Latest news with #HouseofAnansiPress
Winnipeg Free Press
14-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Winnipeg Free Press
Reporter's mother suspected of murder
Squabbling, arrogant wellness superstars selling sophisticated 21st-century snake oil bring murder to Port Ellis in Toronto's elite cottage country, gifting former big city ace reporter Cat Conway a lifeline to keep her heroic small-town paper on life support. There's also an evil mayor cheering on anti-vaxxers who are becoming increasingly violent… but why is his wife so friendly to Cat and her eccentric mother — who, alas, is high on the list of murder suspects? Kate Hilton and Elizabeth Renzetti's Widows and Orphans (House of Anansi Press, 352 pages, $23) is the second in a series telling the hidden truths about small towns, often hilariously, within a darned good whodunit full of whiz-bang characters. Buy on Car-jackings plague Belfast in 1992 as there are hints of a peaceful resolution of the Troubles. But it doesn't sit right with D.I. Sean Duffy that the latest victim supposedly killed by young thugs stealing his car doesn't, well, actually seem to exist. As Duffy juggles neighbourhood punks, British secret police, crime lords, government's darkest corners and the IRA, he sleuths that maybe someone is targeting IRA assassins in deep cover in Northern Ireland — but if not the British, who would dare? Adrian McKinty's Hang on St. Christopher (Black Stone, 306 pages, $44) is a violent tale of honest coppers trying to keep a lid on a brutally divided city in a dangerous land of sectarian hatred — a tale superbly told. Buy on A woman is drugged in the secret Yukon town of Haven's Rock and dragged into the bush in the freezing cold, but somehow survives. A second woman dies an excruciating death only a few hundred yards from safety, while a third woman… Detective Casey and her husband, Sheriff Eric, have faced many villains while running a hidden town for people escaping danger down south, but never one this evil. And all the while a fierce blizzard rages, and Casey could be going into labour any moment. Kelley Armstrong's Cold as Hell (Minotaur, 352 pages, $26) is one of the better (though gruesome) entries in the nine Haven's Rock books so far, at least for regulars, but may lack enough backstory for newcomers catching up. Buy on A widowed innkeeper in rural Denmark gets bludgeoned to death, no suspects, no motive, nothing for ace Copenhagen police detective Louise Ricks — until they find a secret child's bedroom, a child no one (allegedly) knew existed. Will that be the only corpse as Ricks investigates a village which has hidden great evil, and seemingly boring nice people who each may have more than one scurrilous secret? In Sara Blaedel's terrific A Mother's Love, translated by Tara Chace (Dutton, 405 pages, $25), we also get Ricks' own shattered romantic life, the awkwardness of being BFFs with a newspaper reporter, and having to head up a new homicide team that slimy senior officers are eager to scuttle. Buy on Clad only in his PJs, an irascible atheist academic, renowned and despised for spotting fake ancient religious artifacts, is found dead on the lawn of a posh hotel in Oxford — drowned after being beaten. It's a complex case that could cost the careers of the two polar opposite detective inspector Wilkinses — the scholarly, handsome, Black and by-the-book Ray Wilkins and the trailer park, street punk, white and pugnacious Ryan Wilkins — as a new cop shop boss has them atop her list for firing to meet her vision for 21st-century policing. Simon Mason's A Voice in the Night (Mobius, 362 pages, $26) is an utterly brilliant police whodunit with remarkable twists, slews of nifty subplots awash with even niftier characters and two fascinating coppers that'll have you hoping for a TV series on Britbox or Acorn. Buy on Retired Free Press reporter Nick Martin envies Cat Conway and her modern gadgets; at a small-town paper, he had to type on a typewriter (ask your grandparents) and develop rolls of film in a darkroom.
CBC
08-04-2025
- CBC
Wellwater by Karen Solie
The poems in Wellwater, Karen Solie's sixth collection, explore the intersection of cultural, economic, and personal ideas of "value," addressing housing, economic and environmental crisis, and aging and its incumbent losses. In an era of accelerating inequality, places many of us thought of as home have become unaffordable. In "Basement Suite," the faux-utopian economy of Airbnb suggests people with property "share" it with us and, presumably, we should be grateful. In "Parables of the Rat" the speaker feels affinity with scavengers while also wanting the rats gone. Having grown up in Saskatchewan on a small family farm, Solie sees the economic and environmental crises as inseparable. Climate change has made small farming increasingly untenable, allowing overbearing corporate control of food production. But hope, Solie argues, is as necessary to addressing the crises of our time as bearing witness, in poems that celebrate wonder and persistence in the non-human world. Tamarack forests in Newfoundland that grow inches over hundreds of years, the suddenly thriving pronghorn antelope, or a new, unidentified and ineradicable climbing vine, all hint at renewal, and a way to move forward. (From House of Anansi Press) Wellwater is available in April 2025. Karen Solie is the author of several poetry collections, including Short Haul Engine, Modern and Normal, Pigeon, The Road In Is Not the Same Road Out and The Caiplie Caves. She has received many awards, such as the Trillium Poetry Prize and the Griffin Prize, and has been shortlisted for the Derek Walcott Prize and the T.S. Eliot Prize. She teaches half-time in Scotland at the University of St. Andrews and spends the remainder of the year in Canada.
