Random House Canada

In this spicy heist romance from the author of Knives, Seasoning, and a Dash of Love, a feisty hacker sets out to steal from a wealthy mark, but when he shows up at her apartment, could there be more at stake than just money? Billions of dollars on the line. One irresistible distraction.Adelina Choi is a hacker with a heart of gold and a talent for emptying bank accounts. An MIT dropout with Robin Hood tendencies, she funnels cash from greedy marks to those who need it most. It’s a simple gig . . . until she targets the wrong man.West is a conman-turned-single-dad who catches Adelina in the act. But instead of turning her in, he makes her an offer she can’t refuse. Help him pull off the ultimate heist—stealing billions from an Italian crime boss—and she’ll walk away with an equal cut of the money. The catch? She has to play nice with his eccentric team of thieves.Dangerous? Absolutely. Tempting? Even more so, because West is infuriatingly charming and impossible to ignore. And as the job heats up, so does the tension between them. Can Adelina keep her head in the game, or will her feelings for her partner-in-crime blow the whole plan sky-high?

*NATIONAL BESTSELLER*What happens when your worst nightmare becomes your reality?One sunny day in California, Jessie is hugging her nine-year-old son, Dylan, goodbye at the airport. He''s travelling alone, all the way across the country, to visit his grandparents and father, Jessie''s soon-to-be ex-husband. Her heart is breaking, but she puts on a brave face and gives her son one last wave as a flight attendant leads him away. Several hours later, Jessie gets a frantic call from Dylan''s grandmother in New York. Dylan is missing.In a split-second, Jessie''s world turns upside down.The AirTag she''d put in Dylan''s backpack says he''s still at LAX. The airline insists that he was picked up at JFK by an elderly couple claiming to be his grandparents—but Jessie''s in-laws insist they haven''t seen him.Dylan has disappeared into thin air.At the same moment, miles away, in Toronto, a train operator loses control of a subway train, and the fiery crash kills five passengers and injures dozens of others. Was this a fatal human error or something more sinister? And how exactly is it connected to the disappearance of Dylan?Because, somehow, it is.

Featured in Quill and Quire’s 2026 Spring Preview • A Globe and Mail Spring 2026 ReadSingaporean-Canadian author Joanne Leow sheds light on the underbelly of Singapore''s history and the human cost behind its glittering façade."What unknowable chemical? How slow was this damage, this violence? . . . How might any of us stay uncontaminated by all that was built around us?"Sleek and verdant, the city-state of Singapore has long been admired on the global stage as a lush utopia, a well-connected trade port and the jewel of Southeast Asia. Yet this carefully pruned exterior conceals the country’s crude construction—oil is the blood that''s run through Singapore’s hidden veins for decades, while sand and migrant labour has allowed for its rapid development and expansion. The upkeep of this sanitized public image has also relied crucially on the complicity and regulation of its body politic.Years after her departure to Canada, a place likewise indebted to fossil fuel extraction, Joanne Leow continues to live with Singapore’s authoritarian policies embedded within her skin. With unflinching clarity, she exhumes the histories and ongoing realities of various state initiatives that seek to control both the public and the private aspects of its citizenry, examining her work as a journalist for the state-controlled media and chronicling the daily hypervigilance and unconscious suppression of anything that might be deemed as dissidence. In this intervening time, during which she dealt also with serious illness and bereavement, Joanne reflects upon the various ways in which this oppression continues to exist in her bones, a slow poisoning only truth-telling can expunge.In searing yet lyrically gorgeous prose, Exhumations catalogues the many things that are produced under pressure. Bit by bit, Joanne exposes the petrofiction at the heart of Singapore’s being and traces the unruliness of thought daily growing within her, difficult to ignore and impossible to repress.

