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Zed’s Latest Finds

Here's a roundup of what book club contributors are reading, including a thriller set on Canada's West Coast, a biography about the making of Jackie Onassis and a book about tai chi by Lou Reed / BY Zed Staff / May 29th, 2023


As the days get hotter, there’s no better way to stay cool than with a chilled glass of your favourite beverage and a good book. Here at Zed, we’ve been reading an eclectic mix of fiction and non fiction: from mysterious shipwrecks and learning how to look at the Sistine Chapel to the final novel written by the author who brought us the crime-solving escapes of Inspector Banks

Obsessive Book Buyers: Zoomer editors have carefully curated our book coverage to ensure you find the perfect read. We may earn a commission on books you buy by clicking on the cover.

1CAMERA GIRL: THE COMING OF AGE OF JACKIE BOUVIER KENNEDYby Carl Sferrazza Anthony

Author’s Home Base: Los Angeles

Author’s Take: “My hope is that people do get a fuller sense of her. I think she’s got such a rich story that even when I wrote the oral history biography of her, it was such a sweep of her entire life that to slow it down to these four formative years, that was a very crucial decision my editor and I made early on.” 

Favourite Lines: “Janet might control her daughter’s deeds but she could never control her thoughts. Like all willful tyrants, Janet was blinded by her arrogance. She believed she was determining what her daughter was becoming. Yet, crafty as Jackie could be in giving the impression that she would follow the course Mummy laid out, Jacqueline Bouvier never relinquished her right to the larger future she intended to have. It drove her on.”

Review: Just when it seemed there could be nothing left to learn about one of the 20th century’s most intensely scrutinized women, along comes author Carl Sferrazza Anthony’s Camera Girl, essentially the origin story of Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy. Chronicling four critical years in the heralded former first lady’s life from 1949 to 1953, Anthony — author of multiple first lady histories — demonstrates where Jackie’s legendary gravitas came from (balancing an overbearing mother against a needy father) while proving “there was something beneath the pillbox hat” as Jackie herself allegedly observed after reading a previous Anthony portrayal of her. 

As other 20-something women in her rarefied orbit were jockeying for wealthy husbands, Jackie studied at the Sorbonne in Paris where she mastered French, later winning a rigorous but highly coveted Vogue junior editorship, graduating college, serving as a columnist for a Washington D.C. daily and basically upending every convention society and her family placed around her. Yet, she was also well aware that her status as an intelligent, ambitious, engaged woman would not advance her matrimonially in sexist mid-century America. Until it did, when she met dashing war hero, author and Democratic congressman John F. Kennedy at a dinner party in May 1951 (not 1952 as reported elsewhere). 

The rest, as they say, is history, though Anthony brings fresh nibbles to the buffet including a Bouvier family incest reveal and, perhaps more notably, details of how she helped Kennedy “formulate his views on the Vietnam question [by] writing a groundbreaking report for him in 1953,” the contents of which are examined here for the first time. That radically contradicts previous assertions by Jackie that she “got all my opinions from my husband.”

Exhaustive though occasionally exhausting — really, how much relentless physical, academic and filial perfection can anyone bear to read about? — Anthony’s book is a slam dunk for Camelot purists and obsessives alike, and a fascinating window into the early adult life of a woman who somehow managed to be intensely private and globally famous at the same time.  —Kim Hughes


2THE ART OF THE STRAIGHT LINE: MY TAI CHI by Lou Reed

Author’s Home Base: New York City

Author’s Take: “[Lou] didn’t want to do an autobio. We tried to make this like a handbook, a how-to, because he really wanted people to do [tai chi]. He genuinely wanted to help people. He was really driven by this need to make things better. Even on the smallest level, he was always asking, ‘How am I going to make things better?’ He tried to make everything as big, beautiful and fantastic as it could be.” 

Favourite Lines: “Tai Chi frees you from preconceptions — music or tempo, this, that, or the other thing. It is, I think, a pretty enabling kind of thing. I hate to use that word, ‘enabling,’ but there it is. It’s very, very useful for centering yourself, for experiencing these different kinds of disciplines, be it meditation, bodywork, tai chi, yoga, whatever. Or I like to just have it going all the time because it makes the outside sounds into a more musical environment.”

