Amabile launching political thriller

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This article was published 28/12/2019 (2347 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Winnipeg poet George Amabile turns his talents to the political-thriller genre in a new novel, which he launches Friday at 7 p.m. at the Grant Park location of McNally Robinson Booksellers.

Amabile, author of 10 previous books and who explored issues related to war and post-traumatic stress disorder in his poetry collection Martial Music, makes a combat-veteran detective his protagonist in his new novel, Operation Stealth Seed (Signature Editions).

Dealing with flashbacks and violent outbursts, the detective ends up investigating a U.S. intelligence-backed corporate conspiracy to use genetically modified seeds to take over the world’s grain supply.

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The British publisher of the Booker-shortlisted novel Ducks, Newburyport experienced a Christmas miracle straight out of a yuletide movie.

Independent publisher Galley Beggar Press saw what should have been the company’s best year ever turned into a financial crisis when an online and pop-up retailer called The Book People went into the British equivalent of receivership.

The Book People owed the publisher the equivalent of nearly $70,000 for a special Booker shortlist edition of Lucy Ellmann’s 1,000-page experimental novel.

Disaster turned to celebration when Galley Beggar launched a GoFundMe campaign on Dec. 17 and reached its goal the same day.

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A British literary couple may turn out to be a cautionary tale, with the moral “if you marry a fellow writer, make sure you co-ordinate your publication dates.”

Benjamin Myers and Adelle Stripe are both shortlisted for the Portico Prize, a literary award that honours work from northern England.

Myers writes in the Guardian about the couple’s current situation as they await the results, to be announced Jan. 23: “We have each lived the other’s books and now we are going head to head in a literary death match… I hope it doesn’t lead to divorce.”

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Winnipeg psychiatrist and author Manuel Matas was one of three non-fiction finalists this fall at the 2019 Whistler Independent Book Awards, where he gave a reading from his book, The Borders of Normal: A Clinical Psychiatrist De-Stigmatizes Paranormal Phenomena.

The Borders of Normal discusses a variety of paranormal phenomena, including extrasensory perception, telepathy, precognitive dreams, near-death and out-of-body experiences, visions, voices and messages from the spirit world.

Matas writes that these experiences are common, but many people who have them are afraid to talk about them out of fear that they are losing their minds. In his book — available at bookstores and Amazon — he helps readers distinguish between psychic and psychotic phenomena and shares some of his own experiences.

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Librarians, teachers, parents and kids looking for Canadian reading ideas will soon be able to find them online at a YouTube channel being created by the Canadian Children’s Book Centre.

Bibliovideo will include videos and links to author interviews, book trailers, how-to demonstrations by illustrators, book reviews and more. The project, funded by the Canada Council For the Arts, is part of a strategy to increase digital access and promotion of Canadian books.

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Five books by Canadians are among the 100 books that shaped the past decade, according to the website Lithub.

Canadian entries include Sheila Heti’s How Should a Person Be?, an introspective work that helped popularize the term “autofiction”; Naomi Klein’s book on climate change and revolution, This Changes Everything; Rupi Kaur’s collection of poetry, Milk and Honey, which went from Instagram to selling five million copies; 12 Rules For Life, the men’s self-help book by controversial psychology professor Jordan Peterson; and Margaret Atwood’s Booker Prize co-winning novel The Testaments, a sequel to The Handmaid’s Tale.

View the full list at wfp.to/lithub.

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