Lesley Crewe Books In Order

Publication Order of Standalone Novels

Publication Order of Non-Fiction Books

Lesley Crewe
Lesley Crewe grew up in Montreal, PQ. After she graduated from Concordia University with a degree in Education and English, she and her husband settled down in Homeville, Cape Breton and raised their family.

Lesley was a features writer and columnist (Home Fires) for Cape Bretoner Magazine from 2000-2005, and then from 2005-2009, was a columnist (Lesley’s Letters) for Cahoots, an online magazine.

She loves ordinary moments, and celebrates everyday things. They are too often lost in the race something grand, she finds. She holds dear everyone’s humdrum routines. These accumulating hours make up our own lifetimes and when we remember, it’s always the simplest of pleasures which make us happy. It’s these memories that she creates in her novels.

She and her husband were raised in Montreal, however they’ve lived in the same house in rural Cape Breton for forty-five years. It has always been a sanctuary for their kids and pets, both living as well as remembered.

Her writing started as an exercise in attempting to comprehend her world and soon became something that brought her joy. She dearly loves her family, baby blueberry Gia, children’s books, all creatures small and great, and breathing in the wild ocean air. And raisin tea biscuits.

“Relative Happiness” was shortlisted for the Margaret and Joohn Savage First Book Award. It was adapted into a movie in 2014, which was directed by Deanne Foley, produced by Wreckhouse Productions, and starred Melissa Bergland, Susan Kent, Rob Welles, and Jonathan Torrens.

“Relative Happiness” is the first stand alone novel and was released in 2005. Lexie Ivy loves her tiny house in Cape Breton, her huge family, and the neverending sea which surrounds her. She wouldn’t trade her life for anything, however at the age of thirty she is beginning to feel as though something is missing.

That’s where Adrian comes in. He’s a charming backpacker that takes a wrong turn at the US border and winds up on her doorstep, and Joss, this irresistible man that vanishes just as fast as he shows up. Her peaceful life has become much more complex than she could have ever imagined.

Lesley’s funny, whip-smart debut brims with Cape Breton style humor. Filled with heartache without ever succumbing to it, this is the tale about love and life in a small town, about four sisters that betray, love, and rescue one another in turn, and of Lexie’s own joyful awakening.

Lesley’s graceful prose and her ability to turn a familiar story into something with such dramatic and raw power are skills which many veteran novelists have yet to develop.

“Shoot Me” is the second stand alone novel and was released in 2006. The South End house where Elsie Brooks and her complicated family live is bursting with secrets. Her banished husband lives down in the basement. Her lonely sister lives in the attic. And her twenty-something daughters all come and go as they please. And when the renegade archaeologist that they all know as Aunt Hildy, age ninety-one, comes home to die, the poor old place becomes impossibly filled with hidden treasure and hidden meanings, of mystery and murder.

This is a story about fortune, family, and figuring out who you are. Lesley has created a mixed up, frantic, and ultimately lovable East Coast family. However like Aunt Hildy would say: Life’s not really something that needs to be tamed. It’s messy. Always ways and always will be.

Lesley’s characters are believable and they grow while the plot develops. The humor, which is often laugh out loud in this novel, adds to the pleasure of the reading experience.

“Ava Comes Home” is the third stand alone novel and was released in 2008. Ava Harris is a famous actress that lives the life of the rich and fabulous in Los Angeles when a family crisis calls her back home. It has been a decade since she stepped one foot in Glace Bay, Cape Breton, back when she was only plain old Libby MacKinnon. Why she ran away, nobody knows. Coming back home, she has to face her friends, her family, and Seamus O’Reilly (her first love), whose heart broke that day she left.

Ava is a good little actress, determined that nobody will know what happened. She’ll keep the truth buried no matter what the cost, even if she must run away again. However secrets have got a way of surfacing, particularly in a small town, and love has got a way of blasting its way on through the toughest of barriers. As she can never go back home again, possibly Libby can finally.

Lesley continues painting quirky Maritime characters and does a fantastic job of capturing the interplay among each of them. Her dialogue is filled with local phrases and it makes her setting that much more fun and realistic. Some of these conversations are hilarious, particularly the ones between Uncle Angus and Aunt Vi. This one had just a little of everything: sadness, comedy, and romance all rolled into one.

“Hit & Mrs.” is the fourth stand alone novel and was released in 2009. Bette, Augusta, Linda, and Gemma are four lifelong friends that each live in Montreal. This year they are each going to be turning fifty, so they decide it’s time to take a trip to New York together (courtesy of the Visa Platinum belonging to Linda’s philandering husband).

However at the LaGuardia airport washroom, Bette accidentally switches bags with a young mom that is actually smuggling diamonds for the mob, and things begin going horribly wrong. When the kill this aggressive cab driver with pepper spray, the four buddies know that this won’t be some trip of Broadway shows and shopping they’d been expecting.

A series of mishaps and miscommunications entangles these friends even further into the criminal underworld of New York. However out of all the bad luck (Linda’s husband is staying with his girlfriend at the same hotel as the friends) and bad people (drug addicts, Linda’s husband, and some mobsters) emerge these four fifty year old avengers of justice and truth. This is a wildly entertaining comedic romp, in the style of Lesley’s “Shoot Me”.