Governor General's Award for Fiction (Short-listed) 2019, Short-listed
Danuta Gleed Literary Award (Short-listed) 2019, Short-listed

Eye by Marianne Micros is a satisfying and thought-provoking experience. You get a sense of the melding of different cultures and different eras in a new form.

Scotiabank Giller Prize 2019, Long-listed
Governor General's Award 2019, Short-listed
Trillium Award 2019, Short-listed
Toronto Book Award 2019, Short-listed

Praise for Late Breaking

“[K.D. Miller's] stories are sharp, memorable and sometimes harsh. She’s particularly good on sex, and the infinitely variable meanings of sex. Once I had read a few of her stories, nothing could stop me from reading the rest. Miller is obviously a careful, imaginative and deeply empathic author.”—National Post

"A deft, nuanced, and human collection of stories. K.D. Miller's gaze catches both humour and darkness in a wide variety of relationships. A thoroughly captivating book."—Rebecca Rosenblum

"An undercurrent of the surreal pulses through 10 linked stories...sensitive portrayals of the fragility of love and ubiquity of need." —Kirkus Reviews "

If K.D. Miller had produced nothing other than “The Last Trumpet,” the opening entry in this collection of linked stories, she would still have a place on any list of this year’s best fiction. Taking up themes of aging, loneliness, and regret, “The Last Trumpet” is one of the saddest, most affecting pieces of short fiction to appear in this country in recent memory. But that story is just the first blast in a collection that is consistently engaging and assured. The stories in Late Breaking—loosely tied together by recurring characters, a focus on aging and death, and the paintings of Alex Colville—are moving and beautifully written." —Steven W. Beattie

"In Miller’s capable hands . . . familiar themes become fresh, even raw, pulsing with sexuality and longing and anger or casting a cold eye on all the preoccupations of a younger self in a younger world . . . Late Breaking is by turns tender, comic (a number of the characters are writers, which offers opportunity for satire), sad, uncompromising, horrifying and redemptive. The Gothic (think Shirley Jackson and William Faulkner) is never far away. Best of all, for all the seeming familiarity of its themes, the stories are never predictable. Never." —Minneapolis Star Tribune

"In some stories, Miller takes off from the narrative suggestion of a specific painting. In others, she builds from the sense of relationship between people or simply the tone Colville of what depicted. The end result feels like a comprehensive narrative, the characters linked by more than their source material. A real standout." —Jade Colbert, Globe and Mail

"Miller's attentiveness . . . is touching . . . The stories themselves are rich with coherence, meaning, and suggestion, and part of what makes them so satisfying is the space they leave free for us to engage with them and find our own interpretation." —Quill & Quire

"Compulsively readable. Like an Alex Colville painting . . . the longer you look, you realize there's something darker going on underneath the surface. My favourite book so far this fall." —CBC Ontario Morning

"Each of the 10 stories is introduced by a haunting Colville image . . . These paintings, through mood and theme, serve as prompts for the stories, with characters often wandering in from one verbal canvas to another. Refreshingly, the stories feature people in their 60s experiencing big fat emotions that younger writers often deny them." —Toronto Star

"These are all rich and absorbing stories on their own, but even richer for how they also inform each other . . . K.D. Miller’s fiction seems to conjure whole worlds, with characters who seem to walk off the page . . . We get glimpses of these people, but they’re like the tip of an iceberg and there’s so much more going on beneath the surface. Which is something you could say about the people in Colville’s paintings too, and about each of these stories themselves, compelling and disturbing, and impossible to look away from, creating the most terrific momentum." —Kerry Clare

"These stories plumb the depths of sadness and despair but never lose sight of their obverse: the quiet resilience and dignity of the human spirit, which doesn’t fade with age." —Hamilton Review of Books

"These stories are brilliant and addictive and I wanted them to last forever."—Consumed by Ink

"A fabulous book." —CHCH-TV Morning Live

*FINALIST FOR THE 2019 SCOTIABANK GILLER PRIZE
*FINALIST FOR THE 2019 ROGERS WRITERS' TRUST FICTION PRIZE
*FINALIST FOR THE 2019 GOVERNOR GENERAL'S LITERARY AWARD
*WINNER OF THE 2020 THOMAS RADDALL ATLANTIC FICTION AWARD
*NATIONAL BESTSELLER

