Literary

Zero K, Don DeLillo

Don DeLillo’s seductive, spectacularly observed and brilliant new novel weighs the darkness of the world—terrorism, floods, fires, famine, plague—against the beauty and humanity of everyday life; love, awe, “the intimate touch of earth and sun.” -Goodreads. See reviews at the Telegraph, The Guardian, and The Scotsman. His latest novel, Zero […]

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Mara and Dann, Doris Lessing

An emotionally involving science-fantasy novel with a focus on history and sociological relevance, Mara and Dann is Doris Lessing’s return to magic realism after a number of autobiographies and books of essays. As with most of her work, this tale is set in Africa (now known as Ifrik) but several […]

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Barkskins, Annie Proulx

From Annie Proulx—the Pulitzer Prize-­ and National Book Award-­winning author of The Shipping News and “Brokeback Mountain,” comes her masterwork: an epic, dazzling, violent, magnificently dramatic novel about the taking down of the world’s forests. Also see an interview in The New Yorker. Goodreads Reviews Back to GoodReads

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Satin Island, Tom McCarthy

In Satin Island, Tom McCarthy captures–as only he can–the way we experience our world, our efforts to find meaning (or just to stay awake) and discern the narratives we think of as our lives. Goodreads Reviews Back to GoodReads

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The World Without Us, Mireille Juchau

The World Without Us is a beautifully told story of secrets and survival, family and community, loss and renewal. -Goodreads Part of Juchau’s success emerges from the delicacy of her evocations of the natural world. Another part arises from her wry observations of the way people behave and interact. But […]

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A Thousand Acres, Jane Smiley

A successful Iowa farmer decides to divide his farm between his three daughters. When the youngest objects, she is cut out of his will. This sets off a chain of events that brings dark truths to light and explodes long-suppressed emotions. An ambitious reimagining of Shakespeare’s King Lear cast upon […]

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The Grapes of Wrath, John Steinbeck

First published in 1939, Steinbeck’s Pulitzer Prize winning epic of the Great Depression chronicles the Dust Bowl migration of the 1930s and tells the story of one Oklahoma farm family, the Joads, driven from their homestead and forced to travel west to the promised land of California. Out of their […]

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The Back of the Turtle, Thomas King

This is Thomas King’s first literary novel in 15 years and follows on the success of the award-winning and bestselling The Inconvenient Indian and his beloved Green Grass, Running Water and Truth and Bright Water, both of which continue to be taught in Canadian schools and universities. Green Grass, Running […]

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Prodigal Summer, Barbara Kingsolver

Prodigal Summer weaves together three stories of human love within a larger tapestry of lives inhabiting the forested mountains and struggling small farms of southern Appalachia. Over the course of one humid summer, these characters find their connections to one another and to the flora and fauna with whom they […]

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Carbon Dreams, Susan M. Gaines

At an oceanography institute in northern California, geochemist Tina Arenas studies climates of the distant geologic past. Heedless of life beyond her circle of scientists, Tina is immersed in a world of dinosaurs and shifting continents, where time is measured in ten-million-year spans—but when both her research and an extracurricular […]

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Submergence, J.M. Ledgard

Submergence is an example of an emerging genre: postmodern literary airport fiction. Offering myriad pleasures in its prose, it is studded with references and takes a nonlinear, episodic approach to a story featuring glamorous James More, an English spy and descendant of Sir Thomas More, and Danielle “Danny” Flinders, of […]

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MaddAddam, Margaret Atwood

Told with wit, dizzying imagination, and dark humour, Booker Prize-winning Margaret Atwood’s unpredictable, chilling and hilarious MaddAddam takes us further into a challenging dystopian world and holds up a skewed mirror to our own possible future. A man-made plague has swept the earth, but a small group survives, along with […]

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Oryx and Crake, Margaret Atwood

Oryx and Crake is at once an unforgettable love story and a compelling vision of the future. Snowman, known as Jimmy before mankind was overwhelmed by a plague, is struggling to survive in a world where he may be the last human, and mourning the loss of his best friend, […]

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Flight Behavior, Barbara Kingsolver

On the Appalachian Mountains above her home, a young mother discovers a beautiful and terrible marvel of nature. As the world around her is suddenly transformed by a seeming miracle, can the old certainties they have lived by for centuries remain unchallenged? Flight Behaviour is a captivating, topical and deeply […]

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