Curled Up With a Good Book and a Cup of Tea

A young man has moved back to Toronto, the city he grew up in, after years of drifting between school and work that was getting him nowhere. His older sister, Grace, is the one who has brought him back home and she and her friends take him under their wing, helping him find friendship, romance, and a job. Grace and her boyfriend John are promising researchers in psychophysics but it soon becomes apparent to the man that all is not well with his sister and her research. When the two of them disappear, first Grace then months later John, the man makes an incredible discovery while cleaning out their apartment. In the second bedroom that they always kept locked, Grace and John have left behind a box big enough to crawl inside of, a lab, rat, and a note that says “this is the only way back for us.” After months of witnessing Grace’s rage and John’s mental health decline, the man knows that these are not ordinary circumstances. And he knows that he was brought back to Toronto for...

In 1862, a young Jewish man has set sail from his home in Calcutta, heading toward Hong Kong  to participate in the opium trade. Emmanuel has left behind his wife Semah, promising to return to her having made his fortune. But while he is in Hong Kong, he falls in love with Pearl, the daughter of his Chinese business partner. He takes Pearl as his wife and builds her the most beautiful mansion anyone has ever seen in Hong Kong. But Semah refuses to let Emmanuel have his new life and she arrives unannounced in Hong Kong to take her rightful place as mistress of the house. Neither woman wants to share their home or their husband but neither is willing to give up their place as his wife and very quickly, life changes for all of those who live in the house.  Inspiredly the lives of his own ancestors, The House of Wives by Simon Choa-Johnston is a beautiful novel about two women who will do whatever it takes to secure a place for their children in the upper echelons of t...

Her whole life Kate O’Brian has been the odd girl out.  As the scholarship student at a succession of elite private schools, she’s had to prove she is worth her place all while keeping her past a secret. She’s book-smart and she’s street-smart and she can stand her ground no matter what life throws at her and no matter what she has to do. Now she is in her final year of high school and she’s attending yet another new school. But she has a plan. She will climb the social ladder and achieve her ultimate goal - a spot at Yale. She just needs to find the right “it” girl who she can use to her advantage. That girl is Olivia Sumner, a wealthy yet troubled teen. She is back at Waverly School to repeat her last year of high school after mysterious circumstances prevented her from finishing. She’s in desperate need of a best friend, and Kate may be the one for her. But when the handsome Mark Redkin joins Waverly as part of the administration, their world is turned upside down. Ma...

Vegans and vegetarians rejoice! Gone are the days of missing out and forgetting about delicious treats just because you follow a plant-based diet. The mother-daughter duo behind Kelly’s Bake Shoppe and Lettuce Love Café have a new cookbook with over 100 plant-based, gluten-free, dairy-free, egg-free, and peanut-free recipes. And meat-eaters take note - you won’t even realize there is anything missing from these sweet treats. Made With Love: More Than 100 Sweet and Savory Plant-Based Recipes for Every Moment in Life , by Kelly Childs and Erinn Weatherbie, is a beautiful cookbook packed full of delicious foods, easy recipes, and detailed information about vegan cooking and baking. This book is perfect for both the vegan and the meat-eater in your life. I adhere to a mostly plant-based diet but one thing that I tend not to do myself is baking. I leave that to the experts. But this book changed my mind on that. The recipes in this book are easy to follow as well as shop for, whi...

Hermione Winters is really looking forward to her senior year. She’s the captain of her schools championship cheerleading team and one of the most popular girls in school. She has a bright future ahead of her and she plans to make the most of her last days of high school. But just before the school year begins her future is changed in an instant when someone spikes her drink at a party. Everyone at school knows about it and now she is being talked about for all the wrong reasons. But Hermione isn’t going to be “that girl.” She doesn’t want to be known by what happened to her. And with the support of her best friend Polly, her parents, and her cheerleading team, she is determined to defy all of the labels being placed on her. Exit, Pursued by a Bear , by E.K. Johnston, is a touching and poignant story about a young, determined woman and her journey to recovery and acceptance after a terrible crime. I was pretty impressed by this book. Hermione is a young woman who has...