"Written in a language that is at the same time fresh and ancient, Michael Crummey's The Innocents is a (mis)creation myth that demands a reconsideration of what we think we know about love and death, family and loneliness, oblivion and wisdom, horror and beauty, bodies and knowledge, violence and desire. Anchored in exquisite specificity and heartbreaking simplicity, and inviting us into a distant past that makes fresh matters of ever-present concern about survival and sacrifice, Crummey's novel has the capacity to change the way the reader sees the world." —2019 Scotiabank Giller Prize Jury Citation

"Rich with visceral descriptions and outport dialogue that transports readers in both place and time . . . Crummey deftly portrays the physical elements of adolescence as yet another mystifying imposition of nature, but one that both alienates the Best siblings and irrevocably binds them." —The Globe and Mail

"The Innocents resists reader anticipation at every turn. . . . This willingness to resist the easy narrative path is one of The Innocents' great strengths. . . . Crummey is able to create sentences of considerable beauty and force without ever seeming to overstep himself, a complexity rooted in the emotional weight of the language and his comfort with the vernacular. The novel never reads as excessive; its beauty is restrained, weighted and often heartbreaking. Which is perhaps the best description of the novel overall. Crummey makes a virtue of the self-imposed limitations of the story—essentially two characters in a single setting—to explore the nature of what makes us who we are, what makes a family and the sacrifices that are made in the name of love." —Toronto Star

"A gripping and credible page-turner about children surviving in the wilderness, but more than that: this Adam and Eve struggle to make sense of a world that's somewhere between Eden and Hell. Michael Crummey writes like an avenging angel, never putting a word wrong." —Emma Donoghue, author of Room

"Michael Crummey's The Innocents is a dazzling and myriad achievement. Set against the unforgiving Newfoundland frontier, this harrowing tale of two siblings eking out a teetering existence is difficult to witness and impossible to put down. But what makes this story timeless is Crummey's rich depiction of the human heart in extremis, the unflagging beat of life in a world that is too much to bear. Set aside whatever you're reading and pick this up—The Innocents is a masterpiece." —Smith Henderson, author of Fourth of July Creek

"Michael Crummey's new novel The Innocents is a fantastic read. Written in graceful and evocative prose, Ada and Evered's story blurs the boundary between the quotidian and the strange until it becomes a meditation on the curious fact of existence itself. A wonderfully provocative and insightful book." —Kevin Powers, author of The Yellow Birds and A Shout in the Ruins

"Few novels have cast their spell on me as deeply as The Innocents. I am reminded of Dickens, not just the nineteenth-century setting and the imperiled children, but the artfulness: brilliant plot, unforgettable minor characters, perfect pacing. Yet Michael Crummey's poetic voice and landscape are his own. The Innocents is brilliant." —Ron Rash, author of Serena

"Crummey's refusal to go where you might expect . . . provides page-turning pleasures. You can't wait to see what happens next. An unusual, gripping period novel from a much-honored Canadian writer." —Kirkus Reviews, starred review

"Harshly beautiful. . . . What begins as a gripping survival tale deepens into a psychological inquiry into intimacy, conflict and what it means to be alone together in the world. . . . Crummey's vivid depictions of nature are attuned to the rhythms of seasonal harvest and evoke the characters' profound isolation in remote Newfoundland. . . . The last scenes of The Innocents manage to both shock and satisfy, and will leave readers thinking about the story of Evered and Ava for a long time." —USA Today

"A gorgeous portrait of remote Newfoundland of yesterday with a remarkable story of human resilience at its core." —Booklist

"[A] profoundly heart-wrenching story." —Maclean's

"Moving. . . . The relentless bleakness is alleviated by the cinematic depiction of the surrounding wilderness, with Crummey's prose recalling that of Jim Crace in its strange, archaic terminology and sense of timelessness." —Library Journal

"Imagine Into the Wild with prepubescents, told in the voice of a William Blake acolyte as verbally inventive as Tolkien. . . . The Innocents is a survivor narrative and a psychological thriller, a chilling study in isolation." —Vulture

