Skip to content
Account Login Winnipeg Toll-Free: 1-800-561-1833 SK Toll-Free: 1-877-506-7456 Contact & Locations

July & August 2015

 

Subscribe to our email list!

The Bookseller: July & August 2015

IN THIS ISSUE

BOOKS
Take a Winner to the Beach: Recent Literary Award Winners || The Author of To Kill a Mockingbird Returns with a New Novel || More Indian Ernie || New in Paperback || What to Read: Suggestions from owner Chris Hall || Author of the Month: de Rosnay & Hay || Can It! Books to help with your home preserving || Let It Rot! Books to help make the most of compost || Difference: Book recommendations from bookseller Athena || Tales from Beneath the Deep || The Power of Compassion: Forgiveness & Altruism || The Winding Ways of Fear and Addiction || Science Fiction: Imagining the Unimaginable || Summers Novels with a Kick 

MUSIC, MOVIES, and GIFTS
 Helios: Let the Sun Shine in with this Game of Strategy || Enjoy Locally Made Chocolates, Jams, Jellies, and More || Our Sounds: CDs & Vinyl || Our Sights: DVD & Blu-Ray

NEWS, CLASSES, and COMMUNITY
Let's Talk About War & Peace in our Community Classroom || The Word on the Street Festival is coming || Gurevich Gallery: HOT || Our Vibrant Communities: What's coming up in Winnipeg & Saskatoon || Prairie Ink Specials: Summer smoothies, salads, and drink specials 

FOR BABIES
 Dress Up For Summer || Hello! You Adorable Baby, You || Summer Rhymes Will Make You Feel Fine

FOR KIDS
 Cozy Little Animal Stories || Dr. Seuss Lost & Found: What Pet Should I Get? || Who, What, Where? || Join Our Summer Reading Club || Monthly Feature Picture Books at 30% Off || Science Made Simple || Sand Bucket Ice-Cream Set ||  The Kid's Watch List

TEEN SCENE
Friends Are All We Have || Short and Not-So-Sweet || Real Life Graphics || The Teen Watch List

 

 

Take a Winner to the Beach

2015 Alexander Kennedy Isbister Award for Non-Fiction
Detachment by Maurice Mierau. Does fatherhood begin the moment that the adoption papers are signed? And what happens when everything seems to be on the verge of falling apart? Mierau probes the process of adoption and what comes after in this darkly funny and unsentimental memoir. (Softcover. $21.95. Broadview)

2015 Mary Scorer Award for Best Book by a Manitoba Publisher
Sanaaq by Mitiarjuk Nappaaluk. Composed in 48 episodes, Sanaaq is an intimate novel that  tells the story of an Inuit family negotiating the changes brought by the coming of the qallunaat, the white people, to a northern Quebec community in the mid-19th century. (Softcover. $24.95. U of M Press)

2015 Saskatchewan Book Award for Fiction
Rose’s Run by Dawn Dumont. Rose Okanese, a single mother of two, tries to claim respect from the Rez citizens by running the annual marathon. But things don’t go as planned in this charming tale of motherly love, friendship, lustful longing, wîhtikow lore, and Rez humour. (Softcover. $19.95. Thistledown Press)

2015 Saskatchewan Book of the Year Award
Flying Time by Suzanne North. In 1939, Kay Jeynes goes to work for a Japanese businessman, Hero Miyashita. As war looms, Mr. Miyashita is unable to leave Canada, and he asks Kay to travel to Hong Kong on family business. A powerful novel about friendship and the racially charged times of WWII. (Softcover. $19.95. Brindle & Glass)

2014 Governor General’s Literary Award for Non-Fiction 
The End of Absence by Michael Harris. In this eloquent and thought-provoking book, Harris argues that one of the most profound effects of our logged-on lives has been a loss of absence — of silence, wonder and solitude — a surprisingly precious and dwindling commodity. (Softcover. $18.99. HarperCollins)

2015 Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction
The Sixth Extinction by Elizabeth Kolbert. The sixth extinction is predicted to be the most devastating extinction event since the asteroid impact that  wiped out the dinosaurs. This time around, the cataclysm is us. At once frank and entertaining, Kolbert tells us why and how human beings have altered life on the planet. (Softcover. $18.50. Picador)

2014 Governor General’s Literary Award for Fiction 
The Back of the Turtle by Thomas King. Gabriel, a scientist working for Domidion, blames himself for the environmental disaster that destroyed his reserve. He returns with plans to kill himself. But as he prepares to let the water take him, he saves a girl from drowning, and soon is saving others, strangers who have fallen from the sky. (Softcover. $24.99. HarperCollins)

2015 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction
All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr. Doerr’s imaginative and intricate novel explores human nature and the contradictory power of technology through the story of a blind French girl and a German boy whose paths collide in occupied France as both try to survive the devastation of World War II. (Softcover. $19.99. Scribner)

2015 Lambda Literary Award
Winnipeg’s Casey Plett picked up the Lambda award in the “Transgender Fiction” category for her story collection A Safe Girl to Love. The eleven short stories stretch from a rural Canadian Mennonite town to a hipster gay bar in Brooklyn, featuring young trans women stumbling through loss, sex, harassment and love. (Softcover. $21.99. Topside Press.)

2014 Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize
All My Puny Sorrows byMiriam Toews. This riveting story of two sisters — Elfrieda, a world-renowned pianist, who wants to die, and Yolandi, divorced and broke, who desperately wants to keep her sister alive — offers a profound reflection on hope and love and the business of living even when grief loads the heart. (Softcover. $22.00. Vintage)

2015 Leacock Medal for Humour
No Relation by Terry Fallis. What’s in a name? If it’s Earnest Hemmingway, plenty. But Earnest has more than a name on his plate. His father is pressuring him to come home and take an active part in running the family clothing business. As a complex familial battle plays out, Earnest’s inherited name leads him in unexpected directions in this wry and engaging novel. (Softcover. $22.95. McClelland & Stewart)

2015 RBC Taylor Prize
They Left Us Everything by Plum Johnson. After twenty years of caring for elderly parents, Johnson and her brothers experience conflicted feelings of grief and relief when their mother, the surviving parent, dies. Now they must sell the family home, which hasn’t been de-cluttered in fifty years. A touching memoir about the importance of preserving family history to safeguard the future. (Softcover. $18.50. Penguin)

2015 Saskatchewan Book Award for Non-Fiction
11 by Paul Hanley. Global population is anticipated to reach 11 billion and the world economy grow by 500% by the end of this century. Hanley argues that we will unite to meet this ultimate challenge in what will be the next stage in human evolution. (Softcover. $27.99. Friesen Press)

 

The Author of To Kill a Mockingbird Returns with a New Novel

After a lifetime of maintaining that she would never publish another novel, the media-shy Harper Lee finds herself in a place she traditionally has avoided for most of her career: the news. That’s because this summer her heretofore only published novel, To Kill a Mockingbird (1960), is being joined by its sequel, Go Set a Watchman. In a statement delivered through her publisher, the book’s long-lost manuscript was discovered by her lawyer, “in a secure location where it had been affixed to an original typescript of To Kill a Mockingbird.”

Originally written in the mid-1950s, Lee submitted Go Set a Watchman to her publisher before To Kill a Mockingbird. It features many of the characters from the iconic novel some twenty years later as they find themselves adjusting to the turbulent events transforming mid-1950s America. Returning home to Maycomb to visit her father, Jean Louise Finch — Scout — struggles with issues both personal and political, involving Atticus, society and the small Alabama town that shaped her. Exploring the characters from To Kill a Mockingbird in a time of evolving social flux, Go Set a Watchman casts a new light on Lee’s enduring classic, while at the same time standing as a powerful novel in its own right. (Hardcover. $34.99. HarperCollins. July)

 

More Indian Ernie

Retired Police Sergeant Ernie Louttit takes you back to the streets of Saskatoon in his second book, More Indian Ernie: Insights from the Street, an empathetic street cop’s view of the realities of dealing with prostitutes, street gangs, drunk drivers and other offenders. He gives people who are rarely exposed to crime a view of what policing “at the sharp end” is like, while acknowledging the struggles of those who are forced by circumstance to live in high-crime areas. The first point of contact for persons with mental illness and addictions is often the police. Louttit highlights how changes in handling these individuals must occur as well as addressing such topics as drugs and drug dealing, murder, changes in policing and leadership. (Softcover. $25.00. Purich Publishing. June)  EVENT JULY 14

Ernie Louttit was born in Northern Ontario and is a member of the Missanabie Cree First Nation. In 1987 became only the third Native person hired by the Saskatoon Police Service. He spent his entire career on the west side of Saskatoon, where he became known as Indian Ernie. His first book, Indian Ernie: Perspectives on Policing and Leadership, is based on those years on the streets.

