Books published by publisher Anchor Canada

From acclaimed author Douglas Hunter, a searing historical work about death, deceit and dishonour, and the rivalry between Samuel de Champlain and Henry Hudson–two of the greatest explorers of the seventeenth century.Samuel de Champlain of France and Englishman Henry Hudson were rival explorers in a race to describe and exploit the northern half of North America and, not least, to find a profitable passage to the Orient. The English had been trying to find a way through the Arctic since the 1570s. For Hudson, the dream of discovery proved fatal. A mutiny in the summer of 1611 saw Hudson, his teenage son John, and seven other crew members cast adrift in James Bay in an open boat. They were never heard from again.In May 1613, Samuel de Champlain left the site of present-day Montreal on a journey up the Ottawa River into uncharted territory. Champlain had undertaken the expedition because of extraordinary testimony from a young informant, Nicolas de Vignau, who had spent 1611-12 with the Algonquin and returned to France with an incredible story: He had visited the Northern Sea. What’s more, he had seen an English youth, the sole survivor of a shipwreck, held captive by the Nebicerini people as a gift for Champlain. To rescue both the English youth and his own career, Champlain set out to collect him.God’s Mercies has all the elements of a great adventure mystery: a mutiny, a massacre, a murder trial, signed confessions, and intrigue at the highest levels of state. Truths would be revealed as lies, and lies would turn out to be half-truths.From the Hardcover edition.

"Homegoing is an inspiration." —Ta-Nehisi Coates An unforgettable New York Times bestseller of exceptional scope and sweeping vision that traces the descendants of two sisters across three hundred years in Ghana and America.A riveting kaleidoscopic debut novel and the beginning of a major career: Yaa Gyasi's Homegoing is a novel about race, history, ancestry, love and time, charting the course of two sisters torn apart in 18th century Africa through to the present day. Two half sisters, Effia and Esi, unknown to each other, are born into two different tribal villages in 18th century Ghana. Effia will be married off to an English colonist, and will live in comfort in the sprawling, palatial rooms of Cape Coast Castle, raising "half-caste" children who will be sent abroad to be educated in England before returning to the Gold Coast to serve as administrators of the Empire. Her sister, Esi, will be imprisoned beneath Effia in the Castle's women's dungeon, before being shipped off on a boat bound for America, where she will be sold into slavery. Stretching from the tribal wars of Ghana to slavery and Civil War in America, from the coal mines in the north to the Great Migration to the streets of 20th century Harlem, Yaa Gyasi has written a modern masterpiece, a novel that moves through histories and geographies and—with outstanding economy and force—captures the intricacies of the troubled yet hopeful human spirit.From the Hardcover edition.

The reigning master of grand historical fiction returns with the stirring conclusion to his bestselling Dublin Saga. The Princes of Ireland, the first volume of Edward Rutherfurd’s magisterial epic of Irish history, ended with the disastrous Irish revolt of 1534 and the disappearance of the sacred Staff of Saint Patrick. The Rebels of Ireland opens with an Ireland transformed; plantation, the final step in the centuries-long English conquest of Ireland, is the order of the day, and the subjugation of the native Irish Catholic population has begun in earnest. Edward Rutherfurd brings history to life through the tales of families whose fates rise and fall in each generation: Brothers who must choose between fidelity to their ancient faith or the security of their families; a wife whose passion for a charismatic Irish chieftain threatens her comfortable marriage to a prosperous merchant; a young scholar whose secret rebel sympathies are put to the test; men who risk their lives and their children’s fortunes in the tragic pursuit of freedom, and those determined to root them out forever. Rutherfurd spins the saga of Ireland’s 400-year path to independence in all its drama, tragedy, and glory through the stories of people from all strata of society--Protestant and Catholic, rich and poor, conniving and heroic. His richly detailed narrative brings to life watershed moments and events, from the time of plantation settlements to the “Flight of the Earls,” when the native aristocracy fled the island, to Cromwell’s suppression of the population and the imposition of the harsh anti-Catholic penal laws. He describes the hardships of ordinary people and the romantic, doomed attempt to overthrow the Protestant oppressors, which ended in defeat at the Battle of the Boyne in 1690, and the departure of the “Wild Geese.” In vivid tones Rutherfurd re-creates Grattan’s Parliament, Wolfe Tone's attempted French invasion of 1798, the tragic rising of Robert Emmet, the Catholic campaign of Daniel O’Connell, the catastrophic famine, the mass migration to America, and the glorious Irish Renaissance of Yeats and Joyce. And through the eyes of his characters, he captures the rise of Charles Stewart Parnell and the great Irish nationalists and the birth of an Ireland free of all ties to England. A tale of fierce battles, hot-blooded romances, and family and political intrigues, The Rebels of Ireland brings the story begun in The Princes of Ireland to a stunning conclusion.

