Frankie Styne And The Silver Man

When Liz Meredith and her new baby move into the middle row-house on Onley Street—Liza having lived for years off-grid in an old railcar—there's more to get used to than electricity and proper plumbing. She's desperate to avoid her well-meaning social worker and her neighbours Alice and Tom, who, for reasons of their own, won't leave her alone. And then there is her other neighbour, the disfigured and reclusive John Green, better known to the world as Frankie Styne, the author of a series of violent bestsellers. When his latest novel is unexpectedly nominated for a literary prize and his private life is exposed in the glare of publicity, Frankie plots a gruesome, twisted revenge that threatens others who call Onley Street home. Frankie Styne and the Silver Man is unforgettable: a thrilling novel of literary revenge, celebrity culture and the power of love and beauty in an ugly world.

No other person has done more to celebrate and encourage the short story in Canada than John Metcalf. For more than five decades he has worked tirelessly as editor, anthologist, writer, critic, and teacher to help shape our understanding of the form and what it can do. The long-time editor of the yearly Best Canadian Stories anthology, as well as a fiction editor at some of the pre-eminent literary presses in the country for more than forty years, he has worked to support and champion several generations of our best writers. Literature in Canada would be far less without his efforts. Sifting through a lifetime of reading, writing, and thinking about the short story in this country, and where it fits within the larger currents of world literature, Metcalf’s magisterial The Canadian Short Story offers the most authoritative book on the subject to date. Most importantly, it includes an expanded and reconsidered Century List, Metcalf’s critical guide to the best Canadian short story collections of the last 100 years. But more than a critical book, The Canadian Short Story is a love-letter to the form, a passionate defense of the best of our literature, and a championing of those books and writers most often over-looked. It is a guide not only to what to read, but also one, its author’s most fervent desire, which aims to make better readers of us all.

Simon Austen is serving a life sentence for murder. Intelligent but illiterate, charming but also damaged and manipulative, he admits to what he’s done but his motives are far from clear, even to himself. Then Simon learns to read and write. From his high security prison he begins an illicit correspondence with a series of women. The more he learns – about them and about himself – the higher the stakes become. Simon finds himself on a perilous and unpredictable journey as he stumbles towards self-knowledge and redemption.

The Story of My Face is about Natalie Baron, a teenage girl adrift in the world and looking for someone or something to latch on to. Her seemingly innocent involvement with Barbara Hern and her family, followers of an extreme protestant sect, leads to the revelation of a long-kept secret and a devastating series of events which change not only her face but also the course of her life. The Story of My Face is both a stunning psychological thriller and the archaeology of an accident which shaped a life.

Anna Silowski, highly educated, driven and successful, works as a curator in a prestigious palaeontological museum; Scott Macleod dropped out of school, has a confused relationship with his Native roots, and an alcoholic father in tow. After a day’s prospecting leads Anna to make an extraordinary discovery in a remote part of British Columbia, the tensions below the surface of her successful career are exposed. Anna has carried for years terrifying knowledge that she feels she must keep secret, and now is pushed toward breakdown. She finds herself unexpectedly dependent on Scott, and recruits him to help on the excavation of her find. Scott is soon way out of his depth, and the excavation itself teeters on the edge of disaster... THE FIND is a compelling story about discovery, inheritance and fate, and a moving exploration of the possibilities that hide within a seemingly impossible relationship.

By Sue Thomas www.suethomas.net In the early 1990s there were very few creative writing degrees in the UK but lots of creative writing workshops in the community. Many writers, including me, taught creative writing in libraries, prisons, hospitals, schools, even living rooms. The students were hugely varied, from enthusiastic poets to prospective autobiographers and hopeful screenwriters and everything in between. I’m no longer involved in that way but such groups are still very popular, and they often provide a valuable income for self-employed writers. The idea for ‘Creative Writing: A Handbook for Workshop Leaders’ came from a collaboration between East Midlands Arts and the University of Nottingham’s Department of Adult Education, both now defunct. Its aim was to support creative writing teachers by collecting the wisdom of those East Midlands writers who were already involved in the practice. Many writers who teach writing have no formal training in teaching or facilitation and can find very few resources to help them when they’re starting out, or support them as they develop their skills. The book is divided into the following sections: Teaching Adults Teaching Writing Workshop Exercises Problems and Issues Resources and Information Of course some of the material is now wildly out of date and there are virtually no web-based resources but a lot of it will still be useful. I especially like the inspiring vignettes by writers Catherine Byron, Kevin Fegan, Martin Glynn, Jacek Laskowski and Kathy Page.

The Lord Nelson Tavern: a Halifax watering hole in the early 1960s. The group of young university students who hang out there—a ramshackle coterie of aspiring artists, economists, poets, and philosophers—come together to gossip and ponder the big questions of art and life, all the while pining after the vain and untouchable Francesca. Though these friends soon drift apart, their early rivalries, jealousies and conquests will continue to reverberate. In the novel’s seven interlocking sequences, Ray Smith explores the often decisive and even fatal impact of seemingly innocuous choices upon the course of our lives. With unforgettable scenes that marry the sacred and the profane, and with structural innovations that recall the works of Barthelme and Nabokov, Lord Nelson Tavern is a must-read cult-classic of Canadian fiction.

WINNER OF THE 2018 ROGERS WRITERS' TRUST FICTION PRIZE A 2018 KIRKUS BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR A GLOBE AND MAIL BEST BOOK OF 2018 A TORONTO STAR TOP TEN BOOK OF THE YEAR A WINNIPEG FREE PRESS FAVOURITE BOOK OF THE YEAR A QUILL & QUIRE BEST BOOK OF 2018 Born between the wars on a working-class London street, Harry Miles wins a scholarship and a chance to escape his station, but discovers instead that poetry is what offers him real direction. While searching for more of it he meets Evelyn Hill on the steps of Battersea Library. The two fall in love as the world prepares once again for war, but their capacity to care for each other over the ensuing decades becomes increasingly tested. Twisting and startling, harrowing and deeply tender, Dear Evelyn explores how two very different people come together to shape and reshape each other over a lifetime. It is a compelling and unconventional love story that will leave its mark on any reader who has ever loved.