Books by Ann Diamond
DEAD WHITE MALES
David Dennings is a detective with a difference: he also cuts hair on the side. The sign on his door reads, "No hair too thin, no case too small." But when ageing rock star Nick Maggot shows up in his salon in the middle of a Montreal blizzard, Dennings finds himself on a dangerous quest that will change his career and his life, beyond recognition...“[Dead White Males] is nutty, paranoid, messy and a great deal of fun. A must for Ann Diamond fans.” - The Montreal Gazette
"...The only thing the reader can do is let go and be taken along, laughing all the way." - Geist Magazine, spring, 2001
"...a good story that keeps you laughing, Ann Diamond's Dead White Males is a heartening change." - Antigonish Review, spring, 2002
...Diamond’s women seem to use their involvement with brutish, insensitive men as acts of defiance.... - Mary Frances Hill, Books in Canada
...will bemuse fans of traditional mysteries, but satisfy those with a taste for unconventional narratives. - Canadian Book Review Annual, 2000
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A NUN’S DIARY
This is an outlandish, quirky, beautifully-written exposure of one woman's fix on God-his surrealistic depravities, her own lusts and horrors, their vital "marriage."One of the few must-read collections of poetry to appear in a long while."
- Toronto Star
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EVIL EYE
[Winner of the QSPELL Hugh MacLennan Award for Fiction, 1994.]“As in Diamond’s earlier collection, Snakebite, some of the stories are realistic and others fantastical, but in both, the absurd lurks just outside the door and seeps in under the cracks.” - Montreal Gazette
“Diamond’s uncluttered language reveals the chill inherent in keeping one’s eyes -- and heart -- stationed on the borders of experience.” - Books in Canada
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TERRORIST LETTERS
Never complacent and with a good measure of black humour, Ann Diamond takes chances and provokes us to think about the state of our relationships with each other. In Terrorist Letters, she kicks up the sediment and does us all a great service by doing so. Welcome to Diamond's disturbing beauty to what her editor calls "Letters from Hell."Read more »
SNAKE BITE
Ann Diamond has written a powerful sequence of short stories set in contemporary Montreal. Through a series of female protagonists she delineates, with irony and self-mockery, delicately etched stages of growth and degrees of loss. Snakebite is Ann Diamond’s first book of short stories, written and published separately over more than a decade.Read more »
MONA'S DANCE
“[Diamond's first novel is]… not just an accomplished stylistic show-piece; it is also driven by some potent ideas… For a first novel, Mona’s Dance is an impressive work… a chapter in the development of an important and promising Canadian writer.” - Prairie FireChosen by CBC as the best small press novel of 1988.
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STATIC CONTROL
In this modern odyssey, a young woman wanders the Mediterranean in search of her famous father and the secret of her mother’s death. On a Greek island, she meets a New Age entrepreneur who sells static control equipment to dictators in the Middle East. A meditation on love in the Age of Terror.Read more »
MY COLD WAR
The chilling story of a childhood interrupted by secret Cold War experiments. Based on true events, MY COLD WAR is a fictional recreation of a period when governments sacrificed their own citizens to national security.MCW was a compelling read from start to finish...The finale was particularly strong, lyrical and emotional, finishing on a haunting note. Quite an achievement. Bravo!
Christina Manolescu, Publisher, Founder: Invisible Cities Network.
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A CERTAIN GIRL
“On a day in the spring of 1956, my parents dressed my brother and me in brand new outfits, my mother put on makeup and her best, camel-hair coat, and we all went for a drive in the countryside near Montreal. We took along our puppy, Smokey, wrapped in a blanket in case he peed on the seats of our new car. Not long before, my father had agreed to enrol me in a special program, whose directors were very interested in bright little girls like me.” So begins Ann Diamond’s terrifying tale of growing up in Canada during the Cold War — an era when secrecy ran rampant, ruining careers and lives. This is the true story of one family caught in a dangerous web of deception.Read more »