Giller Prize 2019 longlist

The Scotiabank Giller Prize, which was created in honour of the late literary journalist Doris Giller and recognizes excellence in Canadian literature, unveiled its longlist for the 2019 award.

The longlist includes:

• Days by Moonlight by André Alexis
• The Testaments by Margaret Atwood
• Immigrant City by David Bezmozgis
• Greenwood by Michael Christie
• Small Game Hunting at the Local Coward Gun Club by Megan Gail Coles
• The Innocents by Michael Crummey
• Dream Sequence by Adam Foulds
• Late Breaking by K.D. Miller
• Dual Citizens by Alix Ohlin
• Lampedusa by Steven Price
• Frying Plantain by Zalika Reid-Benta
• Reproduction by Ian Williams

The shortlist will be announced on September 30th, and the winner revealed on November 18th.

If you're in Winnipeg, we hope to see you at our annual Giller Light Bash on November 18th, which takes place inside Prairie Ink Restaurant at our Grant Park location. For more details and to book your seats online, see this page.

Booker Prize 2019 shortlist

The finalists of this year's Booker Prize for Fiction have been announced.

Of particular note, Margaret Atwood is the only Canadian to make the 2019 shortlist. She was nominated for The Testaments, a sequel to her iconic novel The Handmaid's Tale, which will be released September 10th, 2019.

The other finalists includes:

• Ducks, Newburyport by Lucy Ellmann
• Girl, Woman, Other by Bernardine Evaristo
• An Orchestra of Minorities by Chigozie Obioma
• Quichotte by Salman Rushdie
• 10 Minutes 38 Seconds in This Strange World by Elif Shafak

The winner will be revealed October 14th, 2019.

What To Read: September & October 2019

A collection of recent books particularly recommended by Chris Hall. Look for our in-store What To Read display tables.

Split Tooth by Tanya Tagaq. Softcover. $19.99. RRC Price $17.99. Fact can be as strange as fiction. It can also be as dark, as violent, as rapturous. A girl grows up in Nunavut in the 1970s. She knows friendship and parents' love, she knows boredom and bullying. She knows the raw power of the ice and sky, the energy of the animal world. She knows the ravages of alcohol, and violence at the hands of those she should be able to trust. She sees the spirits that surround her, and the immense power that dwarfs all of us. When she becomes pregnant, she must navigate all this and becomes a heroine readers will never forget. (Penguin. September)

Crashed by Adam Tooze. Softcover. $27.00. RRC Price $24.30. Crashed is a reinterpretation of the 2008 economic crisis (and its ten-year aftermath) as a global event that directly led to the shockwaves being felt around the world today. It was the greatest crisis to have struck Western societies since the end of the Cold War, but is it over? Tooze takes us through a narrative of the haphazard nature of economics, the erratic path of debt around the world, and the unseen ways different regions and groups are in deeply unequal relationships. (Penguin. September)

See more What To Read picks after the jump...

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September's Author of the Month: RUTH WARE

Ruth Ware is an international number one bestseller. Her thrillers In a Dark, Dark Wood, The Woman in Cabin 10, The Lying Game and The Death of Mrs Westaway were smash hits, and she has appeared on bestseller lists around the world. Ware's writing style is often compared to that of Agatha Christie. Her books have been optioned for both film and TV, and she is published in more than 40 languages. Before her writing career, Ware worked as a waitress, a bookseller and a publicist. She also spent time in Paris, teaching English as a foreign language. She now lives near Brighton with her family.

Ware believes that the biggest autobiographical element of most of her books is that the main characters are generally intolerant of bad coffee. She has stated that “[...] the most interesting thing about me is my books, which are full of murder, family secrets, toxic friendships and things that go bump in the night, in contrast to my own very mundane, peaceful existence.”

In Ware's new novel, The Turn of the Key, Rebecca stumbles across an ad for a live-in nanny when she’s looking for something else completely. But it seems like too good an opportunity to miss — with a staggeringly generous salary. And when she arrives at Heatherbrae House, she is smitten — by the luxurious “smart” house fitted out with all modern conveniences, by the beautiful Scottish Highlands, and by this picture-perfect family.

What Rebecca doesn’t know is that she’s stepping into a nightmare — one that will end with a child dead and Rebecca in prison awaiting trial for murder.