We lay under our covers thinking about the bared shoulders of the women, the stale cigarette smell that clung to the men’s overcoats, and listening to their voices: clinking and burbling at first, then swelling, seeming at times to rush against the floorboards. The harsh, sudden laughter that meant they were having fun.

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Winner of the 27th Danuta Gleed Literary Award for the best first collection of short fiction published by a Canadian in English

"With beautiful, precise descriptions and expert pacing, she effortlessly reveals tensions that feel both classic and utterly her own…. The clarity of sound in Lisa Alward’s sentences — word after word after word — makes it impossible to turn your ear away. This is a quiet voice that booms." — Danuta Gleed Literary Award Jury 

“With a coolly dispassionate voice, Alward views the small horrors of domesticity … and turns them into stories whose implications reverberate far beyond the walls of any house.” — Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

“A Canadian writer to watch” — Deborah Dundas, Toronto Star

“Cocktail, her first book, is a knockout collection of short stories that will stay with you long after you’ve finished reading. The stories are told with a wise attention to craft and the human condition that upends expectations, holding a mirror to the darkness, despair and desire that live in every person.” — Tyee

“Fireflies glow brightly then extinguish themselves, leaving only the ghost of a trace to mark their passage. The stories in Alward’s collection are similarly evanescent, but their potency lies in their precise style and compactness. This is a collection to savour.” — Steven Beattie, That Shakespearean Rag

“Lisa Alward has succeeded in producing a collection that is completely enjoyable.” — Dave Williamson, Winnipeg Free Press

“Alward’s stories teem with vividly honest portraits of human relationships, and her writerly insight lies in clearly seeing our blind spots.” — The Fiddlehead

“These are stories about houses and the secrets they hold, about fractured families and the limits of family life — the end of childhood, a marriage unravelled.” — Pickle Me This

“Her stories … remind me of one of my favorite writers, Joan Silber, with their poignant, beautifully observed mini character studies: folks negotiating the stepping-stones in life, the odd memories that reverberate across the years, the singular event that charts a new course. This is a winner, and I look forward to more from Alward.” — Toby Cox, Three Lives & Co. (NYC)

“From the eyes of a young girl witnessing the foibles of the adult world at her parents’ cocktail party to a new mother seeking validation from a hired house painter to the competitivenss of mothers in a playgroup, each story blossoms into a compassionate examination of the pain of owning an inner life. Alward’s close attention to detail — a color, a flower, the ice in a cocktail glass — adds delicate shade to this intensely intimate collection.” — Grace Harper, Mac’s Backs Book (Ohio)

“The stories in Lisa Alward’s Cocktail are … marked by their intense focus on the telling interplay between wives and husbands, children and parents, and intimate strangers that recalls the early work of Alice Munro.” — Craig Davidson, author of The Saturday Night Ghost Club

“Alward sets her protagonists down at personal crossroads so astutely observed that it is impossible to look away. We watch with hope, amusement and dismay, but also — and this is her uncanny power as a storyteller — with the disquieting sense that we, too, have been caught in the mirror.” — Anne Marie Todkill, author of Orion Sweeping