authors

Karma Brown

Karma Brown is the author of 10 novels, including Mother is Watching; the #1 international bestseller Recipe for a Perfect Wife; What Wild Women Do;  Come Away with Me (a Globe & Mail Best Book of 2015); and  bestsellers The Choices We Make, In This Moment, and The Life Lucy Knew. She is also the author of the bestseller The 4% Fix: How One Hour Can Change Your Life. An award-winning journalist, Brown has been published in SELF, Redbook, and Chatelaine, among other outlets. She lives just outside Toronto with her husband, teenage daughter, and a Labradoodle named Fred.

Mother Is Watching

Mother Is Watching is a page-turning nightmare of a novel featuring a maybe-possession as well as a too-possible future technocratic patriarchy. Not since Ira Levin’s Rosemary Woodhouse have I been as stressed out and scared for a mother-to-be as I was for Tilly.” –Paul Tremblay

Mathilde “Tilly” Crewson, a 39-year-old mother and art conservator, is tasked with restoring The Mother. The painting, believed to be the work of a female surgeon-turned-artist after a personal tragedy, is the rumored fourth piece in a collection of only three known works. But this newly discovered painting, scarred by fire, holds more than meets the eye.

Soon after receiving the painting, Tilly discovers she’s unexpectedly pregnant, and strange, inexplicable occurrences begin: terrifying insect swarms, eerie visits from her long-deceased mother, and sinister whispers that invade her mind. As these malevolent forces intensify, Tilly comes to a harrowing realization that the only way to sever the perilous bond she shares with the painting is to destroy it. But The Mother has plans of her own—and they’re darker than Tilly could ever imagine. As Tilly’s obsession with the mysterious painting spirals into a nightmarish descent, the line between reality and the supernatural shatters, threatening both her sanity and her life.

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Festival Shows

The full Imaginairium schedule will be announced on Aug. 18, 2026.

Be Curiouser

  • DIY Creativity: What Conserving Art and Writing Fiction Have in Common. –LitHub
  • Listen: Karma Brown recommends 3 speculative novels that tackle climate anxiety. –The Next Chapter 
  • Karma Brown: Writing What You Know is Boring. –Writers Digest 
  • Twenty Questions with Karma Brown. –Jeffrey Reads

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