A daughter learns from her father how to thrive beyond the reach of conventional morality; paranoia convinces someone their alphabet soup has been hacked; a bored teenager decides his fate is selling rocking chairs for a living; a jolly lady tries to infuse life back into the hopeless residents of a “crying house”; the Lying Machine spits out “alternative facts”; —in this collection of narratives set against a backdrop of encroaching menace, victims struggle to preserve their threatened humanity. Crying Houses limns the destinies of heroes and fools who confront the calamitous demands of a world on the cusp.

John Carroll’s Crying Houses presents life-changing scenarios that prompt us to look beyond the obvious. The uniqueness of each story and the believability of the characters keeps us reading and leaves us wanting more.
~ Lance A. Chalmers, lyricist and musician with Trooper, Tokyo Rose and Sweeney Todd

Like enlightening conversations with a well-travelled friend, John Carroll’s stories are infused with infectious passion and experience. Crying Houses touches on relevant social realities that get you thinking, with each story resonating long after the book is closed.
~ Jay Lang, author of Hush and Storm

Poignant, witty, terse, ferociously honest and full of dark humor—John Carroll’s Crying Houses raises contentious yet relevant questions faced by humanity as it navigates a constantly monitored life in a world eternally divided on political, religious and ideological lines.
~ Rajnish Dhawan, author of That Land Beyond the Waves

John Carroll is a director, actor, writer, and professor emeritus. He lives in the Fraser Valley, British Columbia.