Review: Lou Reed loved tai chi. Really loved it. He practiced it, taught it, evangelized endlessly about it and pushed everyone in his orbit — from the leather-clad maulers in Metallica, with whom he cut 2011’s Lulu album to Canuck super-producer Bob Ezrin — to give it a go. 

In 2009, the one-time Velvet Underground lynchpin set his sights on writing a book about his beloved martial art. But “too many things intervened,” his widow, the artist Laurie Anderson writes in the foreword to The Art of the Straight Line, which she co-edited with a trio of Reed’s friends. Reed died in 2013 at age 71, leaving behind only “scattered notes.” Yet, Reed also left behind a small, vocal army of tai chi converts and cohorts, whose recollections make up this unusual book, which is organized like an oral history but with Anderson sometimes popping up as interlocutor. 

Familiar names like rocker Iggy Pop, filmmakers Wim Wenders and Julian Schnabel, magician Penn Jillette and Kirk Hammett from the aforementioned Metallica offer anecdotes about the late musician. So do multiple tai chi practitioners, among them Reed’s most important teachers: Master Ren GuangYi — a key figure in Reed’s tai chi development who sometimes performed with him onstage — plus Peter Morales, brother of Reed’s second wife, Sylvia, who introduced Reed to tai chi on the cusp of the ’80s when his much-abused body was in serious need of rehabilitation. 

Tai chi, Reed contends, allowed him to age gracefully while meditatively making peace with the world. “Not to get too flowery here, but I want more out of life than a gold record and fame,” he writes. “I want to mature like a warrior.” The Art of the Straight Line — the title a sly reference to the “circles within circles” propelling practice, which forces one to “move through circles without losing your sense of direction” — is essential reading for fans of Reed, tai chi or, ideally, both. But it’s difficult to recommend more generally. Yes, it’s enlightening and occasionally funny and there are some detours into Reed’s songwriting process. But mostly, it’s really, really focused on tai chi. Enough said.  —Kim Hughes


3THINGS I WISH I TOLD MY MOTHERby Susan Patterson and Susan DiLallo

Home Base: Palm Beach, Fla. (Patterson); New York, N.Y. (DiLallo)

Authors’ Take: “The idea is to move beyond just being just mothers and daughters and really become best friends”  —Susan Patterson

Favourite Lines: “I cite various people I know who’ve just come back from India, Vietnam, the Galapagos, Manitoba, Newfoundland. My mother’s reaction to all of these: “Why would anybody want to go there?”

Review: This is a fun romp through Paris (and later, Norway), as newly divorced ad exec Laurie Margolis and her mother, the esteemed ob-gyn Dr. Elizabeth Ormson, tour the Catacombs, visit the burnt remains of Notre Dame and shop the French clothing boutiques on Rue Saint-Dominique. The authors really dig into the sights and sounds of the city, but Canadian readers may be a little annoyed by the random deployment of French words and phrases (“it’s just the vendeuse, followed closely by ma mère”) and translations of common French words like confiture and miel

As the title suggests, it’s really about a mother-daughter relationship, and a fraught one at that. Laurie is still licking her wounds when she rashly suggests the trip to her mother, after Dr. Liz, an exacting A-type, has a health scare. Laurie feels she can never live up to her mother’s high expectations, so they clash on the trip, but, as the pages turn, they learn more about each other’s hopes and dreams, and eventually come to a rapprochement.

Thrown into the mix is a hotel bar meet cute for Laurie, who spends a good part of the book pining for her hunky English paramour, and a twist at the end one should expect, given it was written with James Patterson, Susan Patterson’s husband and the world’s bestselling author of myriad thrillers. It’s the perfect novel to blow through on a red-eye to Paris or sunning on a beach in the French Riviera.  —Kim Honey


4ADRIFTby Lisa Brideau

Home Base: Vancouver

Author’s Take: “I’m seeing some folks struggle with Adrift because it’s a slow burn… so to clarify: Adrift isn’t really a thriller. Categorizing it has always been a challenge but I’d say it’s a speculative suspense-y mystery. If you’re looking for a high-octane thriller, this isn’t that!”  —Lisa Brideau

Favourite Line: “Maybe the safest way to avoid the temptation of looking for answers was to be with someone who didn’t care about the questions.”

