The Book of Negroes: Illustrated Edition
By Lawrence Hill
HarperCollins Canada 978 1 55468 695 7
$34.99 Fiction

A beautiful, richly illustrated edition of the new Canadian classic with more than 100 images, including early maps, documants, paintings, artifacts and illustrations.

When Aminata Diallo sits down to pen the story of her life in London, England, at the dawn of the nineteenth century, she has a world of experience behind her. Abducted from her village in West Africa as an 11-year-old child and forced to walk on a coffle- a string of slaves- for month to the sea. Aminata is put to work on an indigo plantation on the sea islands of South Carolina. Aminata survives by using midwifery skills learned at her mother's side, and by drawing on a strength of character inherited from both parents. But Aminata remains trapped, narrowly avoiding the violence that cuts short so many lives around her. Eventually, she has a chance to register her name in the "Book of Negroes", a historical British military ledger allowing 3,000 Black Loyalists passage on ships sailing from Manhattan to Nova Scotia.

This remarkable novel transports the reader from an African village to a plantation in the southern United States, from a refuge in Nova Scotia to the coast of Sierra Leone, in a back-to-Africa odyssey of 1,200 former slaves. The Book of Negroes introduces one of the strongest female characters in recent fiction, a woman who cuts a swath through a world hostile to her colour and her sex.

Lawrence Hill has transformed a neglected corner of history into a brilliantly imagined piece of historical fiction, now vividly illustrated in this keepsake edition.

Please join us on Saturday, December 12th at 11:00 am for an in-store signing with Mr Hill. See events page for details.

The Anthologist: A Novel
By Nicholson Baker
Simon & Schuster 978 1 4165 7244 4
$32.99 Fiction

The Anthologist is narrated by Paul Chowder- a once-in-a-while-published kind of poet who is writing the introduction to a new anthology of poetry. He's having a hard time getting started because his career is floundering, his girlfriend Roz has recently left him, and he is thinking about the great poets throughout history who have suffered far worse and deserve to feel sorry for themselves. He has also promised to reveal many wonderful secrets, tips and tricks about poetry, and it looks like the introduction will be a little longer than he'd thought.

What unfolds is a wholly entertaining and beguiling love story about poetry: from Tennyson, Swinburne, and Yeats to the moderns (Roethke, Bogan, Merwin) to the staff at The New Yorker, what Paul Reveals is astonishing and makes one realize how incredibly important poetry is to our lives. At the same time, Paul barely manages to realize all of this himself, and the result is a tenderly romantic, hilarious, and inspiring novel.

The Strangest Man: The Hidden Life of Paul Dirac, Mystic of the Atom
By Graham Farmelo
Basic Books 978 0 465 01827 7
$37.95 Biography

Paul Dirac was among the great scientific geniuses of the modern age. One of the discoverers of quantum mechanics, the most revolutionary theory of the past century, his contributions had a unique insight, eloquence, clarity, and mathematical power. His prediction of antimatter was one of the greatest triumphs in the history of physics. One of Einstein's most admired colleagues, Dirac was, in 1933, the youngest theoretician ever to win the Nobel Prize in physics.

Dirac's personality is legendary. He was an extraordinarily reserved loner, relentlessly literal-minded and appeared to have no empathy with most people. Yet he was a family man and was intensely loyal to his friends. His tastes in the arts ranged from Beethoven to Cher, from Rembrandt to Mickey Mouse.

Based on previously undiscovered archives, The Strangest Man reveals the many facets of Paul Dirac's brilliantly original mind. A compelling human story that also depicts a spectacularly exciting era in scientific history.

The Lacuna: A Novel
By Barbara Kinslover
HarperCollins 978 1 55468 475 5
$34.99 Fiction

In her most accomplished novel to date, Barbara Kingsolver takes us on an epic journey from the Mexico City of artists Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo to the America of Pearl Harbor, FDR, and J. Edgar Hoover. The Lacuna is a poignant story of a man pulled between two nations as they invent their modern identities.

Born in the United States, reared in a series of provisional households in Mexico- from a coastal island jungle to 1930's Mexico City- Harrison Shepherd finds precarious shelter but no sense of home on his thrilling odyssey. Life is whatever her learns from housekeepers who put him to work in the kitchen, errands he runs in the streets, and one fateful day, by mixing plaster for famed Mexican muralist Diego Rivera. He discovers a passion for Aztec history and meets the exotic, imperious artist Frida Kalho, who will become his lifelong friend. When he goes to work for Lev Trotsky, an exiled political leader fighting for his life, Shephard inadvertently casts his lot with art and revolution, newspaper headlines and howling gossip and a risk of terrible violence.

