The Prison Book Club

Ian Brown’s 2009 memoir, The Boy in the Moon: A Father’s Search for His Disabled Son – an unvarnished, heartrending account of Brown’s efforts to connect with his uncommunicative, seriously disabled child – struck a ... Read More »

September 28, 2015 | Filed under: Memoir & Biography

The Lake

By Perrine Leblanc; Lazer Lederhendler (trans.)

To read part one of The Lake, Perrine Leblanc’s follow-up to her Governor General’s Literary Award–winning first novel, Kolia, is to savour enough narrative eeriness to satisfy any David Lynch fan. In spare, allusive language, ... Read More »

September 24, 2015 | Filed under: Fiction: Novels

Arms: The Culture and Credo of the Gun

By A.J. Somerset

Earlier this year, a YouTube clip of comedian Jim Jefferies talking about gun control in America went viral (the clip has since been taken down due to a copyright claim). Jefferies, an Australian, took direct ... Read More »

September 21, 2015 | Filed under: Politics & Current Affairs

★ Sleep

By Nino Ricci

Seven years after the publication of his Governor General’s Literary Award–winning novel, The Origin of Species, Nino Ricci hits readers hard with a scorched-black account of a tormented man’s decline into sleeplessness and self-destruction. Sleep, ... Read More »

September 17, 2015 | Filed under: Fiction: Novels

Witness: Passing the Torch of Holocaust Memory to New Generations

By Eli Rubenstein; March of the Living

In 2014, the United Nations sponsored a touring exhibit titled “When You Listen to a Witness, You Become a Witness.” The photographs and accompanying text comprised profiles and accounts of Holocaust survivors intended to educate ... Read More »

September 17, 2015 | Filed under: History

★ An Inuksuk Means Welcome

By Mary Wallace

Two gorgeous new picture books celebrate the beauty of Canadian landscapes and the fascinating creatures and people who inhabit them. In West Coast Wild, Deborah Hodge focuses on the birds, fish, and other animals that ... Read More »

September 11, 2015 | Filed under: Picture Books

★ The Heart Goes Last

By Margaret Atwood

As one might expect, given her recent MaddAddam trilogy – and, of course, The Handmaid’s Tale – the near-future as imagined by Margaret Atwood in The Heart Goes Last is bleak indeed. Following a “big ... Read More »

September 11, 2015 | Filed under: Fiction: Novels

★ The Scorpion Rules

By Erin Bow

In the future as described by Erin Bow in her stunning and harrowing new novel, the political becomes very personal. Following the melting of the polar ice caps, large portions of the world have flooded, ... Read More »

September 11, 2015 | Filed under: Children and YA Fiction

Loula and Mister the Monster

By Anne Villeneuve

After overhearing her mother say she just can’t live with that “MONSTER” anymore, Loula is sure her large, misbehaving dog, Mister, is in danger of being thrown out “like an old pair of shoes.” With ... Read More »

September 11, 2015 | Filed under: Picture Books

Nowhere Wild

By Joe Beernink

In Joe Beernink’s Nowhere Wild, a global pandemic has wiped out all but those who possess natural immunity to the disease. Transportation is cut off, food supplies vanish, and many desperate survivors let their basest ... Read More »