From the author of the Giller Award - winning novel The Polished Hoe comes a new collection of 20 of his best short stories. Choosing His Coffin is a selection of Austin Clarke’s finest work from more than 40 years of storytelling, drawing on his Caribbean roots and his years in Canada. These stories range in theme from growing up in West Indian society and what it means to be black in both the United States and Canada to surviving as an immigrant in a predominantly Anglo-Saxon culture. Clarke has become one of the most respected authors in North America and is one of Canada’s national literary treasures. He is a master of fictional invention.

A collection of 20 short stories spanning Clarke's 40-year career, drawing on his Caribbean roots as well as his years living in Canada and the United States.

Giller Prize winner Austin Clarke’s memoirs provide insightful cultural observations by one of today’s most influential black writers.

Reader beware--you choose the scare! GIVE YOURSELF GOOSEBUMPS! You're off to visit your grandmother, whose house backs up to a graveyard. At first the tombstones seem far away. But every day they move a little closer. Then you discover the headstones are disappearing. But the dead aren't gone -- their ghosts are moving. Right into your grandmother's house!If you decide to stay, you must battle a warrior ghost. If you decide to run, one of the kid ghosts follows you home. Will you be haunted...for the rest of your life? The choice is yours in this scary GOOSEBUMPS adventure that's packed with over 20 super-spooky endings!

Timothy Schaffert has created his most memorable character yet in Essie, an octogenarian obituary writer for her family’s small town newspaper. When a young country girl is reported to be missing, perhaps whisked away by an itinerant aerial photographer, Essie stumbles onto the story of her life. Or, it all could be simply a hoax, or a delusion, the child and child-thief invented from the desperate imagination of a lonely, lovelorn woman. Either way, the story of the girl reaches far and wide, igniting controversy, attracting curiosity-seekers and cult worshippers from all over the country to this dying rural town. And then it is revealed that the long awaited final book of an infamous series of YA gothic novels is being secretly printed on the newspaper’s presses. The Coffins of Little Hope tells a feisty, energetic story of characters caught in the intricately woven webs of myth, legend and deception even as Schaffert explores with his typical exquisite care and sharp eye the fragility of childhood, the strength of family, the powerful rumor mills of rural America, and the sometimes dramatic effects of pop culture on the way we shape our world.

Winner of the 2002 Scotiabank Giller Prize and of the 2003 Commonwealth Writers’ Prize: Best Book (Canada and the Caribbean) When an elderly Bimshire village woman calls the police to confess to a murder, the result is a shattering all-night vigil that brings together elements of the African diaspora in one epic sweep. Set on the post-colonial West Indian island of Bimshire in 1952, The Polished Hoe unravels over the course of 24 hours but spans the lifetime of one woman and the collective experience of a society informed by slavery. As the novel opens, Mary Mathilda is giving confession to Sargeant, a police officer she has known all her life. The man she claims to have murdered is Mr. Belfeels, the village plantation owner for whom she has worked for more than thirty years. Mary has also been Mr. Belfeels’ mistress for most of that time and is the mother of his only son, Wilberforce, a successful doctor. What transpires through Mary’s words and recollections is a deep meditation about the power of memory and the indomitable strength of the human spirit. Infused with Joycean overtones, this is a literary masterpiece that evokes the sensuality of the tropics and the tragic richness of Island culture.

BEING DEAD CAN KILL A SOCIAL LIFE! For Lil Marchette, the owner of Manhattan’s premier dating service for vampires (and a dazzling denizen of the dark herself), death is all in a night’s work. Unfortunately, it’s going to take more than matching up vamps to pay the bills and fund Lil’s cosmetics addiction. Dare she add actual humans to the mix? Eager to diversify, she signs up for a popular dating show, Manhattan’s Most Wanted (MMW), to pitch her expertise to the perfect target audience–eligible women looking for eligible men. Of course Lil is trying to forget the one man she’d love to sink her own teeth into: Ty Bonner, the ultraseductive vamp who broke her heart after she gave him the hottest night of his afterlife. Problem is, she and Ty have an intense mental connection and she’s sensing he’s in deep trouble. Even worse, she soon finds herself heading for MMW’s grand finale (cameras are so not a vamp’s best friend). The race is on as Lil struggles to save Ty (and herself) before all hell breaks loose. “Lil is a likable mix of Bridget Jones, Carrie Bradshaw and Dracula–charming, sweet, stylish, with just a hint of fang.” –Parkersburg News and Sentinel