Annabel Lyon

A smart, mysterious and heartbreaking novel centred on two sets of sisters whose lives are braided together when tragedy changes them forever. From the award-winning author of The Golden Mean. Saskia and Jenny are twins who are alike only in appearance. Saskia is a hard-working grad student whose interests are solely academic, while Jenny, an interior designer, is glamourous, thrill-seeking, capricious and narcissistic. Still, when Jenny is severely injured in an accident, Saskia puts her life on hold to be with her sister. Sara and Mattie are sisters with a difficult relationship. Mattie, the younger sister, is affectionate, curious and intellectually disabled. As soon as Sara is able, she leaves home, in pursuit of a life of the mind and the body: she loves nothing more than fine wines, sensual perfumes, and expensive clothing. But when their mother dies, Sara inherits the duty of caring for her sister. Arriving at the house one day, she finds out that Mattie has married Robert, her wealthy mother's handyman. Though Mattie seems happy, Sara cannot let this go, forcing the annulment of the marriage and the banishment of Robert. With him out of the picture, though, she has no choice but to become her sister's keeper, sacrificing her own happiness and Mattie's too. When Robert turns up again, another tragedy happens. The waves from these events eventually engulf Sara and Saskia, sisters in mourning, in a quest for revenge. Consent is a startling, moving, thought-provoking novel on the complexities of familial duty and on how love can become entangled with guilt, resentment and regret.

Consent

Aristotle must postpone his dream of succeeding Plato at the Academy in Athens when he is forced to tutor Alexander, a prince of Macedon. Aristotle's resentment at his situation is soon overcome by the boy's intellectual potential and his capacity for surprise.

A Novel

The Golden Mean

Annabel Lyon's passion for historical novels and her love of ancient Greece make her lecture on the process of creating characters of historical fiction captivating. She discusses the process of wading through historical sources — and avoiding myriad pitfalls — to craft believable people to whom readers can relate. Finding familiarity with figures from the past and then, with the help of hindsight, discovering their secrets, are the foremost tools of the historical novel writer. Readers interested in the literary creative process and in writing or reading historical fiction will find Lyon's comments insightful and intriguing.

Imagining Ancient Women

A bold and captivating new novel of what it means to be a woman in ancient Greece, from the celebrated, award-winning author of The Golden Mean. Aristotle has never been able to resist a keen mind in another, even in his own daughter, Pythias - a young girl who should be content with the kitchen, the loom and a future of childbearing. But she is really smart, able to best his own students in debate; is she a freak or a harbinger of what women can really achieve? Whichever is the case, hers is a privileged position, a woman who moves in a man's world, protected by the reputation of her philosopher father. Yet her entire life is set to change when Aristotle falls from grace... Driven from Athens, the old philosopher soon dies. Without the loving guidance of her father, the orphaned sixteen-year-old Pythias quickly discovers that the world is a place not of logic after all, but one of superstition, and that a girl can be preyed upon by gods and goddesses as much as by grown men and women. To safely journey to a place in which she can reach her true potential, Aristotle's daughter will need every ounce of wit she possesses; and she must also learn, quickly, to nurture her capacity to love.

The Sweet Girl

Aristotle’s strong-willed daughter shapes her own destiny in this captivating novel by the award-winning author of The Golden Mean. Aristotle has never been able to resist a keen mind, and Pythias is certainly her father’s daughter: besting his brightest students and refusing a life circumscribed by the kitchen, the loom, and a husband. At first she is protected by her adored father’s reputation, but with the death of Alexander the Great, her fortunes change. Forced to flee Athens and then orphaned, Pythias discovers that the world is not a place of logic after all, but one ruled by superstition. As threats close in on her she will need every ounce of wit she possesses—and the courage to seek refuge where she least expects it.

Aristóteles e Alexandre

Thirteen-year-old Edie Snow is the youngest student in her new high school and she worries about a lot of things, but especially about how she is perceived because of her cousin Merry who has Down syndrome and who Edie must walk home with each day from school.

Encore Edie

Annabel Lyon is one of the country’s most electrifying new literary voices. Written in tough, crystalline prose, these stories explore our need by turns to connect with the people around us, to pull back, to reach out again. When a struggling businessman adds an Adults Only section to his video store, he inadvertently gives his put-upon sister-in-law another chance at happiness. A baffled father does his best to understand the anxiety that keeps his thirteen-year-old daughter awake at night. The facts surrounding a murder become a tangle of contradictions when three teenagers each tell their side of the story. A man’s lifelong devotion to the girl abandoned to his care is not enough to save her from herself. As Lyon bravely delves into the gulf between what is said and what is left unsaid, she reveals to us the awkward and familiar gestures we use to fill our lives.

