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Mystery writer Anne Emery’s latest novel, Fenian Street: A Mystery is a page-turning, unsolved murder investigation set in Ireland in the 1970s. 

Before becoming an award-winning mystery writer, Emery worked as a Halifax lawyer and journalist. She is the author of the popular Collins-Burke mystery series. The series is made up of 11 books, including Postmark Berlin which was published in 2020.

When Shay Rynne’s childhood friend Rosaleen – best known as Rosie - is killed, Shay sets out to find the killer. But the cards are stacked against him.

He grew up in the Corporation Flats — public housing — in Dublin’s Fenian Street. Poor and living on the wrong side of the tracks, Shay toyed with the idea of joining the Garda Síochána, the Irish national police, but in the early 1970s, young men like Shay couldn’t get a foot in the door. After Rosie is found dead at the hotel where she works, and the case hasn’t been solved, Shay knows he has no choice but to find a way to have justice served. 

“First thing next morning, word was out. Shay was leaving the flat when one of the neighbours gave him the news: it was Rosie McGinn lying at the foot of the back staircase of Goss’s Hotel. And the rumour was that somebody had thrown her down the stairs. A terrible image formed in Shay’s mind, of Rosie’s lovely face smashed and bloody, the lips that so often formed a playful smile now gaping in her last instant of horror,” writes Emery in Fenian Street (ECW Press). 

Instead of joining the Garda Síochána, Shay gets on with the Dublin police and sets out to find out what really led to Rosie’s death. Along the way, he makes an enemy of the detective who failed in the first unsuccessful investigation.

When a well-known politician dies violently, Shay is given the opportunity to prove himself and possibly get promoted. Things seem to be going well for Shay’s career; he works with the lead detective on the murder inquiry until a member of Shay’s own family is suspected of criminal activity. Shay gets taken off the case, but that doesn’t stop him from doing his own investigation. Wanting to clear his family name, he digs deeper.

His investigation takes him to New York. His friend, Father Brennan Burke, a priest who shows up in the majority of Emery’s novels, connects Shay to Irish mobsters in New York’s dark underworld.  

In her debut book Joanie (Friesen Press), Elizabeth Deveau tells the true story of her mother’s selfless life – from her troubled childhood to becoming a compassionate mother and foster parent. It’s the story of an ordinary person who lived a most extraordinary life, writes Deveau, a singer and songwriter. 

 “You see, Joan knew that to be loved by others, you need to be love to others. Joan never failed to put everyone else’s needs ahead of her own. Mother Theresa said, “Give the world the best you have, and it may never be enough. Give your best anyway.” Joan did exactly that. Giving was not merely a way for Joan; it was life to Joan,” writes Deveau.

In 1942, Deveau’s mother, Joan Crabb and her siblings became wards of the Loyal True Blue and Orange Orphanage in Richmond Hill, Ont. From age six to 13, Joan lived at the orphanage until she was taken in by a loving couple who showed her unconditional love. Her world turns upside down again when her biological father takes Joan and her siblings to live in Nova Scotia.  

Eventually, Joan falls in love and starts her own family in Annapolis Royal. She devotes her life to her many biological, adopted, and foster children. She develops a particularly strong bond with Chrissy, who was born with spina bifida and had special needs that required continuous care. In Joanie, Deveau explores the special relationship between Chrissy and her mother. 

In Face the Music (Orca Book Publishers), Lesley Choyce’s latest book for teens, Tyler and his friend Mason are desperate to escape the small, boring town where they’ve grown up. 

“Mason and I had been talking about leaving for a long time. But that’s all it was. Just talk. And it was mostly him doing the talking. Finally, though, he convinced me to do it. Get up early, real early, while it was still dark. Steal a car from a driveway down the street. He said he knew of a guy who always left his key in his beat-up Honda Civic. It would be easy. We’d be out of here and gone. So one day we just did it. It actually was as easy as that,” writes Choyce, who is the author of more than 100 books. 

After the car they steal breaks down, Tyler and Mason are rescued by a heavy-metal musician who they discover recently disappeared from the music scene. They have differing ideas about what to do next. 

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