Praise for Michael Crummey

"Michael Crummey is without a doubt one of Canada's finest writers." —The Globe and Mail

"Crummey is a poet and a storyteller and he has an extraordinary way of pinning down even a squirming reader and charming them into submission. He's wise in that old soul way. He explores human nature, charting the moral choices of his characters without passing judgement. . . . Crummey's gift is to write with compassion, imbuing the relationships with complexity and depth. He doesn't make anything simple—or simplistic." —National Post

"It's a rare writer who can fashion a vivid memorial to an all-but-vanished way of life; it's a rarer one who can excavate the vernacular and raise it to planes so poignantly and viscerally true, the exquisite beauty of the apparently ordinary shimmers with a matter-of-fact clarity guaranteed to curl your toes." —Toronto Star

"Crummey's craftsmanship is masterful." —Maclean's

"Crummey's elegant prose and storytelling prowess make abundantly clear [that] no man is an island." —The New York Times Book Review

"Crummey's poetics are like the landscape he describes: stark and sparse, but punctuated with a wild richness that creates the impression of something carefully controlled yet on the verge of bursting. . . . In Crummey's capable hands, the setting breeds magic, and the individuals that populate its rugged terrain are nuanced and real." —The Walrus

City of Toronto Book Award 2019, Short-listed
Governor General's Award for Fiction 2019, Short-listed

"Hundreds of women die each year in the city of Tijuana and along the highway of the Baja coast, many of them from domestic violence, drug overdoses and H.I.V.-related diseases associated with the sex trade. Other bodies, often teenagers, turn up ‘bound and mutilated.’ Still others simply disappear . . .Werb is determined to give them back some humanity" -Marilyn Stasio, New York Times Book Review

"[A] riveting scientific detective story." -Scientific American

"Werb shines a light on an outbreak of brutal crimes against Tijuana’s most vulnerable population. This isa well-researched, pressing study relevant to a wide audience" -Publishers Weekly

"The author'ssteely focus and smooth, vivid prosemake his encounters, which are often heartbreaking, come fully to life. . . . his text shines a necessary light on Tijuana's epidemic of ‘femicide’ and its unrivaled drug and poverty problems . . . Werb cuts through the desolation to get at the truth of the region's vexing problem." -Kirkus Reviews

"Werb’s personal odyssey and unique approach offer valuable insights into the tragedy of femicide on the border, where communities on both sides are inescapably interdependent.A powerful addition to investigative coverage of the volatile borderland." -Booklist

"Dan Werb combines his expertise as a trained epidemiologist with his keen discernment as an investigative journalist to depict what happens when poverty, human desperation, and unfathomable greed at the highest levels of a society mix with imperial ambition and a criminally ill-conceived policy towards drug use.It is a riveting and heartbreaking story, told with eloquence and compassion." -Gabor Maté, MD, bestselling author of IN THE REALM OF HUNGRY GHOSTS

"City of Omensisan urgent and needed account of a desperate problem. The perils that Mexico’s women face haunt the conscience of a nation." -Alfredo Corchado, author of HOMELANDS and MIDNIGHT IN MEXICO

"[Werb’s] writing is vivid . . . He has crafted a finely wrought exploration of public health sleuthing and social justice activism. His analysis is animated by many voices, but the most stunningly powerful are those of the IV drug user sex workers who are participants in this study.” -New York Journal of Books

The Economist Magazine Books of the Year 2018, Long-listed
Kirkus Reviews Best Books of the Year 2018, Long-listed

"For a biographer, there's a lot to untangle. Alan Walker does so brilliantly in Fryderyk Chopin: A Life and Times, a magisterial portrait . . . A polyphonic work that elegantly interweaves multiple strands." --Corinna da Fonseca-Wollheim, The New York Times Book Review

"An ideal composer biography should combine several qualities: a deep knowledge of the artist’s life and milieu, fortified by a reexamination of all available sources; an intimate understanding of the composer’s personality (and, when possible, some affection for it, too); and an ability to speak of the creative work in a manner that will edify both scholars and the general public, and take us all back to the music. Alan Walker’s Fryderyk Chopin: A Life and Times manages this hat trick very well indeed . . . This is now the best biography of Chopin — meticulous, scholarly and well-told." --Tim Page, The Washington Post

