The Luminaries

The Luminaries
Author: Eleanor Catton
Publisher: Little, Brown
Total Pages: 822
Release: 2013-10-15
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0316126950

The winner of the Man Booker Prize, this "expertly written, perfectly constructed" bestseller (The Guardian) is now a Starz miniseries. It is 1866, and Walter Moody has come to stake his claim in New Zealand's booming gold rush. On the stormy night of his arrival, he stumbles across a tense gathering of 12 local men who have met in secret to discuss a series of unexplained events: a wealthy man has vanished, a prostitute has tried to end her life, and an enormous cache of gold has been discovered in the home of a luckless drunk. Moody is soon drawn into a network of fates and fortunes that is as complex and exquisitely ornate as the night sky. Richly evoking a mid-nineteenth-century world of shipping, banking, and gold rush boom and bust, The Luminaries is at once a fiendishly clever ghost story, a gripping page-turner, and a thrilling novelistic achievement. It richly confirms that Eleanor Catton is one of the brightest stars in the international literary firmament.

Prizing Children's Literature

Prizing Children's Literature
Author: Kenneth B. Kidd
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Total Pages: 263
Release: 2016-11-10
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1317231422

Children's book awards have mushroomed since the early twentieth-century and especially since the 1960s, when literary prizing became a favored strategy for both commercial promotion and canon-making. There are over 300 awards for English-language titles alone, but despite the profound impact of children’s book awards, scholars have paid relatively little attention to them. This book is the first scholarly volume devoted to the analysis of Anglophone children's book awards in historical and cultural context. With attention to both political and aesthetic concerns, the book offers original and diverse scholarship on prizing practices and their consequences in Australia, Canada, and especially the United States. Contributors offer both case studies of particular awards and analysis of broader trends in literary evaluation and elevation, drawing on theoretical work on canonization and cultural capital. Sections interrogate the complex and often unconscious ideological work of prizing, the ongoing tension between formalist awards and so-called identity-based awards — all the more urgent in light of the "We Need Diverse Books" campaign — the ever-morphing forms and parameters of prizing, and scholarly practices of prizing. Among the many awards discussed are the Pura Belpré Medal, the Inky Awards, the Canada Governor General Literary Award, the Printz Award, the Best Animated Feature Oscar, the Phoenix Award, and the John Newbery Medal, giving due attention to prizes for fiction as well as for non-fiction, poetry, and film. This volume will interest scholars in literary and cultural studies, social history, book history, sociology, education, library and information science, and anyone concerned with children's literature.

The End of Absence

The End of Absence
Author: Michael John Harris
Publisher: Penguin
Total Pages: 238
Release: 2014-08-07
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0698150589

Soon enough, nobody will remember life before the Internet. What does this unavoidable fact mean? Those of us who have lived both with and without the crowded connectivity of online life have a rare opportunity. We can still recognize the difference between Before and After. We catch ourselves idly reaching for our phones at the bus stop. Or we notice how, midconversation, a fumbling friend dives into the perfect recall of Google. In this eloquent and thought-provoking book, Michael Harris argues that amid all the changes we're experiencing, the most interesting is the end of absence-the loss of lack. The daydreaming silences in our lives are filled; the burning solitudes are extinguished. There's no true "free time" when you carry a smartphone. Today's rarest commodity is the chance to be alone with your thoughts. Michael Harris is an award-winning journalist and a contributing editor at Western Living and Vancouvermagazines. He lives in Toronto, Canada.

Tainna

Tainna
Author: Norma Dunning
Publisher: Douglas & McIntyre
Total Pages: 137
Release: 2021-03-27
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1771622725

Drawing on both lived experience and cultural memory, Norma Dunning brings together six powerful new short stories centred on modern-day Inuk characters in Tainna. Ranging from homeless to extravagantly wealthy, from spiritual to jaded, young to elderly, and even from alive to deceased, Dunning’s characters are united by shared feelings of alienation, displacement and loneliness resulting from their experiences in southern Canada. In Tainna—meaning “the unseen ones” and pronounced Da‐e‐nn‐a—a fraught reunion between sisters Sila and Amak ends in an uneasy understanding. From the spirit realm, Chevy Bass watches over his imperilled grandson, Kunak. And in the title story, the broken-hearted Bunny wanders onto a golf course on a freezing night, when a flock of geese stand vigil until her body is discovered by a kind stranger. Norma Dunning’s masterful storytelling uses humour and incisive detail to create compelling characters who discover themselves in a hostile land where prejudice, misogyny and inequity are most often found hidden in plain sight. There, they must rely on their wits, artistic talent, senses of humour and spirituality for survival; and there, too, they find solace in shining moments of reconnection with their families and communities.

The King of Jam Sandwiches

The King of Jam Sandwiches
Author: Eric Walters
Publisher: Orca Book Publishers
Total Pages: 170
Release: 2020-08-04
Genre: Juvenile Fiction
ISBN: 1459825586

Key Selling Points In The King of Jam Sandwiches , ayoung teen is afraid to let anyone know what is going on at home. This book examines the effects of mental illness, poverty and parental neglect. This is a very personal story for Eric Walters, informed by his own experience. Eric Walters has written over 100 books and is an avid presenter visiting thousands of students each year.

