Wayne Johnston - 6 Books - AZW3 & EPUB

WAYNE JOHNSTON was born and raised in the St. John's area of Newfoundland. His #1 nationally bestselling novels include The Divine Ryans, A World Elsewhere, The Custodian of Paradise, The Navigator of New York and The Colony of Unrequited Dreams, which will be made into a film. Johnston is also the author of an award-winning and bestselling memoir, Baltimore's Mansion. He lives in Toronto.

The Son of a Certain Woman is Wayne Johnston's funniest, sexiest novel yet, controversial in its issues, wise, generous and then some in its depiction of humanity.

Percy Joyce, born in St. John's, Newfoundland, in the fifties is an outsider from childhood, set apart by a congenital disfigurement. Taunted and bullied, he is also isolated by his intelligence and wit, and his unique circumstances: an unbaptized boy raised by a single mother in a fiercely Catholic society. Soon on the cusp of teenagehood, Percy is filled with yearning, wild with hormones, and longing for what he can't have--wanting to be let in...and let out. At the top of his wish list is his disturbingly alluring mother, Penelope, whose sex appeal fairly leaps off the page. Everyone in St. John's lusts after her--including her sister-in-law, Medina; their paying boarder, the local chemistry teacher, Pops MacDougal; and...Percy.

A love story like no other...

A World Elsewhere has all the hallmarks of Wayne Johnston's beloved, entertaining novels: humour and emotion in fine balance, larger-than-life characters, dreams of ambition that threaten to overpower their makers, the rich evocation of place and history - and here an unexpected, unforgettable relationship between a father and his adopted child that forms the beating heart of the story.

This sweeping tale immerses us in the life of St. John's, Princeton University and North Carolina at the close of the nineteenth century. Young Landish Druken is a formidable figure as he sets off from Newfoundland for the famed American university. Quick-witted, broader than most doorways, he is the only son of a notorious sealer who expects Landish to continue his legacy. But at Princeton, Landish is befriended, surprisingly, by "Van" Vanderluyden, son of the wealthiest man in America, and caught up in a life he had never imagined.

The Colony of Unrequited Dreams, a Canadian bestseller, is a novel about Newfoundland that centres on the story of Joe Smallwood, the true-life controversial political figure who ushered the island through confederation with Canada and became its first premier.

Narrated from Smallwood's perspective, it voices a deep longing on the part of the Newfoundlander to do something significant, "commensurate with the greatness of the land itself." Smallwood's chronicle of his development from poor schoolboy to Father of the Confederation is a story full of epic journeys and thwarted loves, travelling from the ice floes of the seal hunt to New York City, in a style reminiscent at times of John Irving, Robertson Davies and Charles Dickens. Absorbing and entertaining, The Colony of Unrequited Dreams provides us with a deep perspective on the relationship between private lives and what comes to be understood as history and shows, as E. Annie Proulx commented, "Wayne Johnston is a brilliant and accomplished writer."

The Colony of Unrequited Dreams, Wayne Johnston's breakthrough novel based on the life of Newfoundland's first premier, Joe Smallwood, was published internationally and earned him nominations for the highest fiction prizes in Canada. One of the most highly praised elements of the novel is the character Sheilagh Fielding, with whom Smallwood shares a lifelong love-hate relationship.
The Custodian of Paradise is a riveting narrative with Fielding at its heart. Fielding—advancing on middle age, hobbled by disfigurement and personal demons—is headed for Loreburn, a deserted island off the south coast of Newfoundland. She has borne a lifetime of estrangement and heartbreak by setting herself apart from the rest of St. John's society. By cultivating her isolation, she's been able to write, both in her journals and for the Telegram. By skirting Prohibition laws, she's also been able to dull the pain of her early years. Alone she remains—except for the mysterious stranger she calls her Provider.


The Navigator of New York is set against the background of the tumultuous rivalry between Lieutenant Peary and Dr. Cook to get to the North Pole at the beginning of the 20th century. It is also the story of a young man's quest for his origins, from St. John's, Newfoundland, to the bustling streets of New York, and the remotest regions of the Arctic.

Devlin Stead's father, an Arctic explorer, stops returning home at the end of his voyages and announces he is moving to New York, as "New York is to explorers what Paris is to artists"; eventually he is declared missing from an expedition. His mother meets an untimely death by drowning shortly after. Young Devlin, who barely remembers either of them, lives contently in the care of his affectionate aunt and indifferent uncle, until taunts from a bullying fellow schoolboy reveal dark truths underlying the bare facts he knows about his family. A rhyme circulated around St. John's further isolates Devlin, always seen as an odd child who had inherited his parents' madness and would likely meet a similar fate.

Baltimore's Mansion introduces us to the Johnstons of Ferryland, a Catholic colony founded by Lord Baltimore in the 1620s on the Avalon Peninsula of Newfoundland, and centres on three generations of fathers and sons. Filled with heart-stopping description and a cast of stubborn, acerbic, yet utterly irresistible family members, it is an evocation of a time and a place reminiscent of Wayne Johnston's best fiction.