Sripathi Rao has made a lot of mistakes in his life but he doesn’t apologize for them. He has a lot of problems but he doesn’t see why he should make any changes because of them. His mother chastises him for never living up to her dream of seeing him become a doctor. His sister is unmarried and well past the average marrying age but that doesn’t stop their mother from scaring off any suitors. His son Arun is involved in political activism but Sripathi thinks he is just lazy. And his daughter Maya is, to Sripathi, the biggest problem of them all. When Maya broke off her arranged engagement to marry a White Canadian man, Sripathi cut her off completely. He and his wife Nirmala never attended the wedding, never saw Maya again, and never met their granddaughter Nandana.  But Maya and her husband have been killed in a car accident and Sripathi is seven-year-old Nandana’s only kin. He has to travel to Canada to bring his granddaughter home to their small city of Toturpuram, In...

Clare is on the run and the remote mining town of Blackmore may be the best place for her to hide. Blackmore was once a prosperous town but when the mine closed after a devastating accident, the town and its residents began to crumble. The people are already suspicious of the newcomer in their midst and when she begins to ask questions about Shayna Fowles, a local girl who is missing, they want to know what she is really doing in their town. But Clare isn’t the only one with secrets. Jared is Shayna’s ex-husband and suspect number one according to most people in the town. There is also Charlie, the town’s dealer and the one who supplied Shayna with the drugs she was addicted to when she went missing. Shayna’s parents Louise and Wilfred are not only dealing with tragedy of their missing daughter but the deterioration of Louise’s mind.  And Louise’s doctor Derek, who tried desperately to get Shayna to go to rehab, seems to be a little to close to the family. As Clare gets to k...

Beena and Sadhana are sisters who share a bond very few can understand. Orphaned as teenagers, they were left in the care of their Sikh uncle who ran a bagel shop in a Hasidic community in Montreal. Their Uncle didn’t want much to do with them so they were left to raise themselves. But the deaths of their parents led the girls in two very different directions. Beena caught the attention of one of the boys who worked in her Uncle’s bagel shop. When she became pregnant at the age of sixteen, he took off leaving her to raise her son on her own. Sadhana was driven to achieve perfection and in doing so spent the rest of her life battling anorexia. Now, Sadhana has died suddenly, her body was left undiscovered for a week. Beena is hurting because she had stopped speaking to her sister only days earlier. She is feeling guilty because if they hadn’t had an argument, if she hadn’t cut her out of her life, then maybe things would have ended differently. As Beena and her son Quinn head...

Twenty-two-year-old Linda Wise dreams of escaping her small town where almost everyone knows that she was sexually assaulted as a teenager. It’s 1965 and Linda is realizing there is a bigger world out there that can help her break free from her overprotective parents. And it seems that her saviour has come in the form of twenty-six-year-old minister Ronald Brunson. Ronald’s passion for social justice ignites a determination in Linda. His stories of freedom rides, protests, and imprisonment fuel the fire in Linda. They marry, and he takes her far away from Stony River, New Jersey, to a prairie town in Minnesota.  Over the next seven years, Linda finds herself caught up in the turbulent world of civil rights and war resistance, all while performing her duties as a mother and pastors wife. But Lin soon realizes that if she is truly going to be free and become the woman she needs to be, she needs to confront the trauma of her past and put herself first. Becoming Lin , by Tri...

Fifteen years ago, Caroline Shipley was on vacation in Mexico with her family and friends, there to celebrate her tenth wedding anniversary.  Fifteen years ago on that vacation, her life was changed forever. On the last night of their trip, Caroline and her husband Hunter left their children, five-year-old Michelle and two-year-old Samantha, asleep in the hotel room while they had dinner with their friends a few floors below. Checking in on the children every half hour, they told themselves everything would be okay. Until they returned to the room at the end of the night to find Samantha missing from her crib. Fifteen years later Caroline is divorced and alone, dreading the yearly calls from reporters that force her to relive the kidnapping. But when the phone rings this year, it’s a voice she wasn’t sure she would ever hear. It’s a seventeen-year-old girl who thinks that she may be her long-lost daughter. While Caroline has been disappointed by calls like this before some...