Oxygen

On the orders of his boyhood friend, now King Philip of Macedon, Aristotle postpones his dreams of succeeding Plato as leader of the Academy in Athens and reluctantly arrives in the Macedonian capital of Pella to tutor the king's adolescent sons. An early illness has left one son with the intellect of a child; the other is destined for greatness but struggles between a keen mind that craves instruction and the pressures of a society that demands his prowess as a soldier. Initially Aristotle hopes for a short stay in what he considers the brutal backwater of his childhood. But, as a man of relentless curiosity and reason, Aristotle warms to the challenge of instructing his young charges, particularly Alexander, in whom he recognizes a kindred spirit, an engaged, questioning mind coupled with a unique sense of position and destiny. Aristotle struggles to match his ideas against the warrior culture that is Alexander's birthright. He feels that teaching this startling, charming, sometimes horrifying boy is a desperate necessity. And that what the boy - thrown before his time onto his father's battlefields - needs most is to learn the golden mean, that elusive balance between extremes that Aristotle hopes will mitigate the boy's will to conquer. Aristotle struggles to inspire balance in Alexander, and he finds he must also play a cat-and-mouse game of power and influence with Philip in order to manage his own ambitions. As Alexander's position as Philip's heir strengthens and his victories on the battlefield mount, Aristotle's attempts to instruct him are honoured, but increasingly unheeded. And despite several troubling incidents on the field of battle, Alexander remains steadfast in his desire to further the reach of his empire to all known and unknown corners of the world, rendering the intellectual pursuits Aristotle offers increasingly irrelevant. Exploring this fabled time and place, Annabel Lyon tells her story in the earthy, frank, and perceptive voice of Aristotle himself. With sensual and muscular prose, she explores how Aristotle's genius touched the boy who would conquer the known world. And she reveals how we still live with the ghosts of both men.

Annabel Lyon’s debut book of fiction, Oxygen, “left the country’s literary elite breathless” (Elm Street magazine). Now, in The Best Thing for You, Lyon has taken her tough, unflinching style to new heights and all the anticipation is rewarded. Here, in three novellas, Lyon reveals the potential for darkness that lurks behind even the most perfect-seeming veneer. In the first novella, “No Fun,” a middle-class family in present-day Vancouver is thrown into turmoil when their teenage son is charged in connection with the beating of a disabled man. In “The Goldberg Metronome,” a young couple discovers an antique metronome taped up and hidden under a sink in their new apartment. Its dark past weaves a story that crosses centuries and continents. Then, in the stunning title novella, a riveting and layered film-noirish piece set in wartime 1940s Vancouver, a housewife in her twenties plots and carries out her husband’s murder with sang-froid, with the help of her lover, a young grocery-store clerk. Later, the son of the insurance agent who loses his job over the woman’s claim must deal with his family’s financial downfall as he nurses his own obsession with her crime and its connection to the music in his head. Lyon draws us in with her vivid characters and sharp, highly charged prose and holds us in the worlds she creates. Along the way, she challenges the fragile illusion of goodness in our lives. Once again Annabel Lyon has demonstrated herself to be one of Canada’s boldest, most exciting new voices.

The Best Thing For You

Eleven-year-old Edie Jasmine Snow has a "perfect" thirteen-year-old sister, two loving parents, and a cat named Dusty. She also has a grandmother she suspects is a witch and a grandfather who insists on calling her Albert. Framed by family summer vacations at the lake, All-Season Edie follows Edie through a tumultuous year in which her beloved grandfather becomes ill. In the face of family tragedy, Edie tries to practice witchcraft, learns to dance the flamenco, meets the Greek god Zeus doing his Christmas shopping at the mall, ruins the most important party of her sister's life and realizes that her family is both completely strange and absolutely normal.

All-Season Edie

Follows a year-in-the-life of eleven-year-old Edie Jasmine Snow during which time her beloved Grandfather becomes ill and Edie tries to practice witchcraft, learns to dance the flamenco, ruins the most important party of her thirteen-year-old sister's life, and more. Original.

Annabel Lyon

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