Memoir & Biography

A Memoir of Friendship: The Letters Between Carol Shields and Blanche Howard

By Blanche Howard and Allison Howard, eds

Carol Shields and Blanche Howard were friends for 30 years, starting in the early 1970s, despite a 12-year gap in age (Shields being the younger). Both were writers and feminists with strong marriages and large ... Read More »

April 9, 2007 | Filed under: Memoir & Biography

I’ve Got a Home in Glory Land: A Lost Tale of the Underground Railroad

By Karolyn Smardz Frost

There have been many books written about the plight of slaves fleeing to Canada prior to the American civil war. In I’ve Got a Home in Glory Land, Toronto-born archaeologist Karolyn Smardz Frost has chosen ... Read More »

April 5, 2007 | Filed under: Memoir & Biography

Prisoner of Tehran

By Marina Nemat

In one of those odd, inexplicable coincidences so common in publishing, two new non-fiction books confront an unimaginable horror: young women abducted (or “arrested”) and held captive for months, if not years, with little hope ... Read More »

March 28, 2007 | Filed under: Memoir & Biography

Kidnapped: A Diary

By Leszli Kalli

March 28, 2007 | Filed under: Memoir & Biography

Robert Service: Under the Spell of the Yukon

By Enid Mallory

To get the most from Ontario author Enid Mallory’s biography of Robert Service, it is a good idea to have a copy of Service’s poems at hand.As Jack Whyte says in his introduction, Robert Service ... Read More »

March 28, 2007 | Filed under: Memoir & Biography

Fashioning Reality: A New Generation of Entrepreneurship

By Ben Barry

Ben Barry’s life story should make for good reading. Born in Ottawa, Barry spent his teens forming his own modelling agency and recruiting normal folks of all shapes and sizes (as well as more traditionally ... Read More »

March 28, 2007 | Filed under: Memoir & Biography

Raisin Wine: A Boyhood in a Different Muskoka

By James Bartleman

This new book by Ontario’s Lieutenant Governor James Bartleman is a boyhood memoir of a self-described “half breed” coming of age in post-war Muskoka. Bartleman’s recollections are poignant and ring with the authenticity of vivid ... Read More »

March 27, 2007 | Filed under: Memoir & Biography

Diagnosing Genius: The Life and Death of Beethoven

By François Martin Mai

In Diagnosing Genius, Ottawa psychiatrist and amateur pianist François Martin Mai proposes to examine the relationship between the creative genius of Ludwig van Beethoven and the various health problems – most notably deafness and depression, ... Read More »

March 27, 2007 | Filed under: Memoir & Biography

The Deserter’s Tale: The Story of an Ordinary Soldier Who Walked Away from the War in Iraq

By Joshua Key with Lawrence Hill

Orwell wrote, “Autobiography is only to be trusted when it reveals something disgraceful. A man who gives a good account of himself is probably lying, since any life when viewed from the inside is simply ... Read More »

March 22, 2007 | Filed under: Children and YA Non-fiction, Memoir & Biography