Valentine’s Fall reviewed in Canadian Jewish News, to come in Toronto Star & Winnipeg Free Press

Valentine’s Fall, by Cary Fagan
978-1897151457 | $21.00 pb | in stock
Cormorant Books (UTP Distribution)

Cary Fagan’s new novel has been reviewed in The Canadian Jewish News and also on the online music site Mandolin Café. Reviews are also coming soon from The Toronto Star and The Winnipeg Free Press.

Elise Moser’s debut reviewed in National Post

Because I Have Loved and Hidden It, by Elise Moser
978-1897151365 | $21.00 pb | in stock
Cormorant Books (UTP Distribution)

The debut novel from Elise Moser was reviewed in the National Post on Sept. 26. From the review:

On the day of her mother’s funeral, Julia Goodman, at 40 no stranger to sorrow and disappointment, learns that she is not an only child, that a sibling, two years older, was given up for adoption at birth. With her father long dead and her mother now gone, there will be no answers from either of them.

Her quest to learn more is one of the threads running through Elise Moser’s ambitious and artfully woven debut novel, Because I Have Loved and Hidden It.

Oonagh reviewed in the Globe & Mail

Oonagh, by Mary Tilberg
978-1897151181 | $21.00 pb | in stock
Cormorant Books (UTP Distribution)

The Globe & Mail reviewed Mary Tilberg’s novel Oonagh on April 24:

Risky and rewarding

REVIEWED BY JIM BARTLEY

April 24, 2009

We enter novels with hope. What we seek is seduction and immersion, whether it comes easily or is stealthily, even painfully coerced. We want equally to escape life and to have it infuse us with new force.

I entered the brief but brimming first chapter of Mary Tilberg’s debut with the usual slightly wary anticipation. In the Upper Canada of the 1830s, a woman alone in bed is remembering someone: "I felt the contours of his smile on my face, as if he were smiling out of my own features."

It becomes clear that she’s unable or unwilling to leave the bed in her sister’s house. She drifts into and out of sleep. "I swam in it, a fish breathing underwater." The smiling man swims with her. She reaches for his smooth stomach muscles and he playfully darts away like a seal. Each time the dreams fade, reality assails her: "a cave full of howling wind … a cold sea dragging me down."

It’s apparent we’re dealing with sorrow, but in Tilberg’s pictures from a mind reeling we see also the world’s gifts. Oonagh Corcoran is the mad sister in the guest room, bleeding hallucinatory joy and pain, a damaged vessel that her family can’t fix. It’s an uncommonly adept and affecting first chapter. The writing is chock full of quiet wonders.

Flash back several years to a seaside village in Ireland. Oonagh, with sister, Mairi, and her young husband, are given the means to break free of both poverty and the chronic political turmoil that led to an innocent brother’s public hanging. Relatives in Canada have sent a letter holding ship passage. The gift of freedom is cut with sadness; they must abandon a tight-knit family and beloved landscape.

In a scenario ripe for lilting melodrama, Tilberg’s compact prose instead delivers nuanced character work and dialogue with just the right pitch of rough affection. The scenes of family meals and neighbourly tensions, the whisky-fuelled rituals of a wedding reception, even the sea and sky hum with a sensory immediacy uncluttered by writerly ornament.

M is for Moose shortlisted for Ruth and Sylvia Schwartz Children’s Book Awards

M is for Moose, by Charles Pachter
978-1-897151-33-4 | $20.00 hc | in stock
Cormorant Books (UTP Distribution)

Charlie Pachter’s M is for Moose has been shortlisted in the Children’s Picture Book category for the 2009 Ruth and Sylvia Schwartz Children’s Book Awards. The winners will be announced on May 20, 2009.

Underground reviewed in the Globe

Underground, by June Hutton
978-1896951812 | $21.00 pb | in stock
Cormorant Books (UTP Distribution)

The Globe & Mail ran a great review of June Hutton’s debut novel on the weekend:

Taut and lean and elegant

REVIEWED BY LYNDA GRACE PHILIPPSEN

April 10, 2009

The day June Hutton’s debut novel, Underground, arrived, even though it was quite late I took a quick peek at the first page before heading up to bed.

A third of the way through, I had to force myself to put it down.

Once finished, I returned to it in idle moments, not to begin the review but to read for pleasure; let the pages fall open, pick a sentence, a paragraph or a chapter to savour. It’s that kind of story.

To find illumination in the darkness that shapes his life, it is necessary to “step to the side,” something that protagonist Al Fraser learns. To survive, it is essential to trust past experience, squelch his fears and persist.

At times, luck sticks a hand in it too. It’s also Hutton’s luck to have had a grandfather who “was buried alive in a trench at the Somme. He dug his way to the top and punched a fist through the mud.” That incident, coupled with Hutton’s discovery that the international soldiers’ salute during the Spanish Civil War was a raised fist, sparked this story.