She''s bound by tradition, but maybe they''re destined for love... Priya Solanki is a ''Dalit'' or ''untouchable,'' the lowest echelon of Indian castes-a stigma that follows individuals from birth to death, and as Priya learns, beyond oceans and continents. Traditionally assigned to occupations considered dishonorable for higher-caste communities, Priya''s father comes from generations of cremators. Deciding to honour his heritage, he opens a funeral home after immigrating to Canada. Determined to free herself from a label that deems her less worthy, less capable, and less intelligent, Priya leaves home against her parents'' wishes. But a failed romance lands her back in the spot she tried so hard to leave-home-and her parents consider her return a cosmic lesson in accepting her fate. Trapped between her parents'' expectations and their caste-assigned family business, she''s desperate to escape. But her plan takes a nosedive when Hollywood''s hottest heartthrob, Ethan Knight, rents out their funeral home to prepare for an upcoming role. And Ethan isn''t just any superstar-he was the boy next door, Priya''s secret teenage crush long before his brooding magnetism seduced millions. When her parents leave to go husband-hunting for her, Priya is left alone with Ethan, and old flames reignite. But cosying up to Ethan means stepping out of the shadows and into the paparazzi flashes-a terrifying prospect. If she can''t see herself as his equal, the world surely won''t. And even if Priya dares to follow her heart, she risks losing everything: her parents'' trust, her chance to break free from the funeral home, and Ethan.

The allegations read like a scene out of a horror movie. Five National Hockey League players, all of them 18-year-old Canada World Juniors at the time, are alleged to have sexually assaulted a young woman in a London, ON hotel room in June 2018 over several hours. When the players learned that the alleged victim had reported the incident to the police, they allegedly threatened her to drop the complaint. Hockey Canada kept the details of the case out of the spotlight and came to a confidential financial settlement with the plaintiff, paid out of a secret slush fund worth millions of dollars that the organisation kept on hand to settle such complaints quietly. On May 26, 2022, TSN investigative reporter Rick Westhead broke the story surrounding the Team Canada junior players and Hockey Canada''s handling of the case, immediately sending shock waves throughout all levels of the hockey world. Once the story went live on the TSN website, Westhead''s inbox on X filled with messages from people who wanted to share their personal stories on how they had been impacted by hockey''s toxic culture. In We Breed Lions, award-winning journalist and bestselling author Rick Westhead does a deep-dive into the state of hockey in Canada today. He gives voice to those who have been sexually assaulted by hockey players, revealing the struggles they''ve had with local police officials in their efforts to seek justice. He also goes inside the dressing room to find out how attitudes of misogyny and homophobia continue to flourish, and speaks to former players who were forced to perform degrading acts of initiation in order to join the team. Looming large in Westhead''s extraordinary reporting are the gatekeepers of the game-league officials, team owners and members of the sport''s governing bodies-who are reluctant to impose change from the outside and willing to sacrifice the well-being of their players and the community for profit. Westhead offers hope for hockey''s future, profiling those individuals and organisations who are committed to educating players around issues of consent, putting an end to hazing and redefining what it means to be a man on and off the ice. Featuring a Foreword by bestselling author Stephen Brunt, We Breed Lions will surely generate an enormous amount of debate and discussion among parents, players and all of those who love the game of hockey and want to see it get to a better place.

When Jamie Musselman''s father is found dead from an apparent self-inflicted gunshot, it doesn''t take long for rumours and suspicions about Jamie to swirl through Miramachi. Why was Jamie also shot that night? Why was money discovered under his pillow? Was it true, as some of the boys at his school claimed, that Jamie possessed a cruel nature and had even once been spotted killing robins? As the years bend on, Jamie continues to maintain his innocence, but few others, aside from his fiancee, Gertie, believe him. Including the police, who finally arrest him. Including the judge, who convicts Jamie of murder. But nothing is ever as it seems in Miramachi, a place where vanity, resentment and crimes of opportunity are forever brewing, and unlikely alliances are continually being formed. In the weeks before the murder, a self-proclaimed revolutionary had returned to Miramachi after being expelled from university; a career criminal falsely claiming Indigenous heritage had been released from jail; and a hapless bully of a father - Gertie''s father - had discovered there was money in the Musselmans'' home, kept in the very study where Jamie''s father was found dead. Is there more to the story than the townsfolk believe? Richly conceived and fearless in its examination of morality and justice, prejudice and corruption, Songs of Love on a December Night is an epic exploration of the evil we are capable of and of the redemption we can aspire to.