Review: It might not be a ‘high-octane thriller’, but Brideau doesn’t waste any time throwing the reader right into the soup. In the first few pages, she hooks us in by creating a scenario in which the main character — who we come to know by many names, mainly Ess — embarks on a journey into the unknown that has the potential to end any number of ways; with little at her disposal except determination and blind faith. 

The book starts as Ess wakes up on an anchored sailboat in the archipelago of Haida Gwaii off the coast of British Columbia with a blinding headache and no who she is or how she got there. There is a cryptic note warning her off looking for answers, and telling her not to ‘look back’. What follows is a psychological mystery as Ess defies the notes advice; acting on that innately human desire to solve a riddle — which is Ess’ case involves putting the pieces of her past back together, all the while knowing she might not like what she finds.

Adrift takes place in 2037, and so the catastrophic effects of climate change and global heating loom large over the novel: Canada has become a safe haven for people fleeing extreme weather and infrastructure collapse south of the border, Bangkok is almost completely underwater, global food insecurity is high and the world is facing a crisis of climate refugees. Key moments in the book are set in Nanaimo as the city becomes caked in smoke from nearby forest fires, record high temperatures and later, a severe flood. 

And yet, amid all the action and plot twists are thoughtful ruminations on ‘the self’ — in other words, what makes a person a person in the absence of memories and experience with which to base the idea of who they are on. “… without a sense of self, memories have no meaning, yet the self is a product of our memories. But memories are fluid and easily modified, just the act of recalling a memory reshapes it, so how can they be the basis for sense of self …” Despite other characters thinking Ess’ lost memory is a fresh start, she’s determined to put the puzzle together, even if in the end, some of those pieces are never found.   —Kisha Ferguson

 


5THE WAGER: A TALE OF SHIPWRECK, MUTINY AND MURDER by David Grann

Home Base: New York

Author’s Take: “… when I found the story of the Wager, it seemed like here you could really see the way people were shading their stories, but then also how nations and empires shade their stories and create their own narratives and their own mythic tales.”

Favourite Line: “Five and a half years. That’s how long the three men had been gone from England. Presumed dead, they had been mourned, and yet here they were, like three Lazaruses.”

Review: New York writer David Grann is probably one of the foremost writers of popular history at work today. From his pieces for the New Yorker (included those collected in The Devil & Sherlock Holmes) to his breakthrough book The Lost City of Z and the international bestseller Killers of the Flower Moon (Martin Scorcese’s film adaptation of the latter debuts in Cannes this month), Grann has been able to find overlooked or forgotten stories and, through scrupulous (and often dangerous) research, bring them to vivid life. He’s part writer, and part treasure hunter.

With his new book, The Wager: A Tale of Shipwreck, Mutiny and Murder, trains his skilled eye on actual treasure hunters. In 1740, The Wager and her crew joined a small squadron of ships charged with chasing down a Spanish galleon loaded with treasure, part of the colonial conflict between England and Spain. From their much-delayed start, everything seemed to go wrong with the hunt, The Wager was lost rounding Cape Horn, and eventually shipwrecked. What follows is a story of mutinies and death, culminating in the return of two groups of sailors to England, each with very different accounts of what actually happened. When a court martial is called, those stories take on the weight of life or death.

In Grann’s hands, this largely forgotten chapter in nautical history comes to vivid life almost three centuries later. From the carefully developed personalities of the captain and his crew to the agonizing accounts of scurvy, starvation and sea battles, The Wager is an utterly compelling and powerful read.  —Robert Wiersema

 


6ALL THINGS MOVEby Jeannie Marshall

Home Base: Rome

Author’s Take: I last visited the Sistine Chapel in February. I wanted to make one last visit before the book would be published and the winter is usually a quieter time. I was surprised to find that I’m still having new reactions to it. I see more in it with each visit”  —From the foreword

Favourite Line: “In trying to explain the Sistine Chapel frescoes to myself in words, I am translating one form of communication to another. And this process makes it apparent that visual art is a way of communicating the things that words alone cannot convey.”

Review: While the Vatican Museums and, in particular, the Sistine Chapel, are usually near the top of any visitor to Rome’s must-see list, expatriate Canadian writer Jeannie Marshall (who moved to Rome with her boyfriend, now husband, in 2002) had been living in the city for a dozen years before she paid her first visit, in the wake of her mother’s death in 2014. “My first experience,” she writes in All Things Move, “was not pleasant and was certainly not what I expected.” In fact, that visit was so “unsatisfying” she knew she had to return.

