Robert J. Wiersema

Sandra Kasturi

Brian Page loves the forest behind his house, but it loves him too, and soon it will come for him.

The World More Full of Weeping

Following a hit-and-run accident, three-year-old Sherry is left in a coma-like state but develops miraculous healing powers, while Harry Denton, the driver who hit her, attempts suicide, only to find himself trapped in dark place, caught between this worl

A Novel

Before I Wake

In his debut collection Seven Crow Stories, best-selling novelist Robert J. Wiersema draws on myth and folktale, ghost stories, and fairy tales to share a glimpse of the worlds bordering our own. With his short fiction, Wiersema explores the mysterious realms of the shadows, the mirrorlands where time runs strange.

Seven Crow Stories

Every night novelist Christopher Knox reads to his son David from an obscure fantasy novel. One night, when David is reading the book alone, an inexplicable seizure leaves him in a mysterious state of unconsciousness. As his seizure recurs every night, his father learns that only one thing will calm it, a bedtime story from this strange new book. Both father and son are headed towards a fateful collision of worlds, and a showdown of ancient evils, both fictional and very real.

Bedtime Story

There are dozens of books about the Boss, exploring every facet of his career. So what's left to say? Nothing objective, perhaps. But when it comes to music, objectivity is highly overrated. Robert Wiersema has been a Springsteen fan since he was a teenager. By most definitions, he's a fanatic: following tours to see multiple shows in a row, watching set lists develop in real time via the Internet, ordering bootlegs from shady vendors in Italy. His attachment is deeper than fandom, though: he's grown up with Springsteen's music as the soundtrack to his life, beginning with his working-class youth in rural British Columbia and continuing on through dreams of escape, falling in love, and becoming a father. Walk Like a Man is liner notes for a mix tape, a frank and inventive blend of biography, music criticism, and memoir over the course of thirteen tracks. Like the best mix tapes, it balances joy and sorrow, laughter seasoning the dark-night-of-the-soul questions that haunt us all. Wiersema's book is the story of a man becoming a man (despite getting a little lost along the way), and of the man and the music that have accompanied him on his journey.

Coming of Age with the Music of Bruce Springsteen

Walk Like a Man

Sixteen-year-old runaway Cassie Weathers is utterly alone, living on the streets as winter sets in. Then she meets Skylark, a young girl who introduces her to a community of street-dwellers and runaways. As Cassie settles in to the community, the city is rocked by the news that a number of young prostitutes have been murdered. Cassie grows closer to Skylark, but the night terrors and sleep paralysis Cassie suffered as a child begin to return, and the mystery as to why she ran away from home deepens. While it seems she ran to escape abuse, the actual reason might be more terrifying: helpless to resist her dreams, did she kill her father and leave home to protect her mother and sister? In the camp, Cassie's dreams take another turn: she dreams of killing one of the members of the community, a woman whose body is found nearby the following morning after an apparent suicide. When Cassie dreams of killing Skylark, she tries to run again only to find herself drawn back into the new home she has found. When Skylark disappears, Cassie is left alone, spiralling into complex dreamworlds where her past blurs with her present and nothing can be trusted. Inspired by authors such as Stephen King, Charles de Lint and Neil Gaiman, Black Feathers is a novel that straddles genres, incorporating elements of literary fiction, urban fantasy and horror. It’s a coming of age story, a love story and a mythic thriller.

Black Feathers

Following his bestselling debut,Before I Wake, Robert J. Wiersema returns with this exquisitely plotted blend of supernatural thriller and domestic drama. For novelist Christopher Knox, getting up early every morning to write isn’t bringing him the sense of fulfillment it once did. It’s been ten years since his first novel was published, to some acclaim, and he’s hit a wall in trying to write his next. His marriage to Jacqui isn’t doing much better, and it’s been months since he’s slept anywhere but his office above the detached garage. The part of Chris’s life thatisgoing well, and brings him easy joy, is his relationship with his eleven-year-old son, David. While Chris may not make it to all of his son’s ball games, their nightly ritual of reading together at bedtime not only helps David overcome his struggles with reading, but is a calm within the storm for them both, when their days are so full of challenges. And what better way for a novelist to connect with his child than through their mutual love of books, and a bedtime story routine as unwavering as Chris’s love for his son. When Chris comes across a book by one of his favourite childhood authors in a local used bookstore, he knows it will be the perfect gift for David’s birthday.To the Four Directionsis not one Chris has read before, but he knows that Lazarus Took’s adventurous, magical stories of young heroes and other realms would be just the thing for David, as they were for him. David is less than thrilled to receive a book he’s never heard of before, however – he’d been hoping forThe Lord of the Rings– and Jacqui is quick to see it as yet another sign of Chris’s detachment from David’s life. But once they start reading the novel together, David is completely enthralled, to the extent that he truly cannot put the book down. The story, of a young peasant boy who is plucked from his home by castle guards and sent on a quest for a mysterious Sunstone, makes David feel like he is right there, in the action. Even after his parents have to take the book away from him, he can’t help but sneak it back to his room. As David is reading alone that night, he suffers an inexplicable seizure and falls into a state of unconsciousness. Doctors perform a barrage of tests, but cannot determine what’s wrong. And as David’s seizure recurs every night, his father learns that only one thing will calm it: being read to from his strange new book. True to his nature, as someone with an inherent belief in the power of words, Chris becomes convinced that the secret of David’s collapse lies within the pages ofTo the Four Directions. After failed attempts to find out more about Lazarus Took from his estate, Chris traverses the continent in search of the truth. Meanwhile, David wakes up within the story he has been reading – as the boy he has been reading about – and finds himself facing perils unimaginable, in a world that he soon realizes was created to capture the hearts and souls of children like him. Because he’s not alone as he takes over the hunt for the Sunstone, but accompanied by those boys who have come before him. And as the quests of father and son lead them toward a fateful collision of worlds, David realizes that while he’s not the first to fall victim to the book’s horrific spell, perhaps he can prove himself strong enough to be the last. From the Hardcover edition.

Robert J. Wiersema

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