I WAS A CHILD OF HOLOCAUST SURVIVORS by Bernice Eisenstein (2006)

This graphic memoir distills, through text and illustration, Eisenstein's memories of her 1950s childhood in Toronto with her Yiddish-speaking parents, whose often unspoken experiences of war were nevertheless always present. Remarkably, her parents met in Auschwitz , near the end of the war and were married shortly after Liberation.

With poignancy and searing honesty, Eisenstein explores with ineffable sadness the bittersweet humour her childhood growing up in the shadow of the Holocaust.I was especially moved by her mother's account of what happened to her at Auschwitz as transcribed by Eisenstein from the videotape interview made for Steven Spielberg's Shoah project.

This haunting, visually ravishing graphic memoir speaks universally about memory, loss and recovery of the past through storytelling.


Bernice Eisenstein will talk about her book and show accompanying images on Tuesday May 15th at 7:30 p.m. at Royal St. George's College in Toronto.

OUTCAST by Jose Latour (2007)

In this hard-boiled, crime novel Havana is beautiful, rundown and home to Elliot Steil, an English teacher barely eking out a living in Cuba. As much as he loves his country, it frustrates and disappoints him. So, when a man claiming to be a friend of his estranged American father offers Elliot a way off the island, he reluctantly agrees.

Steill makes it to Miami, but not as he had planned. You would think the difficulties were well behind him by the time he washes ashore, but not so. He combs Miami's mean streets for the man who deceived him and the reason why he was so horribly betrayed. He finds that the new world is a dysfunctional free-market flipside of communist Cuba-- both brimming with greed, corruption and explosive violence, but also with the kindness of strangers so unexpected that it's wrenching.

RESURRECTION MEN by Ian Rankin (2001)

Since Ian Rankin has agreed to appear in a PEN Canada event I am co-chairing in October 2007, I am reading as many of his novels as I can. His Inspector Rebus appeals to me immensely with his penchant for writing poetry, drinking single malt and listening to The Stones.

In RESURRECTION MAN, Rebus is sent to be "re-trained" at the police college for having tossed a cup of coffee in the direction of his boss Gil Temple. There, he works on a cold case with other miscreants throughout the force. It soon becomes clear that Rebus is there undercover to try to expose some dirty cops.

In the subplot, Rebus's partner, Siobhan gets close to a prostitute who is slashed by her ex-boyfriend and dies in her arms. She thinks that mobster Gerry Cafferty is behind it all, but this time, he's not.

Typically engaging and provocative, RESURRECTION MEN is worth a weekend.

MISSISSIPPI SISSY by Kevin Sessums (2007)

This memoir will make you laugh until you weep and then make you weep again. Sessums is a longtime contributing editor to VANITY FAIR and ALLURE and this first book has launched him to superstardom with its directness and moving prose.

Born in the south to an NBA player for the New York Knicks and his adorable wife, Sessums became the man of the house when his father was killed in a car crash when Kevin was only seven and then his mother died of cancer a year later. Kevin and his younger siblings Kim and Karole were raised by their maternal grandparents. To cope, Kevin divined an imaginary friend, a little Black girl he named Epiphany and chanelled Arlene Francis, his t.v. idol from What's My Line--that campy socialite who flounced about in evening gowns and wore a black silk eyemask dotted with diamond chips.

Sessums read at Harborfront last week and won me over with the authenticity of his voice. If you want to treat yourself, get yourself a copy of this book and watch the author emerge in this fine portrait of the artist as a young man.

BITTER CHOCOLATE by Carol Off (2006)

Subtitled INVESTIGATING THE DARK SIDE OF THE WORLD'S MOST SEDUCTIVE SWEET, Carol Off's foray begins with tracing the origins and lore of the cocoa craze in South America while revealing the exploitation that has always been part of the production of the treat. More recently, the complicity of Western governments and corporations that turn a blind eye to the child labour that makes cheap labour possible in Cote D'Ivoire (which produces nearly half of the world's cocoa beans) reveals the indentured servitude of thousands of young boys who have never tasted chocolate. Part history lesson, part expose of the multi-billion dollar industry, BITTER CHOCOLATE will shock you into never reaching for a Mars bar or Snickers or package of Smarties again.

THE NAMING OF THE DEAD by Ian Rankin (2006)

Taking place in the days surrounding the G8 summit at Gleneagles, Scotland in July 2005, the latest Rankin novel immediately had my attention because I had been in Edinburgh at the end of June that same year and witnessed the barricades being set up near Holyrood House and talked with shopkeepers who were considering boarding up windows along Princes Street.

Although the big show would be to protect the diplomats arriving for the official confab about making poverty history, with the focus on increasing aid to sub-Saharan Africa, the real show for Inspector John Rebus and his colleague Siobhan Clarke is a series of murders with clues left at the nearby Clootie well in Auchterarder. And, when an UK civil servant seems to leap to his death from the rampart at Edinburgh castle, the stakes increase. And, that's not all. Rebus's nemesis, the intimidating Ger Cafferty, seems to be implicated in back room dealings as well as paying off dirty cops.

Add Rebus's own personal loss of his only brother, Michael, at the beginning of the book, and you have a sophisticated mulit-layered tale of which Rankin is the master weaver. THE NAMING OF THE DEAD is not to be missed.

THE EMPEROR'S CHILDREN by Claire Messud (2006)

Set in NYC in 2001 the novel follows three friends and their hangers-on throughout the summer and early fall. Things fall apart, the centre does not hold and mere anarchy is loosed upon their worlds, to bastardize W.B. Yeats. It's a little like a soap opera for a literary palate.

One t.v.-producing girlfriend is having an affair with her best friend's father, a famous writer. Another is a gay freelancer who pays the bills by temping and bedding his handsome boss who wears bespoke suits. An indulged Bryn Mawr princess who has never held a job in her life, moves back in with her parents in their lavish apartment overlooking the Park and then falls for an Australia anarchist who has great designs on conquering New York with his brilliantly conceived satirical magazine.

Add the loner, university dropout nephew who stirs every pot and leaves the extended circle of friends and relatives with their perplexed heads swivelling from side to side, and you've got Messud's version of modern society. Over indulged and over indulging. Though disappointed with the ending, up until the denouement, I didn't want to put this book down.

THE END OF THE ALPHABET by C.S. Richardson (2007)

My friend Pat loaned me her copy of this delectable first novel last night and I read it from cover to cover in one gulp, in spite of the fact that I picked it up at 10:45 at night and had to be at work by 7:30 this morning.

On or about his 50th birthday, Ambrose Zephyr is told by his matter-of-fact MD that he has an incurable disease which "would kill him within the month. Give or take a day." He and his wife Zappora embark on a tour of the alphabet in his remaining days. Some of their choices are nostalgic and others adventuresome: Amsterdam, Berlin, Chartres...Elba (then amended to Eiffel Tower in Paris), Florence, Giza...Istanbul...truncated MNOPQRSTU...Venice....originally Zanzibar and finally home with Zipper.

Richardson's writing is clean and his affinity for storytelling prescient. And, the cover design of an imitation Moleskin journal makes you feel like you're prying into someone's life--the true true thing. Where fiction transcends non-fiction in its ability to reveal emotional truth.

Read this beautiful billet-doux of a book.

C.S. Richardson is appearing with Ian McEwen in Toronto at the EnWave Theatre on Monday April 30th 2007.