Those early visits set the groundwork for All Things Move, a breathtakingly frank and insightful account of the unanticipated value of looking at art over time. It might seem something of a strange approach for a book, but Marshall guides the reader through crowds and frustration to get at the heart not only of Michelangelo’s frescoes, but also of the inherent power of art to touch something within each of us that words fail to address. Part art history, part social history, part art analysis, part memoir, All Things Move is a genuinely powerful work, incorporating photographs by Douglas Anthony Cooper, which explores the deepest of mysteries: how best to feed the human soul. Ideally, one should have a copy of this in their bag when they visit Rome, but the experience of reading it at home is one of vicarious delight and deep contemplation.  —Robert Wiersema

 


7STANDING IN THE SHADOWS by Peter Robinson

Home Base: Toronto/Yorkshire, England

Author’s Take: “I usually begin a book — at least in my mind — with a body in a specific place. I invent many places when I write a novel, of course, but that first place is always real.” 

Favourite Line: “When Banks assessed the damage the following morning, he realised that he didn’t feel too bad, despite the very large Highland Park he had drunk out in the conservatory before going to bed. It had seemed like a good idea at the time.”

Review: The death of Peter Robinson last October was a tremendous loss for Canadian letters. He was not only an internationally bestselling author, with multiple prizes to his credit, but his Inspector Banks also had become an iconic figure in mystery fiction, a character who had aged (roughly) along with his creator, from his mid-30s as a Detective Chief Inspector in his 1987 debut Gallows View to the Detective Superintendent in his late 60s in 2021’s Not Dark Yet.

This spring brings us Standing In the Shadows, what the publisher is calling “the final installment” of the Banks series. The book, as has become common with the series, follows two separate timelines. 

In the first, Nicholas Hartley, a student, is considered a suspect in the death of his upstairs housemate (and former girlfriend) Alice Poole. This being Yorkshire in 1980, he is also suspected of being the Yorkshire Ripper. Hartley, however, suspects that Mark, Alice’s new boyfriend, may be involved in her death. Mark, however, has disappeared.

In the second storyline, set in 2019, a skeleton is found in an archeological dig near the A1 highway. The remains aren’t Roman, however, they’re no more than a decade or so old. Enter DS Banks and his team.

The storylines interweave and alternate, gradually coming together with a resolution which one could call “classic Robinson”: the sins — and crimes — of the past are never far from the surface in Banks’ world. Standing in the Shadows is also what one could call “classic Robinson,” a top-notch mystery, and a welcome chance to touch base with an old friend, for the final time. Let’s raise a glass of Highland Park to Banks and to Robinson.  —Robert Wiersema

 


8THE EDEN TESTby Adam Sternbergh

Home Base: Brooklyn, New York

Author’s Take: “I’ve always been drawn to stories that are in some way claustrophobic. I love a locked room mystery, the Agatha Christie-style whodunit, but my favorite play in college was ‘No Exit.’” – from L.A. Times

 

Favourite Line: “The scent of his sneakers left by the door, after a jog in the rain, their tongues pulled down like two panting dogs, fills the apartment with a fetid tang.”

 

Review: You know you shouldn’t go down to the woods. You are sure to be in for a big surprise. Yet, The Eden Test sends a not very happy New York couple straight to the back of the forest, to a cabin in Plain, N.Y., where they spend a week (without cellphones) under the auspices of the Edenic Foundation. Couples work on their marriage via seven questions: one envelope delivered a day, with the Q1 through Q7 written in “florid gold script.” From there, Edgar-award finalist Adam Sternbergh, who has written three well-received novels, plays cat and mouse with Daisy of the dirty-blond hair and sexy overalls, and Craig of the too-many-conquests to count. Or are they playing with each other?

“Cat and mouse. Cat and mouse. Who’s the cat? And who’s the mouse?” is a line I kept thinking of, from the 1948 Hitchcock thriller Rope, which sums up the games afoot in The Eden Test as Sternberg wires suspense like shimmering electricity throughout. As the week drips by, we learn about past histories, numerous indiscretions, hidden troubles and secrets. So many secrets. There is a plot twist a day, along with the obligatory standoffs with scary town louts, who hate the “cidiots” from New York. There is also the amusing struggles to find cell phone bars in the middle of nowhere, as the two deal with outside relationships, strangers with blaze orange hunters caps, and each other.