First, the unthinkable: a security breach at a secret U.S. government facility unleashes the product of a chilling military experiment. Then, the unspeakable: a night of chaos gives way to sunrise on a nation, and ultimately a world, turned to hell. All that remains is the long fight ahead for the stunned survivors faced with a future ruled by fear--of darkness, of death, of a fate far worse. As civilization crumbles, two people flee in search of sanctuary. FBI agent Brad Wolgast is a good man haunted by what he's done in the line of duty. Six-year-old oprhan Amy Harper Bellafonte is a refugee from the doomed scientific project, and Brad is determined to protect her. But, for young Amy, escaping is only the beginning of a much longer odyssey--spanning miles and decades--toward the time and place where she must finish what should never have begun in the first place.

From Susan Casey, the New York Times bestselling author of The Devil's Teeth and The Wave, a breathtaking look into the mysterious world of dolphins and their conflicted history with man--now in paperback!Since the dawn of recorded history, humans have felt a kinship with the sleek and beautiful dolphin, an animal whose playfulness, sociability, and intelligence seems like an aquatic mirror of mankind. In recent decades, scientists have discovered dolphins recognize themselves in reflections, count, feel despondent, adorn themselves, rescue each other (and humans), deduce, infer, form cliques, throw tantrums, gossip, and scheme. Several native peoples trace their lineage to dolphins. They are the stars of multi-million dollar aquatic theme parks, money which has fueled a sinister illicit trade as shown in the documentary Blackfish. The U.S. Navy has a secret program using dolphins as undersea soldiers. The theory that they are a superior, extraterrestial species is popular among the New Age fringe. They are the victims of brutal slaughters as depicted in the documentary The Cove. To swim with a dolphin is a transporting experience, an encounter with a being seemingly so like us, yet so alien. No writer is better positioned to portray these magical creatures than Susan Casey, whose combination of personal reporting, intense scientific research, and evocative prose made The Wave and The Devil's Teeth contemporary classics of writing on the oceans. For two years Casey travelled the world, and has written a thrilling book about the other intelligent life on the planet.

While justly acclaimed as the closest, most successful military partnership in history, the "special relationship" forged between the United States and Britain during World War II was anything but the inevitable alliance it appears to be in hindsight. As the countries of Western Europe fell one by one to Hitler, and Britain alone resisted him, aid from the U.S. was late, expensive, and reluctantly granted by an isolationist government that abhorred the idea of another world war.Citizens of London is the behind-the-scenes story of the slow, difficult growth of the Anglo-American wartime alliance, told from the perspective of three key Americans in London who played vital roles in creating it and making it work. In her close-focus, character-driven narrative, Lynne Olson, former White House journalist and LA Times Book Prize finalist for her last book, Troublesome Young Men, sets the three Americans - Averell Harriman, Edward R. Murrow, and John Gilbert Winant - at the heart of her dramatic story.Harriman was the rich, well-connected director of President Roosevelt's controversial Lend-Lease program in which the U.S., a still neutral country, "loaned" military equipment to the UK; Murrow, the handsome, innovative head of CBS News, was the first person to broadcast over live, on-location radio to the American public, and Winant, the least known but most crucial of the three, was the shy former New Hampshire governor who became the new U.S. ambassador to England after Joseph Kennedy quit the post and fled the country as bombs rained down around him.Citizens of London opens in 1941 at the bleakest period of the war, when Britain withstood nine months of nightly bomb attacks and food and supplies were running out as German ships and U-boats had the island nation surrounded. Churchill was demanding and imploring FDR to help, but the U.S. did its best to ignore England's desperate plight. It was the work of these three key men, Olson argues, that eventually changed American attitudes. So above all this is a human story, focusing on the individuals who shaped this important piece of history. Key to the book is the extremely close relationship between Winston Churchill and the three Americans, and indeed, so intimate were their ties that all three men had love affairs with women in Churchill's family.Set in the dangerous, vibrant world of wartorn London, Citizens of London is rich, highly readable, engrossing history, the story of three influential men and their immediate circle who shaped the world we live in.From the Hardcover edition.

