Finalist, Margaret Laurence Award for Fiction1971. Lilac Welsh lives an isolated life with her parents at Rough Rock on the Winnipeg River. Her father, Kal, stern and controlling, has built his wealth by designing powerful guns and ammunition. He's on the cusp of producing a .50 calibre assault rifle that can shoot down an airplane with a single bullet, when a young stranger named Gavin appears at their door, wanting to meet him before enlisting for the war in Vietnam. Gavin's arrival sparks an emotional explosion in Lilac's home and inspires her to begin her own life as a journalist, reporting on the war that's making her family rich.The Gunsmith's Daughter is both a coming-of-age story and an allegorical novel about Canada-US relations. Psychologically and politically astute, and gorgeously written, Margaret Sweatman's portrait of a brilliant gunsmith and his eighteen-year-old daughter tells an engrossing story of ruthless ambition, and one young woman's journey toward independence.

A catastrophe on a mountain in Transylvania sends toxic cyanide hurtling through rivers and streams, destroying an ecosystem and killing hundreds. As the impact of the mining breach stretches beyond the country's borders, it ensnares Farrar and Clio, a couple living on another continent, who begin to understand that their business interests are intertwined with enterprises more sinister than they'd realized. Fearing the wrath of Peter Zugravi, a criminal with international reach, Farrar sends Clio and their daughter Sydney to a remote island where he hopes Zugravi will never find them. It's here that Clio finally unlocks the family secrets and the mysterious origins of her family's wealth. With characteristically razor-sharp prose, Margaret Sweatman mines the dark caverns of global capitalism in this new addition to the resource "noir" canon. Intense, visceral, and agile, Night Birds is an all-absorbing thriller, whose morally complex characters are called upon to reckon with the power than runs beneath their feet and the consequences of their own complicity.

Winner, Margaret Laurence Award for Fiction Shortlisted, McNally Robinson Book of the Year and Relit Award (Novel)Award-winning author Margaret Sweatman has proven herself a virtuoso writer of historical fiction. Yet nothing she has written can prepare you for Mr. Jones. Emmett Jones is adrift. Having firebombed civilians as a pilot during World War II, Emmett searches for something to cling to when life loses focus. Post-war, he becomes compulsively drawn to John Norfield, a former POW who has found his focus in communism. Set in a time of rampant paranoia, Mr. Jones peels back the veneer of Canadian politics to reveal a nation willing to sacrifice its own. It is a fearful time, a time of "peace" at the onset of the nuclear age. Emmett's existence comes under scrutiny. His relationship with Norfield makes him a target of security forces. His marriage, his job, even his child are the target of investigation. And as the nuclear arms race heats up, Mr. Jones sets himself on a path that will risk the lives of everyone he holds dear. Evoking the classic works of le Carré and Greene, Sweatman's novel is a shattering exploration of a past where world governments threaten annihilation while training housewives in the proper techniques for sweeping up radioactive dust.

Finalist, McNally Robinson Book of the Year Award Nominated, Margaret Laurence Award for FictionTwo French explorers arrive in Court to charm two ships from the English King. The rest, as they say, is history... Or perhaps not. Set in the libertine era of Restoration England, The Players embarks on a voyage of discovery with compelling characters, a magical plot, and stunning imagery. A tale of beginnings and of invention, this remarkable novel takes on the 17th century with a contemporary sensibility. Here, the ability to perform - in Court, on stage, in private quarters, and in the brutal cold of James Bay - might save your life... and Lilly Cole must play along with the best of them. Sly, provocative, and ingeniously funny, Sweatman's prose explores the deep well of human motivation, how instinct trumps reason when survival is in question.