Hank Wallins is a broken man working the night shift in a meaningless job. Tormented by the tinnitus constantly ringing in his ears, he sleepwalks through life, too scarred by a tragic love affair to try again. When a madman pushes him into the path of an oncoming subway train, this scrape with death re-awakens Hank to the world. Craving a reengagement with passion, he reaches out to a young slightly cross-eyed Russian beauty who he locates on a website. He ventures by plane to meet the lovely and mysterious Anna in her hometown of St. Petersburg. Anna Verkoskova seeks to flee not only the hopelessness of her economic situation, but also the reminders of her own failed love affair with Ruslan, a womanizing Dagastani rock star look-alike from the Chechen region. Finding no particular reason to dislike the kind, lumbering Hank, she agrees to follow him to Canada. But once she has left Russia behind, she is overwhelmed by homesickness and a dread of disappearing into the grey Toronto winter. Then she receives a frightening note: Ruslan has been kidnapped. She races home immediately, carrying a bag stuffed with cash. Hank’s cash. Held captive and tortured by the FSB, Ruslan has been crippled by his tormentors and injected with N20, a mysterious CIA-developed serum that fills its victims’ brains with the totality of human knowledge, rendering them insane. Ruslan is traded to Chechen radicals and ransomed. As Anna is now associated with a “rich” Westerner, she is now a target for the ransom. Ruslan’s former political disengagement has been replaced by a new sort of apathy, one that renders him a pawn to whomever has control of the omniscient demons in his ears screaming for blood. Returned to St. Petersburg and reunited with Ruslan, Anna quickly realizes that her former lover has been lost to her forever, as has her nation. With few options, she returns to the safety of Hank and Canada and discovers that, with her passion for Ruslan faded, she has room for new passions to emerge. But she also carries with her a life-altering secret. The novel unfolds through the words of a narrator who describes himself as an abomination, yet he is heroic and compassionate, and capable of immense acts of love, including the creation of this very narrative itself–a gift for his unborn half-sister. His horrors have been formed as a result of untold millennia of blood hatred. But it is through his existence that our protagonists transcend their own human culpability. A kaleidoscopic and riotous tale, voiced by one of the most unusual narrators in literary history, Robert Hough’s The Culprits puts shape and flesh to the murky unknowns surrounding a real-life terrorist incident and all that led up to it, shining a light into some of humanity’s most inscrutable sins. This novel is at once a mind-blowing hallucination and a classic love story, exploring the human thirsts for love and passion, for allegiance and trust, and for terrible vengeance.

The Culprits

Literature & Fiction

Hough, Robert

World Literature

Random House Canada

Humor & Entertainment

Humor

Vintage Canada

Mabel Stark was the greatest female tiger trainer in history. In the 1910s and 20s, when circus was the most popular entertainment in America, she was the biggest attraction for the Ringling Brothers Barnum &amp; Bailey Circus.Mabel was five-feet tall, brazen, suicidally courageous, obsessed with tigers and sexually eccentric. In The Final Confession of Mabel Stark, Robert Hough has used the documents of her life to explore the mysteries of her heart. His vibrant and moving fictional autobiography starts in 1968. Mabel is just turning eighty and is about to lose her job. Faced with the loss of her cats, she looks back on her life, her escapades and her tragedies, her love affairs with tigers and men. She also confronts her darkest secret, her guilt at committing, 'the worst thing one person can do to another.' Now, with the end of her life in sight, there is one thing above all else she needs to do. Mabel Stark wants to confess. Exuberant and inventive, The Final Confession of Mabel Stark transports its readers to an age before cinema and television, when circus performers were superstars. It is a delightful novel and an unputdownable biography of a gloriously idiosyncratic life.

