A retired New York professor’s life is thrown into chaos when he takes his great-nephew to the French Riviera, in hopes of uncovering his own mother’s wartime secrets. Noah is only days away from his first trip back to Nice since he was a child when a social worker calls looking for a temporary home for Michael, his eleven-year-old great-nephew. Though he has never met the boy, he gets talked into taking him along to France. This odd couple, suffering from jet lag and culture shock, argue about everything from steak haché to screen time, and the trip is looking like a disaster. But as Michael’s ease with tech and sharp eye help Noah unearth troubling details about their family’s past, both of them come to grasp the risks that people in all eras have run for their loved ones, and find they are more akin than they knew. Akin is a funny, heart-wrenching tale of an old man and a boy who unpick their painful story and start to write a new one together.

The Lotterys More or Less is the second of Emma Donoghue’s stories about the family that likes to say, “Why not?” The fifth of seven siblings, nine-year-old Sumac Lottery shares a big house with her four parents, one grandfather, and five pets. She’s the keeper of her family’s traditions – always making sure the Lotterys’ celebrations go off without a hitch. But this winter all of Sumac’s plans go wrong when a terrible ice storm hits the city, causing chaos. The emergency means that one of her dads and her favourite brother can’t make it home from India in time for the holidays. Their visitor from Brazil gets injured and the Lotterys have to look after him. Then the power goes out….

DIVE DEEPER:

Interviews

• “Emma Donoghue: Wonder Woman” — Reader’s Digest Canada

Profiles

• “Author Emma Donoghue Takes Her Writing to School” — The Globe and Mail

Reviews

• “The Lotterys More or Less” — Kirkus Review
• “Emma Donoghue’s new Lotterys novel a page-turning romp” — The London Free Press
• “Akin” — Quill & Quire

Videos:

• “Author Emma Donoghue talks new book” — Breakfast Television
• “Emma Donoghue on writing historical fiction” — YouTube