A heartfelt and wondrous debut, by a supremely gifted and exciting new voice in fiction. Will has never been to the outside, at least not since he can remember. And he has certainly never gotten to know anyone other than his mother, a fiercely loving yet wildly eccentric agoraphobe who drowns in panic at the thought of opening the front door. Their little world comprises only the rooms in their home, each named for various exotic locales and filled with Will's art projects. Soon the confines of his world close in on Will. Despite his mother's protestations, Will ventures outside clad in a protective helmet and braces himself for danger. He eventually meets and befriends Jonah, a quiet boy who introduces Will to skateboarding. Will welcomes his new world with enthusiasm, his fears fading and his body hardening with each new bump, scrape, and fall. But life quickly gets complicated. When a local boy goes missing, Will and Jonah want to uncover what happened. They embark on an extraordinary adventure that pulls Will far from the confines of his closed-off world and into the throes of early adulthood and the dangers that everyday life offers. If I Fall, if I Die is a remarkable debut full of dazzling prose, unforgettable characters, and a poignant and heartfelt depiction of coming of age

Brilliantly sure-footed, strikingly original, tender and funny, this memorable collection of nine linked stories follows a diverse group of curiously interrelated characters— from bank manager to crackhead to retired Samaritan to mental patient to web designer to car thief — as they drift through each other’s lives like ghosts in Vancouver’s notorious Downtown Eastside. These darkly comic and intoxicating stories, gleefully free of moral judgment, are about people searching in the jagged margins of life — for homes, drugs, love, forgiveness. They range from the tragically funny opening story “Emergency Contact” to the audacious, drug-fuelled rush of “Goodbye Porkpie Hat” to the deranged and thrilling extreme of “King Me.” The Beggar’s Garden is a powerful and affecting debut, written with an exceptional eye and ear and heart