CBC
08-04-2025
- Entertainment
- CBC
The Seated Woman by Clémence Dumas-Côté, translated by E.S. Taillon
THE POEMS You fell asleep on the tiles, a translucent peacock loomed, your sex opened and let out a very blue, very high flame. You wore a split veil, that morning. Silent, nailed to her chair, the seated woman writes. She cracks. The poems fidget, slip their fingers: they seek to enter. Perched on her shoulder, the poems whisper in her ear. She captures their messages: "I love the sacred contortions you offer me." The poems protest: "You're squeezing us too hard: careful, pet." More than descriptors, the words behave as commands or moves in a game—and the voice of the seated woman rises to play. (From House of Anansi Press) The Seated Woman is available in March 2025. Clémence Dumas-Côté is the author of the novel Glu and poetry books L'alphabet du don and La femme assise. She studied acting at the National Theatre School of Canada and holds a master's degree in creative writing. She was born in Montreal. E.S. Taillon is a queer and neurodivergent writer whose writing has appeared in publications such as déraciné, filling Station and Agur Magazine. Their first literary translation, Scenes from the Underground, was shortlisted for the Dayne Ogilvie Prize for LGBTQ2S+ Emerging Writers. They are the former managing editor of Prism International magazine and holds a master's degree in French literature from the University of Toronto, as well as an MFA in creative writing from the University of British Columbia.
CBC
08-04-2025
- Entertainment
- CBC
Myth by Terese Mason Pierre
Myth, the much-anticipated debut collection from the multi-talented Terese Mason Pierre, weaves between worlds ('real' and 'imaginary') unearthing the unsettling: our jaded and joyful relationships to land, ancestry, trauma, self, and future. In three movements and two interludes, the poems in Myth move symphonically from tropical islands to barren cities, from lucid dreams to the mysteries of reality, from the sea to the cosmos. A dynamic mix of speculative poetry and ecstatic lyricism, the otherworldly and the sublime, Pierre's poems never stray too long or too far from the spell of unspoiled nature: "The palm trees nod / at the ocean / the ocean does / what it always does / trusts the moon completely." Friends 'with benefits' tour the wonders of Grenada's landscapes; extraterrestrials visit the Caribbean and the locals don't seem phased; red birds "saunter airily like tourists," La Diablesse lures helpless suitors to their dooms. This collection asks: How can myths manifest themselves in our daily lives? What do we actually mean when we say we love ourselves and others? And how do we pursue/create futures that honour our truths, histories and legacies? (From House of Anansi Press) Myth is available in April 2025.
CBC
03-04-2025
- Entertainment
- CBC
Procession by katherena vermette
Procession: a line of people moving in the same direction; a formal ceremony or celebration, as in a wedding, a funeral, a religious parade. Bestseller and Governor General's Awardwinner Katherena Vermette's third collection presents a series of poems reaching into what it means to be at once a descendant and a future ancestor, exploring the connections we have with one another and ourselves, amongst friends, and within families and Nations. In frank, heartfelt poems that move through body sovereignty and ancestral dreams, and from '80s childhood nostalgia to welcoming one's own babies, Vermette unreels the story of a child, a parent, and soon, an elder, living in a prairie place that has always existed, though looks much different to her now. This book is about being one small part of a large genealogy. A lineage is a line, and the procession, whether in celebration or in mourning, is ongoing. Procession delves into what it means to make poems and to be an artist, to be born into a body, to carry it all, and, if you're very lucky, age. (From House of Anansi Press) katherena vermette is a Michif (Red River Métis) writer from Winnipeg. Her books include the novels real ones, The Break, The Strangers and The Circle, poetry collections North End Love Songs and river woman and the four-book graphic novel series A Girl Called Echo. North End Love Songs won the Governor General's Literary Award for poetry. The Break was a finalist for the Rogers Writers' Trust Fiction Prize and the Governor General's Literary Award for fiction. It was defended by Candy Palmater on Canada Reads 2017. The Strangers won the 2021 Atwood Gibson Writers' Trust Fiction Prize and was longlisted for the 2021 Scotiabank Giller Prize. real ones was also longlisted for the 2024 Giller Prize. She is also a senior editor at Simon & Schuster Canada.
