The Footstop Cafe. Paulette Crosse

Run by Karen Morton, the eccentric, sex-fantasy-prone mother in a hilarious yet deeply troubled dysfunctional family in North Vancouver, the Footstop Cafe is a place to put your feet up near the beautiful but tragedy-plagued Lynn Canyon and its vertigo-inspiring footbridge. The canyon and the cafe serve as the nexus around which Karen's universe revolves. Things happen here. Amazing things. Karen's husband is a podiatrist with a foot fetish, her teenage daughter thinks she's a lesbian but is afraid to confront the reality, and her younger son is given to having bowel movements in closets and building bombs. Throw in Karen's unconventional Anglican minister father and his Tibetan wife, a hairy belly dancer named Moey, a randy virgin high school diver with Olympic ambitions, and a host of other quirky, unforgettable characters and you have a debut novel that is at turns absurdist, touching, manic, and supremely irreverent.