The perfect contrast to the hustle and bustle of Christmas is the opportunity to nestle down by the fire with a good book (on paper or on your tablet). Here are three recent releases from local authors for your holiday reading list.
Meaford’s Paul Osborn’s debut novel, the Remnants, tells the tale of two lovers and their tumultuous experiences during the Great War and beyond, in a story that spans four continents and a dramatic emotional landscape.
Danny Pulbrook is a handsome and rebellious young man. Born the bastard son of a minor royal and orphaned at birth he is determined to find a new life far beyond his “pre-ordained oblivion”. His only way out – a forced enlistment into the army brings him to an inevitable confrontation with his own demons in the cauldron of the first world war.
Rose Quayle is a beautiful and confident hazel-eyed housemaid who, like her mother and her mother’s mother is employed in service at Meaford House – an expansive vice-regal estate near Tunbridge Wells. Like Danny she longs for a life beyond the tyranny of the rigid class system that defines her humble destiny.
The Remnants is currently available as an e-book through Amazon.com, Apple’s iBookstore, BN.com, Google Play and KOBO. A portion of the proceeds of ‘The Remnants’ will be donated to True Patriot Love Foundation– a charity in support of Canadian Military Families. A print edition of the book is planned for release sometime in the new year.
Another Manitoulin Island murder mystery from the pen of Meaford’s Jake Doherty has hit the shelves. Bearwalker Alibi, which noted mystery writer Barbara Fradkin calls “powerful and intelligent”, begins with the death on Manitoulin Island of a young German man sought by Interpol.
The only witness is Dr. Mary Fraser, Canada’s ranking expert on native symbols and an Ojibwa herself. She bloodied her hands when she failed to stop the murder. Drawn back to Manitoulin to recover her childhood identity, she ends up in a forensic psych hospital, unable to recall who’s responsible.
A first volume of poetry from Owen Sound writer Richard-Yves Sitoski draws its inspiration from brownfield sites – contaminated former industrial lots that are often too costly to remediate and so remain undeveloped. Sitoski sets out to explore why it is that Owen Sound evolved the way it did: “Why did some of his town’s most vital and celebrated industries wither and die, leaving vast, unsightly scars on the landscape?” His investigations led him back to the mythical past and pointed to an unsettled future.
Brownfields is published by Owen Sound’s Ginger Press.
