Launch of Your Friendly Neighborhood Criminal, a new novel from Michael Van Rooy, recipient of the 2006 Eileen McTavish Award for Best First Book by a Manitoba Writer. Monty is a man with a reputation, an ex-criminal intent on sticking to the straight and narrow path. In fact, he would rather be known as the friendly neighbourhood daycare provider. But somehow, his criminal past keeps catching up with him. As shady characters cross his path, Monty figures if you should keep your friends close, you really should keep your enemies closer.

Reading & Signing of What is America? A Short History of the New World Order. While the U.S.A is now the world’s lone superpower, historian Ronald Wright asks the question -- how did a marginal frontier society, in a mere two centuries, become the de facto ruler of the world? What is America? peels away the historic myths to show how America’s historical legacy of empire creation, and conquest in the New World, has shaped it’s values today. Wright’s previous book, the 2004 Massey Lecture, A Short History of Progress, won the CBA Libris Award for Non-Fiction Book of the Year and has been published worldwide.

The Preacher

Eight boys, eight soldiers, eight journeys home. From drastically different beginnings and for a multitude of reasons eight boys from different parts of the country find themselves forming a bond of friendship in a World War II barracks. Can John Connor, whose legacy includes his grandfather's sin and indiscretion, his father's broken promise and his family's faith fulfill his promise to get each one of the other seven soldiers safely home? As parents, siblings, wives and sweethearts wait and pray for the safe return of their soldiers, the reader will be drawn into the hope each character clings to. Julie Fritz lives and raised 5 children in rural Saskatchewan.

Steven Fletcher, MP, joins author Linda McIntosh for the launch of What Do You Do If You Don’t Die? The Steven Fletcher Story. In less than a decade, Steven’s remarkable courage and determination have taken him from the scene of a horrific collision with a moose to the Canadian Parliament, the world’s first C4 quadriplegic to win a seat in a national legislature. Along the way, he has changed the way hospitals, universities, insurance companies and governments deal with the critically injured. Now a writer and artist, Linda McIntosh was a Member of the Manitoba Legislative Assembly, and served as a minister in Gary Filmon’s government during the 1980s and ‘90s. She has been Steven Fletcher’s close friend and mentor for many years.

Launch of The Retreat, a haunting and deeply felt new novel set during the summer of Ojibway occupation of Anichinabe Park in Kenora. In The Retreat, Bergen reveals the clash of two cultures as he tells the story of the relationship of two brothers whose lives were separated in childhood, of the complicated love between a white girl and a native boy and of a family on the verge of splitting forever. Bergen’s previous book, The Time in Between, received the Scotiabank Giller Prize, the McNally Robinson Book of the Year Award and the Margaret Laurence Award for Fiction. He lives in Winnipeg.

The Brutal Heart

In Bowen’s latest Joanne Kilbourn mystery, the bestselling Regina author returns with a gripping story of marriage, politics, sex and murder.

Journey Without a Map: Growing Up Italian

With her earliest recollections of her family life in New Jersey, her father’s grocery store, her mother’s Catholic admonishments, the family habits, and the ever-present smells from the kitchen, Caruso brings to us her sense of belonging to a rich heritage. And though the wisdom of her father and mother guides her through he growing years, it is their remembered love that guides her through her own darkest hours of breast cancer and family break up. Donna Caruso now lives in Fort Qu’Appelle.

Launch of the novel, Reading by Lightning. Lily Piper and her family live in an ephemeral world, due to collapse at any moment when the Lord comes to pluck His faithful from the draught-ravaged Prairie. Lily tries to be ready, but is restless. Just before WWII, Lily is sent to England to care for her grandmother and learns to experience life in all its ambiguity. A literary debut of great depth and wit, Reading by Lightning tells us something of how we can make sense of a future when the future is something we can hardly imagine. Winnipeg’s Joan Thomas has been a reviewer for the Globe & Mail for over a decade. She has served on the editorial boards of Turnstone Press and Prairie Fire Magazine.

A reading and Signing of Pyper's suspenseful and darkly lyrical novel, The Killing Circle. Patrick Rush joins a writing circle to fill his ravenous ambition to achieve literary fame, but finds he lacks a compelling story to tell. He meets Angela, whose unsettling narrative of the Sandman is exactly the type of story Patrick has craved to call his own. He does. What results is fiction turned to horrific reality and a sequence of murders and disappearances which eventually lead back to Patrick. Pyper is the bestselling author of Lost Girls, The Trade Mission and The Wildfire Season.