Astrid Arz Livres

Kjetsaa tells the dramatic story of how Dostoyevsky, the son of an irascible minor aristocrat, rose rapidly to fame as a writer and just as rapidly lost everything--almost including his life--for his liberal political views. Kjetsaa vividly recreates Dostoyevsky's last-minute rescue from a firing squad and explores how his long imprisonment in Siberia profoundly shaped his vision as a novelist.

A sprawling saga about five generations of a family from Cape Breton, Nova Scotia, Fall on Your Knees is the impressive first fiction from Canadian playwright and actor Ann-Marie MacDonald. This epic tale of family history, family secrets, and music centers on four sisters and their relationships with each other and with their father. Set in the coal-mining communities of Nova Scotia in the early part of this century, the story also shifts to the battlefields of World War I and the jazz scene of New York City in the 1920s.