Books

MacIntyre blows dust off Tudor’s role in war

Ben Sigurdson 6 minute read 5:04 PM CDT

The Irish War of Independence, which saw hundreds killed and wounded in clashes between Irish Republican Army (IRA) forces and Britain’s Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC) and the British army between 1919 to 1921, laid the foundation for conflicts that would persist in the republic for decades.

In his latest book, The Accidental Villain: A Soldier’s Tale of War, Deceit and Exile, veteran Canadian journalist Linden MacIntyre shines a light on the much-overlooked major general Sir Hugh Tudor, who commanded British police and military forces in Ireland.

A longtime friend of Winston Churchill, Tudor and his legacy in the military would be forever tainted by the copious bloodshed in Ireland’s conflict.

Tudor’s name came to MacIntyre’s attention while reading about a secret meeting in 1941 between Churchill and then-U.S. president Franklin Roosevelt aboard naval vessels stationed at Placentia Bay, N.L.

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Authors ruminate on urban life, offering radical responses about their potential

Reviewed by Matt Henderson 5 minute read Preview

Authors ruminate on urban life, offering radical responses about their potential

Reviewed by Matt Henderson 5 minute read Saturday, Oct. 11, 2025

The advent of the city is a relatively recent phenomenon. For much of our past, we relied on families and small groups of families for survival. It’s only in the last 10,000 years that collective development has led us inwards into communities that, ideally, capture human ingenuity and compassion and, at worst, reflect the deep underbelly or our selfishness and contempt for each other.

The notion of the city — and more specifically the utopian city — is the central theme of this third volume of the Alchemy Lecture, hosted annually at Toronto’s York University. The City of our Dreaming brings together four scholars who ask deep questions about the nature of cities and offer radical responses as to their potential.

V. Mitch McEwen is a professor of architecture, Laleh Khalili a writer and professor, Gabriela Leandro Pereira an architect and Leanne Betasamosake Simpson a writer. Each offers unique pathways to critically analyzing cities in their current state while using the city as a canvas for utopian philosophical inquiry into the how we treat each other, other species and the planet.

While there exists a common thread between all four essays — namely, currents of justice, the commons and reciprocity — each thinker addresses the city in unique ways that are layered, nuanced and deeply rooted in their lived experience.

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Saturday, Oct. 11, 2025

John Woods / Free Press files

John Woods / Free Press files

New book has a cornucopia of ideas for entertaining

Colleen Zacharias 6 minute read Preview

New book has a cornucopia of ideas for entertaining

Colleen Zacharias 6 minute read Saturday, Oct. 11, 2025

Robyn Chubey’s creative ideas for decorating homes and gardens in every season, and her garden-to-table recipes to delight family and guests, are about to reach a new audience.

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Saturday, Oct. 11, 2025

Robyn Chubey photos

Robyn Chubey uses pumpkins to create a welcoming entrance to her greenhouse.

Robyn Chubey photos
                                Robyn Chubey uses pumpkins to create a welcoming entrance to her greenhouse.

Soldier’s story reflects grim nature of life in the trenches

Reviewed by Graeme Voyer 3 minute read Preview

Soldier’s story reflects grim nature of life in the trenches

Reviewed by Graeme Voyer 3 minute read Saturday, Oct. 11, 2025

‘Every time I see the dead and wounded along the trenches, I feel sick at the awfulness of this war.”

These were the words of Lester Harper, a disillusioned Canadian soldier in the First World War.

Canadian-born historian Brandon Marriott reconstructs Harper’s wartime experiences, using an archive of more than 700 pages of letters written by Harper during the war.

Marriott was drawn to this subject because Harper was his wife’s great-grandfather.

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Saturday, Oct. 11, 2025

Narrative’s notebooks navigate love, longing and a quest for a lost child

Reviewed by Laurence Broadhurst 5 minute read Preview

Narrative’s notebooks navigate love, longing and a quest for a lost child

Reviewed by Laurence Broadhurst 5 minute read Saturday, Oct. 11, 2025

He turned. He looked back, precisely when he seemed to have the cosmic solution in his hands — and that was his terrible undoing. That was Orpheus’s mistake.