RAISIN WINE by James Bartleman (2007)

Ontario's Lieutenant General has penned this charming memoir about growing up in a different Muskoka during the 40s and early 50s. The title refers to the homebrew that Jimmy's Scottish dad concocts and serves to the locals out behind their outhouse as liberally as he does his stories. Raised in poverty by loving parents and having faced racist taunts of "half-breed" throughout his childhood because his mother is Native and his father is white, we follow the plucky and determined 7-13 year-old Jimmy as he schemes to break the cycle by taking on jobs as a paperboy and later as a scrap metal collector.

Written with honesty and true affection for another time and place in spite of its challenges, RAISIN WINE is worth your time.

THE TIME IN BETWEEN (2005) by David Bergen

Bergen's novel travels from the interior of BC to Vietnam and back and insists that the reader takes that journey eavesdropping alongside Charles Boatman and two of his children Ada and Jon.

Boatman raised his three children on his own when his estranged wife is killed in an accident. And, though he insists that he is a man incapable of love, he manages to show real love towards Ada, Jon and Del. Charles is haunted by his past. Specifically by his active duty in Vietnam where he served with other eighteen year olds and bore witness to the slaughter of innocent Vietnamese.

When his children are adults getting on with their own lives, Charles decides to visit Vietnam to try to put some of his personal ghosts to rest. And, when he loses contact with his children, two of them follow in his footsteps determined to peel away the layers of secrecy in his complicated life.

Bergen's prose is strong, spare and rhythmic. And, boy does he know how to tell a compelling story.

THE PETTY DETAILS OF SO AND SO'S LIFE (2002) by Camilla Gibb

I reread this novel in preparation for the Spring novel studies in my Grade 11 class and loved it even more the second time through. Blue and Emma are siblings who find meaning in their lives first through their connection to each other and then through their separate passions of archeology and tatooing. They lack for models in the parenting department since their father Oliver, an inventor and dreamer, abandoned them and their mother Elaine and with his creepy departure they lost their mother to the fog of alcoholism.

In spite of emotional journeys fraught with disappointment and disillusion both Blue and Emma turn out just fine in the end. Knowing as they always have that they can rely on each other no matter what.

THE KING OF THE MAITRE D'S by Louis Jannetta (2007)

Jannetta was the burly maitre d' at the Royal York's Imperial Room during the 70s and 80s when top notch talent like Tony Bennett and Ella Fitzgerald and Rosemary Clooney sang in Toronto. The book is a collection of anecdotes of his life among the stars. The book is chatty and unsophisticated, but it's the delicious gossip that makes it worthwhile.

I went to the launch last Sunday and marvelled at the number of toupees in the room. Apparently there are men who still wear toupees, a great revelation to me. Faded 60s heartthrob Bobby Curtola leapt across the stage, thereby upstaging Mississauga mayor Hazel McCallion's enconmium to the almost octogenarian Jannetta.

THE TRADE MISSION by Andrew Pyper (2002)

Private school classmates Wallace and Bates are dot.com genuises who are on a trade mission to Brazil to pitch their product HYPOTHESYS to the morally bankrupt South American government officials. After their business is done they travel with their translator Crossman and their marketers Barry and Lydia on an eco-tourism cruise into the Amazon. Lies lead to torture and few of them make it out of the jungle alive.

Pyper's got a gift for storytelling and suspense. He is a master of the literary thriller genre.

A THOUSAND ACRES by Jane Smiley (1999)

Smiley's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel relies on the structure and content of KING LEAR to inform this family's tragic tale when the patriarch decides to divide his thousand acres of land between his three daughters, Ginny (Goneril), Rose (Regan) and Caroline (Cordelia). When Caroline refuses to sign her name to the deed, things fall apart indeed, though not before the neighbouring farmer is blinded like Gloucester or before Rose and Ginny ruin their own marriages by sleeping with the same irresistable prodigal son, Jess Clarke.

LOST GIRLS by Andrew Pyper (1999)

Pyper's earlier novel is as gripping as his most recent one THE WILDFIRE SEASON.

In LOST GIRLS, Barth Crane is a hot shot Toronto lawyer hired to defend a high school English teacher in a northern Ontario town who has been accused of murdering two of his former students, Krystal and Ashley. The bodies have never been found, and with reasonable doubt established for the jury it seems that Crane has an easy enough job of achieiving his client's acquittal.

However, local lore about "the Lady of the Lake" and Barth's own tragic past combine to reveal new truths about what actually happened. Pyper's literary thriller is well worth your time.

FAMILY MAN by Calvin Trillin (1998)

I am on my Trillin tear trying to pick up copies of as many of his 20+ books as I can lay my hands on. FAMILY MAN is a series of vignettes ranging from pre-kid days with Alice and Calvin on their own to the early childhoods of daughters Abigail and Sarah to the post-graduate days of those same girls.

Trillin is equal parts honesty, charm and humour. Reading FAMILY MAN will make you long for such a reconstructed history even if it didn't happen to you in the first place.

THE GUN SELLER by Hugh Laurie (1996)

I'm a rabid fan of Hugh Laurie's acting...Jeeves and Wooster with fellow Cambridge-educated smartypants Stephen Fry...husband to Imelda Staunton in PETER'S FRIENDS, father to the mouse voiced by Michael J. Fox in STUART LITTLE and the curmudgeonly eponymous physician on HOUSE.

This murder mystery showcases Laurie's naughty wit, though the plot drags on and the witticisms are at times a little precious.

Stephen Fry is a better writer. Pick up one of his books instead. Maybe MAKING HISTORY or THE HIPPOPOTAMUS or THE STAR'S TENNIS BALLS--a contemporary re-telling of Webster's play THE DUCHESS OF MALFI.

MORAL DISORDER by Margaret Atwood (2006)

I haven't read a new collection or novel by Atwood in a few years, and I was delighted by this most recent collection of linked short fiction. These stories chronicle a family's history, in a similar way to Alice Munro's fictionalized version of her own lore in THE VIEW FROM CASTLE ROCK. But, there is something about Atwood's storytelling that enables me to identify myself and my own relatives in its midst.

Was Atwood never at the top of her game?

CONSUMPTION by Kevin Patterson (2006)

I've been wanting to read this novel since I first saw the gorgeous cover photo of a woman model posing with the skull of a caribou where her own face ought to be.

This book, rooted in the far north, transports you along with the protagonist Victoria to the south where she is treated for TB and then back to her community where she continues to be a stranger, even to her family. Victoria marries as "kablunauk", a southerner named Robertson who does his best to accommodate the native ways.

Sorrow follows Victoria throughout her life with the loss of two children, the violent and unresolved murder of her husband and her increasing distance from the land on which she was raised with abiding love.

Consumed as he is with the rhythms of the north, Kevin Patterson manages to weave a compelling tale about family, love, loss and healing.

FROM HARVEY RIVER by Lorna Goodison (2007)

Goodison's memoir of her mother and her mother's people is rooted in place in Jamaica. Doris Harvey is one of the illustrious Harvey girls raised by the river that sustained them and named after their immigrant forefathers. She is the shy daughter to Margaret and David Harvey who captures the attentions of Marcus Goodison, a handsome young man who makes a weeky pilgrimmage to get to know her and to ask for her hand in marriage.

Woven with Jamaican Creole aphorisms and song and the Irish temper and wisdom of Margaret's white father George O'Brian Wilson, FROM HARVEY RIVER is a rich cultural tapestry.

When fortunes change and Doris and Marcus must start a life over in Kingston, it is back to Harvey River that Doris's imagination wanders for solace and belonging as she raises her nine children in a new reality.