 

New in PAPERBACK



JULY 30% OFF
Stone Mattress by Margaret Atwood.
$19.95. Our July 30% Off Price $13.97.
A recently widowed fantasy writer is guided through a stormy winter evening by the voice of her late husband. A woman born with a genetic abnormality is mistaken for a vampire. A crime committed long ago is avenged in the Arctic via a 1.9 billion year old stromatalite. In her first new collection of short stories since Moral Disorder (2006), the nine tales in Stone Mattress venture into the shadowlands of the author’s darkly humorous and seriously playful game. A collection of highly imaginative short pieces that speak to our times with deadly accuracy. (McClelland & Stewart. June 23)

AUGUST 30% OFF
This Changes Everything by Naomi Klein.
$22.00. Our August 30% Off Price $15.40.
Forget everything you think you know about global warming. Klein argues that our  current growth-based economic model is waging war on the life support systems of our planet. Tracing the rise of a bold new  resistance movement against extreme energy, she highlights the real solutions emerging from the rubble of our failed systems, solutions that require us to break virtually every rule in the free-market playbook. The climate change debate is about to get a whole lot hotter. Winner of the Hilary Weston Writers’ Trust Prize for Non-Fiction. (Vintage. August 4) 

 

The Organized Mind by Daniel J. Levitin. $22.00. The information age is drowning us in a deluge of data. No wonder the average person can feel worn out by the effort required just to keep up. But some people become quite accomplished at managing information flow. Levitin uses the latest brain science to demonstrate how those people excel, and how readers can use these methods to regain a sense of mastery over the way they organize their homes, workplaces and lives. (Penguin. August)

Adult Onset by Ann-Marie MacDonald. $23.00. As a child, successful YA author Mary Rose suffered from an illness, long since cured. But her frustrations mount as she tries to balance parenthood, causing her to experience a flare-up of once forgotten symptoms which compels her to rethink the memories of her own childhood. A powerful novel about motherhood, the dark undercurrents that break and hold families together, and the power and pressures of love. (Vintage. August)

Long Way Home by Louise Penny. $18.50. In the tenth novel in Penny’s Armand Gamache mystery series, the former Chief Inspector of Homicide with the Sûreté du crime Québec is enjoying his retirement in the village of Three Pines. His neighbour, Clara, however, is anxious to enlist Gamache’s help in a search for her artist husband who has failed to show up as promised. Reluctantly, Gamache sets off on a journey that takes him into the soul of a man so desperate to recapture his fame, he may have sold his soul. (Minotaur. August)

The Tale of the Dueling Neurosurgeons by Sam Kean. $19.00. Early studies ofthe functions of the human brain used a simple method: wait for misfortune to strike and see how the victim coped. An injury to one section of the brain can leave a person unable to recognize loved ones; some brain trauma can even make you a pathological gambler, pedophile, or liar. Kean explains the brain’s secret passageways while recounting stories of common people whose struggles have made modern neuroscience possible. (Little, Brown. June)

Come Back by Rudy Wiebe. $19.95. One snowy April morning, while drinking coffee with a friend, Hal Wiens sees a tall man in an orange downfill jacket walk past on the sidewalk. The jacket, the posture, the head and hair are unmistakable: it’s his beloved oldest son, Gabriel. But it can’t be. Gabriel killed himself 25 years ago. Come Back by the two-time winner of the Governor General’s Literary Award, is an intense and beautiful novel of loss, memory and the limitless nature of family love. (Vintage. August)

The Betrayers by David Bezmozgis. $17.99. When an Israeli politician Baruch Kotler refuses to back down from a contrary but principled stand regarding the West Bank settlements, his opponents expose his affair with a mistress decades his junior. In a mere twenty-four hours, Kotler must face those who have betrayed him and those whom he has betrayed, including his son and daughter and the wife who stood by him. Bezmozgis (Natasha and Other Stories and The Free World) has rendered a novel for our times, an inquest into the nature of fate and consequence, love and forgiveness. (HarperCollins. July)

Abattoir Blues by Peter Robinson. $19.95. In the 22nd novel featuring Inspector Banks, the story begins with a stolen tractor, hardly a job for DCI Banks and his Major Crimes team, but the new police commissioner has put rural crime high on her agenda. Shortly afterwards, a motor accident in a freak hailstorm turns up a gruesome discovery that spins the investigation into high gear. Soon it seems that not even the investigators themselves are safe during the race against time that follows. (McClelland & Stewart. June)

Waking Up by Sam Harris. $21.00. Harris — scientist, philosopher and famous skeptic — argues that important and necessary truths are to be found in the experiences of such figures as Jesus, the Buddha, Lao Tzu, Rumi and the other saints and sages of history. There is more to understanding reality than science and secular culture generally allow. Part memoir and part exploration of the scientific underpinnings of spirituality, Waking Up marries contemplative wisdom with modern science. (Simon & Schuster. June)

The Confabulist by Steven Galloway. $21.00. The Confabulist weaves together the life, loves and murder of the world’s greatest magician, Harry Houdini, with the story of the man who killed him (twice): Martin Strauss, an everyday man whose fate was tied to the magician’s in unforeseen ways. The award-winning author of The Cellist of Sarajevo delivers a magical novel of reality and illusion and the ways that love, grief and imagination can alter what we perceive and believe. (Vintage. June)

Mãn by Kim Thúy. $17.95. Discovering her talent as a chef, Mãn gracefully practices her art with food as her medium. In an arranged marriage to a lonely Vietnamese restaurateur in Montreal, she fulfills her obligations with a sense of duty and respect until she discovers the all-encompassing obsession of a forbidden love affair. From the author of Ru (the winner of the 2015 Canada Reads), Thúy’s latest novel is a meditation on how love and food share passions that are inextricably entwined. (Vintage. August)

The Rise & Fall of Great Powers by Tom Rachman. $21.00. Following his fiction debut with The Imperfectionists, Rachman’s latest novel is an intricately woven tale about a young woman trying to make sense of her past. As a girl, Tooly Zylberberg was spirited away by a group of seductive outsiders, implicated in capers from Asia to Europe to the United States. But who were her abductors, and why did they take her? Years later, she receives news that propels her on a quest around the world in search of the answers. (Anchor. July)

 

What To READ


With the passing of the literary torch to a new generation, Chris Hall, a passionate reader with almost 20 years of bookselling experience, has taken up the challenge of continuing Holly McNally’s stewardship of our What to Read page with personal recommendations that reflect attention to the care and craft of good writing.

 

We Are Not Ourselves by Matthew Thomas. Softcover. $21.00. Spend some time with Eileen Tumulty, heroine of Matthew Thomas’ debut novel, as she faces the normal yet unique set of challenges that life puts in front of her from the day she was born in 1941. The reader gets to experience Elaine’s entire life with her, from the highs of marriage to Ed Leary and the raising of their son, Connell, to various disappointments and failings along with the realities of declining health in later years. Thoroughly rewarding and ultimately safisfying, Thomas offers a great, old-fashioned read. (Simon & Schuster. June)

Sweetland by Michael Crummey. Softcover. $21.00. Michael Crummey has slowly but surely built up a body of work that is difficult to match in Canadian literature. In both poetry and fiction, he is consistently in the running for major awards, and yet readers are still discovering him. Crummey’s reputation has been enhanced with this latest novel, set on a remote island off Newfoundland’s south coast and starring Moses Sweetland, twelfth generation fisherman, who must deal with the dramatic frustrations, both individually and collectively, that come with the loss of the commercial fishery. (Doubleday. June)

Enlightenment 2.0 by Joseph Heath. Softcover. $21.00. The Enlightenment was supposed to mark our emergence from the darkness of irrationality to the light of the rational. So why do we continue to fall prey to our irrational impulses? Heath outlines how we live in a world where the lessons of marketers have been perfected by politicians who know exactly how to take advantage of our innate biases to build their own agenda. With the coming elections, Heath offers a timely appeal to reawaken our thinking selves before we unquestioningly follow our gut instincts. (HarperCollins. April)

A Secret Music by Susan Doherty Hannaford. Softcover. $21.95. It’s Montreal in 1937 and the CBC has only recently launched its new national radio station. Listeners across the country are invited to listen to a fifteen year-old piano prodigy named Lawrence Nolan play Chopin’s  Nocturne, Opus 27, No. 2. But the subsequent perfect performance is only a veneer behind which lie problems at home that in a perfect world no child would face. A beautiful novel about the struggle to balance art with the physical world. (Cormorant. 2014)

Preparation for the Next Life by Atticus Lish. Softcover, $20.50. Winner of the Pen/Faulkner Award for first fiction, this novel offers a journey through a foreign land, a country that is America but not the U.S. we normally see. Instead it’s the country as experienced by Zou Lei, an illegal immigrant from Mongolia, and Brad Skinner, an American soldier recently returned from Iraq and suffering from PTSD. These two lost souls, set adrift for their own reasons, somehow find each other and offer what support they can. Lish is unflinching in his portrayal of the lives of his characters, offering us a love story that could only have been conceived in the twenty-first century. (Tyrant Books. 2014)

Elizabeth is Missing by Emma Healey. Softcover. $19.95. Maud is losing her memory. She can no longer tell her care workers apart from her daughter and granddaughter. She’s also lost her sister Sukey. And she can’t, for the life of her, remember what happened to her friend, Elizabeth. Told with great sympathy and humour, this winner of the Costa Book Award for Best First Novel charts the slow retreat of an elderly woman’s senses. Although the world becomes more and more mixed up for Maud, the novel slowly but surely gives up its secrets to the reader. (Vintage. June)

Fracture: Life & Culture in the West, 1918-1938 by Philipp Blom. $36.95. The First World War and its build- up altered art and culture profoundly, a process explained in Vertigo, a previous book by Blom. Now with Fracture, he continues the story, telling us how painting, music, writing and science were different after the war. Along the way he explores questions such as why figures like Picasso, Shostakovich, Joyce, and Einstein all came along at the same time; or why fascism and communism, jazz and surrealism, existentialism and expressionism, all rose together and what this says about the interwar period. It’s fascinating reading for anyone who loves the arts. (McClelland & Stewart. April)

Van Gogh: A Power Seething by Julian Bell. Hardcover. $26.00. The presence of Vincent van Gogh, the person, looms over his art like a brooding shadow and adds to the fascination his art continues to hold over us. He’d have it no other way as his own vision of art included the life of the artist. Bell offers an introductory lesson in how van Gogh explored both these aspects of his work. His art speaks for itself. (Houghton Miflin. January)

Lovers at the Chameleon Club, Paris 1932 by Francine Prose. Softcover. $19.99. We’ve been recommending Francine Prose for years and if you haven’t already taken us up on our suggestion, this novel may be your best opportunity yet. The story centres on the figure of Lou Villars, a character who blurs the lines between what it is to be a man or a woman. Lou falls constantly under the influence of one person after another and rarely seems in control of her life, a reality reflected in the fact that her story is told by a multitude of voices, but never in her own. (HarperCollins. May)

How to Be Both by Ali Smith. Softcover. $19.95. In an original literary double-take (depending on which version you pick up, the story begins in either the 1460s or the 1960s), this year’s winner of the Baileys Women’s Prize for Fiction is a fast-moving genre-bending conversation between forms, times, truths and fictions. Two tales of love and injustice separated by five hundred years twist into a singular timeless yarn where structure gets playful, knowing gets mysterious, fiction gets real, and all life’s givens get a second chance. (Penguin. July)

 

AUTHOR OF THE MONTH

JULY
Tatiana de Rosnay

Tatiana de Rosnay was born in the suburbs of Paris and is of English, French and Russian descent. She is the author of more than ten novels, including the bestselling novel Sarah’s Key, an international sensation with over four million copies sold in thirty-five countries worldwide. In 2009, she was named one of the top ten fiction writers in Europe.

