COLIN MCADAM

Walt and Judy''s happiness has been blighted by their childlessness; although their marriage seems blissful, Judy feels increasingly empty and Walt longs to make her happy again. So one day he brings home Looee -a baby chimpanzee. Looee, exuberant and demanding, immediately fills the gap in Walt and Judy''s life, and they come to love him as their own son. Like any child, Looee is affectionate and quick to learn, generous and engaging. But he is also a deeply unpredictable animal, and one night their unique family life is changed forever. At the Girdish Institute, chimpanzees have been studied for decades to prove that they are political, altruistic, often angry but also capable of forgiveness. The chimps at the Institute travel a parallel path to Looee''s; they experience friendship, loss and rivalry, just as he does. When these two paths meet, startling truths are revealed about all great apes, captive and free, beloved or abandoned. Told alternately from the perspective of humans and chimpanzees, A Beautiful Truth is a profound and gripping story about the things we hold sacred and the truths of nature we so often ignore.

A masterpiece of adolescent perspective, emotion, impulse, and relationships: the riveting story of two male roommates at a co-ed boarding school and what happens when the girlfriend of one of them goes missing during their final year. From an internationally acclaimed, prizewinning author, whom critics have compared to Dave Eggers and Michael Ondaatje, comes a tour de force: a mesmerizing novel that is at once a spellbinding psychological thriller and a brilliant portrait of adolescence that goes deep into the heads of two very different boys. Awkward Noel thinks he''s been allowed into the inner circle of his elite boarding school when he discovers his senior-year roommate is to be handsome, athletic Julius. Julius, in turn, cares only for the fleeting joys of teenage life: sneaking out to parties, playing pranks with friends, and most of all, spending the night with his girfriend, Fall. As Noel narrates this fateful semester from a perspective of many years, interwoven is Julius''s own in-the-moment experiences of first love and male camaraderie. Always an outsider, Noel develops an unhealthy fascination with Julius, and his crush on Fall begins to border on a dangerous obsession. As Julius experiences all the pleasures of an eighteen-year-old in love, we watch as Noel self-consciously analyzes his interactions with Julius and Fall, convincing himself of a deep connection that might not exist. When Fall disappears close to winter break, Julius and Noel are forced to face their own inner desires, a confrontation that ushers the two boys out of the innocence of adolescence and into adulthood. A tremendous literary page-turner that perfectlycaptures the agonies and delights of adolescence, Fall is the exhilaration and angst of teenage love and friendship and the ultimate transience of those feelings.

A dazzling new novel of obsession, impulse, and adolescent desire from an acclaimed, prize-winning writer. Noel thinks he's been allowed into the inner circle of his elite boarding school when he discovers his senior-year roommate is the handsome and popular Julius. But Noel's unhealthy fascination with Julius and Julius's girlfriend will usher both boys out of adolescence and into the startling realities of adulthood.

Ottawa in the seventies is a field of dreams: a developing city, ripe for the taking. Two men, from different ends of society, see the opportunities: Jerry McGuinty, plasterer-turned-builder, a simple, self-made man, and Simon Struthers, whose inherited wealth and position cannot fill the hollowness inside. As their careers and successes run in parallel - Jerry with his new Irish wife, Kathleen, who likes a drink even more than she likes him, and Simon with his endless affairs and intrigues - we begin to see how love is suffocated by work and the drive to succeed, how individuals are crushed by money and progress. When both men finally understand what they are losing, and go in search of it, their lives start to intersect, and the story spirals to its astonishing conclusion. A thrillingly original novel about ambition and desire, power and corruption, Some Great Thing has the same epic emotional grandeur and sweep as The Great Gatsby. Written with great skill, and with huge compassion for his broken characters and their thwarted dreams, Colin McAdam has created one of the finest first novels of recent years.