In this remarkable collection, Bill Gaston crafts his fiction around the idea of the gargoyle - the concrete representation of extremes of human emotions. This marvelous, riotous, Rabelaisian world contains gargoyles that are physical manifestations of the disfigurements and contortions to which human beings subject themselves. Each of the collection's 12 stories has a strange and unique guardian spirit whose sometimes benevolent, sometimes malevolent presence informs the characters and their actions. A boy struggles with self-image and the need to fit in. A grieving parent tries to prevent others from making his mistake; tragedy ensues. A vengeful son settles a score with mom and her new lover. Other stories focus on familial delight, as well as discord in the lives of an over-the-top artist, a drunken uncle, and a bitter writer. All show one of Canada's finest writers at the top of his form.

A fascinating yet little-known figure in North American history, the French explorer and mapmaker Samuel de Champlain was the subject of a recent best-selling biography by historian David Hackett Fischer. The Order of Good Cheer, a highly readable novel by master storyteller Bill Gaston, offers a beautifully shaded, fictionalized portrait of Champlain, as well as a marvelous window into Canadian culture past and present. In 1607, Champlain and his companions struggled to establish a French colony on foreign soil while warding off scurvy. Separated by the breadth of a continent and exactly 400 years is 21st-century blue-collar worker Andy Winslow and his friends, whose urban landscape is threatened by encroaching environmental and economic disaster. In alternating narratives, Gaston bridges the divide across land and time in this illuminating story about survival, love, feast, and friendship.