Books published by publisher Anchor Canada

A derelict motel, haunting childhood memories, hidden rooms, two sisters and family secrets--a supernatural tale that will thrill and chill in equal measure Once a thriving attraction on the well-traveled roads of rural Vermont, the Tower Motel now stands in disrepair, an eerie, abandoned place. Amy, her best friend, Piper, and Piper's younger sister, Margot, played there as kids, exploring everywhere, even the forbidden tower itself--where they uncovered a secret one summer that ended their friendship. Twenty years later, Piper has left all of that behind, until she gets a call from Margot telling her that Amy's been accused of a horrific crime. Piper and Margot will have to confront what truly happened that long-ago summer and all that led up to it--a hidden room, a family drowning in secrets, another pair of sisters each believing the other to be something truly monstrous--in order to understand, and survive, what is happening now.

The long-awaited magnum opus from Haruki Murakami, in which this revered and bestselling author gives us his hypnotically addictive, mind-bending ode to George Orwell's 1984.The year is 1984. Aomame is riding in a taxi on the expressway, in a hurry to carry out an assignment. Her work is not the kind that can be discussed in public. When they get tied up in traffic, the taxi driver suggests a bizarre 'proposal' to her. Having no other choice she agrees, but as a result of her actions she starts to feel as though she is gradually becoming detached from the real world. She has been on a top secret mission, and her next job leads her to encounter the superhuman founder of a religious cult. Meanwhile, Tengo is leading a nondescript life but wishes to become a writer. He inadvertently becomes involved in a strange disturbance that develops over a literary prize. While Aomame and Tengo impact on each other in various ways, at times by accident and at times intentionally, they come closer and closer to meeting. Eventually the two of them notice that they are indispensable to each other. Is it possible for them to ever meet in the real world?

A riveting and rollicking tour-de-force about the terrifying power of nature's most deadly phenomena — colossal waves — and the scientists and super surfers who are obsessed with them.The New York Times bestselling author of The Devil's Teeth probes the dramatic convergence of baffling gargantuan waves that pummel oil rigs and sink massive ships, the extreme surfers willing to stare down death in order to ride them, and the marine scientists trying to unlock the physics of these waves, the climate changes that are provoking them, and what chaos they might wreak. Susan Casey explores the phenomenon of monster waves and how they have become an obsession for extreme surfers like Laird Hamilton — who serves as the author's guide as she takes the reader into the intense, white-knuckle world of 100-foot waves.From the Hardcover edition.

Achebe writes about the political and social problems facing newly independent African states.Anthills of the Savannah transports the reader to the West African country of Kangan, a fictional Nigeria, in the wake of a revolutionary coup that overthrew a dictator. Achebe discusses the strict balance of power that must be maintained in order to sustain a democracy, and the fine the line that is tread between leader and dictator.

The $12 Million Stuffed Shark delves into the economics and psychology of the contemporary art world – artists, dealers, auction houses, and wealthy collectors. If it’s true – as so often said – that 85 percent of new contemporary art is bad, why were record prices achieved at auction for works by 131 contemporary artists in 2006 alone, with astonishing new heights reached in 2007? The $12 Million Stuffed Shark explores money, lust, and the self-aggrandizement of possession in an attempt to determine what makes a particular work of art valuable while others are ignored. In the style of the bestselling Freakonomics, Thompson uses economic concepts to explain the unique practices employed, to great success, in the international contemporary art market. He discusses branding and marketing and how various strategies are tailored to a wealthy clientele, driving a "must-have" culture. Drawing on exclusive interviews with both past and present executives of auction houses and art dealerships, artists, and the buyers who move the market, Thompson launches the reader on a surprising journey of discovery.From the Hardcover edition.

Hunting has not been a sport for David Adams Richards, but a way of life--and one to be celebrated and defended.The woods have become a part of him. When he first entered them with a gun as a young boy he found "secret places that laid the framework of the template of my life." He had entered a world of danger, where the struggle for life and death was revealed at its rawest. And one, too, of immense beauty--of wilds, hills and streams. It was home to magnificent animals and to people who respected them and whose wisdom about nature was at least the equal of any city-dweller's.Facing the Hunter is a memoir and a polemic and above all shows a writer at the height of his powers evoking the thrills and wonders of the land along the Mirimichi and Matapedia, the territory that has long informed his novels. Here we discover, in prose of unparalleled passion and beauty, what it has meant to David Adams Richards--the man as much as the novelist.