Susanna Crossman reimagines turning and looking back here, in a kind of experiment in genre. The Orange Notebooks is an adventure story, to be sure, but it is also part aching memoir, part lyrical poetry, part polychromatic kaleidoscope, part surreptitious “found footage” but, most thoroughly, part primordial myth.

Crossman seems to dwell, as her writing does, between worlds. She grew up in the U.K. in a “utopian commune” about 50 years ago but now resides in France, writing (both essays and fiction), lecturing and practising arts therapy. Her 2024 memoir, Home Is Where We Start, set a lingering tone of journeys, nostalgia and psychological reflection.

The Orange Notebooks reprises that tone, beginning with the pretense that we are being handed a set of journal reflections written by our protagonist, “Anna,” who herself lives in liminal spaces. She too was raised in England but grew to adulthood as a server on an English Channel ferry, married a dashing Frenchman with an exotic name, Antton (the two Ts a vestige of his Basque heritage) and eventually settled with Antton in a lovely rural French home, both as teachers.

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Saturday, Oct. 11, 2025

Morgane Michotte photo

Susanna Crossman’s novel carries a tone of nostalgia and reflection that’s similar to that of her 2024 memoir, Home Is Where We Start.

Morgane Michotte photo
                                Susanna Crossman’s novel carries a tone of nostalgia and reflection that’s similar to that of her 2024 memoir, Home Is Where We Start.

Late husband haunts musings on life and death

Reviewed by Jarett Myskiw 4 minute read Preview

Late husband haunts musings on life and death

Reviewed by Jarett Myskiw 4 minute read Saturday, Oct. 11, 2025

Death is one of our few universally shared experiences, yet it remains, at least in our culture, nearly unapproachable in conversation.

Poet, professor and artist Kristjana Gunnars’ latest work, The Silence of Falling Snow, is a layered exploration of her husband’s illness and death, of grief and the future, told through the lenses of art, philosophy and nature.

The Silence of Falling Snow is difficult to precisely locate in both genre and theme. Late in the book, Gunnars declares that she “does not want explanation” of the mystery of living, and that she can write about death “only obliquely.” Both ring true, and we arrive at neither a set of postulates nor conclusions but rather questions, often poignant and difficult.

Gunnars’s husband haunts the text: he is both central and absent. Not only is he long since gone, but much of his illness and life are left unspoken. Even his name remains in silence.

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Saturday, Oct. 11, 2025

The Silence of Falling Snow

The Silence of Falling Snow

Poetry project seeks words about Winnipeg

Ben Sigurdson 4 minute read Saturday, Oct. 11, 2025

Organizers behind a new citywide poetry project are hoping Winnipeggers will share lyrical and literary interpretations of the city in a project called, fittingly, The Story of Winnipeg.

The project is being spearheaded by Winnipeg poet laureate Jennifer Still, the Winnipeg Arts Council and the Winnipeg Public Library. Potential participants can stop by a library branch and pick up City of Winnipeg map books created by Still from city archival materials, then fill in the blanks provided with their thoughts.

Once completed, map books can then be kept or dropped at mailboxes at each library branch — submissions will make their way back to Still, who will collect, read and share entries through a mini book installation slated to be launched next year.

Materials are available now at library branches; the initiative runs through to Dec. 1. For more on The Story of Winnipeg see wfp.to/iXt and Tuesday’s Free Press.

Dirty cops targeted in Thorne thriller

Reviewed by Nick Martin 4 minute read Preview

Dirty cops targeted in Thorne thriller

Reviewed by Nick Martin 4 minute read Saturday, Oct. 11, 2025

Det.-INsp. Tom Thorne watches four police officers get murdered right in front of him and does absolutely nothing, because even the four victims aren’t yet aware that they’ve just been murdered.

Only one deserved it in the warped sense of justice of the person who killed them — and will certainly have deserved it in the minds of some readers.

The four will be far from the last in one of the best police thrillers Mark Billingham has ever written.

