Sci-fi meets magic realism in absorbing Atlantis novel

Thomas Wharton’s new novel The Book of Rain is in many ways a successor to his 2004 story collection The Logogryph, which was shortlisted for the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award. One of the highlights of The Logogryph is an essay on the imagined literature of Atlantis (in the story’s world, the island never sunk).

Review: Vietnam vets try to help nation they once attacked

“The Long Reckoning: A Story of War, Peace and Redemption in Vietnam,” by George Black (Knopf)

In the U.S., we’ve mostly moved on from our military engagements in Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan. It’s the American way — not dwelling on our mistakes or engaging in a national discussion about what went wrong.

And atonement? We don’t do that.

But two American Vietnam vets thought differently and became our national conscience, our moral center and our agents of redemption in dealing with the fearsome toll that herbicide spraying and unexploded bombs inflicted on tens of thousands of Vietnamese.

Mother fights for son in Syrian prison

Being jailed indefinitely in a foreign country would be a nightmare for anyone. In Reasonable Cause to Suspect, British Canadian Sally Lane relates a compelling story of her fight to have her son, Jack Letts, released from prison in Syria and brought to Canada, in keeping with the principles of justice and the rule of law.

Review: Prohibition-era tale ‘Hang the Moon’ goes down easy

“Hang the Moon” by Jeannette Walls (Scribner)

Jeannette Walls burst on the scene with her intensely personal memoir “The Glass Castle” in 2005. That book spent more than eight years on the hardcover and paperback bestseller lists and eventually became a 2017 movie starring Brie Larson, Naomi Watts and Woody Harrelson.

This book, while fiction, borrows heavily from the histories of real people and events who lived during the Prohibition era in Virginia. The narrator, Sallie Kincaid, is the daughter of the most prosperous man in Claiborne County, who everyone calls “Duke.” The heart of the story picks up with Sallie at almost age 18, when she moves back to the family estate after a decade in exile living with her poor aunt “in the hollows” of the Blue Ridge Mountains. Her memories of the Duke are almost entirely positive, but the events of the novel quickly challenge that as the plot speeds along at a breakneck pace.

Before you know it the Duke is dead and Sallie stands to inherit the family business, which she’s long believed to be “diversified holdings” anchored by ownership of Caywood, Virginia’s general store. Turns out the real family money is in bootlegging, as Kincaid’s men buy illegal alcohol from family stills across the county and deliver it at a premium to desperate and thirsty customers as far away as Richmond and Roanoke. By novel’s end Sallie has a nickname, the Queen of the Kincaid Rumrunners, and her family relationships are almost entirely reconfigured.

'Ducks' offers insight into Alberta's oilsands

When Kate Beaton migrated west to work in Alberta's oilsands, she didn't know what to expect — other than a job that would allow her to pay down her student loans.

Those making the move now, some 15-plus years after the comics artist worked in Fort McMurray, have more information about the industry thanks to social media, she said.

"If you don't have a personal connection to the actual area, the location, or the workforce, or the people that travel back and forth and work there, then it's harder to have an understanding of day-to-day life there," Beaton said in a phone interview from her home in Cape Breton.

With "Ducks," Beaton's graphic memoir that's now competing in Canada Reads, she sought to show people what the experience can really be like.

Maria Ressa on 'How to Stand Up to a Dictator'

TORONTO - Maria Ressa's coverage of how online disinformation campaigns helped support an authoritarian regime in the Philippines led to her winning the Nobel Peace Prize in 2021, but she says more work needs to be done to hold social media companies accountable for a gradual decline of democracy around the world.

Ressa, who was born in Manila and moved to the United States at age nine, has challenged corruption and tyranny in the Philippines and elsewhere as a reporter for CNN and the founder of Rappler, an investigative news organization that used the emerging power of social media in 2012 to crowdsource breaking news.

On Monday, she will discussher book “How to Stand Up to a Dictator" at the Hot Docs Ted Rogers Cinema in Torontoas a part of a collaboration with the Canadian Journalists for Free Expression.

The book title refers to then-president of the Philippines Rodrigo Duterte, whose government and its war on drugs Rappler began criticizing in 2016.Rappler reports alsouncovered a network of paid followers and bot accounts on Facebook spreading misinformation about Duterte.

Whodunit’s humour and intricacy make for a riotous read

This book makes you do things.

Sympathy, sacrifice in support worker’s journey

Canadian author and playwright Catherine Hernandez has written a unique, intriguing and beautiful novel, The Story of Us.

Black lives and voices in historic comic-strip anthology still resonate today

‘Black History Month has passed, but March happens to be Women’s History Month,” candidly remarks Lekesia, one of the dynamic women characters in Where I’m Coming From, a retrospective by influential cartoonist Barbara Brandon-Croft.