A SPOT OF BOTHER by Mark Haddon (2006)

The recently retired George is looking forward to building a little studio at the back of his garden where he plans to sketch and paint. His daughter Katie announces that she is going to marry Ray, a man that both George and her mother Jean think inappropiate. Katie's brother Jamie is also unsure of Ray's suitability but sees that he loves Katie and her son Jacob.

George discovers a lesion on his hip that sends him for a loop. Katie calls off her wedding and Jamie breaks up with his boyfriend Tony. The only member of the family even remotely happy is Jean who is blissfully and furtively carrying on an affair with David, a former colleague of her husband.

Their world falls apart and the centre does not hold as the Halls try to stumble their way to healing.

ABOUT ALICE by Calvin Trillin (2006)

Calvin Trillin is a long-serving staff writer for The New Yorker and the author of 20+ books of fiction and non-fiction. ABOUT ALICE is a gem of a memoir where he reveals the true Alice, the woman he fell in love with and was lucky enough to be married to for almost forty years. Rife with Trillin's trademark witticisms and his keen observations about the dignity of human life, ABOUT ALICE will make you smile from cover to cover.

WOMEN WITH MEN by Richard Ford (1997)

There are three long stories--moreso novellas-- in this collection. Ford contemplates the complexities of passionate relationships and meditates on the affect of place in setting the tone. He writes convincingly from both male and female perspectives with uncanny sympathy.

LUCKY GIRLS by Nell Freudenberger (2003)

I picked this collection of stories up from a remainder table while waiting for a film to start. It's Freudenberger's first book and reflects personal experiences she had living as a white woman in India and south-east Asia. Each story finds an outsider protagonist more at home away from home. Her style reminds me of Richard Ford's writing: spare, muscular prose. Both writers explore the contemporary human condition and are especially atuned to the nuances in intimate relationships between men and women.

THE YEAR OF MAGICAL THINKING by Joan Didion (2005)

Didion's national book award-winning memoir is as arresting on its third reading as it was during its first. It will become one of the books that I re-read annually to try to absorb her masterful and direct style. Grief makes all of us both less and more than we were before.

THE VIEW FROM CASTLE ROCK by Alice Munro (2006)

I've been a fan of Munro's style since I first read LIVES OF GIRLS AND WOMEN twenty years ago. Her latest, and she claims her last, collection is her most personal. Blending memoir and fiction in these intergenerational stories. Regretably, I found the first section rather dull, but the remaining stories are independently luminous gems. I refuse to believe that this is Munro's last book.

THE GIRLS by Lori Lansens (2005)

During a particularly ferocious tornado in 1974 twins Ruby and Rose Darlen are born in a small town in southwestern Ontario. The girls are a fascination for both the town locals and travellers from abroad because they are not only identical, but also joined at the side of their heads by a patch the size of your palm.

As they approach their unexpected 30th birthday, Rose decides to write her autobiography. What emerges is a story of remarkable love and compassion; a story of true belonging.

Go out and get yourself a copy of this accomplished and human tale. It will make your heart swell.

THE ROMANTIC by Barbara Gowdy (2003)

Louise Kirk is no stranger to love and loss. When she is nine years old, her mother disappears and leaves simply a note attached to the fridge for Louise and her father which reads only "Louise knows how to work the washing machine." Shortly thereafter the Richters move into the house across the street.

Louise has fantasies about being adopted by them as a daughter just as they have chosen their adoptive son Abel(ard), her new best friend. Though geography intervenes and necessarily defines their relationship for several years, Louise can never manage to move beyond her longstanding love for Abel.

THE ROMANTIC addresses the complicated multi-faceted forms of love in haunting ways.

SUMMER CROSSING by Truman Capote (2004)

Published posthumously by the Capote Trust during the flurry of attention because of the two Hollywood films CAPOTE and INFAMOUS, SUMMER CROSSING is a frothy early manuscript that evokes privileged life in Manhattan in the 1940s.

Seventeen-year-old Grady begs off the summer crossing with her parents to their summer home in France and remains in their upper east side luxury apartment occasionally dining with her long-time friend Peter, but more frequently arranging assignations with her current unsuitable object of affection Clyde who manages a parking lot.

What begins as a light-hearted, whimsical tale of indulgence takes a sharp turn when Grady finds herself pregnant and she careens way off track.

Stylistic seeds are planted for Capote's much-loved BREAKFAST AT TIFFANIES and ground-breaking IN COLD BLOOD.

CUTTY, ONE ROCK: LOW CHARACTERS AND STRANGE PLACES, GENTLY EXPLAINED by August Kleinzahler (2004)

In this creative non-fiction collection, the Griffin Poetry Prize winner (for THE STRANGE HOURS TRAVELERS KEEP) ruminates about the scope of his life: growing up in a New Jersey neighborhood where he was surrounded by gangsters and raised by his family dog; his love affair with public transit; his friendship with Beat-god Allan Ginsberg; his penchant for mid-afternoon boozing; his loathing of Garrison Keillor's homespun stories and penchant for reading bad poetry on air nationwide; and, his respect for his gay older brother who commits suicide--a complicated man whom he misses.

As one of the blurbs on the back of this memoir attests, "this is a beautiful book-- mournful, swaggering, bleak, hilarious-- full of piercing and often loving assessments of life and art." What moved me most was the title piece about Kleinzahler's doomed and big-hearted brother, which reminded me of my own brother who died young in 1994.

Eerily, I find myself in Kleinzahler's description of his own teenaged self and how he related to his only brother as I did mine: "I couldn't have made for very thrilling company. But he always acted glad to see me...'You'll be all right,' he'd say smiling. 'Let's go out and see if we can't find ourselves a drink.' I miss having someone like that in my life. I miss it like a limb."

Kleinzahler's prose is tough, unflinchingly honest and gut-wrenching.

A must read.

CROSS BONES by Kathy Reichs (2005)

When a forensic pathologist becomes involved in the autopsy of an Orthodox Jew, her work life becomes unexpectedly thrilling. Someone thrusts a photo of a skeleton her way and cryptically claims it is the reason that the recently deceased has been murdered. Temperance follows the trail, with the help of Detective Andy Ryan, first to a monestary outside Montreal where she is given a bag of illustrious human remains and then across the ocean to Israel where a former colleague is excavating the site of what he believes to be the Jesus family tomb. There Temperance remarkably finds a shroud with bones and life becomes all the more adrenhaline-pumping exciting.

More of a page turner than THE DA VINCI code, and rife with historical conjecture and Biblical allusion, CROSS BONES will certainly have you questioning its plausibility. It's worth the ride, especially with the controversial evidence of the James (brother of Jesus) ossuary that even made a pit stop here in Toronto at the ROM a few years ago.

CAN YOU SPELL REVOLUTION? by Matt Beam (2006)

In this YA novel set in rural Ontario, Clouds McFadden is the new kid in town who greets his fellow eighth graders with the atypical, "Good morning, proletarians." Clouds has great plans to reform what he regards as the tyrannical rule of the teachers in his school and their principal, "the Penguin."

Caught up in repeating history, Clouds's good intentions become warped and his friends have to figure out a way to save him from himself.

UNTOLD STORIES by Alan Bennett (2005)

The esteemed British playwright has published a collection of non-fiction which includes thoughts about art, architecture, life in the theatre and his personal diaries between 1996-2004. I was most interested in the section about THE HISTORY BOYS, his award-winning play that set a record for Tonys on Broadway this past season, and which is currently on the big screen in theatres across the country with the same compelling ensemble cast I saw at the Broadhurst Theatre in July.

