Sherman Alexie feature on CBC.ca Arts

Flight, by Sherman Alexie
9780802170378 | $16.50 pb | In stock
Blackcat / Publishers Group Canada (Raincoast)

Check out this excellent piece on Sherman Alexie on CBC.ca Arts. From the article:

‘“I don’t think you can call this a coming-of-age story,” Alexie says over iced coffee in a hotel restaurant during a tour stop in Toronto. “More like coming-of-blood.” Set in the present day, Flight is Alexie’s attempt, in a post-9/11 world, to understand what drives people to acts of both goodness and violence. “Whether you’re left or right, Christian, Jewish or Muslim, everyone’s ideas about the [Sept. 11 attackers] are really big. They were freedom fighters, or sociopaths.” But, Alexie says, the men themselves were complicated individuals. Set against massive acts of violence like 9/11, it’s the small stories of betrayal and decency, of making the right choice or the wrong one, that interest Alexie.’ -Rachel Giese, CBC.ca

Advance praise for Eric Wright’s Finding Home

Finding Home, by Eric Wright
189715111X | $22.95 pb | available September
Cormorant Books (UTP Distribution)

“This is a different Eric Wright book that incorporates all the familiar Eric Wrights. He gives us a nice bit of mystery, plenty of smiles, and a wonderful sense of place. In fact two places, two whole countries, England and Canada, observed in Wright’s wise and honest style. It adds up to his most personal book, bringing rewards on every page. I’m a long time fan of Eric as both a writer and a guy, and I absolutely love Finding Home. I hope you sell zillions of copies.” – Jack Batten

“Finding Home is terrific value for money.   To start with, this is the involving story of a man on a voyage of discovery, both about himself and his family, with lots of clever twists, well drawn characters, and frequent chuckles along the way.  The bonus is that Canadian readers get a nicely observed if sometimes idiosyncratic picture of modern England, while English readers get the same of Canada, with some fascinating historical sketches thrown in.   If that’s not enough, all readers can sit back enjoy the occasional highly entertaining rant.  Eric Wright is such a very good writer that nobody should be surprised to find he’s a very good ranter too!” – Reginald Hill

Praise for Francisco Goldman’s The Art of Political Murder from Sir Salman Rushdie

The Art of Political Murder, by Francisco Goldman
978-0-8021-1828-8 | $29.95 hc | available October
Grove Press / Publishers Group Canada (Raincoast)

“Francisco Goldman is a wonderful writer and this is an extremely important book.”—Salman Rushdie

“This is an impressive book. Goldman has focused his superb novelist’s talents—compassion, precision, muscularity, great thoroughness and an instinct for the exotic—on modern-day Guatemala’s ineradicable crime against itself. This remarkable book would seem not to remind us of ourselves, yet somehow it does.”—Richard Ford

“One of our hemisphere’s finest writers has done it again. This magisterial book is a marvelous chimera of reportage, history, autobiography but also a riveting whodunit, all rendered with Goldman’s trademark intelligence, compassion and verve. Goldman details how—through war, corruption, impunity, blackmail, silence and murder—a country’s soul can be brought to the brink of extinction.  And how—through faith, perseverance, sacrifice, courage, always courage—it can be brought back to the light. Devastating, gripping, irresistible.”—Junot Diaz, author of Drown

“With his novels, Francisco Goldman has already made extraordinary contributions to modern literature. Now, he has written a compelling and important piece of investigative journalism.  Like all of Goldman’s writings, The Art of Political Murder is a work of unique moral acuity and masterful storytelling; but he has done much more than weave us a fine tale. This is a real-life whodunit, a murder conspiracy which lays bare the poisonous heart of politics and power in contemporary Guatemala. In the story of the murder of Bishop Gerardi, Goldman is not only our writer, but our trustworthy detective.”—Jon Lee Anderson

“Bishop Juan Gerardi directed the investigation into the Guatemalan terror. Prohibited history: military power gave the order for silence and forgetting. One night in the spring of 1998, the bishop published the results of the investigation. Two nights later, he was found lying in his blood, his skull shattered by blows from a brick. A gigantic international operation was launched to disguise the crime and safeguard the Untouchable impunity of the authors of the murder and two hundred thousand murders more. This book by Francisco Goldman is the irrefutable response to the dirty work of the specialists in misleading public opinion.”—Eduardo Galeano 

The Guardian loves Meg Gardiner

Kill Chain, by Meg Gardiner
0340898348 | $24.95 pb | in stock
Hodder / McArthur & Co. (HarperCollins)

Fantastic paperback review for Kill Chain in Saturday’s GUARDIAN:

“Gardiner is brilliant at making the over-the-top seem utterly convincing. Her heroine, Evan Delaney, is a paragon for our times: tough, funny, clever, brave, tireless and compassionate… The pace and inventiveness never flag, and the climax… is both nailbiting and moving. But the brilliant writing is what puts this thriller way ahead of the competition… Reading the fifth Evan Delaney book first is not a problem, but you’ll probably want to go back and read the others. Intelligent escapism at its best.”

