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Category: Fiction

Wayne Arthurson Book Launch, Edmonton

by Dan
Events + Fiction + Mysteries and Thrillers / April 13, 2012

Canadian journalist, author and musician Wayne Arthurson will be launching his new novel A Killing Winterat The Artery in Edmonton on Wednesday April 18th. The event starts at 7:00pm.

Wayne's previous crime thriller, the critically acclaimed Fall From Grace, is a finalist for the 2012 Alberta Reader's Choice Award. 

A Killing Winter Launch Party Featuring Wayne Arthurson
April 18th 2012
7:00pm
The Artery
9535 Jasper Ave Edmonton, AB T5H 3V2
Phone: 780-441-6966 

See you there! 

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Alyx Dellamonica Blue Magic Launch at UBC, April 19th

by Dan
Events + Fiction + Science Fiction and Fantasy / March 29, 2012

Vancouver-based author Alyx Dellamonica will reading from her new novel Blue Magic at the UBC Bookstore on April 19th, 7:30pm.

The sequel to her award-winning eco-fantasy Indigo Springs, Blue Magic continues the story of the three friends who unwittingly caused the escape of magic into North America through a crack between worlds. 

A powerful story of private lives changed by earthshaking events Blue Magic is a poignant tale of a world touched by magic and plagued by its consequences.

 

Alyx Dellamonica
Blue Magic Book Launch
7:30pm, April 19th 2012
UBC Bookstore
800 Robson Street, Vancouver
Tel: 1-800-661-3889 / (604) 822-2665

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Hilary Davidson at Hamilton Public Library

by Dan
Events + Fiction + Mysteries and Thrillers / February 29, 2012

Hilary Davidson, Canadian travel journalist and author of the awarding-winning mystery The Damage Done, will be at the Ancaster Branch of Hamilton Public Library next Wednesday (March 7th 2012) to launch her new novel The Next One To Fall. The event starts at 7pm and books will be available from Bryan Prince Books (full details below).

Hilary Davidson
Wednesday, March 7th: 7:00pm
Hamilton Public Library (Ancaster Branch)
300 Wilson Street East, at Sulphur Springs Road (Ancaster)
Free Admision. Please RSVP to .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)

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Among Others is a Nebula Award Finalist for Best Novel

by Siobhan
Fiction + Science Fiction and Fantasy / February 23, 2012

The Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America (SFWA) have announced the finalists for this year's Nebula Awards, the Ray Bradbury Award, and the Andre Norton Award.

Congratulations to Tor Books' Jo Walton for being one of the finalists for Best Novel for her book, Among Others! The novel is already a big favourite among the staff here at Raincoast.

If you're in Toronto, you'll have a chance to meet Jo Walton at her event at Bakka Phoenix Books this Saturday, February 25th.

View the full list of Nebula Award finalists on Tor.com.

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Jo Walton at Bakka Phoenix February 25th

by Dan
Events + Fiction + Science Fiction and Fantasy / February 16, 2012

Among Others by Jo Walton was one of my favourite books last year. The voice of estranged teenager Mor — a lone twin in a new and austere private school — and her struggle to find some kind redemption through books makes for compelling reading. It is a haunting and unashamedly brainy novel.

I have been busy recommending left, right, and centre and so I'm really happy that Jo will be celebrating the release of the paperback edition of Among Others at Bakka Phoenix Books in my hometown Toronto at 3pm on Saturday February 25th. If you've read the book already, you won't want to miss it. And if you haven't, well, what are you waiting for...?

Jo Walton / Among Others
3pm Saturday, February 25th 2012
BAKKA PHOENIX 
84 Harbord Street,
Toronto
Tel: 416-963-9993 

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Gung Hay Fat Choy

by Natalia
Events + Fiction + Science Fiction and Fantasy / January 23, 2012

Happy Chinese New Year!  Festivities began for the new year yesterday: we are leaving the year of the rabbit and entering the year of the dragon, one of the mightiest and most auspicious symbols in the zodiac.  I'm looking forward to Vancouver's Chinese New Year parade this Sunday — always a great event for families.

In honour of the new year, here are a few books featuring the finest, scaliest, most terrifying firebreathers around!

Dragonships of Vindras series by Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Dragon Age series by David Gaider:

Of course, the Wheel of Time series.  Tor is giving away 50 copies of The Eye of the World in celebration of the new year!