I was surprised by Bennett's stoic approach to the news of colon cancer and his positive attitude that comes out of that recent experience where he is relieved that he can afford private health care and move to the front of the line but equally disappointed in himself that as a socialist he chose to leap the queue.

His refusal to accept both a CBE (under Thatcher) and later a knighthood (under Blair) is curiously Woolf-like in its resolution to refuse gifts from strangers. He claims he couldn't possibly accept either because he couldn't come up with a suitable joke.

DEAD SIMPLE by Peter James (2005)

If you are even mildly claustrophobic, don't read this thriller. As part laugh and part retributive justice for previous pranks pulled, groom-to-be Michael is taken to a series of pubs by his mates and then buried alive in a coffin. The prank unexpectedly takes a turn for the worse when those very mates are killed in a car crash and no surviving friend is able to help Detective Inspector Roy Grace find the missing Michael.

This is a creepy novel with many plot twists. It is certainly not for the faint of heart.

TEACHER MAN by Frank McCourt (2005)

Chronicling his thirty years as a teacher in the NYC public high school system, McCourt unflinchingly portrays both the daily joy and frustration of being in the classroom on display and at the mercy of a roomful of adolescents who find teachers often boring and sometimes curious.

That we are all writers with stories to tell is what matters most. And the gift of trust which is occasionally exchanged in the classroom keeps us hooked on that learning curve.

SUITE FRANCAISE by Irene Nemirovsky (2006)

Published 54 years after the author was killed at Auschwitz, SUITE FRANCAISE offers an insider's perspective of German-occupied France in the early years of WWII. Nemirovsky writes beautifully and compassionately about the French and about the soldiers whose very presence made wartime life all the more complicated.

The story of this novel is as intriguing as the novel itself. For years Nemirovsky's daughters moved what they believed to be their mothers journals from place to place. Only after her younger sister Elizabeth died in 1996, did Denise Epstein read and transcribe this manuscript.

THE DISSIDENT by Nell Freudenberger (2006)

A performance artist and political activist from Beijing accepts a post as an art instructor at an all girls' boarding school in L.A. He is hosted by the Travers family: Cece, Gordon (her psychiatrist husband), Olivia (their anorexic dancing daughter) and Max (their son who has survived an attempted suicide--or so they think). Gordon's siblings breeze in and out as well--Joan, the novelist and Phil, the playwright who has optioned his play about a man who has an affair with his brother's wife to a Hollywood studio.

As the dissident becomes increasingly entangled in the family's life, Freudenberger reveals secret upon secret from his past.

ME AND ORSON WELLES by Robert Kaplow (2003)

Set during one week in November 1937 when Welles mounted a production of JULIUS CAESAR at the Mercury Theatre on West 41st Street, this absolutely charming novel inhabits that time and place through the eyes of Richard Samuels, a seventeen-year-old beginning actor who happens to be in the right place at the right time. We meet John Houseman, Joseph Cotten and the tyrannical twenty-two year old Welles at the beginning of his meteoric rise. During one week, Samuels falls in love, sleeps in Orson Welles' pajamas at the encouragement of his winsome production assistant Sonja (herself making a bid for an introduction to David O. Selznick), acts beside the behemoth in JULIUS CAESAR and loses his job.

LULLABIES FOR LITTLE CRIMINALS by Heather O'Neill (2006)

This is O'Neill's first novel and it will break your heart, phrase by phrase. Baby is a savvy twelve year old being raised by her father Jules, little more than a child himself when Baby was born. They shift from flop house to flop house in Montreal's red light district and Baby is temporarily housed in foster care with other castoffs while Jules is hospitalized.

And, although the circumstances of Baby's life are grim, her attitude towards it is refreshingly ebullient. In LULLABIES FOR LITTLE CRIMINALS, O'Neill has created memorable and sympathetic characters who will encourage you to look at life in an entirely appreciative way.

HELPLESS by Barbara Gowdy (2007)

Celia Fox is a single parent holding down two jobs in order to provide for her and her beautiful young daughter Rachel. On the night of a blackout in Toronto, Rachel is abducted and her mother's life becomes a living hell. Much of the novel is told from the perspective of Ron, a troubled appliance repairman, with an inexplicably close attachment to Rachel.

In HELPLESS, Gowdy, forces you to face your own fears about loss and love. It is a profoundly upsetting and human story.

SECRETS FROM THE VINYL CAFE by Stuart McLean (2006)

This 6th collection of Dave and Morley stories from CBC Vinyl Cafe host Stuart McLean is as engaging and heartwarming as the previous ones; though this time, cartoons by Seth, reminiscent of naive designs for the Flintstones or the Jetsons, imply another layer of storying. So, on the cover you may see yourself in Eavesdropper, Home Haircutter, Nostalgist, Tight-Wad, Sympathy Faker or Fact Fudger to name a few.

The stories range from quietly sentimental as in "Opera" and "The Laundry Chute" to knee-slapping, bladder-bursting funny in "Teeth" or "Kenny Wong's Practical Jokes." In every instance, McLean follows the path of the heart and nudges you, oh gentle reader, to examine your own.

CAUSEWAY: A PASSAGE FROM INNOCENCE by Linden MacIntyre (2006)

MacIntyre's memoir about growing up on Cape Breton in the years bracketed by the construction of the Canso causeway and his strained and complicated rapport with his largely absent father is compelling. He neatly adopts the convincing voice of his 10-12-14-year-old self and recreates the community of Port Hastings in the 1950s and 1960s. The wonder and mystery of the world and the people in it weave through MacIntyre's nostalgic lens.

BY THE TIME YOU READ THIS by Giles Blunt (2006)

Detective John Cardinal has spent years supporting his wife through manic episodes, some during which she had to be hospitalized. Recently, however, Catherine, has been going through a good patch where she has seemed energized by her work as a photographer. When Catherine is found dead, with a suicide note written in her schoolgirl script, her husband is naturally devastated. He's also suspicious. And, when a spate of suicides leads to Catherine's psychiatrist Dr. Bell, Cardinal is obviously concerned and curious.

The subplot involving a cold case of child abuse is equally chilling. Giles Blunt is a master of the crime genre.

THE WILDFIRE SEASON by Andrew Pyper (2005)

Learning that Andrew Pyper is the author assigned to the table where I will be sitting on Wednesday at the Writers' Trust Great Literary Dinner Party, I picked up his most recent novel.

The prose is gorgeous and the dialogue precise and authentic.

An arsonist starts a bush fire in a remotely populated area of the Yukon in order to give the firefighters something to do during the dog days of summer. Miles, the fire chief, not only has the burden of reading the fire and how it will spread, but also the anxiety of saving his five year-old daughter Rachel, whom he has only met recently.

The subplot in which a New York couple, strangers to each other although married for decades, hires a local guide to hunt a bear is no less anxiety-provoking. Especially when they are trapped in the licking flames as well.

The plot had me gasping for breath at times, in panic. And, I had to put the book down because the images were all too real.

Pyper sure knows how to write. I'll be picking up a copy of his earlier novel LOST GIRLS.

DEAD COLD by Louise Penny (2006)

I read Louise Penny's second mystery in one gulp yesterday. (Published as A FATAL GRACE in the US) Set in a sleepy Quebec village, DEAD COLD is a satisfying crime novel wherein several suspects are unlikely-- a bereaved octogenarian, a yoga-studio owning septugenarian and a bullied child who spends her days at an exclusive boarding school for girls in Montreal--the loosely disguised Miss Edgar's and Miss Cramp's.

