Crime book award for fortunate Morrissey

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This article was published 10/06/2017 (3396 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

When an early reviewer described Donna Morrissey’s latest novel, The Fortunate Brother (Viking Canada), as crime fiction, the popular Newfoundland writer yelled out “No! It’s not crime fiction.”

But when the novel won the Arthur Ellis Best Novel Award in Canadian Crime Fiction on May 25, Morrissey took an understandably different tack. “Who am I to argue,” she said.

Other winners included Elle Wild, who won the best first novel award for Strange Things Done (Dundurn Press); Gordon Korman, who won the best juvenile book award for Masterminds: Criminal Destiny (HarperCollins); and Jeremy Grimaldi, who won the non-fiction prize for A Daughter’s Deadly Deception: The Jennifer Pan Story (Dundurn).

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British fantasy author Philip Pullman last month gave fans a taste of his much-anticipated new trilogy that returns to the world of his bestselling His Dark Materials series.

An excerpt from his new book, La Belle Sauvage, the first volume of a series called The Book of Dust, was published in the Guardian on May 27. The excerpt starts at the time of the infancy of Lyra, the heroine of the previous series, and reintroduces readers to her mysterious scientist father, Lord Asriel.

The new book will be published this October by Penguin Random House.

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Oakbank writer Sean Trinder looks at death and the idea of achieving immortality through reproduction in his new novel Die Like a Leaf.

Trinder, whose novel The Guy Who Pumps Your Gas Hates You was released in 2015 by NeWest Press, tells the story of a healthy 35-year-old who is convinced his father’s and grandfather’s early deaths mean he’s marked out for an early exit, too. In hopes of passing on his DNA before his time is up, he locates a potential co-parent.

He launches the novel tonight at 7 p.m. at McNally Robinson Booksellers.

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Prairie Fire magazine launches its “ndncity” special supplement this week with a celebration and reading featuring more than 20 indigenous authors and editors featured in the latest issue of literary journal.

The lineup for the launch, starting Wednesday at 7 p.m. at McNally Robinson, features established and emerging writers. They include pathfinders in the city’s indigenous writing community, such as Beatrice Mosionier and Duncan Mercredi, as well as newly established star of the scene Katherena Vermette, fresh from winning the $40,000 Amazon.ca First Novel Prize for The Break.

The launch comes after Prairie Fire won a gold medal in this year’s National Magazine Awards for writer Benjamin Hertwig and his creative non-fiction story The Burn, published last summer.

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One of Canada’s leading reporters, the Globe and Mail’s André Picard has won a roomful of trophies for his reporting on health care since the 1980s.

Picard visits McNally Robinson Wednesday at 7:30 p.m. to launch his latest book, Matters of Life and Death: Public Health in Canada (Douglas & McIntyre). Past books include The Gift of Death: Confronting Canada’s Tainted Blood Tragedy and Critical Care: Canadian Nurses Speak for Change.

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Canadian food journalist Sarah Elton describes herself as a “conflicted meat eater” — and those conflicts are present in her new book, a guide to vegetarianism for kids called Meatless: A Fresh Look at What You Eat.

The illustrated book discusses some of the ethical and environmental reasons people choose to reduce or eliminate meat consumption. But as a doctoral student in a health and society program at the University of Toronto, she aims to make sure kids who opt to cut out meat don’t miss out on protein, calcium, iron and other nutrients.

The new book from the award-winning author of 2010’s Locavore: From Farmers’ Fields to Rooftop Gardens is packed with meal plans and descriptions of foods from around the world, as well as user-friendly descriptions of nutrition and food-science terminology.

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