Interactive map: The most popular item at each Manitoba Liquor Mart

Twenty-nine liquor marts reported vodka as their top product sold, while 19 others sold beer or light beer the most. Canadian whisky was the top seller at 15 liquor mart locations, while wine dominated at three: pinot grigio and cabernet sauvignon at two south Winnipeg locations, and sherry at a downtown one.

Teen women struggle with fallout of fame

IN Every Little Piece of Me, Canadian author Amy Jones opens a window of understanding into the lives of celebrity girls “gone wild” that is entertaining, thoughtful and moving.

The novel describes five years in the lives of two teenage women as they simultaneously grow up and into the public eye.

Ava Hart is the eldest teenage daughter of two small-c celebrity fathers; the family is conscripted by circumstance into starring in a reality show. Home is Where the Hart Is follows a modern family with two gay parents and three interracial kids as they move from New York City to rural Nova Scotia to run a bed and breakfast; the premise of the reality show is so spot-on, it could already be in your TV guide. Her family’s foibles (often staged for the show — “Cut! Could you say that again?”) and her own typical teenage sullenness become outsized on the small screen.

Meanwhile, Mags Kovach escapes the horror of an abusive, unloving childhood to become the charismatic lead singer of an up-and-coming indie rock band by the side of her bassist boyfriend and two of his high school friends. Mags’ gift for music and performance is undermined by the industry’s exploitation of women and the toll touring takes on the mental health of artists.

Past and present, dreams and reality collide in Newman's new novel

It’s the year 2000. The United States has elected a woman as president, peace accords have been signed in Jerusalem and the United Nations has eradicated poverty. It’s “the first year with no war at all, when you opened up the newspaper like opening a gift,” American author Sandra Newman writes. In this utopia, a young doctoral student, Ben, meets a captivating young woman, Kate, at an upscale left-wing party in New York’s Upper East Side.

Wait… what? That’s not the 2000 you remember? Indeed.

Welcome to The Heavens, the fourth novel by Newman, which is unsettlingly assembled around constant states of presque-vu — the feeling you have seen something before, which you have not — and jamais vu — the feeling you recognize something, but it’s unfamiliar.

All her life, Kate has had vivid dreams of other times and other worlds, and she has an endearing sense of surprise about the world around her. She “gets mixed up between reality and fantasy,” her father informs Ben with affection.

Time travel tips both handy and hilarious

If you’re a fan of his Dinosaur Comics, you already know Toronto writer Ryan North is both whip-smart and hilarious. If you’ve read his choose-your-own-path books based on Shakespearean tales (Romeo and/or Juliet and To Be or Not To Be), you already know his style of casual, non-linear second-person writing — explaining the story while talking directly to the reader.

Combine that humour, intelligence and style with the history of human technology and you’ve got How to Invent Everything, a guide for a future time traveller whose time machine breaks, stranding them somewhere in the past.

The first order of business: figure out what time period you’re in. The book includes a handy flowchart for figuring this out, with options such as, “Are you being subsumed into molten lava?”, “Are there dinosaurs?” and “Do you see any evidence of farming?”

If you’ve landed before 200,000 BC… things don’t look good. But if you’ve landed after that, you can have a big influence on human history — and, helpfully, make your own life more comfortable — by introducing technologies that humans on our timeline took much longer to figure out.

Cannabis across Canada: How to buy, use, store and grow your pot

Laws regarding cannabis use and distribution vary drastically from province to province. But, no worries! Tell us where you in Canada, and we'll tell you what the rules are for buying, storing, growing and using your legal cannabis.

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Cannabis prices across Canada

On Oct. 17, we reviewed prices on legal cannabis stores online to see how pricing compared across Canada.

Nova Scotia prices given are based on pre-legalization estimates, because the online store in that province requires an access code which is collected in person.  (Have a spare access code? Let us know!)

Nunavut store did not appear to be operational when we last checked. Licensed retailers in Saskatchewan are allowed to sell online, but we couldn't find a store that was doing so.  (Know of one? Let us know!)

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Time-travel novel explores feelings of loss

Polly and Frank are an ordinary couple living in Buffalo, N.Y. They are deeply in love. But on a spontaneous holiday to Galveston, Texas, Frank contracts a quick-spreading, deadly flu.

The pandemic traps them far from home, and the couple cannot afford medical care. But Frank will receive life-saving treatment if Polly agrees to go away to work as a bonded labourer for 32 months.

There’s a catch: Polly’s months of labour will last years for Frank: She will be sent more than a decade into the future to work for TimeRaiser.

She and Frank make a plan to meet in the future; Polly, however, arrives years later than expected, and the place they intended to meet is no longer accessible. Her quest to find Frank in the future forms the backbone of An Ocean of Minutes, the debut novel by Singapore-raised, Toronto-based Thea Lim.