Chief Inspector Armand Gamache takes on the case of a Boxing Day murder that happened in broad daylight among many witnesses at the annual outdoor curling briar.

The twists and turns and occasional laughs out loud will have you flipping the pages of this compelling tale right to the end. Acronyms acquire certain power under Louise Penny's pen.

BLOODLETTING & MIRACULOUS CURES by Vincent Lam (2006)

Lam's collection of linked short stories was recentlly awarded the 2006 Giller Prize--for the best English language book of fiction in Canada. In it you follow Ming, Chen, Fitzgerald and Sri through their human anatomy lab at Medical School and into their residential practices at walk-in clinics and emergency room triage. BLOODLETTING & MIRACULOUS CURES is not for the squeamish or faint of heart, especially in "Take All of Murphy," where the descriptive detail is absolutely visceral.

However, in addition to precise prose, Lam is also an adept storyteller, and it is his craftsmanship that will have me reaching for his first novel due out in Fall 2007 from Doubleday.

ECHO PARK by Michael Connelly (2006)

Detective Harry Bosch has a stale case that he just can't leave alone--the unsolved murder of Marie Gesto that has nagged him for more than a dozen years. When he gets a call from a hot-shot prosecutor who has Raynard Waits ready to admit to the murder in order to avoid the death penalty for a series of crimes, Harry is both relieved and bothered by the offer.

The wild goose chase that follows after Waits leads them to the alleged burial site of Gesto's remains is anxiety ridden.

Former defense attorney Connelly is at the top of his crime-writing form in ECHO PARK.

REQUIEM FOR MY BROTHER by Marian Botsford Fraser (2006)

When I saw this title listed in a summer edition of Quill and Quire as forthcoming, I special ordered a copy--having met Marian through PEN Canada work and having buried my only brother.

I had no idea that there would be such haunting similarities in our stories: the eldest of three children; raised in small-town Ontario; a younger brother named David who loved the north--its landscape, its rhythms; a family code in which "I love you" was understood but never said face to face.

Fraser's spare prose hits the mark. As Nino Ricci notes, it is "uncompromising and deeply affecting...a meditation...on how much of even those we are closest to remains unknown."

We are still, David, Denise and I, just the three of us.

THE FEARSOME PARTICLES by Trevor Cole (2006)

I picked up a copy of this GG short-listed novel after hearing Trevor Cole read excerpts at IFOA at the end of October. I was also intrigued by a reviewer's reference to Cole as a stylist belonging to "the Truman Capote school." However, although the sections dedicated to Victoria (the high-end house stager) were wryly amusing, and the narrative dedicated to her son Kyle was painfully engaging, the portions about Gerald's musings and his work life were yawn-worthy.

I must be missing something.

LAST STOP SUNNYSIDE by Pat Capponi (2006)

Living in a rooming house in Parkdale, Dana Leoni finds herself in the middle of a mystery involving a former housemate whose body has washed up along the Lake Ontario shore where the old Sunnyside Amusement park used to be. When the police decide to close the case, Dana and her remaining housemates--people pushed to the margins of society through mental illness and misfortune--decide to do detective work of their own inspired by their reading of the seedy, but hopeful tales of Janet Evanovich. Their dedication leads them to discover a terrible reality that is all too plausible.

PAINT IT BLACK by Janet Fitch (2006)

Fitch's new novel opens with a tribute to lyrics by the Rolling Stones that include "everything that's red, paint it black," a sentiment that well suits Josie Tyrell, the protagonist. Josie's boyfriend Michael, a Harvard dropout, is an artist unsure of the depth of his talents. In spite of the love that surrounds him, Michael drives to the edge of LA and checks in to a seedy motel as Oscar Wilde and puts a gun in his mouth.

Following Michael's suicide the grief that emerges for Josie and for Michael's Mom, a world-famous concert pianist, makes them fast enemies and even stranger friends.

YOU MUST SET FORTH AT DAWN by Wole Soyinka (2006)

Soyinka's memoir of his involvement throughout the early years of Nigeria's independence reads more like an intellectual tract than reminiscences. This accomplished poet, playwright and university professor--and the first African to be awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature--is frank about his many affairs de coeur and about his treatment while imprisoned for speaking out during the Biafran war that consumed Nigeria.

A LONG WAY DOWN by Nick Hornby

Written as four convincing first-person narratives, in the style of Faulkner's THE SOUND AND THE FURY, Hornby's most recent novel chronicles the lives of four strangers who meet at "Topper's House" in London on New Year's Eve. Each is convinced that s/he will put an end to their miserable existence to ring in the new year.

Jess is a teenaged girl who is lost to herself mostly because of her older sister's disappearance/death. JJ is a wannabe rockstar who broke up with his girlfriend and canned his band. Martin is a middle-aged Dad and former tv host who recently completed a jail term for having been involved with a fifteen-year-old girl. Maureen is a middle-aged woman who is weighed down by the care of her adult son who is confined to a wheelchair and diapers.

A less likely group of folks you won't have met; however, there is something absolutely appealing about each one of these characters as they look mortality in the eye and bite their thumbs at it. A topic that seems dreary and depressing will have you cheering by the time Hornby is finished.

REBUS'S SCOTLAND: A PERSONAL JOURNEY by Ian Rankin

I now understand why I've found Ian Rankin's crime writing to be so literary--he spent a former life as a graduate student of English Literature at Edinburgh University where he wrote his Ph.D. thesis on the novels of Muriel Spark.

In this non-fiction book of ramblings and reminiscences and gorgeous--albeit moody-- photographs, Rankin explains his idea of Scotland and how the country is as much a character as Detective John Rebus in all of his novels.

It is a charming and personal book that offers a guided tour along the streets of Edinburgh as well as through Rankin's mind.

LAST CAR TO ELYSIAN FIELDS by James Lee Burke

Veteran Louisiana Detective Dave Robicheaux finds himself in New Orleans, out of district, investigating the brutal beating of his friend Father Dolan, a controversial RC priest. However, another crime closer to home, the deaths of three teenaged girls in a car crash, leads to a series of revenge killings. Putting his own safety on the line, Robicheaux clearly understands the complicated nature of grief as he seeks to balance the scales of justice.

THE COMMUNIST'S DAUGHTER by Dennis Bock (2006)

Bock's hugely anticipated second novel reveals layer by layer the life of Norman Bethune. A life that he guardedly offers up to the infant daughter he has yet to meet. In Spain, Bethune meets Kajsa, a formidable woman who works with an anarchist group to get prostitutes off the streets of Madrid and into respectable work raising orphans of the Spanish Civil war. Although pregnant by him, Kajsa never admits as much and Bethune finds out after the fact that she was allowed to deliver the baby, but then killed because she was suspected of having pro-Fascist connections.

In this series of letters, Bethune confides all to his imagined daughter. He tries to face the truths about himself and his past and tries to communicate to her the necessity of the Chinese struggles against oppression through the leadership of Mao and the communist revolution.

Rife with historical detail and gorgeous descriptive passages, Bock paints a convincing portrait of a flawed man.

THE LINCOLN LAWYER by Michael Connelly (2005)

Defense attorney Mickey Haller has just about had it with his suspect clientele. He has two ex-wives--one on the payroll running his office from her condo; the other raising his only child. To protect himself he curiously runs his business from the backseats of several Lincoln Town Cars that are chauffeured by a former client who is going straight.

