Includes Author-Curated Discussion Questions! The reunited Lund siblings, separated as children by Social Services, find that family, whether held together by blood or by choice, can be both a curse and a blessing, an obstacle and a point of connection.Set in Vancouver during the economically turbulent year of 2008, A Brief View from the Coastal Suite explores the Lunds' differing values in respect to relationships, money, and environment - all markers for a materialistic society that is becoming increasingly inhospitable.  Cleo struggles to find time for her challenging job as an architectural designer and for the demands of her family; Mandalay, an artist and single parent, tries to raise her twin sons uncontaminated by the materialistic values of their lawyer father; and Cliff attempts to run a landscape company with his spoiled younger brother, Ben, and to accommodate the ever-increasing demands of his Estonian mail-order bride.Karen Hofmann's brilliant sequel to her novel What is Going to Happen Next skillfully explores societal attitudes and the instability of personal and public lives in a world that values money above all else.

Winner of Best Cover Design at the 2020 Alberta Book Publishing Awards! Third Place in the Prose Category at the 2019 Alcuin Society Awards for Excellence in Book Design in Canada! All Lit Up Book Club Selection!In this provocative collection of short stories, Karen Hofmann creates characters who struggle to connect or disconnect from entanglements and relationships. With ironic accuracy and sensuous imagery, Hofmann considers a range of human foibles: a newlywed couple who transform into feral beasts during the hardships of a remote research expedition; backbiting faculty members who strip down during a post-conference BBQ; an heretical nun who explores the possibility of a new life by imaginatively excavating the fossils of BC's Burgess Shale; and an ambitious bylaw officer determined to make her mark on the city's streets.In Echolocation, Karen Hofmann has found new ways to sound the depths of the human heart.

Karen Hofmann's empathetic and cathartic novel, What is Going to Happen Next, pieces together the lives of five members of the Lund family following their enforced dispersal after the death of the father and the hospitalization of the mother in the remote West Coast community of Butterfly Lake. It explores their self-doubts and aspirations in the ways they cope with their separation and reunion through their work and personal relationships, and reveals the ways in which their past is filtered through memory and desire. It also skillfully exposes a Vancouver class system from the perspectives of diverse socio-economic conditions and lifestyles.What is Going to Happen Next is character-driven and well-wrought, with a tenderness that propels the reader forward alongside the Lunds who are learning to fuse together as a chosen family. Praise for What is Going to Happen Next "It's a novel that's as original as it is ambitious, and it works, resulting in an all-engrossing visceral reading experience, and I'm recommending it to everyone." ~ Kerry Clare, Pickle Me This "The characters as so unique from one another, each with a distinct voice and personality.... I would highly recommend this wonderful piece of Canadian fiction." ~ Jaaron Collins, Worn Pages and Ink "As a family saga, the novel is empathetic, compassionate, and expertly paced." ~ Brenda Johnston, Canadian Literature

After retiring from the heady world of academia, Sidonie von Täler has returned to the small Okanagan Valley town she escaped in her youth for the lights of the big city. The family orchard has since gone to seed, and ever decades later Sidonie still finds herself living in the shadow of her deceased older sister Alice.As she gets down to work sifting through the detritus of her family's legacy, Sidonie is haunted by memories of trauma and triumph in equal measure, and must reconcile past and present while reconnecting with the family members she has left.Karen Hofmann's debut novel blends a poetic sensibility with issues of land stewardship, social stratification and colonialism, painting the geological and historical landscape of the Okanagan in vivid and varied colours.