Theatre imagery takes front and centre stage in the book, and watch for the Adam and Eve references, paid out like Macintosh apples. It’s an assured deployment of thematic devices from Sternbergh – formerly of Toronto Life magazine; now an editor at The New York Times. Craftily inventive, The Eden Test is a part-romance, part-thriller and all-fruitful tale for our times.


THE SCROLL

Donald Sutherland, 88, to Detail His Journey to Hollywood Fame in Long-Awaited MemoirThe Canuck screen legend's first-ever autobiography will hit Canadian bookshelves on Nov. 12.


Camilla Leads Miniature Book Initiative to Celebrate 100th Anniversary of the Queen’s Dolls’ HouseThe miniature book collection includes handwritten tomes by Sir Tom Stoppard, Dame Jacqueline Wilson, Sir Ben Okri and other well-known authors


2024 Giller Prize: Noah Richler, Kevin Chong and Molly Johnson Among Jury MembersAuthor Noah Richler is chairing the jury for this year's Giller Prize, an award's body his father literary icon Mordecai Richler helped launch in 1994.


Queen Camilla to Offer Weekly Reading Recommendations in New Queen’s Reading Room PodcastThe Queen's Reading Room Podcast will feature Her Majesty's book picks as well as literary discussions with authors and celebrities every week.


2023 Booker Prize: Irish Writer Paul Lynch Wins For Dystopian ‘Prophet Song’Canadian Booker Prize jury chair Esi Edugyan called the novel a "a triumph of emotional storytelling, bracing and brave."


Sarah Bernstein’s ‘Study for Obedience’ Wins 2023 Scotiabank Giller PrizeThe author, who gave birth to a daughter 10 days ago, accepted the award remotely from her home in the Scottish Highlands


Governor General’s Literary Awards: Anuja Varghese’s ‘Chrysalis’ Among This Year’s WinnersEach of the 14 writers, illustrators and translators will receive a prize of $25,000


Giller Prize Winner Suzette Mayr Among Finalists Shortlisted for 2023 Governor General’s Literary AwardsThe 14 winners, who will each receive a prize of $25,000, will be announced Nov. 8


Five Authors Shortlisted for This Year’s $100,000 Scotiabank Giller PrizeDionne Irving and Kevin Chong are among the finalists who "probe what it means to be human, to survive, and to be who we are"


Norway’s Jon Fosse Wins Nobel Literature Prize for Giving “Voice to the Unsayable”The author's work has been translated into more than 40 languages, and there have been more than 1,000 different productions of his plays.


Scotiabank Giller Prize Longlist Recognizes 12 Authors Who Demonstrate “the Power of Human Imagination”The 2023 longlist includes the prize's 2005 winner David Bergen and debut novelist Deborah Willis. 


Duke and Duchess of Sussex Buy Film Rights to Canadian Author Carley Fortune’s ‘Meet Me at the Lake’Prince Harry and his wife Meghan have purchased the movie rights to the bestselling romantic novel, which was published in May this year.


Booker Prize Longlist ‘Defined by its Freshness’ as Nominees RevealedEsi Edugyan, chair of the 2023 judges, said each of the 13 novels "cast new light on what it means to exist in our time."


Barack Obama Releases His 2023 Summer Reading ListThe list includes the latest novel by Canadian-born New Zealand author Eleanor Catton.


David Suzuki Takes Inspiration From His Own Grandchildren for New Kid’s Book ‘Bompa’s Insect Expedition’The book features Suzuki and two of his grandchildren exploring the insect population in their own backyard.


Milan Kundera, Author of ‘The Unbearable Lightness of Being’, Dies at 94Kundera won global accolades for the way he depicted themes and characters that floated between the mundane reality of everyday life and the lofty world of ideas.


Cormac McCarthy, Pulitzer Prize-Winning Dark Genius of American Literature, Dead at 89McCarthy won the Pulitzer Prize for his 2006 novel 'The Road.'


Remembering the Life and Loves of Literary Bad Boy Martin AmisThe legendary British author has died at 73. His absence will be keenly felt, but Amis leaves behind a book shelf’s worth of novels, including 'London Fields', 'Money' and 'Success', filled with shambolic anti-heroes raising a finger at society. 