Does a fruit taste its sweetest when it is forbidden? In A Paris Affair, her first short story collection, infidelity is a given, particularly for the male. Retribution, however, is women’s work. With passion and a clear eye, de Rosnay paints a portrait of the most forbidden of loves, in many different shades, sometimes tragic, sometimes humorous, sometimes heartfelt, always with a dry wit and an unflinching authenticity. Technology is the downfall of many of her straying spouses. In “The Texts,” a wife feigns ignorance of her husband’s escapades, if only she can resist the temptation to hack his cellphone; in “The Baby Phone,” a baby monitor permits a hitherto trusting wife to overhear hanky-panky; and in “The Answering Machine,” an unerased message is the harbinger of betrayal. A Paris Affair is an enjoyable “undressing” of intimate delights, where laughter mingles with compassion and the heartbeats of illicit desire. (Hardcover. $22.99. St. Martin’s. July 7)

 

AUGUST
Elizabeth Hay

For Elizabeth Hay, writing is a physical act. Her admission that she prefers to write her first drafts with a pen or pencil on paper rather than directly on a computer says much about her connection and commitment to her craft. It speaks to a willingness to take the necessary time to fashion tales at the pace they require, to pause and listen to those inner voices, and capture them in a physical act of writing. It is a method of working that has served Hay well. Her graceful prose takes us across the Canadian landscape and across generations, and her work has been recognized by numerous awards, including the Scotiabank Giller Prize for her 2007 novel Late Nights on Air, as well as the Marian Engel Award which recognizes a body of work.

Set in the mid-1990s, when Quebec is on the verge of leaving Canada, her new novel, His Whole Life, is set in a richly intimate world where everything is at risk: family, nature, home. The story opens with ten-year-old Jim and his Canadian mother and American father on a journey from New York City to a lake in eastern Ontario during the last hot days of August. Over the span of a few pivotal years of his youth, moving from city to country, summer to winter, wellbeing to illness, the novel charts the deepening bond between mother and son even as the family comes apart. An irresistible novel of family, hurt, love and forgiveness. (Hardcover. $32.00. McClelland & Stewart. August 11)

 

Helios: Let the Sun Shine In with this Game of Strategy

Helios is a game that involves 2-to-4 players who assume the roles of high priests in a fantasy world of the sun god Ahau. In the game, players are trying to win by developing the most splendid civilizations through expanding cities and building temples. The most interesting aspect of Helios is that the sun marker on each person’s player board drives the core mechanics of the game.

The limited actions and many scoring methods make for a fascinating combination of easy choices and important consequences. There are many paths to victory.

Helios lasts for four rounds and an average game only takes 60 minutes to finish. Actually, the fast play is why a lot of people really enjoy the game. It offers a lot of tactical and strategic depth in a very concise package. The artwork by Dennis Lohausen is another distinguishing feature of Helios.

For ages 10 & up. Price $65.00.

 

Let's Talk About War & Peace

Some of the Community Classroom’s favourite educators, and a few teachers new to us, have joined together for a series curated to examine topics related to the theme of war and peace. These classes will all take place during the last weeks of summer.

Registration for each class is $20 and you must register independently for each class. It is anticipated that many of these sessions will sell out so if something piques your interest you are encouraged to register early. You can register in person at the bookstore, over the phone (204-475-0483) with a credit card, or online.

• AFTER THE WAR IS OVER. Taught by Karen Toole. August 24 Time: 7:00–9:00 pm.
• MUSIC OF THE SECOND WORLD WAR. Taught by Don Anderson. August 25 Time: 2:00–4:00 pm.
• WINDOWS ON HISTORY: THE CAMERA AT WAR. Taught by Adam Muller. August 25 Time: 7:00–9:00 pm.
• SONGS OF PROTEST. Taught by John Einarson. August 26 Time: 7:00–9:00 pm.
• TACKLING TOLSTOY. Taught by Al Rae. August 27 Time: 2:00–4:00 pm.
• GIVE US YOUR SONS & DAUGHTERS: Indigenous Literatures on War and Peace. Taught by Niigaanwewidam Sinclair. August 27 Time: 7:00–9:00 pm.
• OH WHAT A LOVELY WAR. Taught by Roland Penner. August 31 Time: 10:00 am–noon.
• PEACEMAKING: What’s That Got To Do With Me? Taught by Dianne Cooper. August 31 Time: 7:00–9:00 pm.
• PATHS OF GLORY. Taught by Don Anderson. September 1 Time: 1:00–4:00 pm.
• ART AS A SYMBOL OF PEACE, HOPE AND COMMUNITY. Susan Moffatt. September 1 Time: 7:00–9:00 pm.
• PEACE MAKERS IN THE SERVICE OF WAR. Karen Toole & Gordon Toombs. September 2 Time: 2:00–4:00 pm.
• WAR AND PEACE IN THE GRAPHIC NOVEL. Taught by Candida Rifkind. September 2 Time: 7:00–9:00 pm.
• TREATIES: Building a Peaceful Relationship. Taught by a representative of the Treaty Commission of Manitoba. September 3 Time: 7:00–9:00 pm. 

Please note our Community Classroom program is only available at our Winnipeg location.

 

Can It!

Whether you grow it yourself or enjoy picking up fresh produce from farmers’ markets, home canning puts the pleasure of eating natural, delicious produce at your fingertips all year-round.

The Canning Kitchen by Amy Bronee blends the traditions of home preserving with the tastes of the modern home cook with 101 simple, small batch recipes and vivid photography. Fill jars with canning classics such as Strawberry Rhubarb Jam and Crunchy Dill Pickles, and discover new classics like Salted Caramel Pear Butter, Bing Cherry Barbecue Sauce, and Sweet Thai Chili Chutney. With fresh ideas for every season, you’ll want to keep your canning pot handy year-round to make delicious jams, jellies, marmalades, pickles, relishes, chutneys, sweet and savory sauces, and jars of homemade pantry favourites. In addition to year-round recipes, The Canning Kitchen includes all the basics you’ll need to get started. boost your canning confidence with straight-forward answers to common preserving questions and find out about the canning tools you need, many of which you may already have in your kitchen. (Softcover. $28.00. Penguin. June)

Preserving food is modern, practical and really quite simple. Best of Bridge Home Preserving shares user-friendly recipes that will appeal to novice and experienced canners alike. There’s a wealth of information here, including basic equipment lists, food safety requirements and produce purchasing charts. Easy-to-understand detailed processing instructions provide all the information you need before beginning any canning project. The recipes cover everything from jams, marmalades, conserves and jellies to chutneys, pickles, relishes, salsas and more. There really is something for everyone, regardless of your growing region. (Hardcover. $29.95. Robert Rose. 2014)

Better Homes and Gardens Complete Canning Guide is an ideal guide to the best of preserving, complete with hundreds of farm-fresh recipes. With step-by-step explanations of techniques, ranging from the basics of canning to freezing, drying, fermenting, and pickling, readers can learn how to preserve a range of produce including fruits, vegetables and herbs. Included are techniques and recipes for jams and jellies, conserves and fruit butters, condiments, dried treats like fruit leathers and veggie chips, and freezer recipes. Also find recipes for pickles, sauerkraut, relishes, soups and even syrups. And when the tomatoes ripen all at once, check out the chapter on smart ways to preserve them. (Hardcover. $38.99. Better Homes and Gardens. April)

Get Started: Preserving by Susannah Steel and Amanda Wright gives you the knowledge you need to make more than 70 step-by-step recipes, taking you from complete beginner to being able to freeze, bottle and pickle with confidence. Start simple by mixing crunchy pickles, storing luscious fruits in alcohol, and simmering spicy chutneys; build on your skills by boiling jams bursting with fruit and bottling vitamin-rich cordials; and show off by stirring fresh fruit curds to smooth perfection, curing fish and meat, and fermenting your own delicious wines. Packed with advice, reminders, and help when things go wrong, Get Started: Preserving will soon have you filling your pantry with delectable preserves. (Hardcover. $17.00. DK. 2012)

 

Let It Rot!

Gardeners call compost ‘’black gold.’’ It is the product of decomposition of your kitchen scraps and yard waste and it works miracles in your soil. Use it to fertilize your beds and gardens indoors and out, to amend problem soil, to topdress spotty grassy areas. Its uses are endless. And it’s easy to make.

