Ruth Clarke, a tough, supremely competent middle-aged Canadian maple syrup farmer has had it with being hemmed in by the polite, bureaucratic conventions native to her country’s identity. With the help of Remy Bouchard, a pint-sized local blockhead and an aging Mike Byrne, a low-level mobster, Ruth changes her fate — and transforms the future of her community with the theft of millions of dollars’ worth of maple syrup.

Imagine it is summer and that, for the last several days, Montreal has been swimming in sweltering heat and smog. Then imagine that you are in the city's downtown core and a woman holding a...

A celebrity chef who is getting over a bad review and a romance novelist who can't seem to get her next book started meet accidentally at a French villa.