Catherine Hughes

Stars, hide your fires; let not light see my black and deep desires. Nor any truck.

As a civil war shakes the Quebec province of Canada, Valerie is the sole survivor of a mass execution where her boyfriend is killed. Years later, she’s in a close relationship with her new partner, Gabriel. At the Long Term Care Center where she works as an orderly, she befriends Jeanne, an erudite and funny woman, dealing with an important physical handicap. Mixing realism and worrying strangeness, The Laugh presents a humane exploration of the survivor’s syndrome, the grieving process, the distance of time, the power of love, and the joy of being alive.

Diana thinks she's the next Paris Hilton. After all, she's just received an unexpected inheritance - a hotel in an upscale Canadian mountain resort. She's an heiress! But Diana's dreams of glitz and glamour are dashed when she arrives with her two rescue dogs to find the hotel is far from what she'd imagined...