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Blue Vengeance
In the spring of 1964 troubled teenager Cookie Blue dies in the Red River. Cookie’s younger brother, Danny holds Miss Hartley, her despised gym teacher, responsible. Blue Vengeance follows Danny through a Winnipeg summer and fall, as he secretly plots to kill her with a well-chosen stone and a slingshot. Janine Sénécal, a girl who…
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The Girl in the Wall
After leaving the Winnipeg Police force, former Inspector Frank Foote has gone into home renovations. Tearing down a wall in his Norwood Flats neighbourhood, he and his partner come across the skeleton of a young female. They alert the police, but Frank doesn’t tell them about the photograph he found with the remains. He may…
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Sunny Dreams
On a spring morning in 1925 Sunny Palmer is kidnapped in broad daylight from her baby carriage in Picardy’s restaurant in downtown Winnipeg. Despite a police dragnet and a handsome reward offer, months pass with no word, and eventually the search is called off. But eleven years later, the appearance of two drifters suddenly reopens…
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Cherry Bites
On a summer afternoon in 1954 a four-year-old girl, Cherry Ring, bites her baby brother Pete on the cheek. Hard. He needs a skin graft to repair the damage and is scarred for life. Cherry knows what she has done is wrong and she really is sorry. But sorry isn’t good enough. The bite marks…
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The Geranium Girls
A letter carrier named Beryl Kyte, out for a walk on a beautiful spring morning, trips over a body in the woods of a park near her home. The dead woman has mushrooms sprouting in her mouth. A badly shaken Beryl is questioned and escorted home by the police. Soon another body turns up and…
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The Rain Barrel Baby
Frank Foote’s quiet neighbourhood is greening into summer when a dead baby is discovered in his neighbour’s rain barrel. Frank is a cop, and he’s seen a lot of crime scenes, but this one is a little too close to home. Meanwhile, Gus Olsen, who made the gruesome discovery, is worried about a mysterious woman…
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A Blue and Golden Year
When Kenneth spots maggots feeding in a dumpster behind a 7-Eleven, he knows a crime has been committed. Why, and by whom are the questions unravelled through changes of season and setting in A Blue and Golden Year. The story alternates between a Canadian prairie city and a coastal town in Mexico. In Canada, tightly…
Alison Preston was born and raised in Winnipeg. After trying out Calgary, London, Ontario and Vancouver, B.C. she returned to her hometown, where she currently resides. She is a graduate of the University of Winnipeg and was a letter carrier for 28 years. Alison has written seven novels, the first published by Turnstone Press, the other six by Signature Editions. Her last book, The Girl in the Wall, won the Margaret Laurence Award for fiction in 2012. Her most recent, Blue Vengeance, was published in October of 2014.