Mantel’s stunning saga returns

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This article was published 20/07/2019 (2297 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

For years, readers have been anticipating the final book in a popular novel series filled with scheming, royalty and beheadings. No, not the series with the dragons and ice zombies.

HarperCollins recently announced that the final volume of Hilary Mantel’s trilogy focusing on Henry VIII’s adviser Thomas Cromwell will be published next spring.

The Mirror and the Light will wrap up the story Mantel started in 2009’s Wolf Hall and continued in 2012’s Bring Up the Bodies, both of which won the Booker Prize. Like the previous titles, it will be adapted for the BBC.

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Two books about the Northern Irish “troubles” won this year’s Orwell Prizes for political fiction and non-fiction.

Anna Burns won the fiction prize for Milkman, her Booker Prize-winning novel about a young woman who is harassed by an older, married member of a Northern Irish paramilitary group.

The non-fiction award went to Patrick Radden Keefe for Say Nothing, an investigation of the IRA’s 1972 abduction and murder of a woman suspected of being an informant.

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A former director of publicity for Penguin Canada is getting plenty of attention for her debut novel.

The Bookseller reports Ashley Audrain’s novel The Push has set records for a debut, with a two-book £1-million deal in the U.K. and a “higher seven-figure” deal in the U.S. The book has also attracted unprecedented interest in non-English markets, with 22 translations lined up by early July.

Compared to both Lionel Shriver’s We Need to Talk About Kevin and Leila Slimani’s The Perfect Nanny, The Push is a story of motherhood, madness, loneliness and nature versus nurture. It’s set for publication in early 2021.

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Top-selling books from last year, and some from earlier, continue to dominate book sales in Canada this year.

Last year’s top seller, Becoming by Michelle Obama, is the biggest seller so far for 2019, according to BookNet Canada. Other big sellers this year that were also published in 2018 include Educated by Tara Westover, Dog Brawl: Brawl of the Wild by Dav Pilkey and The Tattooist of Auschwitz by Heather Morris. The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck, by Mark Manson, remains one of the fastest-selling books of 2019, nearly three years after its September 2016 publishing date.

Among Canadian-written books, the two top sellers were also the two biggest hits in 2018: Yum and Yummer by Greta Podleski and 12 Rules for Life by Jordan Peterson. Love You Forever, by Robert Munsch, remains in the top five among Canadian-written books, more than 30 years after its publication.

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Winnipeg-born retired physician Ruth Simkin writes about harassment and discrimination in medicine in a memoir she launches Wednesday at 7 p.m. at the McNally Robinson Booksellers’ Grant Park location.

Simkin reflects on a career of perseverance and struggle in Dear Sophie: Life Lessons in Feminism and Medicine (Bedazzled Ink Publishing).

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On Thursday, a Calgary author and teacher launches a graphic novel set against the backdrop of the founding of the CCF (the predecessor of the NDP), the fight for public health care and for better working conditions.

James Davidge, author of several graphic novels and other works, will launch The 1st Legion of Utopia at McNally Robinson’s Grant Park location at 7 p.m. The book includes an introduction by NDP leader Wab Kinew.

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The author of the first history of Latvian immigration to Manitoba will launch his book Friday at an event to be attended by the Latvian ambassador to Canada, Karlis Eihenbaums.

Viesturs Zarins, a former president of the Latvian National Federation, is the author of Latvian Pioneers, Socialists and Refugees in Manitoba: An Illustrated Journey Through the History of Latvians in Manitoba (1895-2018).

The launch, at McNally Robinson’s Grant Park location, starts at 7:30 p.m.

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