What the Night Brings is the 19th Thorne murder mystery featuring our tough, jaded copper and his familiar eccentric eclectic pals and lovers: fellow DIs Nicola Tanner and Dave Holland, boss Russell Brigstocke, romantic partner Helen Weekes and, of course, pathologist Dr. Phil Hendricks — he of the goth clothing, tattoos, piercings and loud, exceptionally colourful declarations of his gayness and abundant sexual appetites.

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Saturday, Oct. 11, 2025

What the Night Brings

What the Night Brings

Daughter digs into late dad’s rocker past

Reviewed by Sheldon Birnie 4 minute read Preview

Daughter digs into late dad’s rocker past

Reviewed by Sheldon Birnie 4 minute read Saturday, Oct. 11, 2025

A broken family, a dark secret, a series of cross-country road trips, decades apart — all propelled by the pulsing rhythm of a bloody red rock ‘n’ roll heart.

Hot Wax, the latest by American author M.L. Rio (Graveyard Shift, If We Were Villains) tells the tale of Suzanne, a 40-year-old woman on the run — from just what, it’s not initially clear, but we learn it stems from one traumatic event in her childhood.

Suzanne’s father, Gil Delgado, was a rock ‘n’ roller on the rise to stardom in the late 1980s. After years of grinding it out on the nightclub scene, Gil and his band the Kills were finally on track to break in a big way. Owing to a series of slapdash circumstances, young Suzanne, not quite 11, was along for the ride.

But for every rocker who makes the big time, a thousand are left in the wake, dreams unfulfilled — or worse. Such is Gil’s fate, though there’s a mystery surrounding it that haunts Suzanne through to the end of the story.

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Saturday, Oct. 11, 2025

Hot Wax

Hot Wax

Carnage aplenty in Interlake whodunit

Nick Martin 4 minute read Saturday, Oct. 11, 2025

A private eye shotgunned in a field of sunflowers, a Mountie blunt-instrumented from behind on a Lake Winnipeg beach, a strong swimmer found floating far from shore, a shootout at the stereotypical friendly farm kitchen table — carnage among the murderous rural folk brings sergeant Roxanne Calloway back early from mat leave.

It has something to do with the disappearance of a lifeguard escaping her strict religious parents, a ne’er-do-well family maybe using their vegetable truck to run drugs or traffic young women, a former bureaucrat and suspected hands-on misogynist likely up to no good, shady siblings and shifty cousins galore, and parenting tips on taking a baby to the OK Corral.

After a disappointing try doing a Manitoba Miss Marple, Winnipeg author Raye Anderson returns to her earlier success with her fifth blood-drenched Interlake police procedural Had A Great Fall (Signature Editions, 272 pages, $18), a nifty whodunit that will do wonders for tourism in the Whiteshell.

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Bestselling author’s antics a quintessentially Canadian delight in Fallis’ new fiction

Reviewed by Deborah Bowers 4 minute read Preview

Bestselling author’s antics a quintessentially Canadian delight in Fallis’ new fiction

Reviewed by Deborah Bowers 4 minute read Saturday, Oct. 11, 2025

If you’re looking for a hopeful tale to balance the increasingly discouraging state of the world, The Marionette could pull the right strings. Like the nine books that came before, bestselling Canadian fiction author Terry Fallis’s latest displays his signature style: wit, humour and intrigue.

The Marionette introduces a new character: James Norval. He’s a thriller writer with a string of bestselling books, many of which were made into Hollywood blockbusters. Norval writes about Hunter Chase, a fictional CIA agent who saves the world, novel after novel.

In real life, Fallis has also become a writing force to reckoned with. His first novel, The Best Laid Plans, began as a podcast, was self-published, won the Stephen Leacock Medal for Humour and was then republished by McClelland & Stewart. It was also crowned the 2011 winner of CBC’s Canada Reads, then adapted into a CBC television series and stage musical. Fallis won the Leacock prize again in 2015 for No Relation. His other novels include Poles Apart, One Brother Shy and A New Season, among others.

The Marionette begins in the Republic of Tajikistan. While researching his next novel, James Norval gets too close for comfort on forbidden soil. He is detained in a sketchy prison, and hilarity ensues. (No, really.)

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Saturday, Oct. 11, 2025

SUPPLIED

The latest by Toronto’s Terry Fallis brings his signature wit, humour and intrigue fans know and love.