"There is more than enough for everyone at this literary feast, and come awards time, it’s likely you’ll see this book short-listed for one of the top literary biographies of the year . . . Walker’s narrative style reflects the very music of his subject: He has a light, delicate touch when making apt inferences, and a soft and rather ornate style when providing descriptions of the artist . . . Walker remains faithful to his subject, which only 10 years of extensive research into vast archives of primary source material could manifest." --Richard Horan, Christian Science Monitor

"At last, the definitive biography of Chopin has arrived. This substantial new study is a masterpiece, indispensable to specialists and general music lovers alike. It overflows with revelatory information, deft characterisation and pertinent, readable explorations of the music. All this is set against a minutely detailed depiction of his world. Walker’s style is elegant, literary and empathetic, while his unfailing love for the music shines from every page." --Sunday Times (U.K.)

"Thorough and authoritative . . . Walker [writes] with the narrative expertise one would expect of the masterly biographer of Liszt . . . Walker is brilliant on piano technique and its musical consequences. These passages are like talk of pigment and brushstrokes in a book about painting: technical in a sense yet free of jargon, easily understood, even perhaps by someone who has never laid hand on a piano keyboard." --Stephen Walsh, The Guardian

"Absorbing . . . Walker integrates [many] different aspects into an entirely convincing entity. It's a measure of Walker's achievement that even in such a lengthy book, he keeps the reader engaged, presenting accessible and illuminating comments backed up with the full weight of scholarly authority." --Erik Levi, BBC Music (five stars)

"[Alan Walker has] shed new light on many aspects of Chopin's life and cleared away a thicket of myths . . . Scrupulous as it is, this monumental biography is deeply engaging and enjoyable." --The Economist

"An informative and exceptionally engaging read." --James F. Penrose, The New Criterion

"Not one paragraph of this meticulously researched and often poignant account is wasted."--Andrew Moravcsik, Foreign Affairs

"A real landmark. For the 'casual' music-lover it contains peerless writing; for the scholar, scotched myths and startling discoveries; and for the musician, insights galore . . . Walker leaves no stone unturned in his search for the truth about Chopin's life. Full of vivid detail, it is a perceptive chronicle through which one seems to live the composer's life alongside him . . . [Fryderyk Chopin] is the most important biography of Chopin in years and will be treasured by musicians and music-lovers as the definitive life for many more." --Jessica Duchen, Sunday Times (U.K.)

"Alan Walker has produced the most comprehensive biography and musical analysis to date on Poland's most famous musician and composer . . . Highly readable and engaging . . . [Fryderyk Chopin] brings to life one of the 19th century's and Poland's most beloved, legendary, and celebrated artists. It deserves a place of merit at every university, music, and school library." --Carol Katz, New York Journal of Books

"[An] expansive, authoritative biography . . . Packed with information and insightful analyses of Chopin’s major works that will interest professional musicians, and even nonspecialists will be entranced by [Alan] Walker’s piquant storytelling and graceful prose." —Publishers Weekly (starred review)

"A sensitively discerning examination of a 19th-century superstar . . . a magnificent, elegantly written biography . . . An absorbing biography unlikely to be surpassed anytime soon." —Kirkus (starred review)

"Walker, whose writing is as limpid and engaging as his subject’s music, punctuates a rich texture of biography and history with discussions of Chopin’s technical and compositional innovations and distinctions that neatly show why he is so highly regarded . . . Informed by the latest discoveries about the composer, Walker’s
biography is a towering and beautiful achievement." —Booklist (starred review)

“[Fryderyk Chopin] is sure to become the definitive biography on the great composer . . . General readers should find this accessible as well as engrossing." —Library Journal (starred review)

