The Last Thirteen: 13 By James Phelan Sam, Eva and Alex are average teenagers, but their dreams are intense and sometimes frightening. Sam has been sent to a psychiatrist to deal with his dreams and the aftermath of a traumatic event. But when Sam’s school is raided by “national security agents” and he is whisked […]
Miriam Toews has this way of writing lines that are so beautiful that sometimes I have to close her books for a moment just to marvel at them. All My Puny Sorrowsis a book that is full of such moments; alternating equally between being eloquently wise, wickedly funny and jaggedly heartbreaking. In every one […]
By Mary Roach While there are plenty of books that cover the political and human impacts of war, we rarely see and examination of more unusual aspects of maintaining a military force. Grunt by Mary Roach isn’t about new guns and tanks, drones and missiles. This is the kind of stuff that most people don’t […]
The Wild Robot By Peter Brown Can a robot survive in the wilderness? Robot Roz must do exactly that when she discovers that she has washed up on the shore of a remote island. Although Roz has been programmed to know many things, she does not know how to survive in the outdoors. But Roz, […]
Boundless By Kathleen Winter When Kathleen Winter is offered a chance to journey through the relatively unknown waters of the Northwest Passage, she responds truthfully, “My bags are already packed.” As a writer, Winter is always ready to embark on a journey and she’s fascinated by the mysteries of the Arctic. In her memoir, Boundless, […]
Space CaseBy Stuart Gibbs Dashiell Gibson is only 12 years old, but he has the privilege of being one of the first people to live on the moon. Although that sounds exciting, life on the moon can be pretty boring. Seeing the same people and doing the same things every day can get tedious. And […]
The Paris Wife Paula McLain The Paris Wife by Paula McLain, is a lilting story of the life of Ernest Hemingway and his first wife, Hadley Richardson. Written from Hadley’s perspective, we get an inside look to what it was like to be a woman in the 1920’s married to a chauvinistic, self-obsessed man who […]
The Kill by Jane Casey I read a lot of mysteries, but surprisingly I have not read anything by Jane Casey before. I’m not sure how I missed her over the years, but I am really glad I stumbled upon her books. The Kill is the fifth book in Jane Casey’s fantastic Maeve Kerrigan’s series. […]
A Darker Shade of Magic by Victoria SchwabJust when I thought that there was nothing new under the sun, I stumbled upon “A Darker Shade of Magic” by Victoria Schwab. At first glance, this fantasy has many elements that might be familiar to readers of the genre: invented languages, magic, a large cast of characters, […]
BirdieBy Tracey Lindberg Everything I read about Tracey Lindberg’s Birdie told me to expect humour. So naturally, I thought I’d be reading a fairly lighthearted novel. Not so. In fact, Birdie was not what I expected at all. Birdie, or Bernice Meetoos, is a young Cree woman from Loon Lake, Alberta. Raised by her mother […]