Black Dove, Hardcover

A deeply imaginative and thrilling novel about grief, single parenting, and the terrifying power of a child's imagination, dancing on an edge between magical realism and horror, perfect for fans of Stranger Things In a tall and narrow house, on a stained and busy street, live twelve-year-old Oliver and his father, a story-loving writer. Haunted by the ghost of his alcoholic mother, Oliver finds comfort in his father's impromptu tales: the Black Dove, an elusive flower that gives strength; the girl who consumes it as she battles attackers and yearns for happier realms. Stories where lonely souls keep searching despite their losses and grief. Running from a bully one night, Oliver hides in a junk shop owned by an enigmatic man. Soon, instead of hiding in the janitor's closet after school, Oliver spends afternoons in the shop, a cavernous place full of storied oddities and grubby wonders where creatures rise up from the basement. A snake in the shape of a boy. A hunter named Night, part panther, part hound, who proves to Oliver that the world holds invisible wonder. Wanting to forget his mother, afraid of his own genes, constantly harassed by bullies, Oliver joins the shop owner in experimenting with dangerous forms of genetic editing. Meanwhile, he meets the girl from across the street, and their friendship grows in a neighbourhood where magic is real, where murderers gather, and where the darker consequences of fantasies play out. A twisting story of grief and revenge, Black Dove is a thrilling read with its own kind of magic. In rich but tightly reined prose, McAdam celebrates the value and shortfalls of storytelling, finding a light in all the darkness to conjure a tender portrait of childhood's end.

Colin McAdam has a PhD in English from Cambridge University. He has mentored writers at the Banff Centre and the University of Guelph-Humber. His first novel, Some Great Thing, won the Amazon/Books in Canada Best First Novel Award, and was shortlisted for the Commonwealth Writers' Prize, the Governor General's Literary Award, the Rogers Writers' Trust Fiction Prize, and the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize in the UK. His second novel, Fall, was shortlisted for the Scotiabank Giller Prize and won the Paragraphe Hugh MacLennan Prize. A Beautiful Truth, his third novel, won the Rogers Writers' Trust Fiction Prize, and was shortlisted for the Governor General's Literary Award.

• Author: Colin Mcadam
• Cover type: Hardcover
• Publishing Year: 2023
• Publishing Month: 2
• Pages: 336
• Language: English
• Publisher: Soho Press
• Weight: 567 g