Born to privilege and wed to her high school sweetheart Veer, a free spirited Maya feels trapped in a conventional upper class family with patriarchal expectations in India. Claustrophobic within the dark walls of the mansion she lives in with Veer, Maya starts living precariously through the threads of her curiosity. This curiosity leads Maya to unearth a dark family secret, a brutal ancestral murder which begins to haunt her and also affect her new marriage.

To escape the malicious spirits lingering in the house, Maya and her family fly to a new land and discover the rough corners, hardship, and the bounty that this adopted country offers. As Maya tries to rebuild her life amidst adventure and the struggles of settling in a new country, her relationship with Veer is tested beyond its limits. Not knowing that the ghosts of their past have followed them, in a race against time, Maya is put to a final test. Armed with conviction and hope, Maya sets out to face the dark forces that lie await.

Peacock in the Snow is a one-of-a kind genre-bending thriller about the power of an eternal love, which survives through three generations of heartbreak, across two continents, and speaks to the tireless capacity of the human spirit to love, hope, strive, and succeed despite impossible obstacles.

Anubha Mehta is a Canadian writer and artist who was born in India. With a doctorate in Political Science, and two decades of Canadian public service experience, Anubha has been awarded for her leadership work with diverse communities. Her book, The Politics of Nation Building and Art Patronage (2012), was a culmination of years of her research in late 1990s. Her short stories and poems have been published in several Canadian magazines and journals and reflect her travels and life lived on both sides of the globe. She currently lives in Mississauga, Ontario. Peacock in the Snow is her debut novel.

Thirty-two-year-old Kang is a new immigrant in Toronto. Having an older sister who was raped and suffers from the ensuing stigma in China, Kang is determined to remain a spinster, which has its own stigma in China, and she struggles with her fear and distrust of men. But Kang's story is not a hard luck story. She is an intelligent woman and a successful immigrant. Kang deals with the perplexities of a different culture by maintaining a sense of curiosity, an enjoyment of learning about the new culture, and by finding humour rather than the humiliation that so often characterizes descriptions of immigrant experience. Kang rooms with Tania, a Russian immigrant, and learns that many years earlier, Tanya was in love with a Chinese medical student at Moscow University who was abruptly returned to China for having had a relationship with her. Kang's own father once studied at that university but has never talked about it since he was forced to leave Moscow and then was labelled as a rightist during the Chinese Anti-Rightist Campaign. Since then her father has been dispatched to work and live in Kunming, a city far away from Beijing. Could the paths of her father and Tania have ever crossed? Curious about her father's past, Kang decides to pay a visit to Moscow, accompanied by Brian, Tania's nephew, a charming engineer who wants to explore his Russian Jewish roots. Spending time with Brian helps Kang to see how much her sister's tragedy has shadowed her life. When Brian suddenly shows symptoms of schizophrenia, Kang must decide whether to throw her spinster's hat away or end her relationship with Brian.

Born in China, Zoë S. Roy, an avid reader even during the Cultural Revolution, writes literary fiction with a focus on women's cross-cultural experiences. Her publications include a collection of short stories, Butterfly Tears (2009), and two novels, The Long March Home (2011) and Calls across the Pacific (2015), all published by Inanna Publications. She holds an M.A. in Atlantic Canada Studies from Saint Mary's University and a M.Ed. in Adult Education from the University of New Brunswick. She currently lives in Toronto and is a teacher for the Toronto Public School Board.

The Scent of Mogra and Other Stories is a collection of four short stories about strong female characters dealing with difficult life-changing situations. The turmoil that they face is, often, the result of a social structure that discriminates against women. Through these powerful women characters, the stories reflect attitudes and ways of life in a village in India, and in modern day Mumbai; they highlight the values of an older generation, and the dreams of a new one. Beneath all their differences, The Scent of Mogra and Other Stories illuminate the quality of women's lives, exposing the pain, the injustices, as well as the triumphs that make up their existence.

Aparna Kaji Shah was born in Mombasa, and grew up in Mumbai. She has a Master's degree in English and Aesthetics from the University of Bombay, and an M. Phil. in English from SNDT University, Mumbai. After she moved to Canada in 1985, she obtained a B.Ed. from the University of Toronto. She and her husband, and their family, have lived for various periods in the UK, India, and Singapore. She and her husband returned permanently to Canada in 2013 and continue to live in Toronto. Her fiction has been included in several anthologies. The Scent of Mogra and Other Stories is her debut collection of short fiction.

Meena's Story: Flight to Freedom" is set around true events. Covering a span of nearly 80 years. It begins when her mother, Elizabeth stumbles into the arms of a handsome Indian man, Ali, in London. It is love at first sight. Ali has to leave England and return home to Hyderabad. Elizabeth finds it impossible to stay on in England without her love and she boards a P&O liner and surprises Ali in Hyderabad.

Enduring cultural challenges laced with comic and ironic instances, the couple are accepted by Ali's widowed mother, uncle and aunt and other family members and are married through Muslim rites, starting life in Hyderabad. Ali's mother gives her new daughter-in-law the Muslim name of Zarina.

Political and religious events following the partition of India and the creation of Pakistan in 1947 present Ali with an option to move to the newly created nation of Pakistan. Ali decides to leave Hyderabad with Zarina and their two daughters, Sayeeda and Meena, and two sons Danny and Tayeb. Zarina is pregnant with another child at this time.