“Adopting the same combination of broad perspective, wealth of telling detail, and musical expertise that he brought to his classic biography of Franz Liszt, Alan Walker has now produced a vast work on Fryderyk Chopin that is likely to remain the most important account of the great Polish master’s life for a long time to come. Walker vividly recounts Chopin’s happy childhood and youth in Warsaw, his unfortunate but artistically prolific adult life in exile from his native country, his loves, and his losing battle with the tuberculosis that killed him at the age of thirty-nine. The book also delves deeply into Chopin’s music. A must for musicians and music-lovers alike.” —Harvey Sachs, author of Toscanini: Musician of Conscience

Governor General’s Literary Award 2019, Short-listed

“Sea Trial is a riveting account of two intertwined voyages of adventure and introspection. Brian Harvey writes with wit, intelligence, dry modesty and high style as he tells the stories of a hazardous and difficult sea passage and an exploration of his father’s long-ago malpractice trial. A fascinating and wholly engaging book.” — Derek Lundy, author of the bestselling Godforsaken Sea

"Sea Trial is gripping from the very first page. You need to be a good navigator to circumnavigate Vancouver Island, with a ragged western coastline known as the Graveyard of the Pacific. You also need to be a skilled writer to navigate the shoals, cross-currents, and uncertain weathers of such an ambitious floating memoir. Brian Harvey is both." — Gary Geddes, author of the bestselling Sailing Home and Medicine Unbundled

“Harvey has serious skills, and his riveting story is impossible to put down.” — Cruising World

“Brian Harvey’s Sea Trial defies easy description. In fact, that is exactly one of its – considerable — strengths . . . With a sharp eye for telling detail, and inventive language, Harvey is a writer who knows how to fix on the less to evoke the more.” — The Ormsby Review

"Harvey's fascinating exploration of his father's pain goes well beyond talented description. With sensitivity, he probes his father's emotions and inadvertently his own as he unravels and explains a tragic backstory . . . The trials Harvey encounters — personal, meteorological, and indeed adjudicative — are arresting.” — Literary Review of Canada

Governor General Literary Awards, Non-fiction 2019, Short-listed
The Western Canada Jewish Book Awards, Pinsky Givon Family Prize for Non-Fiction 2020, Winner
The City of Calgary W.O. Mitchell Book Prize 2020, Short-listed
Wilfrid Eggleston Award for Nonfiction 2020, Winner
Vine Awards for Canadian Jewish Literature 2020, Winner

"Naomi is an incredibly talented writer and the loveliest of human beings. Her words are thought provoking and genuine. This is her journey to learn about her family history. Knowing who you are and understating where you come from can be a lifelong exploration."
"Tiny Lights for Travellers starts with a zit, percolating brightly on the nose of our author while she takes the transatlantic flight that begins the book. In a strange, unlikely, funny, unabashed and endearing way, this first image in Naomi K. Lewis's reluctant, almost anti-travel memoir encapsulates much of what her book is about."
"When Naomi Lewis was a child, no one in her family talked about the fact that her grandfather had escaped Nazi-occupied Europe, largely by foot and through the kindness of strangers. In fact, no one spoke much about that part of their family history, at all."
"After her grandfather’s death, when Lewis’s parents were moving her grandmother into an assisted-living facility, they found a yellowed, type-written document: 30 foolscap pages in Dutch, and 30 pages translated into English. It recounted her grandfather’s escape [from Nazi occupation] into southern France. Lewis, a short story writer and novelist, transcribed her grandfather’s journal, and later traced her grandfather’s route, travelling from Amsterdam to Lyon, discovering family secrets along the way."
"I just finished reading Tiny Lights for Travellers by Naomi K. Lewis and I can't recommend it enough.... [T]his book is beautifully written, immediate, entertaining, and engrossing."
# 8 on Edmonton's Bestselling Books list; Non-fiction, December 01, 2019
# 10 on Edmonton's Bestselling Books list; Non-fiction, September 20, 2020
"Calgary author Naomi K. Lewis joins educator Abby Wener Herlin in conversation about her well-regarded memoir, Tiny Lights for Travellers. Nominated for the Governor General’s Literary Award for Nonfiction in 2019, Tiny Lights for Travellers explores her Jewish identity while retracing her grandfather’s escape from the Nazi-occupied Netherlands." [https://www.straight.com/arts/family-stories-run-through-vancouvers-cherie-smith-jcc-jewish-book-festival]