Few Canadian musicians or authors are as synonymous with their home province as Alan Doyle is with Newfoundland. And now Alan wants to introduce the rest of the world to his home, taking readers on a freewheeling, eclectic trip through the province. From Fogo Island to the Southwest Coast, Labrador to Ferryland and everywhere in-between, Alan''s Newfoundland awaits. There are plenty of stops along the way to admire the sites and take in the history and culture. Among the stops, a discussion of Newfoundland''s eccentric place names, which include Horse Chops Island, Bread and Cheese Cove, and, the (in)famous, Dildo. There are visits to wind-swept coastlines and towering crags, former Beothuk, Viking and Basque settlements, as well as more recent settlements, such as Foley''s Shed, a jaunty live-music pub that - as its name suggests - happens to be located in some guy named Foley''s shed. There are savvy insider tips, such as how to score fish and chips and a free ride by hopping into the delivery person''s car as they deliver your food to your desired destination. And what tour of Alan''s Newfoundland could be complete without a short history of what can best be described as ''icebergs that look like things,'' an illustrious history that includes an exact replica of the Virgin Mary that once washed into St. John''s harbour, and the more recent - and far less holy - ''Dickie Berg,'' which made international headlines for looking like . . . well, not the Virgin Mary. Wildly entertaining, informative and brimming with Alan''s classic brand of storytelling and romping good fun, The Smiling Land is sure to delight even the most travel-adverse reader among us.

Maple syrup flows through the spirit of Canada and has done so since it was first extracted from the forests by Indigenous Peoples. In eastern Canada, especially in the heart of maple syrup country in Quebec, the arrival of sugaring off-season in spring offers an excuse for feasts with dancing in the cabanes a sucre, or sugar shacks. But behind the parties lies a high-tech, high-stakes business. A cartel controls every aspect of the syrup cycle in Quebec and decides who may make maple syrup, where and how much. To skirt this iron grip, sugar bush rebels sneak their barrels of syrup out of Quebec in the dark of night, risking crippling fines and banishment from the syrup business. In Maple Syrup, forester and journalist Peter Kuitenbrouwer leads us through the sugar maple forests, from the syrup''s semi-legendary beginnings to its commercial explosion and global conquest, weaving in his own story of tapping the forest along the way. For him, ''sugaring off'' is a magical season, when the days start to get longer and the snow begins to melt. It signals a time of togetherness and shared experience as his family battles the elements in the indomitable forest to produce bottles of pure, golden, delicious sweetener.

As the world around her is ripped apart by war and infiltrated by Nazi soldiers, Savka Ivanets works as a medic for the Ukrainian resistance, stitching wounds by day, stealing supplies by night, and dodging firefights between the SS and Soviet partisans. Her husband Marko has been gone for years, first as a commander of the resistance and now as a reluctant member of the SS, and she lives each day fearing what will become of him and that she - or, worse, their young son Taras - will be taken hostage and tortured or killed. Then Marko reappears in the darkness of night and after promising her and Taras an escape to safety after the war, gives Savka a coded message that he demands she deliver to an underground bunker. She protests - to leave her, a woman, to such a task is unimaginably dangerous - but, like in many parts of her life, she has no choice. But Savka''s mission doesn''t go as planned, and Taras is kidnapped by the KGB and she''s shot, left for dead in the trees, and fearing she''ll never see her son again. Salt Spring Island, 1972. Celebrated landscape artist Jeanie Esterhazy lives a quiet life on a waterfront estate on Salt Spring Island, hidden away from the world that, with its whispers and curious eyes, is too much for her to bear. Ever since the horrific accident on her wedding day years ago that left her scarred, Jeanie feels unlovable and utterly alone. She''s trapped in a battle of wills with her nurse, a tough and cruel woman who threatens to reveal the truth about Jeanie''s shocking part in her accident all those years ago. Then a mysterious stranger appears at the house, and suddenly Jeanie begins having flashbacks that make her wonder if there''s more to the events of the night of her wedding than she''s been told; flashbacks that make her realize the world around her is not as it seems. Weaving together Savka and Jeanie''s stories with artful precision, The Last Secret is at once luminous and transporting, a brilliant and impossible-to-forget story of love, hope, and the unwavering resilience of women.