Sophie Grégoire Trudeau to Publish Two Books Related to Mental Health and Wellness With Penguin Random House CanadaThe upcoming releases include a wellness book for adults and a picture book for children, which will roll out over the next two years.


Queen Camilla Celebrated Her Love of Books by Having Some Embroidered on Her Coronation GownThe Queen's coronation gown also featured tributes to her children, grandchildren and rescue dogs embroidered into it.


Better Late Than Never: Gabriel Garcia Márquez’s Unpublished Novel Set for Release in 2024'En Agosto Nos Vemos' or 'We'll See Each Other in August' was deemed by the late author's family to be too important to stay hidden


End of an Era: Eleanor Wachtel leaves CBC Radio’s ‘Writers & Company’ After More Than Three Decades on the AirAfter a career interviewing what she describes as the "finest minds in the world," the long-time radio host says she's ready to begin a new chapter.


Canadian Independent Bookstore Day Features Deals, Contests and ReadingsOn Saturday, every book purchased at an indie store qualifies you to enter the Book Lovers Contest, with a chance to win gift cards worth up to $1,000


Translation Project Will Bring Literature From the South Asian Continent to English-Speaking AudiencesThe SALT project aims to translate and publish 40 works by authors from Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka


The Book Thief: An Italian Man’s Guilty Plea Ends a Caper That Puzzled the Literary World for YearsFilippo Bernardini’s elaborate phishing scam netted 1,000 unpublished manuscripts by prominent authors including Margaret Atwood and Ian McEwan


The Late Nobel Laureate Toni Morrison Is Honoured with an American StampThe Obamas and Oprah Winfrey pay tribute to the writer whose poetic interpretations of the African American experience gained a world-wide audience


Five Canadian Writers Make the Long List for the Inaugural Carol Shields Prize for FictionThe US$150,000 English-language literary award for female and nonbinary writers redresses the inequality of women in the publishing world


The Furry Green Grump is Back in a Sequel to “How the Grinch Stole Christmas!”Dr. Seuss Enterprises will publish “How the Grinch Lost Christmas!” in September


Chris Hadfield to Publish a Sequel to His Blockbuster Debut, “The Apollo Murders,” on Oct. 10"The Defector” brings the Cold War intrigue from space to Earth as the Soviets and Americans race to develop fighter jets


Prince Harry’s ‘Spare’ Continues to Break Worldwide RecordsThe book also seems to have put a dent in the popularity of members of the Royal Family — including the Prince and Princess of Wales.


Prince Harry’s Memoir Breaks U.K. Sales Record On First Day of ReleaseThe publisher of the new memoir, 'Spare", says it had sold 400,000 copies so far across hardback, e-book and audio formats.


Barack Obama’s Favourite Books of 2022The former U.S. president’s 13 titles include Canadians Emily St. John Mandel and Kate Beaton, as well as tomes from Michelle Obama, George Saunders and Jennifer Egan


Here are the 5 Books on Bill Gates’ Holiday Reading ListThe billionaire philanthropist is giving hundreds of copies to little libraries around the world


Sheila Heti and Eli Baxter Among 2022 Governor General’s Literary Award WinnersToronto writer Sheila Heti took home the fiction award for 'Pure Colour,' a novel the GG peer assessment committee called "a work of genius."


Suzette Mayr Wins $100,000 Scotiabank Giller Prize for ‘The Sleeping Car Porter’The 2022 Giller Prize jury called Mayr's novel "alive and immediate — and eerily contemporary."


Writers’ Trust of Canada Awards: Authors Nicholas Herring, Dan Werb Nab Top PrizesThe Writers' Trust of Canada awards amounted to a combined monetary prize value of $270,000.


Bob Dylan Releases ‘The Philosophy of Modern Song,’ a Book of Essays Dissecting 66 Influential SongsIn his new book, Bob Dylan offers up both critique and historical insight into various musical recordings of the last century by a variety of popular artists.


Prince Harry’s Memoir ‘Spare’ Will Be Published in January 2023The long-awaited memoir will tell with "raw unflinching honesty" Prince Harry's journey from "trauma to healing", his publisher said on Thursday.