Close Your Eyes, Hold Hands is the story of Emily Shepard, a homeless teen living in an igloo made of ice and trash bags filled with frozen leaves. Half a year earlier, a nuclear plant in Vermont's Northeast Kingdom experienced a cataclysmic meltdown, and both of Emily's parents were killed. Devastatingly, her father was in charge of the plant, and the meltdown may have been his fault. Was he drunk when it happened? Thousands of people are forced to flee their homes in the Kingdom; rivers and forests are destroyed; and Emily feels certain that as the daughter of the most hated man in America, she is in danger. So instead of following the social workers and her classmates after the meltdown, Emily takes off on her own for Burlington, where she survives by stealing, sleeping on the floor of a drug dealer's apartment and inventing a new identity for herself--an identity inspired by her favorite poet, Emily Dickinson. When Emily befriends a young homeless boy named Cameron, she protects him with a ferocity she didn't know she had. But she still can't outrun her past, can't escape her grief, can't hide forever--and so she comes up with the only plan that she can.

Poison expert, deductive genius and lovable busybody Flavia de Luce returns, wending her way down a river and straight into a twisty mystery that may just send her to an early grave. In the wake of family tragedy, twelve-year-old Flavia de Luce finds herself facing a summer with a lot of time on her hands and not much to do. When Dogger, the loyal family servant, suggests a boating trip for Flavia and her reluctant sisters, Flavia obliges. Travelling down the river, she contemplates the recent spate of murders by a church vicar who poisoned three of his female parishioners with cyanide. But when Flavia dips a languid hand in the river, her thoughts are halted when her fingers grasp something. Expecting to have a hold on a fish, the river instead yields Flavia a dead corpse--much to her delight. What better way to while away the time than to solve a juicy mystery (or two)? But the case seems to involve a motley cast of suspects. After all, what could connect the son of an executed killer, a far too canny police constable, a travelling circus, and the publican's mysteriously talented wife? As she works to find answers, Flavia will need to keep her wits about her, or risk falling into a watery grave of her own.

The provocative and mind-bending new novel from the bestselling author of Fight Club and Haunted.Rant takes the form of a (fictional) oral history of Buster “Rant” Casey, in which an assortment of friends, enemies, admirers, detractors, and relations have their say on this evil character, who may or may not be the most efficient serial killer of our time.Buster Casey was every small kid born in a small town, searching for real thrills in a world of video games and action/adventure movies. The high school rebel who always wins – and a childhood murderer? – Rant Casey escapes from his hometown of Middleton into the big city and becomes the leader of an urban demolition derby called Party Crashing, where, on designated nights, the participants recognize each other by dressing their cars with tin-can tails, “Just Married” toothpaste graffiti, and other refuse, then look for special markings in order to stalk and crash into each other. It’s in this violent, late-night hunting game that Casey makes three friends. And after his spectacular death, these friends gather the testimony needed to build an oral history of his short life. Their collected anecdotes explore the charges that his saliva infected hundreds and caused a silent, urban plague of rabies . . .Expect hilarity and horror, and blazing insight into the desperate and surreal contemporary human condition as only Chuck Palahniuk can deliver it. He’s the postmillennial Jonathan Swift, the man to watch to learn what’s – uh-oh – coming next.Excerpt from RANT:Wallace Boyer (Car Salesman): Like most people, I didn’t meet and talk to Rant Casey until after he was dead. That’s how it works for most celebrities, after they croak their circle of close friends just explodes. A dead celebrity can’t walk down the street without meeting a million best buddies they never met in real life.Dying was the best career move Jeff Dahmer and John Wayne Gacy ever made. . . . The way Rant Casey used to say it: Folks build a reputation by attacking you while you’re alive–or praising you after you ain’t.From the Hardcover edition.