Suzanne Lewis has been a Master Composter for more than a decade. In her book Composting for Canada, she explains all the secrets to creating your own black gold, addressing the considerations for our Canadian winters, types of composting and types of bins, the ABCs of backyard composting, what to put in the pile, how to accelerate the decomposition process, troubleshooting, mulching and grasscycling, worm composting, finished compost and what to do with it. Loaded with colour photos and illustrations, diagrams and charts. (Softcover. $18.95. Lone Pine Publishing. 2010)

Compost: A Family Guide to Making Soil from Scraps by Ben Raskin is a funky little guide showing you the nitty-gritty of compost composition. Find out the rules for setting up your very own Worm Lovers’ Society, learn all about the garden-to-plate cycle, and get your family’s feet firmly set on the road to a planet-friendly lifestyle. Includes information on both kitchen and garden composting. (Hardcover. $16.95. Shambala. 2014)

Great compost is one of the most important secrets of successful organic gardening. Using full-colour photographs and easy-to-follow instructions, The Organic Composting Handbook by Dede Cummings teaches all you need to know about the various methods of composting and how to adapt them to your home and garden. Topics covered include: what you can and can’t throw on your compost pile, how to balance nitrogen and carbon in your pile for quick decomposition and rich compost, buying or building the best tools and containers, vermicomposting, how to compost indoors, troubleshooting smelly compost, dry compost, and other problems, how and when to apply the compost to your garden beds. (Softcover. $19.95. Skyhorse Publishing. 2014)

 

DIFFERENCE

"If you only read the books that everyone else is reading, you can only think what everyone else is thinking."
- Haruki Murakami

The Ghost Network by Catie Disabato
Disabato’s debut novel, The Ghost Network, is one of the most satisfying, engrossing, strange and just flat-out fun books I have read so far this year.

When pop star Molly Metropolis vanishes, Molly’s personal assistant and a local journalist come together to try to solve the mystery. And it may be one of the first literary mysteries of the Millennial generation. It is so deliciously unlike anything we’ve had so far: bleary-eyed gay girls solving crimes, old spooky cartographic history, conspiracy theories (or are they?) surrounding a pop superstar, and a web of ghostly forgotten subway lines buried deep underneath Chicago. Disabato is onto something so good. She says she was intrigued by the abundance of writing about celebrities who died young, especially the group of musicians known as the “27 club” — including Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Jim Morrison, Kurt Cobain and Amy Winehouse — who all died when they were 27 years old. The story is legitimately unlike anything else and her writing style is a joy. You owe it to yourself to read this as soon as possible. (Softcover. $16.95. Melville House. May)

Paradises by Iosi Havilio
Here’s a story: A rural mother of a small child loses her husband. In the aftermath of her grief, she finds herself alone and broke in a city. The drive of her days, in her numbness and exhaustion, is only to keep both her and her child surviving. I find most authors, holding the reins of such a plot line, can’t resist the temptation of grandiosity or overt pathos. Which is all a build-up to say that Iosi Havilio’s Paradises does nothing of the sort.

Paradises by the cult Argentinian author whose first novel, Open Door (2011), was highly praised by the influential Argentine critic, Beatriz Sarlo, drives forward with a soft, urgent pulse as the young mother moves around Buenos Aires, finding jobs, taking care of her son, placating landlords, oddballs and ex-lovers. It’s a beautiful, spare, gorgeous novel that somehow communicates real, day-to-day exhaustion at the same time it fiercely draws the reader’s emotions in. This is easily one of the best books I read in 2014. (Softcover. $21.50. And Other Stories. 2013)

—Athena Thiessen

 

Saskatoon’s fifth annual Word on the Street festival will be Sunday, September 20, downtown in Civic Square in front of Frances Morrison Library. National headliners this year include Chef Michael Smith, Margaret Trudeau, and acclaimed fiction writer W.P. Kinsella. They will be joined by many local writers and other authors from across Canada. Come and enjoy Literacy Lane, KidStreet, author readings for all ages, workshops, panel discussions, and lots more. McNally Robinson is proud to be the festival’s official bookseller.

As a non-profit organization, The Word on the Street relies on the support of the community to bring a free, 100% Canadian literary festival to Saskatoon. Please help! Donations can be sent by mail to The Word on the Street, P.O. Box 39042, Saskatoon, SK S7V 0A9, or they can be made online. Select Word on the Street, and when you get to Donate to this Charity Now, click on the grey box to select Word on the Street Saskatoon — General Fund. A tax receipt will be issued for donations over $25.

 

HOT

on display July to September


Gurevich Fine Art @ McNally Robinson is a showcase gallery located in the Winnipeg location of our Prairie Ink Restaurant. Exhibits feature four to six artists and run for three months. The art can be purchased by contacting Gurevich Fine Art.

Welcome summer with the Gurevich Fine Art @McNally Robinson’s exhibit, HOT, which opens in July. HOT features a diverse collection of work from artists Carole Freeman, Bette Woodland, John Erkel and Tom Lovatt. The merging of these artists generates heat from a contrasting yet complementary exhibit.

Bette Woodland’s paintings begin with a response to a particular experience of the landscape, figure or still life. Her works are not descriptive in the photo-realist sense, but evolve intuitively, guided by an involvement with quality of light used to reveal objects and as a way of making certain feelings intelligible.

Siblings. Artist: Carole Freeman.Carole Freeman’s art combines critical study, empathy, humour and ironic juxtaposition to narrative image and portraiture. Uniquely lying somewhere between drawing and painting, Freeman’s pieces are based on memory, examination, life models (sometimes unbeknownst to them), and a mashing of personal and found photographs. Her work has concerns with the magic and surprise in the transformation of photographs, digital images and tubes of pigment placed into drawn and painted pictures. (Featured image, entitled Siblings, is by Carole Freeman.)

John Erkel’s training in welding speaks to his work with metal. His pieces, which have a strong industrial feel, are largely made from found objects: car parts and other scrap metal he finds on the street and works into his compositions. His mainly 3D works are intricate and interesting abstracts.

Tom Lovatt has worked as an artist for more than 20 years. Working primarily in painting, but also with sculptures and drawing, Lovatt’s works explore and represent memories past: be it historical, or the personal past we carry with us in images, memories and reoccurring thought. Each repetition builds momentum towards a larger understanding of the work created and the artist who creates. The repetition is a way of focusing the viewer on something Lovatt considers important, a way of making the viewer slow down and look at his art.

Each artist’s work is distinctively different, but complements the other and helps to bring out even the most minuscule details. The exhibit encourages viewers to slow down and really look.

See more at GFAMcNally.ca
Please note that Gurevich Fine Arts is a Winnipeg institution, and as such all GFA @ MRB exhibitions take place exclusively at our Winnipeg location.

 

Upcoming events!

See upcoming events in Winnipeg > > >

See upcoming events in Saskatoon > > >

 

Tales from Beneath the Deep

Finding and identifying a pirate ship is the hardest thing to do under the sea. But John Chatterton and John Mattera are willing to risk everything to find the Golden Fleece, the ship of the infamous pirate Joseph Bannister. Robert Kurson chronicles their exploits in Pirate Hunters.

At large during the Golden Age of Piracy in the 17th century, Bannister should have been immortalized in the lore of the sea. His exploits were more notorious than Blackbeard’s, more daring than Kidd’s. But his story, and his ship, have been lost to time. If Chatterton and Mattera succeed, they will make history. It will be just the second time ever that a pirate ship has been discovered and positively identified. However, they soon realize that cutting-edge technology and a willingness to lose everything aren’t enough to track down Bannister’s ship. It’s only when they learn to think and act like pirates that they become able to go where no pirate hunters have gone before. Fast-paced and filled with suspense, Pirate Hunters goes deep to discover truths and souls long believed lost. (Hardcover. $34.00. Random House. June)

 

In her new book, Voices in the Ocean, Susan Casey, the bestselling author of The Devil’s Teeth and The Wave, combines personal reporting, scientific research, and evocative prose in a fascinating look into the mysterious world of dolphins and their conflicted history with the other intelligent life on this planet, us.

Since the dawn of recorded history, humans have felt a kinship with the sleek and beautiful dolphin, an animal whose playfulness, sociability and intelligence seems like an aquatic mirror of ourselves. In recent decades, scientists have discovered dolphins recognize their own reflections, count, feel despondent, adorn themselves, rescue each other (and humans), deduce, infer, form cliques, throw tantrums, gossip and scheme. Several native peoples trace their lineage to dolphins. They are the stars of multi-million dollar aquatic theme parks, the U.S. Navy has a secret program using dolphins as undersea soldiers, and there is a theory among the new age fringe that they are a superior, extraterrestrial species. (Hardcover. $29.95. Doubleday. August)

 

The Power of Compassion

Veteran journalist Megan Feldman Bettencourt had never considered herself a forgiving person. She’d just gone through a breakup and felt perfectly justified in hating her ex forever. But then she encountered a man who had truly forgiven the teenager who murdered his only son. How could anyone forgive that? Was there something wrong with him? Or was there something wrong with her? In Triumph of the Heart, Bettencourt sets out on a global adventure, not just to find out what forgiveness is, but how it works. Examining situations as mundane as road rage, as painful as cheating spouses, and as unthinkable as war crimes, she discovers the remarkable physical and psychological benefits of forgiveness, and reveals some of the best ways we can learn to do it ourselves, as both individuals and communities. Because it turns out that the ability to forgive and put down the burdens of the past really is what determines our quality of life. (Hardcover. $28.95. Hudson. August)

 

In his previous book Happiness, Matthieu Ricard demonstrated that true happiness is not tied to fleeting moments or sensations, but is an enduring state of soul rooted in mindfulness and compassion for others. In his new book, Altruism, he turns his lens from the personal to the global, with a persuasive argument that altruism — the genuine concern for the well-being of others — could be the saving grace of the 21st century. It is, he believes, the vital thread that can answer the main challenges of our time: the economy in the short term, life satisfaction in the mid-term, and environment in the long term. Matthieu Ricard makes a robust and passionate case for cultivating altruistic love and compassion as the best means for simultaneously benefiting ourselves and our society. It’s a fresh outlook on an ardent struggle, and one that just might make the world a better place. (Hardcover. $29.00. Little, Brown. June)

