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A Fast Horse Never Brings Good News by Cary Fagan

A Fast Horse Never Brings Good News by Cary Fagan

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Literary Fiction / Short Stories
Publication Date: October 14, 2025
5.25 x 8 inches
266 pages
Trade Paperback
ISBN 9781771669511

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Trade Paperback
$24.95
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This item will be shipped on: October 14, 2025

Multiple award-winning author Cary Fagan displays his extraordinary range and talent in a new collection that is by turns sensitive, surprising, and outrageously funny.

A disgruntled border in 1970s London watches an affair develop between his landlady and a young Canadian student. A woman recalls the family that lived in a very nice tree in her backyard. A fifteen-year-old girl steals a book from a “pretty little bookstore” and sets in motion a remarkable whirlwind journey through New York City. Three turn-of-the-century musicians cross into Saskatchewan to escape an angry gunslinger. A couple decides to separate, only to find that their cat and their dog have a lot to say on the matter.

With witty dialogue, compelling characters, and superb writing, each of these five exquisite stories differs vastly from the next, yet together conjure a world fuelled by the power of our wildest imaginings. A Fast Horse Never Brings Good News is a propulsive and vital new work from one of our country’s most gifted and treasured writers.

Praise for A Fast Horse Never Brings Good News

“Using the sparest of prose, Fagan reveals a world both mysterious and amusingly off-kilter. A wonderful collection.” —Robert Hough, author of Anarchists in Love: A Novel

About the Author

CARY FAGAN is the author of eight novels and six short story collections. He has won many awards, including a Foreward Indies Silver Award for Humor, the Canadian Jewish Literary Award for Fiction, and the Toronto Book Award. He has also been nominated for various prizes, including the Governor General’s Literary Award for Fiction, the Atwood Gibson Writers’ Trust Fiction Award, and the Giller Prize. Fagan’s work has been translated into French, Italian, German, Dutch, Spanish, Catalan, Turkish, Russian, Polish, Chinese, Korean and Persian, and he is also a “beloved” (Quill & Quire) author of books for children. He lives in Toronto.