The Guide to Getting it On! in Oprah Magazine

Guide to Getting it On!, 5th edition, by Paul Joannides
1885535694 | $27.50 pb | in stock
Goofy Foot Press / Publishers Group Canada (Raincoast)

Just in from the new issue of Oprah Magazine:

“You’ve never read a manual as warm, liberating and potentially sex-life-changing as the Guide to Getting It On. Neither had anyone in our office — which may be why our copies keep disappearing.” -O Magazine, July 2007

The Paris Cafe featured on CBS Sunday Morning

The Paris Cafe, by Noel Fitch, illustrated by Rick Tulka
9781933368856 | $22.50 pb | available November
Soft Skull Press / Publishers Group Canada (Raincoast)

Illustrator Rick Tulka featured on CBS’s Sunday Morining June 10th: segment was on Le Select Cafe.

Martha Brooks’ Mistik Lake in Winnipeg Free Press’ Summer Buzz feature

Mistik Lake, by Martha Brooks
0888997523 | $14.95 pb | in stock
Groundwood Books (HarperCollins)

Martha Brooks is the only Manitoba author to feature in the Free Press’ summer books feature, and is also the only “young-adult” novel mentioned among adult titles from the likes of Michael Ondaatje, Ian McEwan, and Jodi Picoult:

“Like that series about the boy wizard whatisname, this young-adult story set in a fictional version of Gimli is being touted as enjoyable for grownups as well.” — Morley Walker, Winnipeg Free Press

CBC.ca’s Words at Large post Reading Road Trip List

Words at Large is encouraging readers to take a “road trip” this summer by reading books from each province across the country. Included in the list are:

Newfoundland:

Grey Islands, by John Steffler
0-9737586-0-0 | $19.95 audio cd | in stock
Rattling Books / House of Anansi (HarperCollins)

Canada’s Poet Laureate takes a road trip to the Grey Islands off the Northern Peninsula of Newfoundland. The book is about isolation, as the narrator reflects on life and the lives of the people who once inhabited these now deserted islands.

 

 

Ontario:

Coureurs de Bois, by Bruce MacDonald
1-896951-72-4 | $22.95 pb | in stock
Cormorant Books (UTP Distribution)

A fast-paced first novel in which author Bruce MacDonald takes on the police, the parole system, mental health care and its providers, and banks. Coureurs de Bois is the story of William Tobe, an Ottawa-born economics grad, who moves to Toronto and falls under the spell of the recently paroled Native Canadian Randall Cobb Seymour who is hell-bent on mastering “the Queen’s economy.” Good-hearted Will not only becomes involved in Cobb’s scams, but finds himself swept up in his own evolving, urban vision quest.

Alberta:

Odori, by Darcy Tamayose
978-1-897151-09-9 | $22.95 pb | in stock
Cormorant Books (UTP Distribution)

The story of a family whose life-blood is embedded as much in the prairie soil of Alberta as in the sands of the Okinawan shores. Odori centres on the downfall of the glorious and peaceful Ryukyuan Kingdom that became Okinawa, and its survival in the souls of its displaced people.

PW Review of Vanishing America

Vanishing America, by James Conaway
978-1-59376-128-8 | $19.95 hc | available October
Shoemaker & Hoard / Publishers Group Canada (Raincoast)

In these perceptive essays, Conaway (The Far Side of Eden) shows how development and tourism are laying waste to America’s natural and cultural landscapes. Entertaining as well as astute, the pieces revolve around his impressions of exceptional places he considers “physical and spiritual barometers” of the country’s health, including the Boise River in Idaho (overused and polluted), Napa Valley in California (disfigured by gigantic wineries and McMansions) and national parks (considered “saleable products” by elected officials and adversely affected by too many tourists, toilets, buses, concessionaires and paved highways). On Western communal lands that should be preserved by the Bureau of Land Management, such as New Mexico’s Bisti Badlands and Wyoming’s Big Piney, energy exploration and extraction, grazing and all-terrain vehicles are taking their toll. On the grounds of Washington, D.C.’s National Cathedral, “development needs” have resulted in new buildings, accommodations for tour buses and a huge gymnasium, so that an institution supposedly dedicated to saving souls has been turned into an “engine of tourism, development, and controversy.” Conaway argues persuasively that these irreplaceable landscapes stand for the real America, but because we are sacrificing them to material concerns, we’re losing our culture along with the very ground upon which America was built.

Illustrator’s Notebook wins Children’s Africana Book Award

The Illustrator’s Notebook, by Mohieddin Ellabbad
9780888997005 | $16.95 hc | in stock
Groundwood Books (HarperCollins)

The Illustrator’s Notebook by Mohieddin Ellabbad has won the Children’s Africana Book Award in the Best Book for Older Readers category. Last year, another Groundwood book won this award as well (The Mzungu Boy). Congratulations to Mohieddin!