Giller Prize–winner M. G. Vassanji gives us a powerfully emotional novel of love and loss, of an African/Indian man who returns to the town of his birth in search of the girl he once loved—and the sense of self that has always eluded him.
Kamal Punja is a physician who has lived in Canada for the past forty years, but whom we first meet in a Tanzanian hospital. He is delirious and says he has been poisoned with hallucinogens. But

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"Nina and Marie were best friends - until Nina was diagnosed with a terminal illness. Before she died, Nina asked Marie to fulfill her final wishes. But her mistake was in thinking Marie was someone she could trust. What Nina didn't know was that Marie always wanted her beautiful life, and that Marie has an agenda of her own. She'll do anything to get what she wants. Marie thinks she can keep her promise to her friend's family on her own terms. But...

After Pinkalicious uses all of Alison's pink paint in class, she wonders how she can repay her best friend.

"Millicent Watts-Cohen is on a mission. When she promised her elderly best friend that she'd reunite her with the woman she fell in love with nearly eighty years ago, she didn't expect that would mean traveling to Key West with three tablespoons of Mrs. Nash's remains in her backpack. But Millie's determined to give her friend a symbolic happily ever after, before it's (really) too late-and hopefully reassure herself of love's lasting power in the...

"Allison believes God made her a promise. So why didn't her life turn out the way she expected? Allison did everything she could do to rescue her marriage, but her husband left anyway. Their marriage is over. She retreats to the mountain home she inherited from her great-aunt Emma, a woman she thought she'd known well. But the trunks she discovers in the attic hold keepsakes, photographs, and journals that reveal secrets and the stories of a kindred...

A fantasy about a dark forest besieged by monsters--and the wild queen who has sworn to drive them out. A fierce young queen, neither human nor lynx, who fights to protect a forest humans have long abandoned. An exhausted young soldier, last of his name, who searches for the brother who disappeared beneath those trees without a trace. A Golden Dragon, fearsome and vengeful, whose wingbeats haunt their nightmares and their steps. When these three paths...

Bob, a feckless bachelor, promised his mother that at her death he would care for his schizophrenic younger brother D.J. but he becomes apprehensive when the time comes. Facing up to his responsibility, Bob tries his best, but his set ways and D.J.'s erratic behavior mix like oil and water. Giving his promise one last shot, Bob takes D.J. on a fishing trip to the secluded lake where they vacationed as children. Here, the rush of memories transforms...

A little bear learns from his mother what it means to make and break a promise, as well as the lesson that some things in life simply cannot be promised.