Events don't turn out well. In Pakistan, Ali is looked upon as an immigrant -- a Mujahar -- and faces hostility all around. Even though he finds a good position in a transport company, others are not pleased. On his way to drop the children to school, Ali's car is involved in a head on collision on a deserted street. The driver and a neighbor's traveling with them are killed. Ali and Meena are seriously injured. Three days later, Ali succumbs to his injuries. Circumstances surrounding the accident are suspicious, but investigations are deferred.

The grieving family is helped back to Hyderabad. But Zarina, distraught, decides to return to England to her mother with the children. But Ali's Uncle Mirza and Aunty Zainab beg her to leave Saeeda behind with them. Reluctantly, Zarina agrees. Bu,t at the airport, the two sisters Meena and Saeeda cling to each other weeping. They are inseparable! Overwhelmed, Zarina decides to leave the two girls behind and fly to London with her two boys.

Several years pass by. The girls grow up in comfort in Aunty Zainab and Uncle Mirza's home.. But the sisters cannot banish from their minds the horror of the accident that killed their father. They share and relive the terrifying accident. Uncle and Aunt notice their pain and do their best to comfort the girls. The girls grow up, finish their schooling and have marriages arranged for them. Saeeda moves to England with her husband, an eye specialist. Meena marries a journalist, moves to his home and together they have two sons. During all this time, Zarina returns only once briefly to Hyderabad.

Fresh social and political upheavals trigger another dislocation in Meena and her husband's lives. The deteriorating political situation in Hyderabad renders life difficult. A sister-in-law living in Canada helps them immigrate to Canada. The family stops in London, en route for a joyous re-union with their mother and brothers, and spend a wonderful week in the Isle of Whyte where her mother now lives.

Once in Canada, Meena's husband is able to find a good job in Calgary which is a flourishing new city. The family adjust to their new life and beautiful surroundings quite easily. But, for Meena, the past will not let her be. The trauma she experienced in her childhood has left a permanent mark in her mind and she explains it best when she says, "We all have something quiet and sad in our hearts."

'Greg is clearly a poet of great vision and clarity. His voice is extremely confident and strong, with each poem well-crafted and lean... If you enjoy the work of Sarah Howe or Ocean Vuong, I would recommend this book with no hesitation.' Stuart Buck, author of Become Something Frail

Greg Santos is the author of Blackbirds (Eyewear, 2018), Rabbit Punch! (DC Books, 2014), and The Emperor's Sofa (DC Books, 2010). He is of Cambodian, Portuguese, and Spanish descent. He holds an MFA in Creative Writing from The New School. He regularly works with at-risk communities, and teaches at the Thomas More Institute. He is the poetry editor of carte blanche. Santos lives in Montreal with his wife and two children.

Connecting is not easy, but proximity is unbearable. The characters in these ten stories are longing for escape and attempt to leave home, but inevitably and perhaps ironically find themselves homesick. Chih-Ying Lay, a Montreal-based expatriate from Taiwan familiar with both homesickness and home sickness, probes our desperate need for home, often matched with an equally desperate need to get away from it. Lay's characters are outsiders, whether queer, indigenous, unloved or lost, and each discovers that home is not the sanctuary it was meant to be. Sometimes, they find a place to call their very own, as if to tell the reader: You can, too.

Born in Taipei, Chih-Ying Lay came to Canada in 2008 to obtain his Ph.D. in Microbiology at McGill University. Stories from his first collection, The Escapist, published in Taiwan in 2008, have been awarded the Formosa Literature Prize and the Liberty Times Literature Prize. He has published a novel, The Ideal Family (2012), and another collection of short fiction, The Comic Lives of Losers (2016). A guest broadcaster both in Taiwan and for Radio Canada International in Montreal, he sings in Ensemble Sainte-Anne Singers and Musica Orbium, and works as a senior research scientist in Montreal.

Darryl Sterk has been translating Mandarin-language fiction from Taiwan and occasionally from China for a dozen years, most notably Wu Ming-Yi's two novels The Man With the Compound Eyes (Harvill Secker, 2013) and The Stolen Bicycle (Text, 2017), which was longlisted for the Booker International. For Linda Leith Publishing, he has translated Xue Yiwei's Shenzheners (2016) and Dr. Bethune's Children (2017) and Home Sickness (LLP, 2020) by Chih Ying Lay. Originally from Edmonton, Darryl Sterk lives in Hong Kong.

Xue Yiwei is an award-winning Chinese writer born in Chenzhou and raised in Changsha, in Hunan province. He has a B.Sc. in Computer Science from Beijing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics, an M.A. in English Literature from Université de Montréal, and a Ph. D. in Linguistics from Guangdong University of Foreign Studies. He has taught Chinese literature at Shenzhen University and is the author of sixteen books, including four novels-Desertion (1989, reissued 2012), Dr. Bethune's Children (2011), Farewells from a Shadow (2013), and Empty Nest (2014)-and five collections of stories. He lives in Montreal.

Darryl Sterk has been translating Mandarin-language fiction from Taiwan and occasionally from China for a dozen years, most notably Wu Ming-Yi's two novels The Man With the Compound Eyes (Harvill Secker, 2013) and The Stolen Bicycle (Text, 2017), which was longlisted for the Booker International. For Linda Leith Publishing, he has translated Xue Yiwei's Shenzheners (2016) and Dr. Bethune's Children (2017) and Home Sickness (LLP, 2020) by Chih Ying Lay. Originally from Edmonton, Darryl Sterk lives in Hong Kong.