PASSCHENDAELE by Paul Gross

Based on the screenplay by Paul Gross, the novel begins near the town of Arras where Sergeant Michael Dunne is leading his troop through a hornet's nest of Huns in the town square. He find himself thrusting a bayonet into the face of a young German soldier to kill him and to secure his own escape--it is this action that haunts Dunne for the rest of his life.

The narrative shifts to Calgary where Dunne is recovering in a military hospital from his physical and emotional wounds. There he meets volunteer nurse Sarah Mann, who is fighting her own psychological demons. When medical doctors decide Dunne has suffered shellshock, he is officially excused from serving again on the front and instead works in the recruiting office where the officer in charge encourages Dunne to ignore some of the enlisting rules in order to provide sufficient back up recruits for all of the fallen on the front.

In spite of his growing affection for Sarah, who he manages to help wean from a morphine addiction--in his greatest act of kindness--Dunne decides he must return to the front, however inappropriate that is or how broken he may be.

Back on the front near Ypres, the exhausted Canadian troops are about to participate in one of the bloodiest battles of the war. The description of the trenches and the bloated corpses, human and animal, that litter them is one of the strengths of this writing. It is visceral and surreal, but absolutely convincing.

EVERYONE WORTH KNOWING by Lauren Weisberger

Bette Robinson quits her Manhattan banking job and finds herself happily embracing sloth and organizing her day around Oprah and her favourite soaps and walking her 4-pound Yorkie, Millington. Her fashionable, rich and gay uncle introduces Bette to Kelly (his former personal assistant) who now runs Manhattan's hottest PR firm and the city's biggest events for those rich and famous enough to see and be seen.

Bette finds herself dating an infamous British playboy and thrills her boss by appearing in all of the gossip rags, thereby providing desirable exposure to the firm. This fast life of black Amex cards and Cristal wears thin on Bette and she walks out of the Playboy fete that she was responsible for running in an attempt to reclaim her old self, which is somewhere between the values of her Hippie parents and the spoiled life to which she has become accustomed.

PEGASUS DESCENDING by James Lee Burke

Detective Dave Robichaux finds his past isn't completely past when his murdered friend Dallas Klein's daughter Trish, a suspected grifter, shows up in town counting cards at blackjack tables and then involves herself with his longtime buddy and P.I. Clete Purcell who has a weakness for damaged women.

At Dave's day job he is put on the case of a young woman who has apparently committed suicide after being raped repeatedly at a frat house. Investigating that case leads him back to an unsolved murder of Crustacean Man, an unidentified homeless wino who had died as a result of a hit and run that Dave traces back to the Lujan family who also seem to be implicated in the death of Cesaire Darbonne's daughter.

Throughout the investigation tempers flair and Dave finds himself pounding his fist into the face of the sleazy D.A. in defense of his lesbian boss, the unflappable Helen Soileau. When his own family is threatened, Dave seeks vigilante justice with full time thug Lefty Raguzza. Although Dave behaves with his own moral code, you can forgive him just as his wife Molly does (she's a former Roman Catholic nun) because he is almost always right.

James Lee Burke writes convincing characters with true human frailty and scripts a plot at breakneck speed. I'll be reading as many of his books as I can find.

THE NEW YORKERS by Cathleen Shine

In a neighborhood peopled with lonely, hardworking folks, you meet Polly and her brother George and their puppy Howdy who came with the apartment, Jody and her aging pitbull Beatrice, gay restauranteur Jamie and his cairn terriers and divorce Everett who is suffering from empty nest syndrome now that his daughter is away at university. Each character's life bleeds into each other's and they each find love and meaning in unexpected ways.

THAT SUMMER IN PARIS by Morley Callaghan

Take a trip back to the halcyon ex-pat days in Paris of 1929 with Morley and his wife Loretta as they insinuate themselves into the lives of the Fitzgeralds ( yes, F. Scott and Zelda) and the Hemingways as each of those men build their writerly careers. Don't bat an eyelash when the abstract painter Miro carries Ernest's bag of boxing gear and acts as timekeeper in one of his friendly matches with Morley, or even turn your head when James Joyce invites them to stop by while he plays a recording of the suffragist Aimee Semple Macpherson.

The tenderness with which Callaghan recounts those luminescent days will encourage you to savour each beautifully wrought anecdote and will have you reaching for the novels each of those men were writing at that time: TENDER IS THE NIGHT; A FAREWELL TO ARMS and IT'S NEVER OVER.

