Nosy Parker

<p><b><i>Globe & Mail</i> bestselling Lesley Crewe's new novel brings readers to 1960s Montreal & features a nosy would-be child detective searching for the truth about her mother.</b> <p/> It's 1967 in Montreal the Expo is in full swing and Audrey Parker has just moved with her dad to Notre-Dame-de-Gr��ce a whole new neighbourhood full of different kinds of people to spy on. Audrey is a lot of things: articulate disarming forthright. And as her father reminds her often indecently nosy. <p/> Audrey scribbles every observation down in her notebooks -- from which foods her new teacher eats for lunch to how blue the water is in Greece to what time the one-legged man across the street gets home. She is certain she will soon root out a murderer or uncover a mystery. But there's only one mystery that really matters to her: her mother. Who was she? How did she die? Why won't her father ever talk about her? <p/> Over a year of Audrey's life we bike with her through the streets of NDG encountering stray animals free-range kids and adults both viciously cruel and wonderful. And we walk with Audrey across the threshold from childhood to adolescence where she will discover the truth about her mother. <p/> Balancing humour and sadness as expertly as ever author Lesley Crewe -- who has so often captured Cape Breton perfectly on the page -- turns her incisive observations for the first time to the NDG of the 1960s where she grew up.</p>