baby of their own, is forever set apart. Hes not human, but he is certainly no longer like other chimps. And then one night, after years at the familys Vermont home, their unique family life is changed forever.At the Girdish Institute, a group of chimpanzees has been studied for decades. There is proof that chimps have memories and solve problems, that they can learn language and need friends. They are political, altruistic, get angry, and forgive. Mr. Ghoul has been there from the beginning, and has grown up in a world of rivals, sex, and unpredictable loss.Looee and Mr. Ghoul travel distant but parallel paths through childhood, adolescence, and early middle age until Looee, who endures the darker side of Girdish, ends up meeting his kindred spirit long after he moves from Vermont.

A place of pressure and contradictions, St Ebury is an exclusive boarding school for the children of Canadas elite, where boys must act as men while navigating their adolescence.One of only a handful of girls at the school, Fall is the most beautiful. Noel, a clever, ghostly loner, watches her, certain that one day Fall will come to know him deeply. But like everyone else, she is drawn to Julius, the confident and magnetic son of the American ambassador to Canada. They fall in love and Noel keeps watching.In their final year, the boys room together and as Julius grows closer to Fall, Noels enthusiasm for their relationship shades into something darker as he imagines himself as a confidante to Julius, sensing that the time has come for him to enter Falls life forever.