Dark, haunting, utterly enthralling: Fredrik Backman’s Beartown is your next great read.

Fredrik Backman, the #1 New York Times bestselling author of A Man Called Ove, returns with a dazzling, profound novel about a small town with a big dream—and the price required to make that dream come true.

“Late one evening toward the end of March, a teenager picked up a double-barrelled shotgun, walked into the forest, put the gun to someone else’s forehead and pulled the trigger.” That is the first line of Beartown, a novel that will completely engross, dropping you into small-town life where time is strung together with hours on the rink.

Hockey is the last glimmer of hope for the people of Beartown, a small community isolated in the deep woods with a dying economy. In this remote and cold climate, the sound of pucks hitting walls is the only thriving pulse-beat. Much more than a game, hockey gives the last remaining citizens of Beartown a sense of purpose. But in Backman’s chilling novel, the rink is both the sanctuary from a hardened existence and also the backdrop of a sinister crime.

With every sentence packing a punch, Backman’s writing will rip you from your own reality and plunk you into the middle of Beartown, where you will witness all its tough and unforgiving ways.

Beartown explores the hopes that bring a small community together, the secrets that tear it apart, and the courage it takes for an individual to go against the grain. In this small forest town, Backman has created an entire world.

Get outside what you know and fall deep into this masterpiece.

CONTEST! 

We want your next read to be a total page-turner, so we’ve partnered with Simon & Schuster Canada to give away 5 copies of Beartown!

Three ways you can enter:

  1. On Twitter, tweet, “Hi @Shedoesthecity, I’m ready for an emotionally heavy page-turner. Send me #Beartown by Fredrik Backman & drop me into the woods.”
  2. On Instagram, LIKE + COMMENT under our #Beartown post.
  3. On Facebook, LIKE + COMMENT on our #Beartown post.

Beartown is published by Simon & Schuster Canada and hit bookstores across Canada on April 24.