Cocktail by Lisa Alward

A girl receives a bedtime visit from a drunken party guest, who will haunt her fantasies for years. A young mother discovers underneath the wallpaper a striking portrait that awakens inconvenient desires. A divorced man distracts himself from the mess he's made by flirting with a stranger.

These intimate, immersive stories explore life's watershed moments, in which seemingly insignificant details a pot of hyacinths, a freshly painted yellow wall and the most chance of encounters come to exert a tidal pull. Set in the swinging sixties and each decade since,Cocktailreveals the schism between the lives we build up around us and our deepest hidden selves. (FromBiblioasis)

• 74 works of Canadian fiction to read in fall 2023
• Orlando 1974 by Lisa Alward
• 5 Canadian authors shortlisted for $10K Danuta Gleed Literary Award for best debut short story collection

Lisa Alward's short fiction has appeared inThe Journey Prize Stories 2017,Best CanadianStories 2017andBest Canadian Stories 2016. She is the winner of the New Quarterly's 2016 Peter Hinchcliffe ShortFiction Award as well as the 2015 Fiddlehead Short Fiction Prize. She lives in Fredericton. She was onthe 2018 CBC Short Story Prize longlistforOrlando 1974which is included inCocktail.