The third annual Alchemy Lecture took place in the fall of 2024 at York University, to a sold-out in-person audience and hundreds of online viewers tuning in from multiple continents. Gathered by Dr. Christina Sharpe, these Alchemists - four thinkers and practitioners who work across a range of disciplines and geographies - shared their ideas of city life, its structures and architectures, and how radically different these can and should be organized to support community needs. Their urgent, poignant, and inventive lectures have been captured and expanded in these pages. Princeton assistant professor of architecture V. Mitch McEwen borrows the language of the swamp to suggest a city modeled on buoyancy: ''Let''s dream a physics - which is to say a calculability or maybe a comprehension towards calculability - that considers floating as something other than displacement.'' Iranian-American writer and professor Laleh Khalili dreams a city of radical kinship, in which even strangers have the means and desire to share a table; she suggests that ''hospitality does not presume pre-existing bonds. It is about creating the bond through the rituals of reciprocal giving.'' In the Bantu/Kongo tradition, Brazilian architect and professor Gabriela Leandro Pereira points to dreams as the site from which all Black emancipation begins: ''Building and ruining, refusing and dissembling, cultivating and creating. What cities emerge from dreams that find their foundation in these gestures?'' And Michi Saagiig Nishnaabeg writer and musician Leanne Betasamosake Simpson examines how collectives form at the thresholds between things; ''this city of my dreaming is one that relentlessly chooses life, Black life, Palestinian life, Indigenous life, the life of the watered, aired and landed, the life of snow crystals, over and over again, across every scale, temporality and spatiality. Relentlessly.'' Conveyed here are clarion calls for new conceptions of the city. The four Alchemists in The City of Our Dreaming imagine the architectures and infrastructures that make possible, inevitable, and irresistible gestures of freedom, modes of sustenance, and the necessity and pleasure of breaking bread, together.

Dimitri Abramovich may have won back the throne of Novo-Svitsevo, but even after defeating his former husband, the usurper Alexey Balakin, he seems no closer to securing lasting peace for his people. Enemies are closing in on all sides, and pressure is mounting for Dimitri to play the one card he has left in a bid for stability - offering his hand in marriage for a second time. But Dimitri is still healing from the tragedies of the war, his return to the throne, and Alexey''s years of torment. Vasily Sokolov is the only person with whom he feels safe, and giving up the comfort of their budding relationship feels unfathomable, even if it''s the only way to sever the alliances being formed among the countries surrounding Novo-Svitsevo. So as Dimitri and Vasily reckon with political treachery, the lasting consequences of Dimitri''s resurrection, and the sinister legacy of Alexey''s use of the Holy Science, they must also work to understand what it means to love each other even as they prepare to let each other go - which might prove the most difficult of all.