 

The Winding Ways of Fear and Addiction

Stage Fright
Stage fright is one of the human psyche’s deepest fears. Laurence Olivier learned to adapt to it, as have actors Salma Hayek and Hugh Grant. Musicians such as George Harrison and Adele have battled it and learned to cope. Others never do: In 1973, Pittsburgh Pirates All-Star pitcher Steve Blass suddenly could no longer find the strike zone; his career ended soon after. Surveys in the United States repeatedly rank public speaking as one of the top fears. Using her own journey in coping with stage fright, Sara Solovitch examines its causes and the diverse ways to overcome it in Playing Scared, a history and memoir of stage fright as well as a tribute to pursuing personal growth at any age. (Hardcover. $30.00. Bloomsbury. June)

Addiction
From viewing addiction as a dead end for social misfits, we’ve come to see it as a disease, attacking politicians, entertainers, our relatives and ourselves. In his provocative book, The Biology of Desire, Marc Lewis, a neuroscientist and himself a former addict, argues that addiction is a learned adaptation to emotional needs. It arises from the same attachment system that binds infants to their parents and lovers to each other. Addiction is unquestionably destructive, but it’s also quite normal. Lewis proposes a new theory of addiction and demonstrates its power and utility by telling the real-life stories of people who, like the author, became addicted, and successfully recovered. (Hardcover. $32.00. Doubleday. August)

 

Enjoy Locally Made Chocolates, Jams, Jellies, and More

Mordens’ of Winnipeg
Established in 1959, the renowned Winnipeg chocolatier is famous for their signature chocolate, the Russian Mint, of which they produce one ton every three days from October to December. Mordens’ offers a variety of chocolate confections at a wide range of prices from their Russian Mints to their Chocolate Covered Ju Jubes, as well as individual specialty items sold separately.

Riverbend Plantation
Saskatoons, a dark purple fruit that is often described as a berry but is actually botanically similar to the apple, are a unique Western Canadian treat. From jams and syrups to vinaigrettes and pie-fillings, all made from antioxidant-rich saskatoons, Riverbend Plantation of Saskatoon has an assortment of products to please any palate.

Chocolates, jellies, jams, and honey

Crampton’s Manitoba Maid
In 1997, Sam and Paulette Crampton traded in their cattle and grain operation near Somerset for a 40-acre lot in Starbuck to make jam full-time. They now make more than 27 different jams, jellies and marmalades from mostly local fruits and berries, and are thought to be Manitoba’s largest jam producer.

The Taste of Honey
Using time-tested methods of slow cold filtering, small batch extraction and in-hive storage, The John Russell Honey Company and Raven Creek Farm are two Manitoba honey companies that strive to give you farm fresh flavour in every jar. It’s the next best thing to having a hive of honeybees in your own back yard.

 

Science Fiction: Imagining the Unimaginable

Ernest Cline
Zack Lightman is daydreaming through his high school math class when he glances out the window and spots the flying saucer. At first, Zack thinks he’s going crazy. A minute later, he’s sure of it. Because the UFO he’s staring at is straight out of the videogame he plays every night, an online flight simulator called Armada in which gamers just happen to be protecting the earth from alien invaders. But what Zack’s seeing is all too real. A classic coming of age adventure and an alien-invasion tale like nothing you’ve ever read before, Armada, the new novel by the author of Ready Player One, is infused with Cline’s trademark pop-culture savvy. (Hardcover. $31.00. Crown. July)

N.K. Jemisin
Three terrible things happen in a single day. A woman named Essun comes home to find her husband has murdered their son and kidnapped their daughter. Mighty Sanze, the world-spanning empire that has been civilization’s bedrock for a thousand years, collapses. And across the heart of the vast continent known as the Stillness a great rift has opened, spewing ash enough to darken the sky for centuries. In The Fifth Season, the first book in a new trilogy by Hugo and Nebula Award nominated author N.K. Jemisin, Essun must pursue the wreckage of her family through a dying land, without sunlight, clean water and in the midst of war. (Softcover. $17.00. Orbit. August)

John Scalzi
The Hugo-award winning author returns to his best-selling Old Man’s War universe with The End of All Things, a direct sequel to 2013’s The Human Division. Humans have expanded into space only to find a universe populated with multiple alien species bent on their destruction. Thus was the Colonial Union formed, to help protect us from a hostile universe. But when the ranks of the Colonial Defense Forces are depleted, the struggling human colonies are vulnerable to the alien attack. And there’s another problem: A group, lurking in the darkness of space, is playing human and alien against each other, and against their own kind, for their own unknown reasons. (Hardcover. $28.99. Tor. August)

 

Summer Novels with a Kick

Rebecca Makkai
Makkai’s first two novels, The Borrower and The Hundred-Year House, have established her as one of the most imaginative voices in fiction. The characters in her latest book, Music for Wartime, a highly anticipated collection of short stories, range from a reality show producer who manipulates two contestants into falling in love, to a composer recording the folk songs of two women from a village on the brink of destruction. These wide-ranging stories, some inspired by her own family history, are marked with Makkai’s signature mix of intelligence, wit and heart. (Hardcover. $31.00. Viking. June)

Sascha Arango
On the surface, Henry Hayden seems like someone you could like or even admire. A bestselling author who appears a modest everyman. A devoted husband even though he could have any woman he desires. But Henry Hayden is a fake, and not just about the fact that his wife writes all his novels. When his carefully constructed facade is about to crumble, he tries to find a permanent solution, only to make a terrible mistake. Arango’s latest novel, The Truth and Other Lies, is a literary thriller that follows a famous author dealing with the consequences of his wife’s death. (Hardcover. $30.00. Viking. June)

Kevin Kwan
On the eve of her wedding to Nicholas Young, heir to one of the greatest fortunes in Asia, Rachel Chu still mourns the fact that her birth father, a man she never knew, won’t be able to walk her down the aisle — or will he? The author of Crazy Rich Asians returns with China Rich Girlfriend, a wickedly funny novel of social climbing, secret emails, art world scandal, lovesick billionaires, and the outrageous story of what happens when Rachel Chu, engaged to marry Asia’s most eligible bachelor, discovers her birth father. (Hardcover. $32.00. Doubleday. June)

Haruki Murakami
After almost thirty years being out of print, the first of Murakami’s major works of fiction — the novellas Hear the Wind Sing and Pinball, 1973 — are finally together in one volume under the title, Wind/Pinball, in all-new English translations. Centering around two young men, an unnamed narrator and his friend and former roommate, these short works are powerful, at times surreal, stories of loneliness, obsession and eroticism. A fascinating insight into Murakami’s beginnings, and remarkable works of fiction in their own right. (Hardcover. $29.95. Doubleday. August)

Kate Walbert
The Sunken Cathedral, the new novel by the author of A Short History of Women, follows a cast of characters as they negotiate one of Manhattan’s swiftly changing neighborhoods, extreme weather, and the unease of 21st century life. In a chorus of voices, Walbert explores the growing disconnect between the world of action her characters inhabit and the longings, desires, and doubts they experience, painting portraits of marriage, friendship and love in its many facets. (Hardcover. $32.99. Scribner. June)

Paula McLain
Circling the Sun, the latest novel by the author of The Paris Wife, takes readers to Kenya in the 1920s, where the beautiful young horse trainer, adventurer and aviator Beryl Markham tells the story of her life among the glamorous and decadent circle of British expats living in colonial East Africa. The complex love triangle she shares with the white hunter Denys Finch Hatton and Karen Blixen, author of Out of Africa, changes the course of Beryl’s life, setting tragedy in motion while awakening her to her truest self. (Hardcover. $32.00. Doubleday. August)

 

OUR SIGHTS & SOUNDS

Music CDs & Records

Ian Tyson. Carnero Vaquero. $19.99. The West is not the city, it’s not the Internet, it’s not your office, your house, or your new clothes. It’s hard weather, horses, cattle, space and sky. And it’s Ian Tyson’s world, a place where there’s time for stories, legends, myths and songs. In his latest album, the legendary singer and songwriter, now 81, brings his world to yours in ten memorable songs with tunes you can remember and stories that resonate. Starting his career in the early 1960s with the folk duo Ian & Sylvia, Tyson is now regarded as one of the pre-eminent singer/songwriters in western music. (Stony Plain. June)

The Milk Carton Kids. Monterey. CD $16.99. Vinyl $24.99. Joey Ryan and Kenneth Pattengale continue to fashion their own folk music revival with their third album, the follow-up to their 2013 Grammy-nominated The Ash & Clay. The duo recorded half the album on the road and the other half in a Nashville church in order to re-create the intimate feel of a live performance. The close vocal harmonies and intricate all-acoustic, flat-pick guitar playing forge a powerful resonance filled with an intimate and forlorn beauty reminiscent of Simon & Garfunkel and the Everly Brothers at their most ethereal and subdued. (ANTI-. May)

Great Lake Swimmers. A Forest of Arms. CD $15.99. Vinyl $24.99. On their sixth album, with a surging rhythm section, razor sharp violin and a flourish of banjo and guitars, Tony Dekker’s Great Lake Swimmers have created some of the most dynamic songs they have ever recorded. Those familiar with the decade-long output of Great Lake Swimmers will recognize the thematic threads of beauty in the natural world, environmental issues and explorations of close personal ties that hold us together. Creating a soundscape that is so lush at times, it’s easy to forget that the primary lead instruments are acoustic. (Nettwerk. April)