WISHFUL DRINKING by Carrie Fisher

The Star Wars parody cover of Fisher's memoir had me reaching for a copy. In addition to being a pop cultural icon as Princess Leia (having been replicated as a PEZ dispenser, a barbie doll, a shampoo bottle...) Fisher is also a celebrated novelist and screenwriter.

In WISHFUL DRINKING she begins at the beginning--being born into a celebrity family of famous parents: America's sweethearts of the 1950s, tap dancing, Singin' in the Rain Debbie Reynolds and crooner Eddie Fisher. That is until her father left her mother when Carrie was two to "console Elizabeth Taylor with his penis." She is this direct. Always.

By the final page, you'll feel you've become Fisher's confidante as she's spilled her personal beans about being an addict (no surprise because of the publicity her drug and alcohol addictions have drawn over 30 years) who was once counseled by Cary Grant as a favour to her mother; about her insecurity regarding her looks when George Lucas told her to lose ten pounds (and she only weighed 105) and to support her breasts with Gaffer tape since they didn't wear underwear in outer space, duh; about her powerful ability to turn men gay. Just ask the father of her only child who left her for a man.

Her daughter Billie, by the way (who was recently at a Paris debutante ball with Bruce Willis's daughter Rumer) has decided to abandon a dream of becoming a neurosurgeon who specializes in schizophrenia, in favour of becoming a comic of which her mother heartily approves:" If you want to be a comic, you have to be a writer. But don't worry, you have tons of material. Your mother is a manic depressive drug addict, your father is gay, your grandmother tap-dances, and your grandfather shot speed." And you will laugh and laugh and laugh just like Billie.

ALL THE COLOURS OF DARKNESS by Peter Robinson

What appears to be a cut and dry case of murder/suicide where a local theatre designer has apparently hanged himself after having bludgeoned his partner to death, turns out to be something much more that threatens the well being of Detective Alan Banks and DI Annie Cabbot as they try to peel back the layers of truth.

When Banks meets one of the dead men's mothers, she reveals to him that her son was a spy. In his work day world secrets and deceit were the norm and murder the Machiavellian solution. In the M16 realm of kill or be killed "the end almost always justified the means." The closer Banks and Cabbot get to revealing other truths about the players, the closer they come to their own mortality.

Robinson's ability to create tension and to build suspense lasts through to the final pages. And, he has me reaching for a copy of OTHELLO, to re-familiarize myself with its web of deceit and darkness that give this 18th Banks mystery its title.

CHASING HARRY WINSTON by Lauren Weisberger

From the novelist of the bestselling blockbuster THE DEVIL WEARS PRADA, CHASING HARRY WINSTON follows the vapid lives of three late-twenty-something New Yorkers who have it all: looks, loves, avocations. Having it all isn't enough so the three best girl-pals decide to make a pact to alter their already enviable lives. Emmy (just dumped by her long time boyfriend) resolves to embark upon meaningless safesex with strangers on all continents, but Antarctica; Leigh, a rising junior editor on the NY publishing circuit takes on the enfant terrible of the literary world, Jesse Chapman, at his request and muddles her rapport with her gorgeous and successful fiance in the process; and Adriana, the drop dead gorgeous daughter of a supermodel who spends most of her days luring men and being, well, drop-dead gorgeous, decides it's time to settle down with a suitable boy and establish a suitable career.

Complete escapist New York fantasy, this chick-lit selection kept my crankiness at bay while I was suffering my way through an interminable superbug and coughing myself awake every hour for the past three days.

YESTERDAY'S WEATHER by Anne Enright

In this collection of short fiction, the Booker Prize-winning writer invites you into the intimate lives of men and women in contemporary Ireland. Here characters struggle with love in all its forms: platonic, romantic, familial. Sharp, tender and rarely predictable these stories hold up the mirror and ask who are you, really?

THROUGH BLACK SPRUCE by Joseph Boyden

This dual narrative follows Will Bird and his niece Annie as the two of them struggle along separate paths of self-discovery, both of which are fraught with obstacles physical and emotional.

Will is a legendary Cree bush pilot, lying in a coma in a hospital near his hometown of Moose Factory. His niece Annie, a beautiful and resilient young woman, has returned from trying to find her missing sister Suzanne down south where she disappeared into the maws of Toronto, Montreal or New York, a victim of the drug trade and a career as a high fashion model, it would seem.

At her uncle's hospital bedside, Annie confesses all and articulates some truths about herself for the first time, hoping that all of her chatter will keep Will's brain flickering and encourage him to wake up, a possibility increasingly remote the longer he remains unconscious.

This is a story of traditions and of true love. I will not be surprised to hear Joseph Boyden's name called this week as the winner of the 2008 Giller Prize.