Mickey gets picked by a Beverly Hills rich boy realtor to defend him in a case of assault which he claims he didn't commit. The twists and turns of this hyper narrative will keep you second guessing right until the murderer is revealed at the climax.

THE LINCOLN LAWYER will have me reaching for other Connelly books. I will certainly make a point of hearing him read at IFOA in October.

CERTAINTY by Madeleine Thien (2006)

Thien's debut novel tells the story of Gail Lim, a radio documentary producer, who lives in Vancouver with her doctor husband Ansel. She believes in the serendipitous nature of life--that eventually everything will connect in a meaningful way. In her attempt to make a documentary about a man who encoded a journal during WWII, Gail discovers that she must crack the code of her own father's past in war-torn Asia.

Thien's understanding of grief is accurate and her evocation of it eloquent.

This is a stunning novel in which the characters are fully formed. Thien is the bright new voice in Canadian fiction. You will be able to hear her read from CERTAINTY at this year's IFOA at Harbourfront in Toronto this October.

THE GRAVE TATOO by Val McDermid (2005)

Atypical torrential rain drenches the Lake District and exposes a bog body that has been wildly tatooed. Local lore suggests it could be the corpse of the legendary sailor Fletcher Christian who led the mutiny on the Bounty against Captain Bligh. For four centuries people in the district have gossiped that Christian returned home to England after staging a massacre on the island of Pitcairn in the South Pacific. He told his story in confidence to the most famous man of the district, William Wordsworth, a school chum and longtime family friend. Wordsworth, at the height of his poetic power, may have turned the sailor's tale into a long narrative poem that he never published.

Enter Jane Gresham, a Lake District girl who has become a Wordsworth scholar. Jane discovers fresh correspondence between Wordsworth's widow and their son John that intimates the existence of such a poem. As she tries to follow the genealogical labyrinth to the possible whereabouts of this precious manuscript in the present, there are a series of troubling murders.

I couldn't put this book down because of its galloping pace and interweaving subplots. No stone is left unturned by McDermid in her research. I stayed up reading into the early hours even knowing I had to haul myself out of bed at 5 a.m. to row this morning.

TURNING ANGEL by Greg Iles (2005)

Following the current run of mysteries I seem to be devouring, I've added an author who is new to me: Greg Iles. Set in the American South and rife with the racial strife that continues to stain that area, TURNING ANGEL, follows Penn Cage (a prosecutor-turned-novelist) whose best friend Drew Elliott is desperate for his legal counsel once the body of a high school senior has been found near the Mississippi River. Penn plans to do all he can to help Drew (a respected town doctor who had been sexually involved with the murdered Kate Townsend) who saved his life when they were boys; however, Penn suspects Drew is hiding the truth.

The story is utterly consuming.

DEAD SOULS by Ian Rankin (1999)

Inspector Rebus stumbles upon a freed paedophile at the Edinburgh Zoo while he is stalking someone who has been poisoning the animals. By outing Darren Rough, Rebus has roused the local vigilantes from the housing project where Rough has been located since completing his sentence.

In addition to his troubles with the former paedophile who has been out for a year and not re-offended, Rebus has to deal with the apparent suicide of his colleague Jim Margolies who has hurled himself from Arthur's Seat on a dark and stormy night. And, if that isn't enough, a convicted murdered who has served his time in US jails, is looking to play games with Rebus as his pawn.

This is crime writing of the highest order.

Read Ian Rankin.

THE HANGING GARDEN by Ian Rankin (1998)

O.K.

Any book that begins by quoting both T.S. Eliot and the Lerner and Loewe musical BRIGADOON is a must read as far as I'm concerned. That it happens to be a rapid fire murder mystery makes it all the more charming.

In THE HANGING GARDEN Rebus is trailing a WWII war criminal when their paths cross with a Chechen gangster who is running prostitutes out of eastern Europe. It becomes very personal when Rebus's only daughter Samantha is the victim of a hit and run. Rankin makes you hypothesize how the rules of the game change when family is threatened.

LET IT BLEED by Ian Rankin (1995)

I'm beginning the back-to-school Rankin-reading blitz. I just can't get enough of his fast-paced literary thrillers featuring Detective John Rebus, who speaks his mind often to his own detriment. But, his Edinburgh bravado has its winning ways.

Rebus is, as usual, in the wrong place at the right time. Three storylines interweave: the Lord Provost's daughter seems to have been kidnapped; a city counsellor is caught shredding documents; Rebus finds himself on the invitation list to a private shooting party hosted by the Scottish Office's Permanent Secretary. It can only me corruption at the heart of modern Scotland.

THE LAST HEATHEN by Charles Montgomery (2004)

Shortlisted for the Charles Taylor Prize for Literary Non-fiction, this memoir is subtitled "Encounters with Ghosts and Ancestors in Melanesia." Montgomery's great grandfather was the Bishop of Tasmania at the end of the 19th century. At that time, the volcanic islands that make up Melanesia were a hotbed of cannibalism and witchcraft. Travelling in his relative's footsteps, Montgomery explores the effects of colonialism and marvels at cultural anthropology and myth making.

A compelling read.

A WAY OF LIFE, LIKE ANY OTHER by D'Arcy O'Brien (1977)

Set in Hollywood in the 1950s this is about a former cowboy movie star, his leading lady wife and their son. Their heyday far behind them, the husband and wife split and she spends the rest of her life searching for the perfect man through her alcoholic stupor. She thinks she's found him in a short, stocky sculptor.

The best part about this book was the epigraph attributed to Benedict Kiely: "There's what I want on my tombstone: Growth, Self-Deception, and Loss."

Don't bother reading it. That's 3 hours of my life wasted.

THE NAVIGATOR OF NEW YORK by Wayne Johnston

The narrator, Devlin Stead, was born in St. John's Newfoundland in the late nineteenth century. Through this bildungsroman we witness Devlin's early years when his doctor father abandons his wife and son to explore the Polar seas in the company of Lt. Robert Peary and Dr. Frederick Cook. Devlin's mother dies when he's only six and he's raised by his aunt and uncle until he decides to pursue a dream in New York under the tutelage of Dr. Cook from whom he has been receiving letters for many years.

Devlin learns truth after truth about his past and comes to find himself secure in love at last.

MONSTER by John Gregory Dunne

Screenwriter and novelist John Gregory Dunne chronicles the years it takes to pitch, draft and re-draft a story for the big screen. He and his wife Joan Didion collaborated on the script for UP CLOSE AND PERSONAL, a movie finally made once Robert Redford and Michelle Pfeiffer attached their names to the project--8 years later.

Ten years ago the best "script doctors" in the business (Dunne cites Carrie Fisher a.k.a. Princess Leia for one) got paid upt to 200k for one week's work.

There's a gig worth getting.

EVERYMAN by Philip Roth (2006)

Roth's 5th novel of the 21st century takes its title from the allegorical early English play about the summoning of the living to death. In it his everyman is a retired advertising executive who lives alone outside of NYC along the Jersey Shore and paints watercolours, an avocation of which he has dreamed. He has three failed marriages behind him, a doting daughter, an iconic older brother and two sons who have alienated him most of their adult lives.

Every word in this 182-page novel counts. Roth manages to get the reader on side from the opening sober scene at the graveyard where the cast gathers to contemplate this life.

"The terrain of this powerful novel is the human body. Its subject is the common experience that terrifies us all."

