Books published by Inanna Publications & Education

Winner of the 2019 American Book Fest Best Book Award for Women's Fiction; Finalist for Literary FictionKate, a somewhat clumsy widow of thirty-two, flees her stifling hometown on Vancouver Island to live alone on an even smaller island in the Salish Sea. In so doing, she has vague expectations of solace and sanctuary, despite past experience. Instead she meets Ivy, a woman who through their conversations transports her to the intoxicating world of 1926 Cuba. Within the context of their friendship, Ivy's past begins to unravel from a long-held silence, just as Kate finds herself confronting her relationship with the colourful community she's known all her life, along with an unexpected visitor who threatens to remove all peace from her chosen refuge. Told from the perspectives of three narrators: Ivy, Kate, and Kate's mother Nora, Fishing for Birds is a novel that juxtaposes the expectations we cling to so fiercely and the unexpected and sometimes unconventional things that turn up. The novel challenges traditional constructs of time, ethnicity, and relationship. Set against the tropical beauty of 1920s Cuba and the Northwest Coast of contemporary time, both the landscape and unique character of island life underscore the experiences of three very different women.

Abby Faria returns from an extended vacation/work holiday in BC to discover that her friend, Maria is having marital problems, problems that are affecting her children as well. As Abby resumes her job as a bike courier, it becomes clear that Maria's troubles are bigger than she first presented and they are soon compounded with the disappearance of her son. She turns to Abby for help. As usual, as Abby tries to piece together the clues, and to help keep Maria's fish shop running, she makes new friends who help out. Alex, the woman who took over the Community Centre Bike work program for youth in Abby's absence, becomes a close friend as they work together. Handsome Dave, a fellow bicycle and coffee enthusiast, and an RCMP officer on loan to the Toronto police Force, becomes an unlikely ally as well, in the hunt for Thomas, Maria's son. As she continues to work on the case, Abby finds time to go for two or three thrilling rides through the city, develop a relationship with Dave, enjoy some excellent meals in Little Italy and Kensington Market, and learn some little known facts about pedophiles. But, the longer time passes, the more desperate the situation becomes. Ultimately Abby ends up trapped in Alex's house in Little Italy, in danger and frustrated at being unable to help Maria. This leads to an unexpected twist, a hidden room, the rescue of young Thomas, and the tragic death of a new friend, all of which bring relief, and grief, to Abby's community.

On the Edge tells the story of Emerald Lake Visser, an unhappy fourteen-year-old who came to live on her aunt and uncle's farm when she was orphaned at age five. A misfit in her community and at school, her only real friend is an elderly woman, Jess, who teaches her to sail. Emma's a natural sailor, as if she's been on a sailboat her whole life. When Jess dies, it's revealed that she was Emma's grandmother. After receiving a letter that her mother may be living in the Bahamas, Emma runs away on her grandmother's boat, the Edge, to find her. Disguising herself as a boy, Emma sails the Edge through the Erie Canal, down the Hudson River, out onto the Atlantic Ocean and through the ICW to Miami, where she crosses the Gulf Stream to the Bahamas. Navigational mistakes, near misses with the coast guard, a robbery, and storms put Emma in danger time and again. To add to her stress, by the time she reaches New York City she suspects she's being followed. She notices small black pebbles appearing on her boat, along with dirty footprints in her cockpit. When a handwritten note is tucked into her porthole, she becomes very frightened. She has no passport and is underage. If she's caught, she'll be sent back to the farm. But Emma is determined to find her mother.

The child Frederick and his mother both have secrets. She sings alone in their desultory kitchen; he sneaks out of the house to sing for spare change in front of city bars and nightclubs, his vast repertoire learned from his mother's lyrical midnight music. His six older brothers run wild, and the sensitive and musically gifted Frederick and his struggling mother are very sure he is not like them at all.In mid-life, Frederick is deliverer of Canada Post mail; teacher of Voice; keeper of even bigger secrets; caretaker of his demented mother; lousy with dates. Still, it appears that everything is more or less satisfactory and under control...until it becomes obvious that he can't get away from his past after all. The Madrigal explores the experience of solitude, the deep longing for elusive connection, the meaning of extraordinary talent, and the role of memories--either involuntarily forgotten or intentionally suppressed--throughout our lives. As each week Frederick steadfastly visits his mother in her nursing home, he brings a unique twist to a timeless journey of self-forgiveness.

In Many Waters is the gripping story of three orphans whose lives intersect on the island of Malta during our current, urgent refugee crisis. Zoe, a budding historian, comes to Malta with her younger brother Cal to learn more about their Maltese mother, as well as the mysterious circumstances surrounding their parents' untimely deaths. The siblings' well-mapped plans are derailed when Cal, who is a daily swimmer in the Mediterranean, discovers a girl floating in the sea, barely alive. The small, battered fishing boat on which she has journeyed from Libya to Malta capsized in a storm: Aziza is the sole survivor. Meanwhile, Zoe returns to the site of her parents' drownings and stumbles across a trail of clues which lead to the discovery of an unknown family member, unearthing a chain of life-changing secrets. In Many Waters brilliantly mines the hearts and minds of characters in extremis, the unforgettable tale of the ways that we love and help one another and how the choices we make reverberate through generations.

"Elena Ferrante's Neapolitan novels meet Alice Munro's Lives of Girls and Women" in award-winning author Connie Guzzo-McParland's highly anticipated sophomore novel, The Women of SaturnThe Women of Saturn chronicles the lives of three women of different generations, all living in Montreal in the 1980s, connected and haunted by the same Italian village of their pasts. When high school teacher Cathy's estranged childhood friend, Lucia is found beaten and abandoned in an apparent act of domestic violence, she takes Lucia's teenage daughter, Angie, into her home. An aspiring writer, Cathy resolves herself to giving Lucia a voice through her writing--and in doing so, relives their journey from Calabria to Canada in 1957, her own family's difficult years after their arrival in Montreal, and the exhilarating, corruption-ridden period of Expo 67.Meanwhile, rumors swirl about Lucia's family's connections to the Montreal Mafia. Cathy's live-in boyfriend, Sean, sees Angie's presence in their home as a dangerous liability to his career in federal politics - not helped by the fact that Lucia's husband, located in Italy, begins to hurl accusations of corruption against Lucia's family and their business partner with ties to the Member of Parliament for whom Sean works. When these revelations are brought to the attention of Montreal tabloid journalist Antoine--Cathy's former writing mentor, with whom she's had a problematic relationship since her teens--Cathy becomes yet more determined to connect the village stories of the past with the drama of the present, culminating in a confrontation that will forever change her life.Gripping and as satisfying as southern Italian cuisine, The Women of Saturn is an important and unforgettable story about the female immigrant experience, and the inescapable impact of the past on our post-modern present.