Lia Juma thought she''d buried the dreams of her heart long ago. But when she''s forced to return to her family''s summer cottage on Pike Bay, the life she''s carefully crafted begins to unravel. The perfect immigrant daughter, Lia has carved out a successful career as a corporate lawyer and has just started dating a man who fulfills all her mother''s criteria for the ideal son-in-law. But underneath her polished life lies a secret she''s never spoken of - one she fears could have destroyed her family a decade ago. Back at the bay, Lia stumbles upon memories she thought were long forgotten and, at the center of it all, is Wesley Forest - the boy she left behind, the boy who knew her dreams better than anyone. Their friendship and young love once burned bright, woven through long sun-drenched days and whispered promises of a future together. But when family pressures and heartbreak pulled the two lovers apart, they were forced to follow separate paths. Now, Wes is back in her life, and with him, old wounds and feelings surface. As the two confront the choices and secrets that divided them as teenagers, Lia must decide if she can heal from the past and finally embrace the life and love she''s always craved. Could a second chance with Wes be worth risking everything for? Told over the course of five years in the past and one summer in the present, Lia will discover that sometimes, the only way forward is through the heart''s deepest scars.

Pete Crighton came of age in the early/mid 1980s in the shadow of HIV/AIDS. Growing up in Toronto, he was terrified that his friends and schoolmates would find out that he was ''different'' at a time when being gay felt like a death sentence. His only comfort was music, the songs a balm to his painful adolescence. Struggling to make sense of his sexuality and fear of the disease stifled Crighton as a sexual being. Instead of exploring sex, he began curating a massive music library. He then took what he thought was a safepath and entered into two long-term monogamous relationships, both doomed to fail. Finally, in his 40s, Crighton decided to ignore his fear and live his queer life to the fullest. The Vinyl Diaries is the story of Crighton''s mid-life sexual awakening. From one-night trysts to friendships resulting from app-based hookups, Crighton is honest and unapologetic as he chronicles the pursuit of his erotic desires. Each new connection and lover is linked to an artist, song, or album from his vast collection and backdrops the stories Crighton tells about his life, interconnected with the artists'' work and histories. Kate Bush, the B-52s, Prince, The Smiths, Yoko Ono, and Stevie Nicks are just a few of the artists who provide an extraordinary soundtrack to Crighton''s adventures. Big-hearted, funny, thoughtful, and wildly entertaining, The Vinyl Diaries is a celebration of sex, music and the discovery of our true selves.

Miz is not the marrying kind. She''s more of the no-strings-attached kind. No labels, only fun. So, when she finds a diamond ring in her casual-but-very-hot hook-up''s gym bag, she immediately ends things and runs. Kal is one of Miz''s best friends, an aspiring actor who moved to Toronto from Ethiopia and is on the brink of his big break. But when he''s suddenly at risk of losing his work visa - which would mean leaving Toronto forever - Miz panics. What will she do without him? What if she never sees him again? There''s only one solution: Miz will marry Kal to become his spousal sponsor. He''ll get to keep pursuing his acting career, and she''ll get to keep her best friend in the city. It''ll be a quick, short only-on-paper marriage between friends, followed by a quick, easy divorce. What could possibly go wrong?

Garth Mullins was born partially blind and with Albinism into a world too bright for him to fully see and too unforgiving to fully accept him. Growing up, he was often bullied, by both students and teachers, who mocked his appearance and trivialized his disability. But Garth found strength and purpose in anti-fascist activism and punk rock, a scene that accepted him for who he was and offered an escape from the alienation and drudgery of his suburban Vancouver neighbourhood. He also found solace in heroin, spurring an addiction that would span three decades. Garth''s own experiences as a heroin user, complete with dope sickness, incarceration and overdose, is a common story for those struggling with heroin and opioid addictions. And for Garth, it was this realisation, while fighting his addiction, that led him to drug activism. He had seen first-hand the failure of abstinence-based recovery programs, the fatal threat posed by unsafe drug supplies, the over-representation of drug users, particularly Black and Indigenous users, in jails and prisons. And he saw that far from the government being successful in its attempt to curb drug use, its war against drugs had been a deadly failure. Weaving together Garth''s raw and intimate account of his addiction with the broader issues and history surrounding drug treatment and policy, Crackdown offers a forceful challenge to the received wisdom about how best to treat addiction and keep drug users alive and safe.