Sri Lankan Author Shehan Karunatilaka Wins 2022 Booker PrizeKarunatilaka won the prestigious prize on Monday for his second novel ‘The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida’, about a dead war photographer on a mission in the afterlife.


Canadian Council for the Arts Reveals Governor General’s Literary Awards FinalistsThe finalists for the Governor General's Literary Awards spotlight books in both the English and French language, as well as translated works.


New Penguin Random House Award Named After Michelle Obama Will Honour High School WritersMichelle Obama Award for Memoir will provide a $10,000 college scholarship to a graduating public school senior based on their autobiographical submission.


French Author Annie Ernaux, 82, Becomes First French Woman to Win Nobel Prize for LiteratureThe author said, of winning, that "I was very surprised ... I never thought it would be on my landscape as a writer."


Hilary Mantel, Award-Winning British Author of ‘Wolf Hall’ Trilogy, Dies at 70Wolf Hall, published in 2009, and its sequel Bring Up the Bodies, released three years later, both won the Booker Prize, an unprecedented win for two books in the same trilogy and making Mantel the first woman to win the award twice.


Prince William “Cannot Forgive” Prince Harry, According to ‘The New Royals’ Author Katie NichollPrince William “just cannot forgive his brother,” according to Katie Nicholl, author of 'The New Royals: Queen Elizabeth’s Legacy and the Future of the Crown.'


Five Finalists Announced for Hilary Weston Writers’ Trust Prize for NonfictionThe winner — to be announced on November 2 — will take home the annual $60,000 prize.


Peter Straub, Bestselling American Horror Writer, Dies at 79Friend and co-author Stephen King has said the author's 1979 book, "Ghost Story," is his favourite horror novel.


Rawi Hage, Billy-Ray Belcourt and Sheila Heti Make the 2022 Scotiabank Giller Prize Long ListThe jury read 138 books to choose 14 titles for the long list, one of which will win the $100,000 prize, one of the richest in Canadian literature


Salman Rushdie, Novelist Who Drew Death Threats, Is Stabbed at New York LectureThe Indian-born novelist who was ordered killed by Iran in 1989 because of his writing, was attacked before giving a talk on artistic freedom.


Raymond Briggs, Creator of Beloved Children’s Tale ‘The Snowman’, Dies at 88First published in 1978, the pencil crayon-illustrated wordless picture book sold more than 5.5 million copies around the world while a television adaption became a Christmas favourite in Britain and was nominated for an Oscar.


Canadian Author Emily St. John Mandel Makes Barack Obama’s 2022 Summer Reading ListObama's list includes everything from fiction to books on politics, cultural exploration and basketball.


Canadian Author Rebecca Eckler to Launch RE:books Publishing House Focused on Female Authors and Fun ReadsThe former National Post columnist says her tagline is ‘What’s read is good, and what’s good is read.’”


Brian Thomas Isaac’s “All the Quiet Places” wins $5,000 Indigenous Voices AwardThe B.C. author, a retired bricklayer, drew on his childhood growing up on the Okanagan Indian reserve for his coming-of-age story set in 1956


Canadian-American Author Ruth Ozeki Wins Women’s Book Prize for “The Book of Form and Emptiness”The UK judges said her fourth novel, inspired in part by the Vancouver Public Library, contained "sparkling writing, warmth, intelligence, humour and poignancy."


The Bill Gates Summer Reading List Includes a Sci-Fi Novel On Gender Inequality Suggested by His DaughterBill Gates' summer reading list includes fiction and non-fiction titles that cover gender equality, political polarization and climate change.


American novelist Joshua Cohen wins the Pulitzer Prize for fiction for “The Netanyahus”The 2022 Pulitzer prizes include this satirical look at identity politics, focused on the father of former Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, at a crucial time in the Jewish state’s history


Margaret Atwood, Alice Munro Among Canadian Authors Recognized in Commemorative Reading List Marking Queen’s Platinum JubileeThe authors are among six Canadian scribes included on the The Big Jubilee Read list.


Queen Elizabeth II’s Aide Reveals Details of Life in Royal Pandemic Lockdown in New Addition to BookAngela Kelly, who's worked for the Queen for 20 years, discusses everything from cutting the Queen's hair to "the light and laughter that was shared ... even in the darkest moments."


New Leonard Cohen Story Collection, ‘A Ballet of Lepers,’ Set for October ReleaseThe collection features a novel, short stories and a radio play written between 1956 and 1961.