GOOD TO A FAULT by Marina Endicott (2008) Broadview Press

This first novel from a new small Canadian press made it to the short-list (named by Margaret Atwood, Bob Rae and Colm Toibin) for this year's Giller Prize. It is a gem. Even if it isn't the prize-winner on November 11th, go out and get yourself a copy.

Clara Purdy is a 40-something insurance adjuster who in a moment of distraction causes a car crash with incredible personal fallout. The Gage family, whose innocent lives Clara has accidentally interrupted, was on its way to build a new life in the relatively prosperous working class town Fort McMurray, living out of their delapitated Dodge Dart along the way. None of them is horribly injured, but the Mom, Lorraine, is diagnosed with cancer. Unable to cope with this shocking reality, her husband Clayton flees, leaving Clara to accommodate each of them into her single life.

The kindness of strangers and prairie warm-heartedness combine to create stability for Lorraine's young family as she is faced with chemo, radiation and eventually a bone-marrow transplant. Clara welcomes the new challenge in her life in caring for Dolly, Trevor and Pearce and enlists the help of her neighbour and her cousins and even her pastor, Paul Tippett to do so. Recovering from her own divorce and lack of purpose, Clara finds real meaning in her life, but not before she is faced with emotional loss of her own.

NO SUCH CREATURE by Giles Blunt (2008)

I'm a fan of Blunt's John Cardinal mysteries like BY THE TIME YOU READ THIS, FORTY WORDS FOR SORROW and BLACKFLY SEASON, so was keen to pick up his new book, in which he takes a break from the gripping suspense that defines the series.

In NO SUCH CREATURE we follow a gregarious thief named Max and his great-nephew, Owen, as they travel across the American southwest in search of robbery jobs where they fancy themselves modern day Robin Hoods, stealing only from the wealthy Republicans in their wake. Max is a washed up actor with a flair for accents and disguises who loves to quote Shakespeare even as he's getting his short-term hostages to add their Rolexes, diamonds and emeralds to his goody bag. Owen, is his orphaned nephew, who dreams of enrolling at Juilliard in NYC and training to be a real actor.

Out of deference to a fellow thief nicknamed the Pontiff whom he met at "Oxford" (Max's euphemism for incarceration), Max looks out for John Paul's daughter Sabrina on his way through Las Vegas. She ends up joining Max and Owen for a while, and just as they feel comfortable trusting her with their secrets, she takes advantage of them and splits to pursue her own American Dream.

There is a sweetness to the telling that is new to Blunt's books, with the grace, compassion and emotion I already expect when I pick up one of his novels. Reading NO SUCH CREATURE is a heartening way to pass the time, keeping company with Max and Owen, in spite of their flaws.

THE MURDER STONE by Louise Penny (2008)

At a charming boutique hotel called the Manoir Bellechasse, in the Eastern townships of Quebec, Armand and Reine-Marie Gamache are intending to celebrate their wedding anniversary in quiet contentment, returning to the place where they first became intimate.

The Finney family, established and moneyed Montrealers, also gathers to pay tribute to their father by having a figurative sculpture in his likeness unveiled in the back garden. In the heat of summer, in the height of blackfly season, the irascible middle-aged siblings barely behave in an effort to suck up to their aged P, demanding mother. A storm brews, tempers flare and one of the siblings is murdered, leaving those remaining suspicious of each other and their intents.

As Penny was editing this fourth novel, she decided to use the name of a former student of mine, one who got me on to her books in the first place. It is delicious to find him among these pages as one of the suspects and I can't wait for him to see his name in print.

THE FLYING TROUTMANS by MIriam Toews (2008)

Hattie Troutman gets called back from hanging out with her boyfriend in Paris to run interference for her mentally ill sister Min. Min's kids Logan and Thebes have ministered to her invalid needs, but she refuses to get out of bed and face the world and her responsibility as a parent. Hattie and Logan manage to get Min to hospital where her needs will be assessed.

Min beckons Hattie to her beside and asks her to help her die. Hattie refuses. It is obviously a decision she's had to make before. Hattie takes Logan and Thebes on a roadtrip to the midwest to try to find their father who Min kicked out of the house when the children (now 15 and 11) were small.

Nobody writes about teenaged angst more convincingly or sympathetically than Miriam Toews. This novel will claw its way to the top of bestseller lists.

THE CORPSE WILL KEEP: A DANA LEONI MYSTERY by Pat Capponi

Parkdale P.I. Dana Leoni and her unlikely crew of boarding house sleuths have their first paying gig. Harp, a university friend from Dana's past, thinks his wealthy Rosedale mother is being taken advantage of in her efforts to help the homeless at the local Out of the Cold program where she has volunteered for years, because that is just what one does. Harp turns to Dana because he trusts her and because he knows that she knows only too well how to navigate her way undetected through the rough life on the streets.

