Friday Special Blend
Friday October 10th, 2025 with Susan Johnston and Micah Petti
Ajar (Margo LaPierre). A Capital Mystery.

In the first hour, Ottawa writer Margo LaPierre joins us to talk about Ajar. Ajar celebrates radical recovery from violence and psychotic paradigm shifts, approaching madness through prismatic inquiry and navigating the monstrous physical and psychological dangers of womanhood. As time converges within us, we find new ways to heal and grow. From the emergency room to the pharmacy to the fertility clinic to the dis/comfort of home and memory, Ajar humanizes bipolar disorder, emphasizing the auspicious outcomes of neurodiverse cognition. Buy Ajar from your local bookstore or borrow it from your public library. Ajar launches as part of a series of events at Club SAW on Tuesday October 14. In our second hour, Mike Martin joins us to talk about A Capital Mystery. An heiress befriends a saleswoman at Ogilvy’s department store in 1955. They fall in love with the same man. What could go wrong? An unknown assailant is terrorizing the quiet suburban neighbourhood of Riverside South. Can a young boy succeed where the adults have failed and put an end to the reign of terror? An upmarket restaurant in downtown Ottawa is plagued by threats from a poison pen. The proprietor, the chef and a former vice cop turned major domo try to fend off disaster while cooking up a side order of romance. A young artist travels to Bytown in the early 1850s. An employee of the artist’s uncle turns up dead, and the only clue to the killer’s identity seems to be a sketch the artist made near the crime scene. Can this sketch solve the man's murder? These mysteries, and seventeen more, can be found in A Capital Mystery, an anthology of short stories that spans the length, breadth and history of Ottawa, Canada’s capital city.