From the author of that classic of modern science writing, A Short History of Nearly Everything, comes a work of what you might call domestic science: our homes, how they work, and the fascinating history of how they got that way.Bill Bryson and his family live in a Victorian parsonage in a part of England where nothing of any great significance has happened since the Romans decamped. Yet one day, he began to consider how very little he knew about the ordinary things of life as found in that comfortable home. To remedy this, he formed the idea of journeying about his house from room to room to "write a history of the world without leaving home." The bathroom provides the occasion for a history of hygiene; the bedroom, sex, death, and sleep; the kitchen, nutrition and the spice trade; and so on, as Bryson shows how each has figured in the evolution of private life. Whatever happens in the world, he demostrates, ends up in our house, in the paint and the pipes and the pillows and every item of furniture.From the Hardcover edition.

Winner of the 2007 Crime Writers’ Association Debut DaggerA delightfully dark English mystery, featuring precocious young sleuth Flavia de Luce and her eccentric family.The summer of 1950 hasn’t offered up anything out of the ordinary for eleven-year-old Flavia de Luce: bicycle explorations around the village, keeping tabs on her neighbours, relentless battles with her older sisters, Ophelia and Daphne, and brewing up poisonous concoctions while plotting revenge in their home’s abandoned Victorian chemistry lab, which Flavia has claimed for her own.But then a series of mysterious events gets Flavia’s attention: A dead bird is found on the doormat, a postage stamp bizarrely pinned to its beak. A mysterious late-night visitor argues with her aloof father, Colonel de Luce, behind closed doors. And in the early morning Flavia finds a red-headed stranger lying in the cucumber patch and watches him take his dying breath. For Flavia, the summer begins in earnest when murder comes to Buckshaw: “I wish I could say I was afraid, but I wasn’t. Quite the contrary. This was by far the most interesting thing that had ever happened to me in my entire life.”Did the stranger die of poisoning? There was a piece missing from Mrs. Mullet’s custard pie, and none of the de Luces would have dared to eat the awful thing. Or could he have been killed by the family’s loyal handyman, Dogger… or by the Colonel himself! At that moment, Flavia commits herself to solving the crime — even if it means keeping information from the village police, in order to protect her family. But then her father confesses to the crime, for the same reason, and it’s up to Flavia to free him of suspicion. Only she has the ingenuity to follow the clues that reveal the victim’s identity, and a conspiracy that reaches back into the de Luces’ murky past.A thoroughly entertaining romp of a novel, The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie is inventive and quick-witted, with tongue-in-cheek humour that transcends the macabre seriousness of its subject.From the Hardcover edition.

Pearl Tull may be dying, but she remembers well the day her husband abandoned her and left her to raise their three children--Cody, Ezra, and Jenny--by herself. Now, as these three are brought together by Pearl's nearing death, each sibling recounts the bitter memories of their childhood: Cody, the oldest, who felt responsible as the cause for his father's departure, all the while hiding his envy for his younger brother Ezra, whom he believes to be his mother's favourite; Ezra, the kind, nurturing young son whose sole wish is to see his family be together and happy, trying repeatedly (and failing) to bring his splintered family together for a meal at the restaurant where he works; and Jenny, the willful scholar, who only encounters familial stability after her third marriage. Contending with the troubles of their past and present, Ezra makes a final attempt to bring the family together for a meal, where the Tull siblings will come together to hash out their repressed feelings--and encounter a surprise visitor--recounting with painful candor what the family meant to them.