Migrations, Charlotte McConaghy

Propelled by a narrator as fierce and fragile as the terns she is following, Migrations is a shatteringly beautiful ode to the wild places and creatures now threatened. But at its heart, it is about the lengths we will go, to the very edges of the world, for the people […]

Read More

The Rain Heron

Robbie Arnott’s The Rain Heron [is] described by its publishers as an “ecological fable. –INews UK Goodreads Reviews Back to GoodReads

Read More

The Inland Sea, Madeleine Watts

Written with down-to-earth lucidity and ethereal breeziness, this is an unforgettable debut about coming of age in a world that seems increasingly hostile. Watts explores feminine fear, apathy and danger, building to a tightly controlled bushfire of ecological and personal crisis. Goodreads Reviews Back to GoodReads

Read More

The Glass Hotel, Emily St. John Mandel

Weaving together the lives of these characters, The Glass Hotel moves between the ship, the skyscrapers of Manhattan, and the wilderness of northern Vancouver Island, painting a breathtaking picture of greed and guilt, fantasy and delusion, art and the ghosts of our pasts. Goodreads Reviews Back to GoodReads

Read More

A Word About Covid-19

As many of you may know, my husband and I began the process of planning a move from Vancouver to Halifax. This started before the coronavirus hit. And even in our latest planning, the disease had not become a pandemic yet and Canada was still considered low risk. As we […]

Read More

Where the Oceans Hide their Dead, John Yunker

Click here to return to the series I’m happy to revisit John Yunker’s work. We previously chatted, along with Midge Raymond, about publishing and environmental fiction. His newest novel, Where the Oceans Hide their Dead (Ashland Creek Press, 2019), gazes at various places in the world where the characters work, […]

Read More

If We Were Giants, Dave Matthews and Clete Barrett Smith

Yes, it’s the Dave Matthews we all love. For his debut novel, Dave Matthews found inspiration close to home.He was recording music in New Orleans years ago when he started imaging the story of “If We Were Giants.”  His twin daughters were 6. While they played in the trees, the […]

Read More

The World on Either Side, Diane Terrana

Reviewed by Kimberly Christensen Young Adult Fiction Content Warning: This book includes descriptions of death, depression, attempted suicide, animal poaching, animal cruelty, forced migration, human trafficking, war, genocide, child soldiers, and rape. Following the death of her boyfriend, high school senior Valentine falls into a severe depression and nearly overdoses […]

Read More

A Peculiar Peril, Jeff VanderMeer

Jonathan Lambshead stands to inherit his deceased grandfather’s overstuffed mansion—a veritable cabinet of curiosities–once he and two schoolmates catalog its contents. But the three soon discover that the house is filled with far more than just oddities: It holds clues linking to an alt-Earth called Aurora, where the notorious English […]

Read More

The Wormwood Trilogy, Tade Thompson

In the Wormwood Trilogy’s concluding two novels, The Rosewater Insurrection (2019) and The Rosewater Redemption (2019), the seeds of colonial invasion, alien supposition, and systemic control planted in readers’ minds during the first novel sprout into deadly blooms. –LA Review of Books Goodreads Reviews Back to GoodReads Click here for […]

Read More

Trace Elements, Donna Leon

In “Trace Elements,” a character who worked in the field collecting samples of contamination for a company that measures the cleanliness of Venice’s water supply dies in a mysterious motorcycle accident. –Wisconsin State Journal Trace Elements is the 29th book in the Commissario Brunetti series.. Goodreads Reviews Back to GoodReads

Read More

Lot: Stories, Bryan Washington

Few writers have done for their city what Washington has done for Houston, which is to say, to articulate how a new generation of citizens are living, loving and struggling there with both the legacies of their shared past and the new possibilities of the present. But in writing an […]

Read More

The Bear, Andrew Krivak

In this arresting, exquisite novel, time acquires a new quality. When human civilization is over and there’s no hope left for society, what Krivak imagines is a stillness. An incandescent calm settles upon the earth now that humans are no longer capable of doing any further damage. His unnamed father […]

Read More

The Suicide Season, Jeremy Gadd

Click here to return to the series Thanks to Stormbird Press for allowing Dragonfly to run their interview with Jeremy Gadd about his Australian novel The Suicide Season. I’ve worked with the team at Stormbird Press for a few years now, whether collaborating on projects or talking with their authors–before […]

Read More