SUPPLIED
                                The latest by Toronto’s Terry Fallis brings his signature wit, humour and intrigue fans know and love.

A thug on the ice, Odjick’s life away from the rink a compelling story of struggle and sacrifice

Reviewed by Gilbert Gregory 4 minute read Preview

A thug on the ice, Odjick’s life away from the rink a compelling story of struggle and sacrifice

Reviewed by Gilbert Gregory 4 minute read Saturday, Oct. 11, 2025

With chants of “Gino, Gino” raining down from the bleachers at Pacific Coliseum, Gino Odjick’s status as one of the most beloved players in Vancouver Canucks history began when he fought Chicago Blackhawks tough guys Dave Manson and Stu Grimson in his first NHL game after being called up from the minors early in the 1990-91 NHL season.

In Gino: The Fighting Spirit of Gino Odjick, longtime Vancouver sports writer Patrick Johnson and Peter Leech, a friend and colleague of Odjick’s, give an in-depth, up-close and insightful look at the too-short life of player who brought Canucks fans to their feet with his fearless play, and who, sadly, died from heart disease early in 2023 — after being given a year to live almost 10 years earlier.

The authors make the case the Canucks went from being talented underachievers to perennial Stanley Cup contenders with the arrival of Odjick, a tough-as-nails, team-first guy who would do everything he could to protect his smaller, more talented teammates from opponents who in the past would bully the Canucks with little or no pushback.

When Odjick arrived, he made it clear there would be consequences for those who dared to take liberties with players such as Cliff Ronning, Geoff Courtnall and especially Pavel Bure, who from the moment he stepped on the ice was one of the NHL’s most exciting players and remained one of Odjick’s best friends until the very end.

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Saturday, Oct. 11, 2025

Tim Krochak / Canadian Press files

Gino Odjick, seen here in 2001 during his stint with the Montreal Canadiens, spent the bulk of his NHL career with the Vancouver Canucks.

Tim Krochak / Canadian Press files
                                Gino Odjick, seen here in 2001 during his stint with the Montreal Canadiens, spent the bulk of his NHL career with the Vancouver Canucks.

J.K. Rowling mocks Vancouver park board after its apology over Harry Potter event

The Canadian Press 2 minute read Preview

J.K. Rowling mocks Vancouver park board after its apology over Harry Potter event

The Canadian Press 2 minute read Friday, Oct. 10, 2025

VANCOUVER - Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling says being disavowed by the Vancouver Board of Parks wasn't "much of a blow" after its commissioners unanimously voted to apologize for a Harry Potter event opening in Stanley Park next month.

Rowling posted a screenshot on social media of board commissioner Tom Digby's statement about how it had disavowed the author for her views on transgender issues.

The British author says she was unaware that the board had "avowed" her and posted that she would accept a "certificate of avowal" that she would frame hang over her computer and take a selfie with it.

The park board on Tuesday voted unanimously to apologize for the Harry Potter: A Forbidden Forest Experience event set to open on Nov. 7 in Stanley Park, after hearing from members of Vancouver's 2SLGBTQ+ Advisory Committee.

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Friday, Oct. 10, 2025

J. K. Rowling poses for photographers upon arrival at the World premiere of the film 'Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore' in London Tuesday, March 29, 2022. (AP Photo/Scott Garfitt)

J. K. Rowling poses for photographers upon arrival at the World premiere of the film 'Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore' in London Tuesday, March 29, 2022. (AP Photo/Scott Garfitt)

What’s up: Propagandhi, meow mania, Queen, realism, celebrity bowls

6 minute read Preview

What’s up: Propagandhi, meow mania, Queen, realism, celebrity bowls

6 minute read Thursday, Oct. 9, 2025

Propagandhi oral history book launchPublic Domain, 633 Portage Ave.Saturday, 7 p.m.Tickets $10 plus feesFor nearly 40 years, Winnipeg (via Portage la Prairie) political punk band Propagandhi has been pumping out head-banging songs with a conscience. And for the last few years, Buffalo, N.Y.’s Greg Soden has been exploring the band’s catalogue and ethos via his podcast Unscripted Moments: A Podcast About Propagandhi, which has featured a range of musicians waxing poetic about the foursome as well as conversations with band members themselves.