And let's take a moment to acknowledge the very first (Western) dragon of them all — a thousand years later still unmatchable for its bloodcurling ferocity:

Then the baleful fiend its fire belched out,
and bright homes burned. The blaze stood high
all landsfolk frighting. No living thing
would that loathly one leave as aloft it flew.
Wide was the dragon’s warring seen,
its fiendish fury far and near,
as the grim destroyer those Geatish people
hated and hounded. To hidden lair,
to its hoard it hastened at hint of dawn.
Folk of the land it had lapped in flame,
with bale and brand.                                                         —Beowulf XXXI

Remember to clean your house from top to bottom for good luck in the coming year.

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Sisterhood of Dune Vancouver Launch

by Dan
Events + Fiction + Science Fiction and Fantasy / January 09, 2012

Join author Brian Herbert at the launch of his new novel The Sisterhood of Dune — the latest book in the international bestselling Dune series — at 2pm on Sunday January 15th (THIS SUNDAY!!) at Chapters Metrotown in Burnaby. 

Brian Herbert, Sisterhood of Dune
January 15th at 2pm
Chapters Metrotown
Metropolis, Metrotown 4700 Kingsway
Burnaby, British Columbia
V5H 4M1
Tel: 604-431-0463
 

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My Favourite Books of 2011: Nadia (Operations)

by Nadia
Fiction / December 22, 2011

This is my first year at Raincoast and already it’s hard to choose a favourite. There have been plenty of non-fiction recommendations from everyone, so I’m going to recommend some good fiction from this year.

For the mystery lovers, A Trick of the Light by Louise Penny is a pretty sure bet. Written by a Canadian author and set in Québec, this is the seventh and latest in the mystery series featuring Chief Inspector Armand Gamache of the Sûreté du Québec. This mystery features two worlds:  the world of art and the world of a small town. It makes for an interesting and engaging cast of characters and the central mystery itself is not an easy one to solve. Having grown-up in small town Québec myself, the setting of Three Pines was an added incentive to me to pick up this book. 

I enjoyed it enough to pick up a copy of the previous novel in the series, Bury Your Dead, that I plan to read over Christmas. 

This next one isn’t a new pub, but I haven’t managed to read much (read: none) of the new science fiction that was published in 2011. But if you like science fiction and you haven’t read Ender’s Game, I can’t recommend it highly enough. Winner of both the Hugo and Nebula Awards for best novel, it’s a classic and the first in the series about Andrew “Ender” Wiggin. It’s in the process of being adapted into a movie by Odd Lot and Summi that will feature Harrison Ford, Asa Butterfield, Hailee Steinfeld and Ben Kingsley.  It was first published in 1985 and is still available from TOR.

And since Jamie’s already gone and recommended both an older book and one we don’t have here at Raincoast, I’m going to add my favourite science fiction book of them all: To Say Nothing of the Dog by Connie Willis. This is part science fiction (time travel is central to the plot) and part comedy of manners (most of the novel takes place in Victorian England). It’s a very funny book, with plenty of literary references slipped in alongside the laws and physics of time travel.

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My Favourite Books of 2011: Matt (Sales)

by Matt
Fiction + Food & Drink + Kids / December 21, 2011

As the holiday season has already shown, “just one more”, seems to have become my motto. I’ll try and break this habit in choosing from the smorgasbord of delectable books distributed by Raincoast in 2011, difficult as that may be considering my…appetite.

You would think this means I would start with a cookbook, and it does. I will. Two of them actually, both beautifully designed and produced by Chronicle Books.

Yotam Ottolenghi’s (love that name), Plenty, has fast become the must-have foodie cookbook of the year. It is filled with stunning visuals and consistent recipes that promise to sway even the most ardent eaters of faun and fowl into dedicated vegetarians. Five words; Caramelized fennel with goat cheese. Much like with my wife, I fell in love when I saw this book. That love has developed and deepened as I have cooked.  Awkward metaphor? Yes. Great cookbook? Definitely. 

Ruhlman’s Twenty taught me more about salt and water than a day trip to First Beach. I am a better cook for having read, and re-read this book, and you will be too.