Good Lovelies. Burn the Plan. $14.99. On their sixth album, the first in four years, the Juno Award-winning folk trio captures a set of well-crafted stories in harmonies that cast an ear back to the close-knit vocal arrangements of the 1950s and 60s. Although the band has obvious and considerable strengths — winsome songwriting, impeccable vocals and triangulated charisma — what keeps the three Lovelies making music together is their unshakeable friendship, which supports each member contributing to the songwriting in distinct ways. (Six Shooter Records. June)

 

DVD & Blu-Ray Movies

It Follows directed by David Robert Mitchell. Blu-ray. $27.99. For 19-year- old Jay, the fall should be about school, boys and weekends at the lake. Yet after a seemingly innocent sexual encounter she suddenly finds herself plagued by nightmarish visions; she can’t shake the sensation that someone, or something, is following her. As a ghostlike morphing creature closes in with evil intentions, Jay and her friends must somehow escape the horrors that are only a few steps behind in this indie chiller that the web site Bloody Disgusting calls “the scariest movie of 2015.” (Starz/Anchor Bay. July)

The Salt of the Earth, a film by Sebastião Salgado & Wim Wenders. Blu-ray. $29.99. The Salt of the Earth explores the life and work of Sebastião Salgado, the undisputed master of monumental photojournalism projects in black and white. Having travelled the world in the footsteps of an ever-changing humanity, he is now embarking on the discovery of pristine territories, of wild fauna and flora, and of grandiose landscapes as part of a huge photographic project which is a tribute to the planet’s beauty. (Mongrel. June)

Poldark 2015: Complete Series One. $44.99 Blu-ray. Ross Poldark rides again in a swashbuckling new adaptation of the hit series that helped launch Masterpiece Theatre in the 1970s. Aidan Turner stars as Captain Poldark, a redcoat who returns to Cornwall after the American Revolution and finds that the woman he hoped to marry is now engaged to his cousin and the property he has inherited has been allowed to deteriorate. While facing the challenge of making his land once again productive, he tries to win back the woman he loved, or find a reason to live without her. (PBS. July)

Clouds of Sils Maria written and directed by Olivier Assayas. $21.99 DVD. At the peak of her acting career, Maria Enders (Juliette Binoche) is asked to accept the part in the very same play that originally made her famous. At the age of eighteen, she played Sigrid, a destructive youth who takes advantage of an older woman named Helena, which results in driving her to suicide. Now she’s being asked to play the  part of Helena, while tabloid queen Jo-Ann Ellis (Chloë Grace Moritz) plays Sigrid. But taking on this role proves to be more destructive than Maria ever imagined. (Mongrel Media. August)

 

 

McNALLY ROBINSON for babies

Baby toys, teddy bears, clothing, gifts, and, of course, books in our baby boutique

 

Dress Up for Summer

Our unique lines of clothing celebrate those fleeting years when newborns transform into young toddlers. Whether they’re napping, throwing cereal on the floor or crawling through deliciously muddy grass, we have a wide range of apparel for babies that lets little ones be little.

 

Hello! You Adorable Baby, You

In the follow-up to Plant a KissLittle Miss, Big Sis anticipates the momentous arrival of a new baby and then experiences the wonders of being a big sis. The bestselling team Amy Krouse Rosenthal and Peter H. Reynolds have created a one-of-a-kind ode to the bestest big sisters everywhere. (Hardcover. $17.99. HarperCollins. June)

Do you have a new baby in the family? Follow the tips in 15 Things Not to Do with a Baby by Margaret McAllister, with illustrations by Holly Sterling, and you’ll all be happy. Rules number 1 and 2: Don’t lend your baby to a kangaroo or plant your baby in the garden. But cuddles are good, and so is reading and singing to your baby, and giving your baby lots and lots of love. (Hardcover. $19.99. Frances Lincoln. March)

Hello in There! by Jo Witek, with illustrations by Christine Roussey is a heartfelt look at the wonder and excitement of waiting and waiting...for a new sibling to arrive. The charming protagonist is so eager to step into her role as a big sister that she’s starting early! She sticks close to her mama so she can sing songs to her sibling-to-be (loudly, of course) and explain all the great things waiting in the outside world (cupcakes! strawberries! swimming!). A joyful and celebratory ode to the growing family for any sister- or brother-to-be. (Hardcover. $18.95. Abrams. 2013)

 

Summer Rhymes Will Make You Feel Fine

Katie, Pip and Freddy are energy-packed creatures who love to make noise, dance about and have fun. Beautifully illustrated by the award-winning Axel SchefflerTreasury of Rhyming Stories is a collection of rhyming stories with CD performed by Joanna Page, the voice of Poppy Cat. The collection is completed by robust, easy-to-hold tabs to keep track of each story. (Board Book. $17.99. PAN Macmillan. July)

From Humpty Dumpty to Rock-a-bye Baby, Treasury of Nursery Rhymes has been beautifully imagined by Lucy Cousins, illustrator of the Maisy books. Complete with audio recording by CBeebies star Katy Ashworth and robust, easy-to-hold tabs for finding your favourite rhymes, this is a perfect, playful introduction to the world of stories for little children. (Board Book. $17.99. PAN Macmillan. July)

 

 

McNALLY ROBINSON for kids


Cozy Little Animal Stories

Firefly and Cricket, two tiny animals with big dreams, challenge the status quo and pursue their destinies with the help of a miniature giant (a boy named Peter) and an old river vole in Firefly Hollow by Alison McGhee, with illustrations by Christopher Denise. Firefly wants to fly to outer space someday and Cricket aspires to be “the cricket version of Yogi Berra.” Although they both have been warned about the hazards of human beings, they are intrigued by Peter’s way of life. After all, he and another miniature giant used to play catch, and others of Peter’s tribe have reached the moon. As the story unfolds, bits of natural history are woven into a whimsical tale of interspecies friendships. (Hardcover. $18.99. Atheneum. August) (Ages 8-12)

Now that Snip the cat is gone (but hardly forgotten), the classroom animals of the Midnight Academy are ready for things to get back to normal at the McKenna School. After all, protecting nutters (students) and lankies (teachers) is an around-the-clock job in this delightful series by W.H. Beck and illustrated by Brian Lies. In the second book Malcolm Under the Stars (the first book Malcolm at Midnight is now available in softcover), Malcolm and the Academy find they have another mystery on their paws when a rare coin and a strange code are uncovered in the school. To find answers, Malcolm ventures into the dangerous outside world full of shady characters, new friends and old enemies. Can Malcolm solve the mystery and save the school before it’s too late? Join Malcolm and company as they take on their most challenging assignment yet. (Hardcover. $21.99. Houghton Mifflin. August) (Ages 9-12)

In Appleblossom the Possum by Holly Goldberg Sloan and illustrated by Gary A. Rosen, Mama has trained up her baby possums in the ways of their breed, and now it’s time for all of them — even little Appleblossom —to make their way in the world. Appleblossom knows the rules: she must never be seen during the day, and she must avoid cars, humans, and the dreaded hairies (sometimes known as dogs). Even so, Appleblossom decides to spy on a human family, and accidentally falls down their chimney! The curious Appleblossom, her faithful brothers who launch a hilarious rescue mission, and even the little girl in the house have no idea how fascinating the big world can be. But they’re about to find out! (Hardcover. $18.99. Dial. August) (Ages 8-12)

 

Dr. Seuss Lost & Found

What Pet Should I Get? is a never-before-seen picture book by Dr. Seuss. It was found in the author’s home in 2013 and features the same characters from the 1960 classic One Fish Two Fish Red Fish Blue Fish. What happens when a brother and sister visit a pet store to pick a pet? Naturally, they can’t choose just one! (Hardcover. $21.00. Random House. July 28) (Ages 3-7)

 

Who, What, Where?

The Who Was? series is a collection of illustrated biographies for young readers ages 8 to 12 that features significant historical figures, including artists, scientists and world leaders. The bestselling series features such luminaries as Edgar Allen Poe(due out in August), Alexander Graham BellAnne FrankDr. Seuss and more. (Softcover. $6.99 each. Grosset & Dunlap)

Who Is....? A Journal for You by You
Now you can join the ranks of the famous in the latest version of the series coming out at the end of summer. Not Who Was...? but Who Is...? with a place to insert your own name in this journal for you by you. Each illustrated spread focuses on different topics, from birth and the toddler years up to the present and dreams for the future. Create your own family tree, list your BFFs, pets, and favourite subjects, foods and hobbies. When completed, you will have an up-to-the-minute autobiography that is right at home among our other legendary Who Was...? titles. (Hardcover. $8.99. Grosset & Dunlap. August.)

Related titles include the What Were? and the Where Is? series. They offer detailed accounts respectively of important historical events and famous locations and landmarks around the world.

Check out What Were the Salem Witch Trials? by Joan Holub to discover the hysteria that took over a small Massachusetts town in 1692 that led to nineteen people being hanged for witchcraft while even more languished in prison.

Or pick up the recently released Where is Mount Everest? and let the author, Nico Medina, guide you through the mountain’s ancient beginnings, first human settlers, and historic climbs.

 

Join Our Summer Reading Club

Our 2015 Summer Reading Club runs from Wednesday June 24 to Tuesday September 8. Join the club, join the fun. Anyone who is reading independently can join and the rules are super simple. Purchase three kids books and pick a prize from our treasure chest. Purchase three more books and you receive a free book, valued at $10 or less. Please register at McNally Robinson for Kids to receive your book club cards and enjoy a rewarding summer of reading fun.

 

Monthly Feature Picture Books at 30% Off

Every month we feature three delightful and new picture books at 30% off the publisher’s list price. Here are some of the titles we’ve chosen for you this summer.