In the 1980’s, a young mixed-race woman moves from Canada to Germany in search of a new life. Berlin is full of dreamers, artists, and travellers, and Ruby Edwards quickly finds her place amongst them. She is able to break free from her overbearing family and the claustrophobia of her all-white neighbourhood in Canada and discover the person that she was meant to be. But just as Ruby is finding her place and building her life, she finds herself hospitalized for mental illness. As she leans on her family and her tight-knit community she is able to fight her way through it but for Ruby it is something that she will be fighting every day of her life. Café Babanussa , by Karen Hill, is a moving and heartbreaking novel based on the authors own life experience of race, immigration, and mental illness.  It is especially poignant knowing that Hill passed away a year before it was published and was never able to see the finished product hit the shelves.  This was an anti...

For all of her life, Lizzie has never liked the way her body looks. Her friend Mel says that she’s the pretty one, but all Lizzie really sees is a fat girl. And as she gets older, she’s convinced thats how everyone else sees her as well. So she loses weight. She counts every calorie, deprives herself of the foods she loves, logs every mile she travels through exercise, and eventually she becomes the thin person she's wanted to be.  But she quickly realizes that being thin isn’t the solution to all of her problems because being thin doesn’t mean she sees herself as anything other than a fat girl. 13 Ways of Looking at a Fat Girl , by Mona Awad, is a novel told in thirteen short stories. It is a moving and heartbreaking story of a young girl who is spurned by the body-obsessed culture that surrounds her and who struggles through her whole life to conform. This is such a unique and interesting book. I didn’t know what to expect going into it and I found myself moved by the ...

Casey Duncan is a talented police detective, dedicated to her job and her best friend Diana.  Other than her no strings attached relationship with ex-con Kurt, her life is focused on those two things.  But Casey carries with her a very dark secret - she once killed a man, and she got away with it. Casey and Diana have been on the run for years, from Diana’s powerful and abusive ex-husband.  Once again, he’s found her and now it’s time for Diana to run once more.  But when a figure from Casey’s past shows up and threatens her life, the two women realize that they need to go somewhere they will never be found. Diana has heard of a place, a town where people who need to disappear completely can go.  Located in the far northern reaches of Canada, this town is their only hope.  Casey and Diana are thrilled to be accepted into Rockton, but when they arrive Casey quickly discovers that all is not as it seems.  Because a hunter has come to Rockton, ...

Bernice Meetoos, aka Birdie, is a Cree woman who has left her home in Northern Alberta and travelled to Gibsons, BC. There, she hopes to find and meet Pat Johns, who played Jesse on The Beachcombers, partly because of a teenage crush and partly because he is a working, healthy Indian man.   In Gibsons, she ends up meeting Lola, a white woman who gives her a place to stay and a job in her bakery.  But it is also here that her past catches up to her.  When she doesn’t find what she is looking for her on her travels, she has a breakdown and takes to her bed. Her Auntie Val and her cousin, Skinny Freda, soon arrive in Gibsons to take care of Birdie, as she embarks on a quest that will change her life forever. Birdie , by Tracey Lindberg, is an incredible novel about confronting and healing from your past.  Steeped in Cree lore and traditions, this novel touches on the life faced by Aboriginal woman in Canada and on the experiences all women face. I ha...

Pete and Joey are brothers, young Aboriginal men who are surrounded by poverty, drug abuse, and gang violence brought on by the centuries of historic trauma inflicted upon the Aboriginal people of Canada.   Pete has fallen in with a gang, is dealing drugs, and is committing violence in order to provide for his younger brother and his heroin addict mother.  One night, Pete gets into a fight with his mother’s boyfriend, Dennis, which ends with Dennis being taken away in a body bag.  In jail, Pete maintains his gang ties but when he finds out that Joey has fallen in with them and then Pete is attacked by a rival gang member, he realizes that he needs to break the cycle. Pete is offered the opportunity to participate in a program that helps incarcerated Aboriginal men begin the process of rehabilitation through traditional Aboriginal healing circles and ceremonies.  It will be a difficult struggle, one that Pete will initially try to fight but he knows that th...