The Final Confession of Mabel Stark

The Stowaway

The Stowaway is at once a thrilling maritime adventure and a thought-provoking morality tale based on real-life events. The novel begins in the spring of 1996 when Rodolfo Miguel, a bosun on the Taiwanese container ship Maersk Dubai, discovers a hungry and frightened pair of Romanian stowaways. He presents them to his officers, fully expecting that they'll be put to work or else dropped off at the nearest port. Instead, he and his fellow Filipino crewmen watch in silent horror as the Romanians are cast overboard in a flimsy raft only to disappear beneath the ship's wake. The Stowaway moves seamlessly between two storylines. Aboard the Maersk Dubai, Rodolfo and his crewmen must deal with the emotional trauma of what they've seen - as well as grapple with how to act on what they know. The atmosphere on the ship grows increasingly tense as fear, anxiety and paranoia grip the Filipino sailors. Trapped witnesses to a crime, they wonder whom they can trust and whether they themselves will meet with the same fate as the stowaways. Meanwhile, a nineteen-year-old Romanian named Daniel Pacepa heads out on a nail-biting adventure from Bucharest to Algeciras. Poor, brave and full of youthful indiscretion, Daniel is desperate to stow away on a ship and head to a better life in America. Along the way, he meets another Romanian named Gheorghe and together they perform cheap labour, pose as evangelical Christians and do whatever it takes to find their way to the Spanish port of Algeciras. Eventually the two stories merge when Daniel and Gheorghe sneak onto the ill-fated Maersk Dubai. One man is killed, the other discovered by Rodolfo. Once again, the Filipino crewmen find themselves faced with an excruciating moral dilemma

Mystery, Thriller & Suspense

Thrillers & Suspense

Random House of Canada, Limited

In the 1910s and '20s, during the golden age of the big top, Mabel Stark was the superstar of the Ringling Brothers Barnum and Bailey Circus, and one of America's most eccentric celebrities. A tiny, curvaceous Kentucky blonde in a white leather bodysuit, Mabel was brazen, sexually adventurous, and suicidally courageous. The Final Confession of Mabel Stark is Robert Hough's brilliant, highly acclaimed novelization of her fantastic life. It is 1968 — Mabel is just turning eighty and is about to lose her job at Jungleland, a Southern California game park. Devastated by the loss of her cats, she looks back on her life and her five husbands: the fifth would one day be tragically mauled by her one true love, her ferocious yet amorous 550-pound Bengal tiger Rajah. Starting with her escape from a mental institution to begin her circus career as a burlesque dancer, Mabel's exquisitely voiced confession is a live wire of dark secrets, broken dreams, and comic escapades. It is a brilliant, exhilarating story of an America before television and movies, when the spectacle of the circus reigned and an unlikely woman captured the public imagination with her singular charm and audacity.

The Final Confession of Mabel Stark: A Novel

British & Irish

GROVE PRESS

A fictionalized autobiography tells about the life, loves, and adventures of Mabel Stark, the greatest female tiger trainer in circus history.

Contemporary

Atlantic Monthly Pr

Diego's Crossing

A young man is on a dangerous mission that will secure his future  or leave him dead. With all the suspense of a fast-paced movie, this gripping novel about Diego’s treacherous journey across borders, is also a moving story about a boy’s crossing into manhood.

Children's Books

Action & Adventure

Annick Press

A young man is on a dangerous mission that will secure his future or leave him dead. With all the suspense of a fast-paced movie, this gripping novel about Diego’s treacherous journey across borders, is also a moving story about a boy’s crossing into manhood.

Horrified when a pair of stowaways is sent to their deaths upon discovery, container ship bosun Rodolfo Miguel watches his crewmates split into opposing groups that are subsequently forced to come to terms with their actions. By the author of The Final Confession of Mabel Stark. 25,000 first printing.

The Stowaway: A Novel

Literary

Arcade Publishing

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Hough, Robert. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Hough, Robert

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Hough, Robert. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

The Culprits

The Culprits

The Final Confession of Mabel Stark

The Stowaway

The Stowaway

The Final Confession of Mabel Stark: A Novel

The Final Confession of Mabel Stark

Diego's Crossing

Diego's Crossing

The Stowaway: A Novel