“Begins here first account of operative me, agent number 67 on arrival midwestern American airport greater _____ area. Flight _____. Date _____. Priority mission top success to complete. Code name: Operation Havoc.” Thus speaks Pygmy, one of a handful of young adults from a totalitarian state sent to the United States, disguised as exchange students, to live with typical American families and blend in, all the while planning an unspecified act of massive terrorism. Palahniuk depicts Midwestern life through the eyes of this thoroughly indoctrinated little killer, who hates Americans with a passion, in this cunning double-edged satire of a xenophobia that might, in fact, be completely justified.From the Hardcover edition.

Anne Tyler’s richest, most deeply searching novel–a story about what it is to be an American, and about Iranian-born Maryam Yazdan, who, after 35 years in this country, must finally come to terms with her “outsiderness.”Two families, who would otherwise never have come together, meet by chance at the Baltimore airport – the Donaldsons, a very American couple, and the Yazdans, Maryam’s fully assimilated son and his attractive Iranian wife. Each couple is awaiting the arrival of an adopted infant daughter from Korea. After the instant babies from distant Asia are delivered, Bitsy Donaldson impulsively invites the Yazdans to celebrate: an “arrival party” that from then on is repeated every year as the two families become more and more deeply intertwined. Even Maryam is drawn in – up to a point. When she finds herself being courted by Bitsy Donaldson’s recently widowed father, all the values she cherishes – her traditions, her privacy, her otherness–are suddenly threatened.A luminous novel brimming with subtle, funny, and tender observations that immerse us in the challenges of both sides of the American story.

"Martha Schabas is clearly a natural with long-form fiction. . . .The sign of a truly good novel is one where your personal interest in whatever topic or milieu (in this case, The Royal Toronto Ballet Academy) doesn't matter. It is a good story told in an original way, and if it were about monster trucks, another thing I'm less than enthused about, I would still be intrigued because Schabas writes so well. . . . Schabas is a writer in full control of her craft." --National Post Shy and introverted, and trapped between the hyper-sexualized world of her teenaged friends and her dysfunctional family, Georgia is only at ease when she's dancing. Fortunately, she's an unusually talented and promising dancer. When she is accepted into the notoriously exclusive Royal Ballet Academy--Canada's preeminent dance school--Georgia thinks she has made the perfect escape. In ballet, she finds the exhilarating control and power she lacks elsewhere in her life: physical, emotional and, increasingly, sexual. This dynamic is nowhere more obvious than in Georgia's relationship with Artistic Director Roderick Allen. As Roderick singles her out as a star and subjects her to increasingly vicious training, Georgia obsesses about becoming his perfect student, disciplined and sexless. But a disturbing incident with a stranger on the subway, coupled with her dawning recognition of the truth of her parents' unhappy marriage, causes her to radically reassess her ideas about physical boundaries--a reassessment that threatens both Roderick's future at the academy and Georgia's ambitions as a ballerina.

A compelling, at times horrifying work that is impossible to put down, House Rules will stand beside Running With Scissors and The Glass Castle as a memoir that cracks open the shell of a desperately dysfunctional family with impressive grace and humour.Rachel Sontag grew up the daughter of a well-liked doctor in an upper middle class suburb of Chicago. The view from outside couldn’t have been more perfect. But within the walls of the family home, Rachel’s life was controlled and indeed terrorized by her father’s serious depression. In prose that is both precise and rich, Rachel’s childhood experience unfolds in a chronological recounting that shows how her father became more and more disturbed as Rachel grew up.A visceral and wrenching exploration of the impact of a damaged psyche on those nearest to him, House Rules will keep you reading even when you most wish you could look away.In the middle of the night, Dad sent Mom to wake me. In my pajamas, I sat across from them in the living room. I was sure Grandma had died and I remember deciding to stay strong when Dad told me. “What did you say to her?” he asked. His elbows rested in his lap.“What do you mean?”“You spent a good half hour alone in that hospital room. What did you talk about?”“I don’t know, Dad”“What do you mean, you don’t know? You know. You know exactly what you talked to her about.”“You talked about me, Rachel.”“No. I didn’t.”“To my own mother?”. . . . I wondered how he’d been with Mom, how she’d missed the signs. He couldn’t have just turned crazy all of a sudden. I wondered if his own father had infected him with anger. But mostly, I wanted to know what he saw in me that caused him to break up inside. Was it in my being born or in my growing up?--from House RulesFrom the Hardcover edition.