The novel opens after a night spent digging out a collapsed trench in the Somme. Fraser, not yet 18, and “another dozen of them up and down the trench, their helmets just skimming the top, a line of turtles along a ditch hoping their shells protect them,” wait for the end of their tour. However, in the “oyster smear” of daylight on their return to the dugout, “the cold air becomes an oven, hot breath roars in his ears. A heavy hand clamps onto his skull and flings him up into folds of hot air. …

“The brown sky balloons and then collapses, hurtling him back to the ground … into the same brown dirt that has lifted him and now, instantly, buries him.”

This is not Fraser’s first journey underground. At 14, so short that the other miners said he should work with the Chinese in cramped tunnels where “workers had to crawl on their bellies,” he went into the Nanaimo coal mines “two thousand feet below the ocean floor.” Before that, his first Canadian home was a soddie where his mother’s Spode and Persian carpets “looked as silly” as they did later in a miner’s shack and on an abandoned ranch.

Cormorant title nominated for Commonwealth Writers’ Prize

Silver Salts, by Mark Blagrave
978-1897151242 | $21.00 pb | in stock
Cormorant Books (UTP Distribution)

Mark Blagrave’s novel Silver Salts is one of seven books to be nominated in the Best First Book category for the 2009 Commonwealth Writers’ Prize (Canadian/Caribbean region).

M is for Moose on The National, CBC Radio’s Next Chapter, more

M is for Moose, by Charles Pachter
978-1-897151-33-4 | $20.00 hc | in stock
Cormorant Books (UTP Distribution)

M is for Moose is starting to get some great national coverage:

Canadian Press is running a story on the book, which will likely show up in newspapers everywhere.

The Scene, on CBC’s the National, is going to run a piece.

Shelagh Rogers is interviewing Charles on The Next Chapter, her new weekend show on CBC Radio.

The Walrus and the Canadian Jewish News will be running stories as well. Plus, the RCMP is promoting it in their newsletter.

New Release Roundup: Titles Shipping Now

Here’s a quick list of some of the more important fall books that are in the warehouses and shipping now:

Doors Open, by Ian Rankin
9780752890715 | $24.95 pb | in stock
Orion / McArthur & Co. (HarperCollins)

Ian Rankin’s DOORS OPEN is now shipping from Harper Collins (McArthur) and will be soon on National bestseller lists. And don’t forget the final Rebus novel, Exit Music, is now out in mass market paperback (978-0752893952).

Payback, by Margaret Atwood
9780887848100 | $18.95 pb | in stock
House of Anansi (HarperCollins)

Also, Margaret Atwood’s new Massey Lecture PAYBACK (Anansi) will hit Harper’s warehouse Sept 12. She hits the road to deliver the lectures in October, and they’ll be broadcast on CBC in early November.

Cockroach, by Rawi Hage
978088784209 | $29.95 hc | in stock
House of Anansi (HarperCollins)

Off to War, by Deborah Ellis
9780888998958 | $12.95 pb | in stock
House of Anansi (HarperCollins)

Both Deborah Ellis’s book OFF TO WAR and Rawi Hage’s book COCKROACH are getting lots of fabulous reviews and media attention. Cockroach has just been longlisted for this year’s Giller Prize as well.

 

Born With a Tooth, new edition, by Joseph Boyden
978-1-897151-34-1 | $20.00 pb | in stock
Cormorant Books (UTP Distribution)

Joseph Boyden’s new book is coming from Penguin this fall and will push sales for this paperback. His new book has also been longlisted for the Giller.

M is for Moose, by Charles Pachter
978-1-897151-33-4 | $20.00 hc | in stock
Cormorant Books (UTP Distribution)

This book is beginning to take on a life of its own: please take note. I’ll update publicity and promotion developments as they are booked. At the moment, the book will be featured in the October issue CANADIAN FAMILY.  This could be THE kids Canadiana art book of the Christmas season!

M is for Moose to be in Canadian Family, Toronto Life

M is for Moose, by Charles Pachter
978-1897151334 | $20.00 hc | available September
Cormorant Books (UTP Distribution)

M is for Moose will have coverage in both Canadian Family Magazine and Toronto Life. The back cover endorsements are in as well:

“M is for Most Marvellous”, an alphabet book whose quirky verse and brilliant paintings  — that sparkling water, those nobly looming Moose, those Mouth-watering butter tarts — have Major Mojo. Any Canadian kid or former kid will be Mesmerized, and I think these indelibly vivid and iconic images will take up residence in their Minds. What a lovely legacy!” – Michele Landsberg

"A Book Charlie Drew Exudes Fine art, Grace + Humour". – Arlene Perly Rae

Ricci’s Lives of the Saints in G&M Paperback section

Lives of the Saints, by Nino Ricci
978-1897151358 | $20.00 pb | in stock
Cormorant Books (UTP Distribution)

The new edition of Ricci’s Lives of the Saints was mentioned in the Paperback column in last weekend’s Globe and Mail Book Section.