In Anne Baldo’s Morse Code for Romantics, patterns of life emerge—and break—in relationships both requited and otherwise. A restaurateur orchestrates a devious punishment for his wife’s lover. A desperate mother searches for her missing daughter, a modern-day Persephone who was lured away by a sinister boyfriend. An islander falls under the spell of a visiting researcher, whose insidious smiles and natural sangfroid mirror the serpent-like sea monster he hunts. These wistful, darkly surreal stories, set in Southern Ontario, suggest that maternal instinct is not just a chemical lie but something bloody and painful; that one person’s clouds can rain on generations; and that true loneliness can be as clear as code written on a face, and as ominous as a dark, monstrous shape lurking beneath the surface.

A poignant friendship novel of two besties sharing yearning, rejection, and lip gloss in a close-knit blue-collar town.It's 2004 and childhood friends Sami and Lucy are on the edge of adulthood. Lucy knows what she is going to do - she's going to school and getting out of this town. But Sami, caught in an endless loop with a boy from a troubled family called True, can't seem to get unstuck."I'd used to feel, when I was with True, that I was safe, that he would take care of me, that he wouldn't let anything bad happen. But now I wasn't sure what I had constructed that from. His easy way with words, his confidence, maybe, his height. I was tall but he was bigger than me; in my mind he was bigger than anyone. Or maybe it was the surprisingly gentle way he'd touch your hair, your face. But in reality, he'd offered no more protection than a child's nightlight against monsters, a tender deception we fall for, easily, before we grow up and know better."The farther Sami drifts from Lucy, the harder it is to not be guided and bound by her heartbreak for True, whose destructive presence continually interferes with Sami's hope for stability and connection. As their paths begin to diverge, Sami must learn to navigate life in their small town -- and the universe -- without the one person she's always counted on."If soulmates were real, Lucy was mine."