When the ghost of a woman appears alongside Inspector Ricardo Ramirez, he knows that it won’t be long before a woman turns up dead in Havana.  And while he is investigating a case of vandalism in the art world, a prostitute is found murdered, with nylons wrapped around her neck.  The nylons connect this case to Ramirez’s only cold case and now he fears he has a serial killer on his hands. Detective Charlie Pike is investigating a murder on a First Nation reserve in Northern Ontario, and people are worried that this body is another victim of the Highway Strangler.  This woman too has a pair of nylons tied around her neck. It is a race against the clock for both officers to find their killer before it strikes again.  With the Cuban government trying to silence Inspector Ramirez and Detective Pike having to navigate the delicate relations between the First Nations and the Canadian forces, the pressure mounts for these two to track an international serial kill...

Maggie and Ben were madly in love but a terrible tragedy tore them apart.  Now, they are trying to make their way through life separately but neither of them can outrun the pain on their own. Ben, a limo driver to the wealthy and irresponsible, had a tough upbringing and he finds himself having to care for the man who was never much of a father to him.  His younger brother, Cola, is there to help but is more concerned with the fact that he owes a lot of money to some not very nice people.  And now, Ben has woken up in a hospital with a hole in his head.  He’s the one who put it there, his desperate attempt to escape what is hurting him.   Maggie stopped working after the tragedy but with the bills mounting up, she must return to her job of caring for seniors.  Her first client, Lucy, is well-meaning but her attempts to help Maggie contact those she has lost are causing too much pain.  Maggie tries to turn to her brother Francis, but he’s dea...

Everyone’s favourite Canadian (but left us for America) sportscaster is back with more hilarious stories from the worlds of sports, Canadian media, and now (because he left us for America) Hollywood.   Number Two: More Short Tales from a Very Tall Man , by Jay Onrait, picks up where his first book, Anchorboy , left off and gives us more hilarious stories that will have you laughing out loud and completely grossed out, probably at the same time. One has to wonder about Jay Onrait.  He is most certainly a hilarious guy, but how one earth is this his life?  Does he go out looking for crazy things to happen or do they just find him?  In this book Jay shares about hilarious circumstances in his life like trying to get a medical marijuana license, not giving up his table at a restaurant for Jay-Z even though it was Jay-Z’s table, getting bumped off of television appearances because of Rob Ford’s crack confession, and the madness that was the 2014 Sochi Olympics....

In Red Deer Alberta, Chinksta rap is the all the rage.  And the biggest star of the scene is rapper King Kwong.  But not everyone is a fan of Kwong - his younger brother Run doesn’t like his music or his personality.  He wishes he could have nothing to do with him.   But Kwong has gone missing, days before the biggest performance of his life.  Run doesn’t really want to get involved, but when his mother is wounded by a bullet fired into their home, he has no choice.  Before he knows it Run, along with his best friend Ali, finds himself in the middle of a battle between Red Deer’s rival gangs.   Chinkstar is a raw and fascinating novel by debut Canadian author Jon Chan Simpson.  A story of music, family, and culture, it takes readers on an adventure into a crazy world. I decided to read this book after hearing Jon talk at the Word on the Street festival this past summer.  Speaking on a panel about diversity in the publishing wo...

Nalo Hopkinson is known for her fantastic, vivid, and stunning works of fantasy fiction.  One can only imagine how incredible it is to possess her imagination.  From Brown Girl in the Ring to Skin Folk , Hopkinson is at the top of the class when it comes to fantasy.  Her mix of modern speculative fiction with Afro-Caribbean folklore makes for incredibly inventive stories.   Falling In Love with Hominids is a new collection of short stories written by Nalo Hopkinson, most of which are unavailable anywhere else in print.  These eighteen stories were written over the past dozen years and cover a wide variety of themes. Fantasy and Speculative Fiction aren’t genres I read much of, in fact I’m not familiar with them enough to even know if there is supposed to be a difference between the two.  But whenever I hear people discussing the genres, I hear Nalo Hopkinson’s name come up.  Brown Girl in the Ring is often held up as one of the best. I ha...