July
Something Extraordinary by Ben Clanton. Hardcover. $18.99. Our July 30% Off Price $13.29. Wishes and imagination have power but the truly amazing things are happening all around you. You just need to know where to look, and this whimsical picture book is the perfect place to start. (Simon & Schuster) (Ages 4-8)

I Yam a Donkey! by Cece Bell. Hardcover. $21.99. Our July 30% Off Price $15.39. Even frustrated grammarians will giggle at the who’s-on-first routine that begins with a donkey’s excited announcement, “I yam a donkey!” Unfortunately the donkey’s audience happens to be a yam, and one who is particular about sloppy pronunciation and poor grammar. (Houghton Mifflin) (Ages 5-8)

 

August
If You Ever Want to Bring an Alligator to School, Don’t! by Elise Parsley. Hardcover. $19.00. Our August 30% Off Price $13.30.Magnolia brings an alligator to her school show-and-tell. Her reptilian rapscallion impresses everybody, but not in the way she thought, and it’s up to Magnolia to find a way to send this troublemaker home. (Little, Brown) (Ages 5-8)

I Will Never Get a Star on Mrs. Benson’s Blackboard by Jennifer K. Mann. Hardcover. $19.00. Our August 30% Off Price $13.30. Rose does her best at school, but sometimes her mind wanders. But when it’s time to make thank-you cards for a class visitor, her artistic skills shine through in this empowering picture book for the child whose talents lie in unconventional areas. (Candlewick) (Ages 5-8)

 

Science Made Simple

Discover the world of science with the Science Made Simple series by Ticktock. (Softcover. $14.99 each. Octopus Books. Ages 8-14.) Three new titles release in July:

In Science Made Simple: Inventions, let Sparky introduce you to the 50 most important inventions of the last 1,000 years, from eye-glasses to the internet itself. With the help of photos and illustrations, the little lightning- bolt character talks children through the text, providing quips and comments on the historical development of technology.

Science Made Simple: Weather explores climate change, the seasons, and extreme conditions in this definitive guide to the weird and wonderful world of weather. Would you survive a tornado in the Mid-West? Could you handle forty feet of snow? Find out the answers to these questions and more in this fun and informative book, packed full of photos and illustrations.

How do reptiles rev themselves up? Why are pandas so keen on bamboo? And what has biology got to do with it all? With a lively mix of illustrations, diagrams and photography combined with bite-size chunks of text, Science Made Simple: Animals captures children’s thirst for knowledge and makes them laugh along the way.

 

Beach Fun with the Sand Bucket Fun Ice-Cream Set

Enjoy fun in the sun, every time you fill an ice cream cone with sand using your choice of seahorse-shaped scoops for “hard” or “soft serve” and top off with your shell-topped “sprinkle” shaker.

Everything stores in a convenient bucket with a lid that doubles as a sand mold. (Sunny Patch. $20.00)


 

The Kid's Watch List

Geronimo Stilton Cavemice #8: Surfing for Secrets by Geronimo Stilton. (Softcover. $7.99) July 1

Geronimo Stilton #60: The Treasure of Easter Island by Geronimo Stilton. (Softcover. $7.99) July 1

Wings of Fire # 7: Winter Turning by Tui T. Sutherland. (Hardcover. $19.99) July 1

The Unwanteds #4: Island of Legends by Lisa McMann. (Softcover. $9.99) July 7

The Land of Stories #4: Beyond the Kingdoms by Chris Colfer. (Hardcover. $20.00) July 7

Mapmakers #2: The Golden Specific by S.E. Grove. (Hardcover. $20.00) July 14

Heidi Heckelbeck Says “Cheese!” by Wanda Coven, illustrated by Priscilla Burris. (Softcover. $6.99) July 1

Star Wars Jedi Academy #3: The Phantom Bully by Jeffrey Brown. (Hardcover. $14.99) August 1

The 39 Clues: Doublecross #2: Mission Hindenburg by C. Alexander London. (Hardcover. $14.99) August 1

Goddess Girls #17: Amphitrite the Bubblyby Joan Holub & Suzanne Williams. (Softcover. $9.99) August 18

 

 

TEEN SCENE


Friends Are All We Have


A good friend keeps the world at bay, makes you laugh and listens to your worries. Sink into these friendship stories to feel the click of recognition, the sigh of a satisfying resolution to danger and the pull of attraction that friendship can bring.

In Adi Alsaid’s Never, Always, Sometimes, Blase seniors Dave and Julia mock high school with a Never List of everything they’d never be seen to do, starting with Never Date Your Best Friend. But then, as a lark, they decide to complete all these Nevers, which leads them to some regret and an unexpected love. (Hardcover. $19.99. Harlequin. August)

It’s no wonder All We Have is Now by Lisa Schroeder, a story about Emerson and her best friend Vince living homeless on the streets of Portland, has been getting some great pre-publication notices. For starters, an asteroid is only days away from destroying the earth when Emerson and Vince receive money from a generous stranger. They decide to pay it forward, but can their friendship cope with altruism in the face of the apocalypse? (Hardcover. $20.99. Scholastic. August)

In Trouble is a Friend of Mine by Stephanie Tromly, sixteen-year-old Zoe’s new friend Digby is more than a little nerdy. He’s downright weird. Why is he always hungry? And how can he miss so much school? But then there’s drugs, guns, a cult moving in across the street and missing girls. How strong can friendship be? (Hardcover. $19.99. Penguin. August)

 

Short and Not-So-Sweet

Prepare yourself for the chills that a good story can give in these three satisfyingly scary short story anthologies.

In Thirteen Chairs by Dave Shelton, Jack has often been fascinated with that old, abandoned house just off the beaten path. It’s haunted, his friend tells him, but for only one night each year. On that night, Jack stands in front of the house and tells himself he should go home. But Jack is a curious boy. Written as a collection of ghost stories told within a story, Shelton weaves a single narrative between the thirteen seemingly unrelated stories. Some are sombre, some are darkly humorous and some are downright frightening. (Hardcover. $20.99. Scholastic. August)

If dark fairy tales are more to your taste, look no further than Grim edited by Christine Johnson. Perfect for fans of the dark and sinister, this collection of short stories takes such classic fairy tales as “Bluebeard,” “Hansel and Gretel” and even “The Three Little Pigs” and re-works them into something wholly new and completely unexpected. With stories from well-known YA authors such as Julie Kagawa, Ellen Hopkins, Rachel Hawkins and Melinda Lo, this anthology is not for the faint of heart. (Hardcover. $18.99. Harlequin. 2014)

What started off as a friendly discussion between two fictional character-types soon exploded into an all-out literary and internet war, now chronicled in the mass-market edition of Zombies Vs. Unicorns edited by Holly Black and Justine Larbalestier. Heading Team Unicorn is Holly Black, who believes unicorns are more than the fluffy beasts of old. For Justin Larbalestier of Team Zombie, nothing quite beats a good flesh-eater. Both have recruited a team of YA authors to write strong arguments for their own side, thus leaving the ultimate decision up to you. Which will you choose? Zombies or unicorns? (Softcover. $9.99. Saga Press. August)

 

Real Life Graphics

The graphic novel form has evolved to tell non-fiction and tackle serious historical issues.

With the illustrations by Maris Wicks, Primates by Jim Ottaviani is an entertaining nonfiction graphic novel that looks at the field of primatology and at the lives of three of the most remarkable women scientists who defined it: Jane Goodall, Dian Fossey, and BirutÄ— Galdikas. (Hardcover. $14.99. Square Fish. August)

On August 29, 2005, Hurricane Katrina overwhelmed the levees around low-lying New Orleans and flooded the city. Drowned City with Don Brown’s kinetic art and as-it-happens narrative captures both the tragedy and triumph of one of the worst natural disasters in American history. (Hardcover. $28.99. Houghton Mifflin. August)

On June 28, 1914, Gavrilo Princep assassinated Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria, setting off a series of events that triggered WW I. How could a poor student from a tiny Serbian village turn the wheel of history and alter the face of a continent for generations? Terrorist by Henrik Rehr is a riveting graphic novel that fills the gaps in the historical record and imagines the events that led a boy from Oblej to become history’s most significant terrorist. (Softcover. $15.99. Lerner. April)

 

THE TEEN WATCH LIST

Falling Into Place by Amy Zhang. (Softcover. $12.50) July 7

Lorien Legacies #5: The Revenge of Seven by Pittacus Lore. (Softcover. $12.50) July 21

CHERUB #4: Lone Wolf by Robert Muchamore. (Softcover. $10.99) July 28

The Immortal Game #2: Public Enemies by Ann Aguirre. (Hardcover. $20.50) August 4

Diviners: Lair of Dreams by Libba Bray. (Hardcover. $23.00) August 25

 

 

Our Vibrant Communities

What's coming up in Winnipeg & Saskatoon


 

WINNIPEG

Winnipeg Art Gallery
Olympus: The Greco-Roman Collections of Berlin brings to Winnipeg over 160 ancient Greek and Roman art treasures from the celebrated collection of the National Museums in Berlin. The exhibit continues through to April 2016. wag.ca

Walking Tours of the Exchange District
Steeped in history, the Exchange District holds Winnipeg’s deepest, darkest secrets. Knowledgeable tour guides examine legends of power, corruption and heroism all while you enjoy an exceptional collection of architecture. Tours run from May 1 to August 29. To book your tour go to exchangedistrict.org/tours-attractions/walking-tours

Downtown Farmers’ Market
Located at Manitoba Hydro Place (360 Portage Avenue), The Downtown Winnipeg BIZ’s popular farmers’ market serves up fresh produce, vinegars, jams, spices, meat, sauces, fruits, vegetables and preserves every Thursday 10:00 am to 3:00 pm from June 4 to October 8. downtownwinnipegbiz.com

The Winnipeg Folk Fest
The 42nd annual Winnipeg Folk Fest takes place July 9 to12. For four days in July, performers and audiences from all over the world come to Bird’s Hill Park to enjoy exceptional music with friends and family. winnipegfolkfestival.ca