Fictional trio leave civilization behind in dense dystopian drama

Canadian-born, Los Angeles-based journalist and activist Cory Doctorow’s latest novel for adult audiences, Walkaway, sees cyber “maker” culture meet post-scarcity in the Canadian wilderness in a story that is either a dystopian or utopian look to the future, depending on your feelings on meritocracy.

The novel unfolds over some 50 years in the lives of our protagonists, a group of young adults who meet in near-future Toronto, complete with believably futuristic details. We’ve got the fun predictions (self-cooking pizzas, robot waitresses, illegally hacked self-driving cars) as well as the dire (profound income inequality, mass unemployment, universal surveillance).

Unemployed nobodies Hubert and Seth meet ultra-rich “zotta” Natalie at an illegal furniture-manufacturing rave in a derelict factory (“putting the ‘party’ back in ‘Communist Party’”). After the party is busted, the trio spends the next day hiding, recovering and arguing about philosophy in Natalie’s parents’ mansion before deciding to “go walkaway” — that is, walk out of the city (and law-and-order civilization) into the no man’s land that is the Niagara Escarpment.

Walkaway territory is an anarchic hinterland; it exists in ex-urban areas around the globe. With the futuristic equivalent of today’s 3D printers — as well as renewable energy and raw materials sourced from amply available scrap — anyone can print nearly anything needed, so walkaways do a type of digital homesteading in the wastelands by manufacturing their own food, medicine, shelter and technology.

Rebellious critters rule future Canada

The Minted won’t become an international bestseller. It won’t top the New York Times list, won’t lead Amazon’s fiction sales, won’t win the Man Booker Prize.

If you’re not profoundly, tremendously Canadian, you won’t get it. Although even if you are Canadian to the core, you still might not get this bizarre, fast-paced dystopian hallucination.

Will McClelland’s debut novel tells the story behind the scenes of the Canadian Animal Rebellion of 2031.

Our narrator is Nicholas A. Cibiades, a former professor, high-tech worker and lay minister who, grieving the losses of his wife and son, takes to the wilderness to commit suicide — but instead encounters a talking moose on the eve of a series of wildlife terrorist attacks on Canada’s urban dwellers.

Barrelling over falls brings family together

Amy Jones’ debut novel We’re All in This Together is a whirlwind ride, blazing through four days in Thunder Bay, Ont. in a tale narrated by 10 characters connected to a single family.

At the book’s core is Serafina (Finn)Parker, working hard to live an unremarkable solitary life in a nondescript suburb of Toronto. Finn is called back to a complicated family situation she fled years earlier in Thunder Bay when her mother, Kate, goes over goes over Kakabeka Falls — “the Niagara of the North” — in a barrel, barely surviving and becoming a viral video sensation.

Once Finn returns to Thunder Bay, the book’s narration is shared among Finn and her father, her twin sister, her niece, her adopted brother, his wife, and others: in total 10 separate narrators, each with their own clear voice. The family members’ accounts layer, cross and converge, each person seeing the weekend’s events through the lens of their memories of past events.

We’re All in This Together brings Thunder Bay to life so faithfully the reader could follow the characters’ steps on a map. Jones, a native of Halifax and only recently of Thunder Bay, does a beautiful job of bringing small-city living to life: “She is all about the downtown north core, that two-block radius of stores and restaurants that can make you feel like you’re in a real city until you realize you have walked the entire length of the neighbourhood in less than a minute,” she writes of one character’s commitment to condo living. “Still, if you never left that two-block radius, if you lived and worked and partied there, you might be able to forget where you are.”

Interactive map: Raw sewage in Winnipeg’s rivers

Senior officials from the city’s water and waste department said Thursday steps are in place to prevent a repeat of this month’s sewage spill, but the city’s own data reveals the antiquated combined storm water and sewer system is in a constant state of disrepair.

The city’s combined underground water and sewage system, which combines the flow of storm water and sewage through the same lines, provides for the discharge of untreated sewage into the Red and Assiniboine rivers from most of its older neighbourhoods during times of intense rainfall or snowmelt. The city has a long-term plan to separate its sewage and storm water lines, at a price tag of about $1 billion.

There have been four spills of raw sewage into the Red River this month alone, with a total of 31 spills of raw sewage over the past 12 months, pouring several millions of litres of untreated sewage into the Red and Assiniboine rivers.

Many of the incidents reported on the city’s website fail to disclose how much sewage was spilled or for what duration.

Dystopic California tale anything but dry

On the day she was born, Luz Dunn was "adopted" by the government as a symbol of conservation.

