Lesley Choyce

Sixteen-year-old Dylan Gibson has always felt different from his classmates and is shocked to discover he is a clone of his dead brother.

Sixteen-year-old Simon has always been considered odd. Three years ago, a skateboarding accident caused some minor brain damage and made him a little stranger. His career-driven parents mostly leave him alone, and he spends much of his time living in his imagination. When Sara, whom no one else can see, appears to Simon in class, he is fascinated by her and strikes up a friendship, even though he knows she may be pure hallucination, he's had imaginary friends before. Sara says she is there to 'help' him, but before the story ends, Simon discovers that it is he who needs to help Sara, not the other way around.

For Sylvie, Ragged Island - and the whales who swam around it - is the only world she has ever known. It is the place where she was born and raised, where she lived with her four late husbands, and where she plans to live out her remaining years. It is also the home to a community whose love for the island is immense. But when the Nova Scotia government decides to shut down the ferry service that is the lifeblood of Ragged Island, the residents see their world beginning to disappear. Sea of Tranquility is the lyrical and moving story of an island struggling to survive. Lesley Choyce's seventh novel, it contains the elements for which the author is known: engaging characters, page-turning storyline, and uproarious humour. Choyce is in top form.

Martin Emerson's family, friends, and even his therapist have trouble figuring him out. He never showed much of a reaction to the death of his mother, and his behaviour of late has been getting more and more bizarre. And yet, his website -- Emerso.com -- has made him something of a cult figure to followers who believe that, if not having all the right answers, "Emerso" at least has all the right questions. Shoulder the Sky is a rarity among young adult novels - it challenges the reader with philosophical thought and complex observations.

Craig has finally made first string on the high school football team and is looking forward to the season ahead. But suddenly his best friend Ray is surpassing him and everyone else on the football field. When Craig learns his friend is on steroids, or what Ray calls his "vitamin program," he decides to start a steroid program of his own.At first Craig is on the top of the world and on top of the team, until he begins to experience terrifying side effects, including "roid rage," when feelings of aggression and violence threaten to send him out of control. Craig must come clean with his coach and his family before he endangers his health and loses his girlfriend Cheryl forever. Most difficult of all, Craig has to convince Ray that his health is also in danger - before it's too late.Fast-paced and socially relevant, Roid Rage explores the challenges of friendship and peer pressure, both on and off the playing field.

Lesley Choyce's novella The Summer of Apartment X is a beach book for grownups who remember how they got that way. Fred Winger and his two buddies, Richard and Brian, intend to take the beach resort town by storm. It's the fateful summer between high school and university, early 1970s version. Equipped with two barely mobile cars and a seized-up MG motor, around which Richard wants to build an entire sports car, they plan to rent a suave apartment, get cool jobs, meet girls, and lose their virginity. Dream and reality diverge immediately.307 1/2 Hibiscus Street is an old triplex subdivided for summer tenants into a self-contained ghetto. The only window in Apartment X is in the kitchenette, and the entrance is through the outdoor shower used by the entire building. The friends find work: Brian cleans the parking lot and grill of a grease-encrusted burger joint, and Richard preens himself on his lofty -- though brief -- position as a lifeguard. Fred replaces the drunken usher at the Queen Theatre, where monsters slavering over shrieking blondes and Annette Funicello's bursting brassiere entertain necking teens and "pervs" too timid to patronize real porn flicks. Fred's feelings for his chameleon girlfriend lurch from love to lust to horror, depending on whether she's demurely selling movie tickets, acting out erotic fantasies about saving the world on the back seat of a school bus, or sharing the shower with Brian.The Summer of Apartment X lurks in everyone's past: the first foray beyond the view of elders, the first attempt at self-support, the shocking recognition that adulthood involves more than sand, sex, and cars. Lesley Choyce recreates this exhilarating terror in the Technicolor of a B-movie poster, nostalgia undercut at every turn by ebullient humour.

When their farm gets expropriated to make way for the Point Lepreau nuclear power plant, Alexander McNab and his family move to Saint John. Without the magic of the Bay of Fundy, without the bright companionship of his little sister, Alex grows up a lonely, insecure failure. At 30, he's had enough; to make a clean break, he moves to Halifax. There, he is hired as a counsellor at New Dawn, a rehabilitation workshop, even though he has no professional qualifications. Alex soon becomes part of the New Dawn family, and the distinction between the helper and the helped blurs. The key may be that Alex takes for granted the wholeness in each of these damaged adults. Blind Jeff, 17, knows everything about cars, so Alex takes him out to the parking lot and teaches him to drive. In turn, Alex is adopted by Cornwallis Itwaru, a descendent of Jamaican Maroons plagued by encroaching Alzheimer's, who firmly adjusts Alex's fuzzy thinking. Alex sees right away that Gloria Vincent, who suffers from schizophrenia, has adopted a sloppy dress and ugly glasses as camouflage for her intelligence and beauty, and his discovery does not wholly displease her. Unfortunately, New Dawn goes broke, but by the time the landlord padlocks the doors, Alex has learned that living life fully doesn't depend on external circumstances.

Lesley Choyce writes rings around most Canadian authors. This collection of short stories, Dance the Rocks Ashore, is certainly choice Choyce. Dance the Rocks Ashore contains substantial new stories including "Dance the Rocks Ashore," a bittersweet account of an elderly couple's decline; the hilarious and bizarre "My Father Was a Book Reviewer" "The Third or Fourth Happiest Man in Nova Scotia," with a peculiar hero reminiscent of Noah; and "The Wreck of the Sister Theresa," in which spring fever hits like "a handshake in hell." Favourite stories from previous books include "Losing Ground," the pivotal chapter in Choyce's acclaimed 1989 novel The Second Season of Jonas MacPherson, as well as "The Cure," "Dancing the Night Away," and the complex and disturbing "Conventional Emotions."