Local mystery author Erika Chase will be in the store on Saturday, October 24 from 11:00am to 1:00pm to sign copies of her new Ashton Corners Book Club mystery, Law and Author.
To learn more about Erika and the Ashton Corners Book Club series, check out her website: http://erikachase.com/
We look forward to seeing you on Saturday!
Janice Dickson will be in the store on Saturday, October 24 from 1:00-3:00pm to sign copies of her new book Herbert Peppard:The Eternal Man.
About the book:
“Herbert Peppard: The Eternal Man tells the true story of a 95-year-old WWII veteran who was a member of the First Special Service Force, which is also known as the Devil’s Brigade.
Peppard grew up during the Great Depression in Truro, Nova Scotia. Unable to afford books for school, he dropped out at age 16 to work at the lumberyard. But with Hitler and the Nazis terrorizing Europe, he felt the call to join the army to help in the war effort.
While Peppard fought for his country and became a decorated soldier, he had a rebellious side. Peppard went AWOL – a serious offence in the army – five times while on duty. But during a prohibited vacation home, he met a beautiful woman named Greta MacPhee.
Critical moments of battle are interwoven with letters, written by Peppard to his family and to Greta, the woman he vowed to return to and marry. Many letters were written from his hospital bed in Naples, where he spent six months recovering after being shot.
The story follows Peppard after the war when he returned home to Nova Scotia to start a family. But soon after his return, Greta, his beautiful new bride, is diagnosed with a debilitating disease.
Peppard is living in Truro in the very home where he was born. He writes columns in the local paper, walks a mile every day and continues to inspire others.”
Paula McLain made her name as a writer of historical fiction with her earlier book, The Paris Wife, which became a huge best-seller.
In this new one, she continues her sharp, sympathetic writing, this time in the early days of British colonial Kenya. She concentrates on the daughter of a couple who left England in 1904 to set up a farming estate in the British African Protectorate. The father was an experienced horseman and planned to train horses for racing. The mother very soon found the life too grim and returned to England with her son, abandoning her young daughter, Beryl.
This girl grew up with her father and a native tribe who lived on the estate. She was independent and fearless, to a degree, and very soon discovered she too had the ability to ride and train horses, which she did to the amazement of the British colony.
She broke all the rules socially, with a disastrous marriage and a love affair in a triangle involving the famous writer, Isak Dinesen who wrote the classic memoir Out of Africa. McLain’s book is filled with descriptions of the beauty of Kenya as a backdrop to the decadent set of expats who had come to enjoy it but broke all social rules while doing so. Circling the Sun brings the 1920’s to life and reads at a suitably fast pace.
Reviewed by Anne McDougall
We will be CLOSED on Monday, October 12 for the holiday weekend. Regular store hours will resume on Tuesday, October 13.
Wishing you all a lovely long weekend and a very happy Thanksgiving!
On Saturday, October 3, we will have two great authors in our store to sign their new books.
Kicking us off at 11:00am, local author Murray Ault will be here signing copies of his new book View from the Deck.
Then, at 1:00pm, Ian McKinley will be in the store to sign copies of his new fantasy novel The Gallows Gem of Prallyn.
We hope to see you here!
Check out this great book trailer for Amazing Grace, the new novel by Lesley Crewe. Lesley will be in our store on Saturday, September 26.
She will be doing a reading at 11:00am, followed by a book signing. We hope to see you here!
Is the federal election and political spin getting you down? Looking for a funny political book which satirizes the tactics and tricks of politicians bent on winning at all costs? Then Tough on Crime: The Novel is the book for you.
Come by the store on Saturday, September 26 to meet Ottawa author David Holdsworth. He will be here signing copies from 1:00pm to 3:00pm.
The story revolves around a fictional Prime Minister who believes the only way to political success in the next election is to show voters his party is the toughest on crime in Canadian history. His secret strategy is to build a string of huge prisons in the national parks and bring in tough new sentencing laws to fill them up. All is going according to plan until the sixty year old mayor of the town targeted for the first one (near Wakefield, Quebec), learns about it and decides to fight back. She and the town mobilize their forces to end the government’s charade, with unexpected results. To his surprise, suddenly it’s the Prime Minister’s turn to face the people.
The cover illustration was done by David Parkins, editorial cartoonist for the Globe and Mail.
Come by the store this weekend and check out the great signings we have going on!
On Saturday, September 19, local author Ian Prattis will be here signing copies of his books Redemption and Trailing Sky Six Feathers from 11:00am to 1:00pm.
Then, on Sunday, September 20, James Bartleman will be here from 1:00pm to 3:00pm signing copies of his newest novel Exceptional Circumstances.
Tim Parks is a British writer, well-known for fourteen novels as well as works of non-fiction. But he is also loved as a translator of books by famous Italian writers down through the years.
In A Literary Tour of Italy, he looks at a number of these writers (and statesmen) and gives us essays on Dante, Machiavelli, Garibaldi, Mussolini — all the way up to less familiar names like Bassani and Tabucchi. These show the stages by which various parts of Italy finally got together to become one country.
Parks loves his adopted country and between literary and statesmen concerns we get a vivid picture of the life and customs of this beautiful country.
Reviewed by Anne McDougall
With so much of our own news coming from the Middle East these days, it is interesting to read of this remarkable woman who played a big role in that part of the world some 100 years ago.
Gertrude Bell was born into a rich family of industrialists in the north of England in 1868. She was the first woman to get first class honours in Modern History at Oxford University. She set off to explore the world and found her love in trips through Middle East deserts, making seven independent expeditions in all. She learned Arabic, and also turned to archaeology, and photography. She served the British armed forces during World War I, as intelligence expert, becoming an army major.
She worked for self-determination of the Arabs and contributed to the defeat of the Ottoman Empire and the founding of the new Iraq. She understood the importance of what she called “a just comprehension of the conflicting claims of different classes of the population” and “gaining the confidence of the people so as to secure their cooperation.” We are still trying to do this today.
There have been many books written about Gertrude Bell. In this one, Georgina Howell has collected her papers and letters. They give an excellent picture of her life and times.
Reviewed by Anne McDougall