Her "Baby Dunn" persona was trotted out throughout her young life, her childhood milestones forming waypoints in southern California's slow death by drought: grass eradicated before she can play on it, swimming pools drained before she can swim. "Without evacs, Baby Dunn will die of thirst by 24," writes American author Claire Vaye Watkins.

But at age 25, Luz has not abandoned California. Instead, as the Golden State dies slowly from dehydration, she connects with Ray -- a surf-loving veteran of the "forever war" who cannot leave the state -- and moves to a movie starlet's abandoned mansion in Los Angeles.

The pair scavenge vacant buildings, drink ration cola and eat $200 blueberries, and invent make-work projects to keep each other sane -- a life that is adequate if not satisfying. They then half-rescue/half-kidnap an enigmatic, coin-eyed toddler, forcing them to make a dangerous journey into the Amargosa, a vast and mystical sea of sand consuming the American West.

California couple heads for the woods in post-apocalyptic tale of survival

California will surely appear soon on a bestseller list near you, but not for the reason you might expect.

Late-night television host Stephen Colbert recently urged audiences to pre-order the novel -- the debut effort by Edan Lepucki -- as part of an ongoing dispute between bookseller Amazon and Hachette, which publishes the book (and Colbert's own book) in the United States.

The book leapt to the top of several independent bookstore bestseller lists, leading Colbert to set a new, higher goal for his audience: get California on the New York Times bestseller list. Doing so, Colbert suggests, will "really show Amazon" that readers reject its stance on pricing.

Colbert commands an audience a million strong and is likely to have a substantive effect on the success of the book, landing it in the hands of thousands of readers who might not have otherwise heard of it.

Growing pains: Novel traces outbreak through group of teenage girls

The Fever is a teenage coming-of-age story crossed with a Dr. House-style social-medical mystery. The plot is told by turns through the eyes of Deenie Nash, a teenager, and two members of her family: her father Tom, a popular high-school science teacher; and Eli, her hockey-star older brother.

But the story belongs to and revolves around Deenie, whose circle of friends is struck by an epidemic of seizures and hallucinations.

Panic, secrets and tempers swell as the town tries to understand the cause of the outbreak among its teenage girls: Pollution? Vaccination? Drugs? Hysteria?

Abbott, an Edgar Award-winning author of six previous novels, is perhaps best-known for her hard-boiled neo-noir heroines. Her work in this decade leaves the mid-century ladies behind, instead exploring the raw heart of modern female adolescence while maintaining the tight but lyrical prose of her older books.

Interactive Map: Crash outcomes in Winnipeg

The Winnipeg Police Service’s central traffic unit investigated 30 serious accidents in 2011. Only a third resulted in charges and even fewer resulted in jail time, according to a review by the Free Press.

See the results of our research on each case in the map below. Green markers indicate crashes in which charges were laid. Click on any marker for more details on the case.

Isolation tanks relax the body and mind

"Sensory-deprivation tanks? You mean like Altered States?"

It's the question everyone asked upon hearing I would try out the services of the newly opened Floatation Therapy Winnipeg, home to a floatation tank -- also known variously as a float pod, think-tank, isolation tank or -- yes -- sensory-deprivation chamber. By any name, they offer a similar experience: an extended period lying weightlessly in total darkness and silence, generally for relaxation or recreation.

Floatation Therapy Winnipeg opened in December in Roi and Liz Jones' nondescript St. Vital home. The couple converted their basement into a spa-like space with a waiting room and a second area housing a floatation tank -- a three-metre by 1.5-metre, lightproof, soundproof metal pod filled with 30 centimetres of skin-temperature water and 450 kilograms of pharmaceutical-grade Epsom salts.

The Joneses started thinking about sensory-deprivation therapy after catching a Vice documentary on the topic on YouTube a year ago. After conducting more research, they decided to take the plunge, so to speak, spending thousands of dollars to import a tank from California -- even though neither had actually tried one.

Apocalyptic NYC thriller likely to land on big screen

Mike Mitchell has a problem: his wife might be having an affair with a neighbour down the hall from their pricey Manhattan condo.

Also: the world is ending. So begins Cyberstorm, a new apocalyptic thriller by Matthew Mather.

Mike, Cyberstorm's protagonist, is a junior partner in a New York venture capital fund. He eloped with Lauren Seymour, who gave up her job as a lawyer to stay home with Luke, the couple's new son.

Mike wants a sibling for Luke, but Lauren worries about getting her law career back on track; he thinks Lauren's spending too much time with Richard, the former footballer down the hall.

Winnipeg Free Press Pothole Locator

Found a horrible pothole on a Winnipeg street? Warn other readers about it -- and then find out spots you should avoid using the map below.

Infographic: Manitoba budget 2014

Revenues, expenditures and key figures in Manitoba's 2014 budget.