Archived Letters Reveal How Toni Morrison Helped MacKenzie Scott Meet Future Husband Jeff BezosBezos hired Scott at the hedge fund where he worked after receiving a recommendation from Morrison. Shortly thereafter, the pair married and Scott helped Bezos launch Amazon.


Prince Harry’s Memoir is Set to Rock the MonarchyFriends say the California-based royal got a million-pound book deal to write "an intimate take on his feeling about the family."


European Jewish Congress Asks Publisher to Pull Anne Frank BookThe Congress says 'The Betrayal of Anne Frank' has "deeply hurt the memory of Anne Frank, as well as the dignity of the survivors and the victims of the Holocaust."


Canadian Author Details Anne Frank Cold-Case Investigation That Named Surprise Suspect in Her Family’s Betrayal in New BookAhead of the 75th anniversary of the publication of Frank's 'The Diary of a Young Girl' in June, a team that included a retired FBI agent and around 20 historians, criminologists and data specialists identified a relatively unknown figure as a leading suspect in revealing her family's hideout.


Man Who Tricked Authors Into Handing Over Unpublished Manuscripts Arrested by FBI in New YorkFilippo Bernardini, an employee of a well known publication house, has been arrested for stealing hundreds of unpublished manuscripts.


Hollywood Legend Betty White Has a Last Laugh in New Biographic Comic BookThe creators of the biographical comic book have released similar books about Hollywood legends like Carrie Fisher, Lucille Ball, David Bowie and Elizabeth Taylor.


Barack Obama Reveals His List of Books That Left “A Lasting Impression” in 2021Obama's favourite 2021 reads include two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning author Colson Whitehead's 'Harlem Shuffle' and 'Klara and the Sun,' by Nobel Prize-winning author Kazuo Ishiguro


“Interview With the Vampire” Author Anne Rice Dies at 80 — Tributes Pour in From Stuart Townsend and OthersThe author, who was best known for her work in gothic fiction, died on Saturday evening as a result of complications from a stroke.


Norma Dunning wins $25,000 Governor General’s English fiction prize for ‘Tainna’The Edmonton-based Inuk writer explores themes of displacement, loneliness and spirituality in six short stories


Omar El Akkad wins $100,000 Giller prize for “What Strange Paradise”The former Globe and Mail reporter, who published "American War" to acclaim in 2017, tackles the global migrant refugee crisis in his second novel


South African Author Damon Galgut Wins the Booker Prize For ‘The Promise’Galgut received nominations for his 2003 and 2010 works before finally taking home the prize this year. 


Hollywood Legend Paul Newman Discusses Life, Acting and Aging Gracefully in Newly Discovered MemoirPublishers of the newly discovered memoir say the Hollywood legend wrote the book in the 1980s in response to the relentless media attention he received during that time.


Here’s What You Need to Know About the Toronto International Festival of AuthorsDirector Roland Gulliver lands in Toronto to open his second, much-expanded virtual festival with more than 200 events


Tanzanian Novelist Gurnah Wins 2021 Nobel Prize in Literature for Depicting the Impact of Colonialism and Refugee StoriesGurnah, 72, is only the second writer from sub-Saharan Africa to win one of the world's most prestigious literary awards


Miriam Toews Garners Third Giller Prize Nomination for “Fight Night” after Shortlist AnnouncedSophomore efforts from novelists Omar El Akkad and Jordan Tannahill join debut books from Cheluchi Onyemelukwe-Onuobia and Angélique Lalonde


Tina Brown’s New Book, ‘The Palace Papers’, Covers the Royal Family’s Reinvention After Diana’s Tragic DeathTina Brown's sequel to her 2007 release 'The Diana Chronicles' is set to hit shelves April 12, 2022. 


Audible.ca Releases Andrew Pyper’s Exclusive Audiobook “Oracle” For New Plus Catalogue LaunchThe thriller about a psychic FBI detective is one of 12,000 titles now available for free to members


Barack Obama and Bruce Springsteen to Release Book Based On Their “Renegades” PodcastThe new book will feature a collection of candid, intimate and entertaining conversations


Prince Harry Will Publish a Memoir in Late 2022Harry says he's writing the book "not as the prince I was born but as the man I have become."


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