When a strangely handsome and charismatic do-gooder at one of the church shelters takes an interest in Dana, her judgment is temporarily impaired and she finds herself face to face with fear and real danger. Through Dana, Pat Capponi writes convincingly about Toronto's marginalized and makes a terrific argument for compassion without a note of pity.

THE P'TOWN MURDERS: A BRADLEY FAIRFAX MYSTERY by Jeffrey Round

If you are at all intrigued or bemused by camp and gay culture and like to read mysteries, this confection is the escapist read for you. Bradley Fairfax works for a topsecret agency where he is only known as "Red" and where his boss, whom he has never met, is the mysterious "Grace." Fairfax is going to Provincetown, a gay mecca on the eastern seaboard, where he is claiming his former lover's body. Ross died accidentally, and Brad is pretty certain that his death was also intended.

While in P-town, Brad discovers there is more to the gay-friendly town than meets the eye. Big Ruby, a lesbian who runs a high end coffee shop, Cinder, a transvestite who becomes Marilyn, Renee and Cybil with a brush of lipliner, and Zach, a natural healer with indigo locks and a washboard stomach, all form distractions for Brad as he attempts to remain undercover.

Round follows the prescription for a conventional murder mystery, but enhances the experience by pulling back the curtain to see the wizard operating the strings.

THE CASE OF LENA S. by David Bergen

This heartbreaking coming-of-age novel follows Mason Crowe, a 16-year-old who dreams of becoming a poet, along a vulnerable path to love. At the beginning Mason has a crush on Seeta, a beautiful East Indian girl a couple of years his senior who has been betrothed to a man she's never met. Seeta soon rejects Mason's attention for his older brother Danny's and Mason finds himself intrigued by Lena Schellendal, an impulsive and provocative girl who opens up a world of intimacy to him he hasn't previously experienced. Lena is a troubled soul, unable to be saved, especially by those who love her.

Bergen writes convincingly of teenaged love/lust and matter-of-factly creates authentic sex scenes. If you are at all prudish about burgeoning sexuality and its discovery, you won't be able to read the first 150 pages without blushing.

YOUTH by J.M.Coetzee

One of my students loaned me his copy of YOUTH because he thought I would enjoy the narrative and the literary references to Eliot, Pound, Beckett and Ford.

18-year-old John, the narrator, is disgruntled especially about living in apartheid South Africa in the 1950s, so he moves to London to begin his life as a poet. He is equally disappointed there when he secures a job as a computer programmer with IBM, a vocation that totally depresses him.

In this coming-of-age novel, this young man's struggle to find his way in the world Coetzee writes with tenderness and clarity.

THE FORGERY OF VENUS by Michael Gruber

I love the way Gruber paces his novels and engages me culturally. In THE FORGERY OF VENUS, painter Chaz Wilmot makes his living producing parodies for ads and magazine covers and squeezes by financially to support his ex-wife and children. His talent is, however, of another time when portrait painters such as Rubens, Titian, Rembrandt and Velasquez created canvases that read like photographs.

Wilmot gets two breaks: one financial where he agrees to participate in a drug study led by a former university peer who is interested in its effect on creativity, and one creative where an art dealer arranges a commission for him to restore a fresco in a Venetian palazzo.

During the drug trials Wilmot experiences hallucinations where he becomes younger versions of himself as well as time travels and becomes the esteemed Spanish 17th century painter Diego Velasquez, the finest portraitist of his time.

Back in the present in NYC Wilmot suffers a mental breakdown and then finds himself able to create a portrait of Venus, in a style that is indistinguishable from the work of the original master. This forgery stands to make Wilmot a very rich man who will finally be able to provide the exclusive private health care his son Milo needs to survive his childhood.

A PRISONER OF BIRTH by Jeffrey Archer

I heard Archer speak here in Toronto in the Spring. He was charming and thoughtful and unflinchingly honest about his time in prison: apparently nothing quite focuses the writing mind like a 6 by 10-foot cell you share with a stranger.

This most recent novel follows the fate of the wrongfully convicted Danny Cartwright who is sentenced to 22 years in the highest-security prison in England for the murder of his best friend, who just happens to be his fiancee Beth's brother. Danny shares a cell with the erudite and kindly Nick Moncrieff who helps him to navigate his way through the prison hierarchy to a safe job in the prison library.

Brimming with insider allure, and enough red herrings to make your head ache, Archer's latest book will have diehard fans clamoring for more of the same.