MORTAL SINS by Anna Porter (1987)

Journalist Judith Hayes gets an exclusive interview with secretive businessman Paul Zimmerman thanks to her friend Marsha Hillier. For some reason Zimmerman is ready to spill the beans about his private life. Hayes is invited to a special dinner party chez Zimmerman and there, in the company of strangers, bears witness to his unexpected death at the table. What follows is a journey into Zimmerman's obscure past in Hungary.

NIGHT GAME: A KATE HENRY MYSTERY by Alison Gordon (1992)

Kate is in Florida covering the "Grapefruit League" pre-season training for the Toronto Titans, when their pre-season rituals take a sinister turn. A rookie from the Dominican Republic is arrested for the murder of a blonde bombshell reporter, and Kate sets out to clear his name.

You get an inside peek at the complicated relationships between players and their wives and families during life on the road. Many of the adults follow Oscar Wilde's advice that the only way to deal with temptation is to yield to it.

SAFE AT HOME: A KATE HENRY MYSTERY by Alison Gordon (1990)

Ace reporter, Kate Henry, is about to break a story featuring a gay baseball player on Toronto's major league team. The news is sure to throw the sports world a curve ball. At the same time, Kate's lover, Detective Andy Munro, is trying to find the person responsible for the murders of two young boys. When their paths cross, Kate and Andy find that it's just not safe at home.

This novel clips along right to its satisfying end.

Perfect summer reading.

MOUTHING THE WORDS by Camilla Gibb (1999)

This is Gibb's debut novel. In it she writes convincingly from the perspective of Thelma, a young girl who has moved from England to Toronto and tries to make sense of her new world. Themes of incest and self-discovery make this book uncomfortable, but important reading.

ON BEAUTY by Zadie Smith (2005)

England's wunderkind novelist who broke on the scene with the satiric WHITE TEETH, has established herself with this third novel about a blended family living in small town New England. Dad is a progressive professor who made the predictable middle-aged man's mistake and had an affair with a colleague. Mom is a luscious African American whose kindness keeps her weary family together. The three siblings position themselves for approval from a variety of sources. What Smith does most convincingly is write dialogue. Zora and Levi and Kiki leap off the page.

ON BEAUTY won the Orange Prize for fiction. The title is stolen from a poem by Smith's equally ambitious literary spouse, Nick Laird.

THREE WISHES by Deborah Ellis (2005)

Banned by the Toronto Board of Education, this collection of personal essays from the point of view of both Israeli and Palestinian children and teens tries to account for the prejudice into which they are born. In their own words, these vignettes are equally despairing and hopeful about the burden of growing up in the Middle East today.

THE MASTER (2005) by Colm Toibin

Toibin inhabits the psyche of American man of letters Henry James in this triumph of imagination and style that takes place over the course of five years in James's life in England, when he found himself writing for the stage at the same time as the celebrated and immensely popular Oscar Wilde.

THE MASTER recently won the 2006 Dublin IMPAC Literary Award, the richest prize for English language fiction.

THE PETTY DETAILS OF SO AND SO'S LIFE (2002) by Camilla Gibb

This novel explores the life of quirky siblings Emma and Blue who embark on separate journeys of self-discovery due to their mostly inept parents. Emma becomes obsessed with archaeology and digging up the past and Blue finds his own way through his work as a tatoo artist with the support of his girlfriend, a former stripper.

Camilla Gibb won the Trillium Book Award this Spring for her most recent novel SWEETNESS IN THE BELLY.

THE MEMORY BOOK (2005) by Howard Engel

Private Investigator Benny Cooperman is recovering in a Toronto hospital from a serious blow to the head. He has a peculiar condition that allows him to write, but not to read. And, while he can remember great swaths of his distant past, he finds himself sometimes brushing his teeth with his shaving cream. Friends in homicide tell Benny that he was found in a dumpster on the U of T campus beside a dead woman. Probably left for dead himself.

Engel's book gives an insider's perspective on what it feels like to be utterly frustrated by a head injury.

There is a captivating afterword by Dr. Oliver Sacks, who does his best to explain Engel's condition alexia sine agraphia and its ramifications.

THE DELICATE STORM (2003) by Giles Blunt

Already a fan of Detective John Cardinal from Blunt's other crime novels, it was a quick decision to pick up this one. Blunt's characters are believable and cunning and full of human frailty. I especially enjoyed the mini-history lesson refresher about the 1970 FLQ Crisis which is the thread that connects the contemporary murders Cardinal is compelled to solve.

PRAIRIE HARDBALL (1997) by Alison Gordon

Baseball writer Kate Henry takes a holiday at home in small town Saskatchewan and brings along her partner, Detective Andy Munro. They join her parents for her mother's induction in the Saskatchewan Baseball Hall of Fame since she played in the 1940s (while all of the boys were at war) on the legendary Racine Belles.

While at the reunion in North Battleford, one of the Belles is murdered.

PRAIRIE HARDBALL is part nostalgia for the glory days of the game, part road trip and all intrigue. It has me reaching for the rest of Alison Gordon's Kate Henry Mysteries.

THE BOOKFAIR MURDERS (1997) by Anna Porter

World-class editor Marsha Hillier is networking her way through a posh party at the Frankfurt Bookfair when she stops to chat with Andrew Myles, a top literary agent who represents the darling of the event, Margaret Drury Carter who has recently signed a three-book deal for $20 million--a sum worthy of Stephen King and Tom Clancy. As the narrator quips, "Andrew was dead, so he didn't respond."

In addition to being populated with real people from the publishing world, THE BOOKFAIR MURDERS is an intriguing mystery with many suspects.

THE MURDER ROOM by P.D. James

At a small family run museum outside of London, a grisly murder is committed, one that appears to be a copycat. When Dr. Neville is burned to death in his vintage Jag, his brother and sister co-operate with the police to try to figure out who could possibly wish their psychologist brother any harm. With a dash of romance on the side between the poet-cum-detective and a literature professor at Cambridge, this mystery is a satisfying romp.

RACE AGAINST TIME by Stephen Lewis (2005)

Delivered as the Massey lectures this past fall, Stephen Lewis contemplates the fate of Africa as the first world stands idly by. The opening lecture, "It Shames and Diminishes Us All," will convince you that 0.7 is potentially the most powerful number. Period. If the G8 countries actually delivered on their promise of 0.7 of the GDP, and forgave existing debts in sub-Saharan Africa, then those devastatingly poor countries might have a chance to rebuild.

Lewis's honesty and integrity and passion about the dire circumstances of women and children suffering the HIV/AIDS pandemic will make you want to raise a call to arms.

THE PLOT AGAINST AMERICA by Philip Roth

Prolific novelist Philip Roth blurs fact and fiction in this remarkable novel which supposes what might have happened had Anti-Semitic, world-famous aviator Charles Lindberg been elected President of the USA, sending FDR to defeat in the years surrounding WWII. The narrator is eight-year-old Philip who grows up in New York City, proud of his Jewish cultural heritage and then conflicted when his older brother Sandy appears to support the charismatic new leader. This novel is brave and terrifying in equal measure.

BABES IN THE WOODS by Ruth Rendell (2003)

Two teenaged children and their adult minder go missing during a storm while their parents are away for an extended weekend in Paris. Their mother believes they've drowned in the floodwater and when a t-shirt that unmistakably belongs to her daughter is found by the police, she is convinced of foul play. The detective on the case has his awareness heightened by the fact that his adult daughter is trying to extricate herself from an abusive relationship.

When the police learn that the son belonged to a fundamentalist Christian sect, everyone seems suspicious. Even the children's famous photographer grandmother.