Swanson’s new thriller fiendishly fantastic

Joan isn’t yet evil Joan when she walks into the office of New England private eye Henry Kimball to hire him to confirm her husband Richard is cheating with Pam, an employee in his real estate office, who’s also a friend of evil Joan’s. Pause for breath.

Manitoba Women’s Institute shares stories of pandemic’s daily impact

Annette Holowka kept a journal, Dorothy Braun devoted herself to caring for her mother, Sheena Letexier travelled the world without ever leaving her armchair and Debra Barrett collected stories.

Colourful character brings authentic charm in Whittall’s latest

With her new novel The Fake, Ontario author Zoe Whittall shows her ability to capture adults in distinctly contemporary situations. As they interact, their actions and their dialogue seem so authentic, the reader feels involved — not only witnessing the heartache, the preoccupations and the emotions, but sharing them.

Zoe Whittall on the appeal of the scammer

TORONTO - Zoe Whittall doesn't usually write about her own life. She tells people it's too boring, and she likes making stuff up too much.

Her latest novel, "The Fake," is the exception.

Whittall's yearlong relationship with a scammer served as a springboard for the book, which follows two people who become entwined with a woman who seems to lie about everything — including her supposed cancer diagnosis.

The novel's antagonist is similar to Whittall's ex. Both were charismatic storytellers who told tall tales about their pasts in a largely successful effort to win people over.

Review: Stunning new novel about a family and mental illness

“Commitment,” by Mona Simpson (Alfred A. Knopf)

Mona Simpson’s latest novel “Commitment” is a minimalist masterpiece, exploring the large and small ways that a diagnosis of mental illness affects a family. In a story utterly devoid of car crashes, murders, abductions and explosions, Simpson bears down on the truly important questions about life — home, work, love and family.

At the center of the novel is Diane Aziz, a single mother struggling to raise three kids on a nurse’s salary in Los Angeles in the 1970s. She has lied to get them into an exclusive public high school in the Pacific Palisades, and it has paid off big for her two older children, Walter and Lina.

When the novel begins, it is 1972, and Walter has just enrolled at UC-Berkeley. Soon after that, Diane spirals into a deep depression and is admitted to a state mental hospital. At that point, her best friend, Julie, a colleague at work, steps up to take care of Lina and younger brother Donnie.

Review: A writer investigates a UFO cult in East Texas

“The Donut Legion,” by Joe R. Lansdale (Mulholland)

Charlie Garner, a former private detective turned novelist, was staring through his telescope at the rural East Texas sky late one night when he received an unexpected visit from his ex-wife, Meg.

Or did he?

A storm had left the ground soft, perfect for leaving footprints and tire tracks, but in the morning there was no sign that she had ever been there. Had it been a dream? A hallucination? An apparition?

Linda Villarosa, Deborah Cohen among Lukas prize winners

NEW YORK (AP) — Linda Villarosa's “Under the Skin,” an exploration of racism's impact on the American healthcare system, and Deborah Cohen's history of a network of journalists who confronted fascism before World War II, “Last Call at the Hotel Imperial,” were among the winners of awards announced Tuesday by the J. Anthony Lukas Prize Project.

Villarosa won the $10,000 J. Anthony Lukas Book Prize for a nonfiction work that exemplifies reportorial and literary excellence, and Cohen the $10,000 Mark Lynton History Prize for “intellectual distinction” and "felicity of expression."

The project also gave $25,000 awards to two books in progress that are “significant works of nonfiction on American topics of political or social concern”: Jesselyn Cook's “The Quiet Damage: QAnon and the Destruction of the American Family” and Mike Hixenbaugh's “Uncivil: One Town’s Fight over Race and Identity, and the New Battle for America’s Schools.”

Established in 1998, the project is managed by the Columbia Journalism School and the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard and is named for the late author and investigative journalist. Previous winners include Robert Caro, Isabel Wilkerson and Jill Lepore.

Liberal insider reflects on struggle to entrench Indigenous rights during the constitutional process of the early 1980s

The following is an abridged excerpt from Unlikely Insider: A West Coast Advocate in Ottawa, by Jack Austin, a former federal Liberal policy adviser, chief of staff to prime minister Pierre Trudeau and senator, with Edie Austin (McGill University Press, 2023). In the book the Liberal insider reflects on the struggle to entrench Indigenous rights during the constitutional process of the early 1980s.

B.C. Senator offers some instructive insight

Jack Austin is a former federal Liberal policy adviser, deputy minister, chief of staff to prime minister Pierre Trudeau, cabinet minister and senator. But unless you hail from B.C., his name’s not apt to ring a bell.