Birds Art Life

Birds Art Life
Author: Kyo Maclear
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Total Pages: 240
Release: 2017-01-03
Genre: Art
ISBN: 1501154206

"A writer's search for inspiration, beauty, and solace leads her to birds in this ... meditation on creativity and life"--

When Everything Feels like the Movies (Governor General's Literary Award winner, Children's Literature)

When Everything Feels like the Movies (Governor General's Literary Award winner, Children's Literature)
Author: Raziel Reid
Publisher: Arsenal Pulp Press
Total Pages: 107
Release: 2014-11-18
Genre: Juvenile Fiction
ISBN: 1551525755

Winner, Governor General's Literary Award Finalist, Lambda Literary Award and Ferro-Grumley Award for LGBT Fiction "Raziel Reid is a really extraordinary guy. He's got a great thing going."—Anne Rice School is just like a film set: there's The Crew, who make things happen, The Extras who fill the empty desks, and The Movie Stars, whom everyone wants tagged in their Facebook photos. But Jude doesn't fit in. He's not part of The Crew because he isn't about to do anything unless it's court-appointed; he's not an Extra because nothing about him is anonymous; and he's not a Movie Star because even though everyone know his name like an A-lister, he isn't invited to the cool parties. As the director calls action, Jude is the flamer that lights the set on fire. Before everything turns to ashes from the resulting inferno, Jude drags his best friend Angela off the casting couch and into enough melodrama to incite the paparazzi, all while trying to fend off the haters and win the heart of his favourite co-star Luke Morris. It's a total train wreck! But train wrecks always make the front page. Raziel Reid is a graduate of the New York Film Academy. He currently lives in Vancouver.

The Thirty-Nine Steps Illustrated

The Thirty-Nine Steps Illustrated
Author: John Buchan
Publisher: Independently Published
Total Pages: 146
Release: 2021-04-09
Genre:
ISBN:

Hanney, an expatriated Scot, returns from a long stay in South Africa to his flat in London. One night he is buttonholed by an American who appears to know of an anarchist plot to destabilise Europe, and claims to be in fear for his life. Hannay lets the American hide in his flat, and returns later to find that another man has been found shot dead in the same building, apparently a suicide. Four days later Hannay finds the American stabbed to death.

John Buchan

John Buchan
Author: J. William Galbraith
Publisher: Dundurn
Total Pages: 721
Release: 2013-08-10
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 145970939X

Soldier, spy, politician, bestselling thriller writer, and governor general of Canada — John Buchan was a man of many seasons and talents. An accomplished Scottish journalist, soldier, head of intelligence, and Member of Parliament, John Buchan (1875-1940) is best known for penning thrillers such as The Thirty-Nine Steps. However, as Canada’s 15th governor general (1935-40), Buchan, 1st Baron Tweedsmuir, played a significant leadership role as a statesman and diplomat. Buchan was the first governor general appointed after the 1931 Statute of Westminster, which gave Canada constitutional equality with Britain. He worked tirelessly for Canadian unity and promoted the sovereignty, and loyalty to the sovereign, of Canada. In 1937 he founded the Governor General’s Awards, still Canada’s premier prizes for literary achievement. Lord Tweedsmuir helped draw Canada, Britain, and the United States closer together to strengthen the democracies threatened by Nazism and Fascism. He was an inspiration to several of his successors and still inspires us today.

Butter Honey Pig Bread

Butter Honey Pig Bread
Author: Francesca Ekwuyasi
Publisher: arsenal pulp press
Total Pages: 277
Release: 2020-11-03
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 155152824X

Finalist, Lambda Literary Award, Governor General's Literary Award, and Amazon Canada First Novel Award; Longlisted for the Scotiabank Giller Prize Spanning three continents, Butter Honey Pig Bread tells the interconnected stories of three Nigerian women: Kambirinachi and her twin daughters, Kehinde and Taiye. Kambirinachi believes that she is an Ogbanje, or an Abiku, a non-human spirit that plagues a family with misfortune by being born and then dying in childhood to cause a human mother misery. She has made the unnatural choice of staying alive to love her human family but lives in fear of the consequences of her decision. Kambirinachi and her two daughters become estranged from one another because of a trauma that Kehinde experiences in childhood, which leads her to move away and cut off all contact. She ultimately finds her path as an artist and seeks to raise a family of her own, despite her fear that she won’t be a good mother. Meanwhile, Taiye is plagued by guilt for what her sister suffered and also runs away, attempting to fill the void of that lost relationship with casual flings with women. She eventually discovers a way out of her stifling loneliness through a passion for food and cooking. But now, after more than a decade of living apart, Taiye and Kehinde have returned home to Lagos. It is here that the three women must face each other and address the wounds of the past if they are to reconcile and move forward. For readers of African diasporic authors such as Teju Cole and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Butter Honey Pig Bread is a story of choices and their consequences, of motherhood, of the malleable line between the spirit and the mind, of finding new homes and mending old ones, of voracious appetites, of queer love, of friendship, faith, and above all, family. This publication meets the EPUB Accessibility requirements and it also meets the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG-AA). It is screen-reader friendly and is accessible to persons with disabilities. A Simple book with few images, which is defined with accessible structural markup. This book contains various accessibility features such as alternative text for images, table of contents, page-list, landmark, reading order and semantic structure.