I KNOW THIS MUCH IS TRUE by Wally Lamb (1998)

Keith Cressy told me this book resonated with him more than any other that he's read so far. It's a whopper of a novel clocking in at more than 800 pages, but every page is worth your time. Really.

Thomas and Dominick Birdsey are identical twins who are raised in an abusive environment. Like all families theirs is rife with secrets. After their first year at university, Thomas experiences his first psychotic episode and after several misdiagnoses is properly diagnosed as a paranoid schizophrenic.

I KNOW THIS MUCH IS TRUE will tear at your heart in so many ways as you get to know quite intimately the emotional burdens of each of the characters. It is not an easy read, but it is well worth your effort. I'm adding it to my personal pantheon of favourite books.

MORTAL CAUSES by Ian Rankin

Ian Rankin is a mystery writer at the top of his game. In MORTAL CAUSES, Inspector John Rebus is seconded to a special unit to investigate a ghastly execution that happened in Mary King's Close in Edinburgh during the Fringe Festival. Those of you who know the streets of Edinburgh will find the geography compellingly familiar as well as creepy.

It turns out that the first victim is the son of a gangster who is doing time and, of course, is stoked by revenge once he hears of his only son's gruesome death. As in Renaissance revenge tragedy, the bodies pile up before the good guys figure out whodunnit.

NOTHING LOST by John Gregory Dunne (2004)

Dunne's final novel (he died unexpectedly in December 2003) shows his fascination with "the forgotten, the rejected and the left behind." When a lurid murder comes to trial in small town America, there is a media circus as the celebrity machine comes to feast on the events.

There is a cast of memorable and credible characters including a defense attorney whose real father was a Las Vegas mobster, a tough gay former state's attorney, a sociopathic supermodel and sister of the accused, and a glamorous right wing congresswoman who is a gubernatorial candidate.

No one escapes Dunne's unsentimental narrative.

DEMOCRACY by Joan Didion (1984)

Inez Christian Victor is the wife of a U.S. senator who has designs on the presidency. Set in the years following the fall of Saigon, DEMOCRACY is a political satire as well as bildungsroman. Inez is spunky, intelligent and self aware. The politics of that time are inseparable from private life and join to assure both public and private disaster.

Didion's eye for social commentary is precise.

THE WOMEN OF BREWSTER PLACE by Gloria Naylor

A collection of linked stories that weave together to form a novel, THE WOMEN OF BREWSTER PLACE honours the lives of several tough Black American women who inhabit the margins of society because they are either on welfare, are prostitutes or are lesbians. When it was first published in 1980 one critic wrote that "vibrating with undisguised emotion" the book " springs from the same roots that produced the blues...it sings of sorrows proudly borne by black women in America."

LARRY'S PARTY by Carol Shields

Larry Weller is a florist who lives in Winnipeg with his wife Dorrie and his young son Ryan. He builds topiary mazes after "getting the bug" during his honeymoon visit to Hampton Court Palace. As he learns more about designing these labyrinths he also negotiates his way more adeptly through his relationships with his son and with the women in his life. Shields, as usual, shows herself to be the master of communicating what is remarkable about an ordinary life.

FORTY WORDS FOR SORROW by Giles Blunt

Detective John Cardinal faces his own criminal past again when his partner Detective Lise Delorme is assigned to determine the source of Cardinal's income that enables him to pay for his daughter's graduate education at Yale. Delorme and Cardinal are put on murder cases of children as yet unsolved. Once they discover the remains of a thirteen year old Native girl in an abandoned mineshaft on Windigo Island, a killer strikes again. Set in Algonquin Bay (fictionalized North Bay, Ontario) and in the Toronto forensics lab, FORTY WORDS FOR SORROW is fast-paced and, at times, terrifying. It makes you really wonder about youth in care.

THE TORTURE OF OTHERS by Val McDermid

Detective Carol Jordan is wooed back on to the front lines of police work by a series of cold cases including missing children. Recent murders of prostitutes are especially difficult for Jordan to face since she is recovering from being raped when she went undercover in Berlin. The narrative twists and turns with the snap of the sexual predator's fingers. It is compelling and sickening to read.

KICK BACK by Val McDermid

Detective Kate Brannigan uncovers a mortgage theft scam that is run by a salesman who works for a greenhouse building company. In addition to fraud, this novel keeps you flipping through it because of twisted relationships between the characters. I can easily lose myself in such a fast-paced tale.

A PLACE OF EXECUTION by Val McDermid

I've recently become interested in murder mystery writing. A friend gave me McDermid's book insisting that she wrote at the top of her game. Set in a remote village in northern England, A PLACE OF EXECUTION is fast-paced and thought-provoking. It addresses the failure of the justice system and the messiness of ethical decisions and their ramifications. I was not disappointed and have picked up another McDermid book to see if she really is such a consistently fine storyteller.

NIGHT by Elie Wiesel

This brave and haunting memoir written by the Nobel Prize winner demands to be read over and over again. Wiesel is just a boy when he and his family are taken to Auschwitz and then he is moved to Buchenwald with his father. What astonishes me each time I read this book is how he manages to remain a man of faith in face of the atrocities he witnessed and experienced.

UNION STATION by Joe Fiorito

I went to Fiorito's launch of this non-fiction collection of essays about who we are now in Toronto on Tuesday night. Many of the people about whom Fiorito has written were there as well including the Nigerian cab driver whose son Fiorito has the privilege of calling Joseph after a naming ceremony and Enza-the-supermodel Anderson, the drag queen (and occasional mayoral candidate) who finally got the breast implants she desired.

It is a raw look at Toronto. At our kindnesses, cruelties and foibles.

Fans of Fiorito's column must read this book.

LIVES OF GIRLS AND WOMEN by Alice Munro

I've just re-read this fantastic collection of linked short fiction published first in 1971. It is a progressive book for its time--so progressive that several libraries chose to ban the book because of its explicit depiction of Del's coming of age and growing awareness of her sexuality.

Alice Munro is a must-read author. Dip and then delve into her body of work.

THE QUEEN'S FOOL by Phillipa Gregory

Set in the early English Renaissance during the reigns of "Bloody" Mary and Elizabeth I, this historical novel follows the life of a young Jewish girl who has moved from Spain to England with her bookseller father to escape persecution that led to her mother's death at the stake.

Dressed in the clothes of a young boy, she piques the interest of one of the courtiers who invites her to become the fool in the court of the invalid boy/king. She then befriends Mary and Elizabeth and serves as a spy reporting between their two royal camps.

It is a novel filled with intriguing historical anecdotes and credible characters.

MARLEY AND ME by John Grogan

For any doglovers, this memoir, that is a New York Times bestseller will affirm your loyalty to your furry four-footed companions. Grogan unabashedly recounts Marley's really bad behaviour, but reminds us that Marley approaches everything with joyful ebullience.

THE PROJECTIONIST by Michael Helm

Set in late 80s small town Saskatchewan, this novel reveals Toss Raymond's fierce loyalty to his remaining family (his Aunt Cora and her son Perry) and his emotional exhuberance for other social misfits like himself (including Dewey, the projectionist at the dilapitated movie house.)

Toss has a history of violence and in the recent past his wife Marcie has left him because of rumour and misunderstanding that so easily passes from mouth to gossipping mouth.

Toss is a crusader for truth. And he's willing to face his own demons to find it.

THE PROJECTIONIST is Michael Helm's first novel and it was short-listed for The Giller Prize. His prose is deft, rhythmic and clean. Read this book!