Rainbow Stage
After a spectacular 60th Anniversary Season, the excitement continues with a stellar line-up throughout the summer. If you missed West Side Story in June, there’s still time to enjoy a great outdoor musical theatre experience with Les Misérables (July 9-24) and Sister Act (August 13-September 1). rainbowstage.ca

Winnipeg Fringe Theatre Festival
The Winnipeg Fringe Theatre Festival is North America’s second-largest Fringe. In 2015, the Winnipeg Fringe will host its 28th festival in Winnipeg’s historic Exchange District from July 15-26. winnipegfringe.com

The Manitoba Thresherman’s Reunion
July 23-26. Austen, MB. The Manitoba Threshermen’s Reunion and Stampede is Canada’s largest pioneer heritage festival, that attracts over 10,000 visitors each year from across Manitoba, Western Canada and abroad to the Manitoba Agricultural Museum near Austin. Featuring a working 20-building Homesteaders’ Village, live farming demonstrations with horse, steam and gas power, vintage fashion show, home handicraft displays, heavy horse events, antique car show, live entertainment and a rodeo, this family-friendly show has been entertaining the public for 60 years. ag-museum.mb.ca

Gimli Film Festival
July 22 - 26. Celebrating its 15th year this summer, the Gimli Film Festival with its four indoor venues and the popular free on-the-beach screenings is widely recognized as the most successful film festival in Manitoba. GFF showcases feature films, documentaries and short films from Manitoba, Canada and the world. gimlifilm.com

Ballet in the Park
July 29 - 31. A summer tradition since the 1970s, Ballet in the Park attracts thousands to RWB’s free performances in Assiniboine Park. Sitting on a lawn chair or blanket on the grass at the outdoor Lyric Theatre (2355 Corydon Avenue), this is a relaxed way to take in ballet with your family and friends. rwb.org

Folklorama
Inaugurated in 1970 as a one-time celebration of Manitoba’s centennial, Folklorama has grown to become the largest and longest-running multicultural festival of its kind in the world. This annual two-week Festival of global culture and entertainment takes place the first two weeks in August and attracts over 400,000 visits every year. folklorama.ca

Fire & Water Music Festival
July 31 - August 2, Lac Du Bonnet. Music lovers, are you looking for the perfect way to spend your August Long Weekend? The Fire & Water Music Festival offers three stages featuring independent music, artist workshops and children’s programming that is fun for all ages. The festival brings it all together with the Art Wave Art Show and the Artisan Square Trade and Craft Show featuring local visual artists. And of course there’s the Sol Barrage Light Show which really puts the fire in the Fire & Water Music Festival. firenwater.ca

Morden Corn & Apple Festival
August 21-22. Morden, MB. The Morden Corn and Apple Festival originated as a community celebration for Canada’s 100th Birthday in 1967. Since then it has grown to attract over 70,000 people to a three day event which features free hot buttered corn on the cob, free Ice cold apple cider, free live stage entertainment and more. cornandapple.com

Aboriginal Music Week
Winnipeg’s Aboriginal Music Week presents Native, Métis, Inuit and Indigenous artists performing hip hop, electronic, traditional, world, folk, rock, country and blues music. The festival takes place at various venues from August 18-22. aboriginalmusicweek.ca

 

SASKATOON

Craven Country Jamboree
July 9 – July 12, Craven. Beautiful Craven Valley is the location for the “World’s Greatest Country Music Festival.” Today’s hottest acts and country legends will keep your toes tappin’ all weekend. cravencountryjamboree.com

RCMP Musical Ride
July 13, Fort Battleford National Historic Site. One of Canada’s national icons, the Musical Ride canters into the authentic setting of Fort Battleford to show off their skill. See one of our national treasures perform their intricately choreographed routines. pc.gc.ca/lhn-nhs/sk/battleford/activ.aspx

A Taste of Saskatchewan
July 14 – July 19, Kiwanis Memorial Park. Saskatoon’s festival of fabulous food features more than 30 of the city’s finest restaurants serving their favourite dishes. The festival also features more than 55 Saskatchewan bands and performers. tasteofsaskatchewan.ca

Saskatchewan Festival of Words
July 16 – 19, Moose Jaw. A festival of imaginative language featuring storytellers, novelists, filmmakers, poets, dramatists, songwriters and journalists. See our events listings for details. McNally Robinson is proud to be the festival’s official bookseller. festivalofwords.com

Back to Batoche Days
July 16 – July 19, Batoche. The most celebrated Métis Festival in North America has been a cultural attraction for nearly 50 years. Discover the wonderful culture and music of the Métis people at this family-oriented, drug and alcohol free event that is open to everyone. backtobatoche.org

The Trial of Louis Riel
July 16 – August 1, Regina. 2015 marks the 48th season of Saskatchewan’s longest running dramatic, theatrical production. Experience a re-enactment of the famous Regina courtroom proceedings drawn from the actual transcripts of the trial of Louis Riel, who led the Métis people in the Northwest Resistance of 1885. Performances run Thursdays to Saturdays. rielcoproductions.com

Third Annual Yoga at the Ridge Retreat
July 24 – July 26, Ski Timber Ridge Lodge, Big River. Unite with yogis from across the prairies and beyond at this 3-day yoga retreat in Northern Saskatchewan that fosters learning, growth and wellness. Whether you are new to yoga or an experienced practitioner, the Yoga at the Ridge Retreat welcomes you to explore, discover and experience your yogic journey. tadasanayoga.ca/yoga-retreat

Ness Creek Music Festival
July 16 – July 19, Big River. This outdoor music and culture festival in Saskatchewan’s boreal forest features four days of great music, camping and community. nesscreek.com

PotashCorp Fringe Theatre & Street Festival
July 30 – August 8, Saskatoon. This annual theatre and cultural celebration in the heart of the Broadway District features theatre, arts, crafts, food and busking that attracts 40,000 visitors annually. potashcorpfringe.ca

Northern Lights Bluegrass & Old Tyme Music Camp & Festival
August 10 – 16, Ness Creek. Situated in a clearing in the boreal forest just west of Prince Albert National Park, the 10th Annual Northern Lights Bluegrass and Old Tyme Music Festival (August 14 –16) takes place at Ness Creek. In keeping with blue-grass festival tradition, a music camp will be held at the festival site August 10 –14 with instructors from the mainstage lineup. northernlightsbluegrass.ca

Regina Folk Festival
August 7 – 9, the Regina Folk Festival presents a weekend of exceptional musical styles, cultural influences and some of the best talent in the world. Take in the ticketed main stage shows, free daytime concerts and workshop sessions, children’s area, artists’ market, international food vendors and the Big Rock Garden at Victoria Park in downtown Regina. reginafolkfestival.com

Folkfest ’15
August 13 – 15, Saskatoon. Folkfest is an annual three-day multicultural festival showcasing 18 ethnic pavilions, promoting their cultures through entertainment, cuisines and demonstrations and displays. saskatoonfolkfest.com

Ring of Fire: The Music of Johnny Cash
August 11 – 30, Persephone Theatre, Saskatoon. Performed by a multi-talented cast featuring some of Saskatchewan’s finest artists, this Globe Theatre production includes all of Cash’s classic hits: “I Walk the Line,” “A Boy Named Sue,” and “Folsom Prison Blues,” in a powerful tribute to the Man in Black’s story of finding love, success, faith and redemption. persephonetheatre.org

John Arcand Fiddle Fest
August 13 – 16, Saskatoon. The John Arcand Fiddle Fest is a four-day, family-friendly, affordable festival. A one-time gate admission gives you complete access to workshops, concerts, showcases, competitions, old time dances, Métis Cultural Camp, and more. There’s free shuttle service from four Saskatoon locations, free un-serviced camping, an on-site concession and a large children’s activity area. johnarcandfiddlefest.com

 

 

Prairie Ink Restaurant & Bakery


TOAST YOUR FAVOURITE AUTHOR WITH A COOL, HEALTHY SMOOTHIE
Sip a “Brontë” made from blueberries, banana, yogurt, milk, flax seeds and nutmeg. Take on a “Hemingway” made from spinach, kale, mango, yogurt, orange juice, bananas, lime juice and hemp hearts. Relax with an “Angelou” made from mango, carrots, bananas, yogurt, orange juice, pineapple juice and coconut. For a really hot day try a frozen “Tolstoy” made with apples, dates, bananas, oats, almonds, yogurt, apple juice and cinnamon.

Toast your favourite author with a cool, healthy smoothie

CHEF'S FRESH ENTRÉE SALADS
Keep cool with our rotating menu of delicious entrée salads that wake up the senses and make you feel alive and in tune with nature.

PAUSE FOR A COOL ONE
Enhance your meal with a Rock Creek cider or any of our select mixed-drink specials, and in Winnipeg cool down with one of our specialty iced-teas.

IT'S PATIO TIME
Beat the heat with cool treats and healthy eats on our intimate outdoor space and enjoy the full Prairie Ink menu. (Winnipeg location only.)

LIVE MUSIC
Prairie Ink continues to present free live music every Friday and Saturday night throughout the summer from 8:00 pm to 10:00 pm. Browse our events listings to see what shows are coming up: Winnipeg & Saskatoon 


For more information on Prairie Ink, or to make a reservation, please call us.
Winnipeg
204-975-2659 | Saskatoon 306-955-3579

Also visit our Prairie Ink site for hours, menus, upcoming events, and more.

 


 

Thanks for reading.

The Bookseller is published by McNally Robinson Booksellers each January, March, May, July, and September. It is mailed to Reader Reward Card members, and is available in-store and right here on our website.

You can also subscribe to our mailing list to have The Bookseller sent right to your inbox.

Prices listed above are subject to change.