Books with author Brian Doyle

Winner of the Canadian Library Association Book of the Year Award, and a Horn Book Fanfare Selection Old Mickey is one hundred and twelve years old. He can't remember what he ate for lunch today, but he can remember every detail of what happened one hundred years ago, when he and his mother ran away from his violent father to take refuge in the hills north of Ottawa. Brilliantly combining humor and tragedy, the award-winning Uncle Ronald is one of Brian Doyle's most emotionally powerful novels.

It’s winter in Ottawa, and that means crunching snow, plunging temperatures, and frozen canals. It also means murder. Ottawa Technical High School student Spud Sweetgrass has just witnessed a killing and he can’t get it out of his mind. He wrestles with deciding if he should tell the police what he saw or remain silent. His conscience ultimately wins over his fear, and Spud takes on the complex task of helping solve the crime. Spud doesn’t tell everything he knows to Detective Kennedy, nor is he working alone. His friends Connie Pan and Dink the Thinker return from Spud Sweetgrass to assist. The clues point to some unexpected places, like the beauty salon where Connie works. One of Connie’s clients, the man with the most beautiful hair in the world — or so he thinks — may be involved! Despite being unnerved over Connie having had her fingers in that hair, Spud forges ahead. But can he and his pals solve this terrible crime? Spud in Winter showcases Brian Doyle’s trademark vivid, staccato style, smart, fast-paced plotting, and memorably eccentric characters in a rollicking read.

Spud gets angry when he sees Dumper Stubbs, a creepy delivery man, dumping oil into a storm drain and causing terrible pollution in the river. When Spud blows the whistle, he loses his job. Enlisting the help of his buddy, Dink the Thinker, and Connie Pan, Spud thinks he has a chance of regaining his job . . . and stopping the Dumper's harmful activities.

Spring has arrived, and Martin O’Boy has finally found a true home with Grampa Rip and a job at the Pure Spring soft drink company, though he lied about his age to get it. However, not everything is perfect. Martin feels bad about lying to kindly Mr. Mirsky, Pure Spring's owner, and sometimes Grampa Rip’s brain goes very far away. There's the mysterious yet familiar man in the park. There are Martin’s memories. Igor Gouzenko, the famous Soviet defector, has unexpectedly reappeared. And Martin learns that his very peculiar, dirty-mouthed workmate and boss, Randy, is a blackmailing crook. When Martin falls in love with the beautiful Gerty McDowell, whose old grandfather is being robbed by Randy — with Martin forced to act as an accomplice — Martin’s happiness, his sense of duty, and his love for Gerty collide. It won't be easy, but he has to find a way through all of it and preserve the joy of spring. This sequel to Boy O’Boy is Brian Doyle at his brilliant best, deftly blending deeply serious, even tragic moments with great humor and pathos.

In this brilliant and poetic novel, BRIAN DOYLE brings us back to the Gatineau River near Ottawa, the world of UP TO LOW and UNCLE RONALD.Mary Ann Alice McCrank was named for the pretty church bell in the steeple of St. Martin's Church in Martindale. She has the soul of a poet and Mickey McGuire Jr. (son of Mickey, the narrator of UNCLE RONALD) is in love with her. Mary Ann Alice is passionately interested in many things, especially the geology of her part of the world. Her teacher, the wonderful Patchy Drizzle, shares her passion for rocks and fossils, many of which can be found along the river and in caves under the famous Paugan Falls. But a new project to dam the river at Low places rocks, fossils, falls as wel as many farms in danger, including those of Mean Hughie from UP TO LOW and the strange Cork family. But the dam must go ahead. And, as with much technological change, it brings both benefits and tragedies to the community.

In Up to Low Young Tommy and Baby Bridget, the girl with the trillium shaped eyes, discover that loving and healing and dying are not always what they seem. And they make that discovery with the help of a wonderful cast of characters including Crazy Mickey, drunken Frank, and the Hummer.Brian Doyle, author of Hey, Dad! and You Can Pick Me Up at Peggy's Cove, spent the summers of his boyhood in the Gatineau Hills, where he has set Up to Low. It is one of his finest novels for young people.Up to Low was the winner of the 1983 Canadian Literary Association Book of the Year Award.

Old Mickey is one hundred and twelve years old. He can't remember what he ate for lunch today, but he can remember every detail of what happened one hundred years ago, when he and his mother ran away from his violent father to take refuge in the hills north of Ottawa.Brilliantly combining humor and tragedy, Uncle Ronald is one of Brian Doyle's most emotionally powerful novels.

Like Dylan Thomas' Under Milk Wood and Sherwood Anderson's Winesburg, Ohio, Brian Doyle's stunning fiction debut brings a town to life through the jumbled lives and braided stories of its people. In a small fictional town on the Oregon coast there are love affairs and almost-love-affairs, mystery and hilarity, bears and tears, brawls and boats, a garrulous logger and a silent doctor, rain and pain, Irish immigrants and Salish stories, mud and laughter. There's a Department of Public Works that gives haircuts and counts insects, a policeman addicted to Puccini, a philosophizing crow, beer and berries. An expedition is mounted, a crime committed, and there's an unbelievably huge picnic on the football field. Babies are born. A car is cut in half with a saw. A river confesses what it's thinking. . . It's the tale of a town, written in a distinct and lyrical voice, and readers will close the book more than a little sad to leave the village of Neawanaka, on the wet coast of Oregon, beneath the hills that used to boast the biggest trees in the history of the world.

Hubbo O'Driscoll is torn between his poor but fun friends and family and the shallow but rich kids at his school.Hubbo's first year in high school is off to a bad start as he veers wildly between the lovely Fleurette Featherstone Fitchell and the ever more enticing gang at the exclusive Hi-Y Club. Just then a mysterious benefactor appears and Hubbo gets a new job working for the elegant, elderly, and very rich Miss Collar-Cuff.An improbable surprise ending completes this wonderfully comic novel, which won the Canadian Library Association Book of the Year Award.