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Sport, fitness, games and murder are the main themes of this collection of wicked and witty crime fiction and poetry by the Ladies’ Killing Circle, who brought you Menopause is Murder and Cottage Country Killers. From the gym to the golf course to the supposedly peaceful practice of tai chi, murder, rage and revenge refuse to respect the human quest for immortality through fitness and can victimize the most tanned and toned bodies as easily as those of couch potatoes and gourmands. Excessive good health can lead to an early demise in this energetic new anthology.

It’s an exciting time for seventeen-year-old Libby, as she announces to her aunt that she plans to leave Toronto in the 1950s to spend the summer living alone in the empty family home in Pinkney Corners. Libby is determined to make it on her own and to spend some time honing her skills as a writer so that she can become a novelist and journalist like her deceased mother. But living alone can be a challenge. Libby makes a little money working at the five and dime, but the local paper can’t afford to hire.

There was something floating in the water ahead of the canoe. It looks dead, whatever it is, someone said. Thats where the mystery begins, and eleven-year-old Alan and his friends are determined to solve it on their own, without adult interference. They have all the tools they needZiggys canoe, Jose’s ability to impress parents, and Alans detective instinct. Mix in a gang of bullies on jet-skis, an eccentric hermit, and the theft of a priceless violin, and the stage is set for a fast-action summer adventure in cottage country.

In this dark and moving young adult novel, sixteen-year-old Naomi’s best friend has moved away, and Naomi herself is starting at a new high school. Curtis, the artistic guy she likes, seems to be avoiding her, making her feel alone and lonely. On top of lots of difficult homework and an awful part-time job, she also has problems at home. Her dying aunt has come to live with her family, Naomi’s mother seems to be on the verge of a breakdown, and her Polish father is absent and unsupportive. How can Naomi overcome all these negatives in her life?

Willa has never known her father. In fact, her mother has refused to tell the eight-year-old anything at all about him. Willa dreams about what he might look like and who he might be. She often asks herself why her hair, which is "afro-crinkly", and her skin, which is dark, are so different from her mother’s brown hair and pale skin. A substitute teacher’s request that the class draw pictures of their dads for a Father’s Day card launches Willa on an odyssey to discover the truth.

The Okanagan summer stretches out in front of twelve-year-old Nikki like a sparkling rainbow, with lots of time to spend at the beach and with her horse, Ginger. When her cousin Trevor arrives in his wheelchair, spoiling all her plans, they take an instant dislike to one another. But a vision in the clouds will change both her and Trevor’s feelings about a lot of things and, in fact, will help make a dream come true as Trevor competes in the B.C. Games for the Physically Disabled.

There is a killer at work in the sleepy village of Cedar Falls. The peaceful order of puppet-maker Polly Deacon’s back-to-nature rural life is violently interrupted when she finds her best friend Francy’s abusive husband lying dead in the dump with a hole in his chest. What’s worse, Francy can’t remember what happened the night of the murder. The cops soon get involved…and in more ways than one, as Polly finds herself falling for hunky officer Mark Becker.

It’s Labour Day, Camilla’s favourite weekend of the year. She’s planning to relax and ponder what’s happening in her relationship with policman Sgt. Ray Deveau. She’s emphatically not planning to get involved in anything that means trouble. No wonder the news that an old acquaintance has had an accident comes as a surprise. There must be some mistake. By the time Camilla unearths Laura’s connection to a violent revolutionary group active two decades earlier, she’s had several blows to the head and discovered that people shes been talking to keep ending up dead.

Twelve-year-old Martin Jessup, teller of tall tales and other untruths, cannot understand his sister’s objections to the family’s move from Winnipeg to small-town Ontario. With Dad in the military, moving is a fact of life. Settling into his new home, Martin is intrigued by a deserted house across the street and by an unfriendly neighbour, who seems to be waiting for something to happen. Martin and new friends Granger and Holly form a club that meets in the deep end of an empty swimming pool.

In the remote wilderness of West Quebec, where trees outnumber people a million to one and lakes a thousand to one, Death’s Golden Whisper opens with the sudden arrival of float planes bringing what Meg Harris believes are fishermen to the isolated northern lake she lives on. Within hours, she discovers that these men have come to develop a gold mine. She combines forces with Eric Odjik, chief of the neighbouring Migiskan reserve, to fight the mining company.