January 22, 2004 | Filed under: Children and YA Non-fiction, Fiction: Novels
Despite its provisional title, its hesitant, breath-in-the-throat half-title, Carol Shields’ Unless knows its own mind and isn’t afraid to speak it.In this, her 10th novel, Shields constructs a tangle of questions. What is goodness? What ... Read More »
Kevin Armstrong’s first collection of short fiction begins and ends with sailing stories, fictionally documenting a geographical journey the author himself undertook. Armstrong spent 15 months sailing in and around the Kingdom of Tonga, where ... Read More »
January 21, 2004 | Filed under: Children and YA Non-fiction, Fiction: Short
A Reckless Moon explores the lives of middle-class, middle-aged characters undergoing fateful moments that propel them toward an epiphany and a thorough re-evaluation of life. Often set in Prairie cities and their suburbs, the stories ... Read More »
January 21, 2004 | Filed under: Children and YA Non-fiction, Fiction: Short
Sparkle Hayter, a transplanted Canadian turned New Yorker, has attracted a cult-like following for the sassy, girl-powered Robin Hunter mystery series. Her new novel, Naked Brunch, abandons the winning Robin Hunter formula without abandoning Hayter’s ... Read More »
January 21, 2004 | Filed under: Children and YA Non-fiction, Fiction: Novels
The Wrong Madonna, Regina writer Britt Holmstrom’s second English-language novel, begins in a deserted churchyard in Zagreb, Yugoslavia, in the spring of 1965. “In this city, where the image of Madonna and Child cropped up ... Read More »
January 21, 2004 | Filed under: Children and YA Non-fiction, Fiction: Novels
The idea is a good one. There’s room in the market for a book on activities for fathers and sons. But Chicago-based journalist Ed Avis’s book (with its same-size companion journal costing $15.95) fails on ... Read More »
January 21, 2004 | Filed under: Children and YA Non-fiction
The Young Adventurer’s Guide to Everest, by climber and author Jonathan Chester, joins a spate of recent books for young readers and future mountaineers. Using the alphabet format of his popular A is for Antarctica, ... Read More »
January 21, 2004 | Filed under: Children and YA Non-fiction
Any author that begins a novel with a man standing on a lonely highway with the business end of a rifle in his mouth has got his work cut out for him. The challenge is ... Read More »
January 21, 2004 | Filed under: Children and YA Non-fiction, Fiction: Novels
Bill Gaston’s Mount Appetite is an unsettling collection of 12 short stories that plunges readers into a morass of unfulfilled desires, broken hearts, and lives overwhelmed to the point of destruction by chemical and emotional ... Read More »
January 21, 2004 | Filed under: Children and YA Non-fiction, Fiction: Short
In light of sweeping new police powers approved by the Canadian government last fall, Spying 101 is a timely and valuable document of a shameful chapter in Canadian history. Many readers will be shocked to ... Read More »
January 19, 2004 | Filed under: Children and YA Non-fiction, History