A snowy story of right and wrong

In midwinter 1897, midwife Elspeth Howell returns after months away to her family's remote homestead in upstate New York to find her husband and four of her children killed in cold blood.

The lone survivor of the massacre, troubled 12-year-old introvert Caleb fears his mother's approaching footsteps, thinking they harken the killer's return. He strikes out blindly, gravely wounding his last family member with his own shotgun.

Thus the theme is set for the rest of James Scott's debut novel, an exploration of the unintended consequences of acts that seemed right when they were committed -- set against a beautifully drawn backdrop of stark winter.

Scott unfolds his characters' secrets in a series of skilful flashbacks while weaving together twin narratives: Elspeth's flight from her sins and Caleb's hunt for justice. Both protagonists are tormented by things they've done, and each dreads and hungers for the conflict that awaits them.

Phoenix Sinclair: A timeline of key events

Key events in the short life of Phoenix Sinclair, and in the trial and inquiry that followed her death.

The HQ Effect

The immediate area surrounding Winnipeg's new downtown police headquarters is the focus of a significant real-estate play, with nearly half the properties changing hands within the past five years.

Facebook founder’s big sister has basic advice for life online

Dot Complicated is part memoir and part self-help book, aiming to use stories from real life to help readers navigate social challenges in the online world.

This mediocre book is the first literary outing for U.S. entrepreneur Randi Zuckerberg, 31, who worked for six years as a marketing executive at Facebook, the social media empire founded by her younger brother, Mark, before leaving to start her own company.

She begins with a lengthy autobiographical section, followed by chapters on specific topics, such as friends, love and career. Each chapter offers her observations on the influence of new technology, peppered with vignettes from average people.

When she's not dropping the names of celebrities she has met, Zuckerberg provides lots of anecdotes from her own happily domesticated life -- she is married to her college sweetheart and has a young son -- often in tedious detail. In contrast, her stories about other people, sometimes friends, sometimes strangers, are in the third-person, usually in a single paragraph.

Shark thriller proves difficult to digest

Six Miami heroin addicts are kidnapped by shadowy ex-military men, wake up on a deserted island and are forced to swim through shark-infested waters to get their next fix.

So begins Bait, a kind of Jaws meets Survivor meets Intervention thriller by Torontonian J. Kent Messum.

If you can swallow that premise, Messum's first novel is a page-turner, easily consumed in a few hours -- though you might find it difficult to digest.

Narration in Bait is unsteady, sometimes relaying the (often crude) thoughts of each character, but occasionally describing events unknown to the characters or oddly ill-timed philosophizing. For example, one drug-addled swimmer reflects on the nature of identity as "key to corporality" while being eaten by a shark. (No spoiler alerts needed here -- the first shark attack takes place on page 2).

Winnipeg homicides, 2012

This map shows the locations of homicides in Winnipeg in 2012. 

Red icons show unsolved cases, while green icons show cases considered solved.

Use the controls at left to zoom in and out on the map, and click and drag to move around the map. 

Click on any icon for more details on the case.

INTERACTIVE MAP: Winnipeg’s top collision locations, 2005 – 2009

This map shows the location of the 150 intersections that recorded the highest volume of collisions between 2005 and 2009, as reported to Manitoba Public Insurance. The Free Press obtained the claims data through a Freedom of Information request.

INTERACTIVE MAP: Winnipeg road fatalities, 2007 – 2011

This map shows number of collision fatalities between 2007 and Aug. 2, 2011.

The data does not include a pedestrian who died after being struck by a snowmobile in Transcona in January 2011, as this incident did not take place on a city street.

Vacation in Iceland? Why not?

Iceland is not a destination for a relaxing holiday.

Oh, it's a fantastic holiday destination. But it will not be relaxing. If you're looking for a nap in the sunshine in an exotic locale, Iceland is not for you.

If, however, you want to stay up around the clock, snorkel in crystal-clear ice-cold water, ride a snowmobile up the side of a glacier, tramp over a lava field to climb a volcano, dance in nightclubs until 5 a.m. -- then get thee to the Land of Fire and Ice.

"Why Iceland?" was the question my husband and I heard most often after booking a week's holiday there this June.

Our Winnipeg: Cement cemetery

This spot on the outskirts of northwest Winnipeg was dubbed the "cement cemetery" by the friends who introduced it to me in my teens.

The purpose of the site is unclear: monument to dystopia? Abandoned building project? Concrete testing zone? The latter seems the most likely, since the columns appear to be marked with numbers -- possibly dates? If so, some have been in the ground since the 1950s.

There's no equipment around, no sign of use -- just two mounds of grass pierced with dozens of columns and a small brick box between them.

Perhaps that mystery is what attracts me to it; it's an enigmatic subject that complements my lo-fi photography experiments.