Ali Bryan is a novelist and creative nonfiction writer who explores the what-ifs, the wtfs, and the wait-a-minutes of every day. A two-time finalist for the Stephen Leacock Medal for Humour, her work has also been nominated for the Pushcart Prize, longlisted for both the Commonwealth Short Story Prize, the Wilbur Smith Adventure Writing Prize, and optioned for TV by Sony Pictures. Her novels include Coq, The Crow Valley Karaoke Championships, Takedown, Roost (winner of the Georges Bugnet Award for Fiction), The Figgs, and The Hill.
Sixteen-year-old star wrestler Rowan Harper’s biggest fan is her father. But he has ALS, and his symptoms are getting worse. Saving his life will cost more money than the family has, but Rowan finds a solution. Will she risk her chances at a scholarship by competing in a lucrative, but illegal, underground MMA fight? Takedown is a high-intensity coming-of-age story about family illness and competitive combat, with lots of heart, hope, and headlocks.
A year after forest fires ravaged the town of Crow Valley and claimed the life of Dale Jepson—karaoke legend, local prison guard, and all-around good guy—the community hosts a high-stakes karaoke competition. But when a convicted murderer escapes from nearby Crow Valley Correctional, residents discover there’s more on the line than local, perhaps even national, karaoke fame.
In this darkly comedic, fast-paced ride through an unforgettable small town, five residents with intimate connections to Dale and drastically different goals for the night will collide into, conspire with, and aid one another as they scramble to make it successfully through the evening under the scrutinizing watch of neighbors.
To the soundtrack of classics belted out with abandon, voices will crack, cars will be stolen, marriages will falter, and kids will slip away in search of trouble. And maybe, just maybe, lives will be transformed for the better.
In the spirit of reconciliation, we acknowledge that we live, work and play on the traditional territories of the Blackfoot Confederacy (Siksika, Kainai, Piikani), the Tsuut’ina, the Iyarhe Nakoda Nations, the Otipemisiwak Métis Government of the Métis Nation within Alberta District 6, and all people who make their homes in the Treaty 7 region of Southern Alberta.
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