Soden has compiled more than 15 hours of interview material from band members past and present for his new book Unscripted Moments: Conversations with Propagandhi (2020-2025), which he launches in Winnipeg on Saturday at 7 p.m. at Public Domain, where he’ll be joined in conversation by Witchpolice Radio podcast host Sam Thompson.

Will Propagandhi be taking the stage to play the event? Not likely. But those in attendance can instead enjoy some tunes from Mike Koop and Paul Hodgert.

Tickets for the event are $10. And for all you aging punks out there: don’t forget your reading glasses.

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Thursday, Oct. 9, 2025

Trevor Hagan / Free Press files

Todd Kowalski (left) and Chris Hannah of Propagandhi

Trevor Hagan / Free Press files
                                Todd Kowalski (left) and Chris Hannah 
of Propagandhi

Hungarian master of absurdist excess László Krasznahorkai wins Nobel literature prize

Kostya Manenkov, Jill Lawless And Mike Corder, The Associated Press 6 minute read Preview

Hungarian master of absurdist excess László Krasznahorkai wins Nobel literature prize

Kostya Manenkov, Jill Lawless And Mike Corder, The Associated Press 6 minute read Thursday, Oct. 9, 2025

STOCKHOLM (AP) — Hungarian writer László Krasznahorkai, whose surreal and anarchic novels combine a bleak world view with mordant humor, won the Nobel Prize in literature Thursday for work the judges said upholds the power of art in the midst of “apocalyptic terror.”

The Nobel judges said the 71-year-old author, whose novels sometimes consist of just one long sentence, is “a great epic writer” whose work “is characterized by absurdism and grotesque excess.”

He’s the first Nobel literature winner from Hungary since Imre Kertesz in 2002 and joins a list of laureates that includes Ernest Hemingway, Toni Morrison and Kazuo Ishiguro.

“I am calm and very nervous,” Krasznahorkai told Radio Sweden after getting news of the prize, which comes with an award of more than $1 million. “This is the first day in my life when I got a Nobel Prize. I don't know what's coming in the future.”

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Thursday, Oct. 9, 2025

FILE - Hungary's Laszlo Krasznahorkai poses for photographers in London, Tuesday, May 19, 2015. (AP Photo/Matt Dunham, File)

FILE - Hungary's Laszlo Krasznahorkai poses for photographers in London, Tuesday, May 19, 2015. (AP Photo/Matt Dunham, File)

Kirkus Prize winners include a novel on identity, a history of Iran and an ode to belly buttons

Hillel Italie, The Associated Press 2 minute read Preview

Kirkus Prize winners include a novel on identity, a history of Iran and an ode to belly buttons

Hillel Italie, The Associated Press 2 minute read Friday, Oct. 10, 2025

NEW YORK (AP) — A novel about identity and a missing youth, a history of the overthrow of the Shah of Iran and a picture book celebrating the underappreciated belly button are this year's winners of the Kirkus Prize, which includes a $50,000 cash award for each of the three categories.

Lucas Schaefer's “The Slip,” which follows a man's search for a nephew who disappeared years earlier, won for fiction, while the award for nonfiction was given to Scott Anderson's “King of Kings: The Iranian Revolution: A Story of Hubris, Delusion and Catastrophic Miscalculation.” The winner for young readers’ literature was Thao Lam's “Everybelly,” a poolside view of belly buttons and the stories they tell.

Established in 2014, the prizes are overseen by the trade publication Kirkus Reviews.

“This year’s Kirkus Prize winners bring us vital messages for our time — messages about the joys of community, the power of self-transformation, and the mutability of historical events — all conveyed through exhilarating prose and pictures," Kirkus Editor-in-Chief Tom Beer said in a statement Wednesday.

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Friday, Oct. 10, 2025

This combination of book cover images shows "The Slip" by Lucas Schaefer, left, and "King of Kings: The Iranian Revolution: A Story of Hubris, Delusion and Catastrophic Miscalculation" by Scott Anderson. (Simon & Schuster/Doubleday via AP)

This combination of book cover images shows

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