Owing to my four year old nephew and six year old niece, both of whom have developed a taste for my next pick, I have read and reread Herve Tullet’s, Press Here, more times than I care to admit, more times than I have the Lord of the Rings. That is saying something. It’s not often a book can elicit visceral responses from me within the first few pages. Even rarer are those books that can engage the reader, young or old, to pick it up, shake it out, turn it sideways, push on brightly painted circles and alternate between clapping, laughing, clapping faster, and laughing noisily in a rising crescendo as the book nears its end. The answer to TV and the internet is in this 8x8 board book, published first in France in 2010, and then picked up by Chronicle Books and brought to the Canadian market in 2011. 

Grandpa Green is Lane Smith’s newest children’s title after It’s a Book. It is a memoir, a personal narrative on growing old and on being young, on imagination and forgetting, on the ingenuity of telling a story, whether your own or someone else’s, in a way that remains true to the heart. This book has my heart in its pages, for the beauty of the story and the images both. It’s one I’ll read to my child and savor for myself in the quiet moments.

Among Others, by Jo Walton treads softly, using echoes of the fantastic and a decidedly non-urgent magic to tell a fictional tale that could be otherwise completely more or less mostly real. It is a fairy tale and an elegant curtsy to the great stories and writers of the sci-fi and fantasy genres. Thanks to Dan for pointing this book out to me – I’ve never read anything quite like it. Here is what I emailed him after I was finished:  “The way in which she weaves magic into the fabric of her life, and the story reminds me of the film Pan's Labyrinth, where, as the audience you aren't sure if magic really does exist or if her telling is something that is purely fantastical and without truth. The complexity of that question has kept me gnawing at it the last few nights, it's definitely a book I'll pass on to some friends for discussion when I'm done. PS — I think I saw a fairy this morning.”

Lastly, Paula Scher MAPS, Published by Princeton Architectual Press, surprised me with its beauty and with its complexity. Whether you take to this book for its visuals or prefer to delve into the theory behind the project, there is no doubting its resonance as an artifact of modern culture, and a remembering of an art form quickly becoming anachronistic.  Sher uses language to (re)create her maps; some familiar and some less so. They are drawn from, “memory, from impressions from media, and from general information overload”, and her brief introduction, titled “All Maps Lie” outlines how all maps are fallible objects influenced by factors as trivial as personal preference, inaccurate information, and imagination. The maps themselves keep me coming back to them with new questions in mind, curious as to how the world looks through her copious and particular lens. Every page engages and invites us to follow along and recognize the unfamiliar in what is quite clearly a familiar landscape. 

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Naughty and Nice

by Siobhan
Fiction / December 19, 2011

The fire is roaring, you're curled up in a warm, wooly blanket with a cup of hot chocolate... what more could you need to heat things up this holiday season? Hmm, how about a Christmas romance!

Here are a couple of new romance novels from Sourcebooks that'll make you want to hang up mistletoe all round the house.

Lady Sophie's Christmas Wish
by Grace Burrowe, author of The Heir, Soldier and Virtuoso.

A luminous holiday tale of romance, passion, and dreams come true from rising star Grace Burrowes, whose award-winning Regency romances are capturing hearts worldwide.

All she wants is peace and anonymity… Lady Sophie Windham has maneuvered a few days to herself at the ducal mansion in London before she must join her family for Christmas in Kent. Suddenly trapped by a London snowstorm, she finds herself with an abandoned baby and only the assistance of a kind, handsome stranger standing between her and complete disaster.

But Sophie’s holiday is about to heat up… With his estate in ruins, Vim Charpentier sees little to feel festive about this Christmas. His growing attraction for Sophie Windham is the only thing that warms his spirits—but when Sophie’s brothers whisk her away, Vim’s most painful holiday memories are reawakened.

It seems Sophie’s been keeping secrets, and now it will take much more than a mistletoe kiss to make her deepest wishes come true…

 

Darn Good Cowboy Christmas
by Carolyn Brow, author of Red's Hot Cowboy and Love Drunk Cowboy and Honky Tonk Christmas.

Just in time for Christmas, a scorching-hot cowboy romance from a rising star author.

Carolyn Author of #1 bestselling Christmas romance in 2010 (Honky Tonk Christmas) creates a new installment in her sexy contemporary cowboy romance series that showcases her amazing Southern voice.

Born and raised in a traveling carnival, all Liz Hanson ever wanted for Christmas was a home that didn't have wheels. After she was old enough to date she added one more item: a sexy cowboy.

She'd about given up on Santa ever bringing either one when her father dies and leaves her an ugly house and twenty acres in Texas. Then rancher Raylen O'Donnell walks onto her property.

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