With deeply compelling characters, a vivid sense of place, and a clear grasp of how history and public opinion can shape a life, Barbara Kingslover has created an unforgettable portrait of the artist- and of art itself. The Lacuna is a rich and daring work of literature, establishing its author as one of the most provacative and important of her time.

Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide
By Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn
Knopf 978 0 307 26714 6
$34.00 Political Science

From two of our most fiercely moral voices, a passionate call to arms against our era's most pervasive human rights violation: the oppression of women and girls in the deloping world.

With Pulitzer Prize winners Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn as our guides, we undertake a journey through Africa and Asia to meet the extraordinary women struggling there, among them a Cambodian teenage sold into sex slavery and an Ethiopian woman who suffered devastating injuries in childbirth. Drawing on the breadth of their combined reporting experience, Kristof and WuDunn depict our world with anger, sadness, clarity, and, ultimately hope.

They show how a little help can transform the lives of women and girls abroad. That Cambodian girl eventually escaped from the brothel and, with assistance from an aids group, built a thriving retail business that supports her family. The Ethiopian woman had her injuries reapired and in time became a surgeon. A Zimbabwean mother of five, counseled to return to school, earned her doctorate and became an expert on AIDS.

Through these stories, Kristof and WuDunn help us see that the key to economic progress lies in unleashing women's potential. They make clear how so many people have helped to do just that, and how we can each do our part. Deeply felt, pragmatic, and inspirational, Half the Sky is essential reading for every global citizen.

A Week in December
By Sebastain Faulks
Random House 978 0 09 179445 3
$34.95 Fiction

Over a week in 2007 we follow the lives of seven major characters: A hedge-fund manager trying to bring off the biggest trade of his career; a professional footballer recently arrived from POland; a young lawyer with little work and too much time to speculate; a student who has been led astrayby Islamist theory; a hack book-reviewer; a schoolboy hooked on skunk and reality television; and a subway driver whose trains join these and countless other lives together in a daily loop.

With daring skill, the novel pieces together the complex patterns and crossings of modern urban life. Greed, the dehumanising effects of the electronic age, and the fragmentation of society are some of the themes dealt with in this savagely humourous book. The writing in the wall appears in letters ten feet high, but the characters refuse to see it- and party on, as though tomorrow is a dream.

Sebastian Faulks probes not only the self-deceptions of this intensely realised group, but their hopes and loves as well. As the novel moves to its gripping climax, they are forced, one by one, to confront the true nature of the world they inhabit.

Savage Gods, Silver Ghosts: In the Wild with Ted Hughes
By Ehor Boyanowsky
Douglas & McIntyre 978 1 55365 323 3
$28.99 Biography

They met at a poetry reading, but Ehor Boyanowsky and British Poet Laureate Ted Hughes became friends through their shared- and unquenchable- passion for fishing. Against the backdrop of British Columbia's Dean River, one of the world's greatest steelhead rivers, the two men explored their mutual regard for the planet's wild places. Boyanowsky, a criminologist and lifelong adventurer, draws on personal correspondence, interviews and journal entries to recreate their encounters and to paint an intimate portrait of a lifelong out-doordsman, conservationist and artist.

The book also goes behind the creative process as fishing logs transmute into poetry, talk becomes action and the Queen's bard composes bawdy verse on the drive to a stag party. Boyanowsky realizes he's been priviledged to gain access to a side of the literary giant unseen by the public- both at home in Great Britain and in the New World to which Hughes came to feel such affinity.

In these tales of male friendship and the primal act of fly-fishing, recounted with the rigour of a scholar and the passion of a poet, Boyanowsky offers glimpses of the nature "red in tooth and claw" that drew Hughes in his final years to Canada- and reaffirmed his love for the natural world.

The Odds Get Even
By Natalie Ghent
HarperTrophy Canada 978 1 55468 412 0
$14.99 ( Ages 9-12)

Boney, Itchy and Squeak are the Odd Fellows, just a bit different from everyone else, and the best of friends. They hang out in their treehouse in Boney's backyard, a refuge from their mortal enemy, Larry Harry, and his relentless bullying. But the Odds have had enough- it's time to get revenge. They're going to put an end to Larry's reign of terror, and they're going to use their knowledge of science and the local legend of the haunted mill to do so- if they don't get tanged up in their own schemes first.

Hipless Boy: Short Stories
By Sully
Conundrum Press 978 1 894994 40 8
$19.95 Graphic Novel

Say for a second you're just a normal person. You live in a hipster neighbourhood but you're not a hipster. You're hipless. This is the premise behind this collection of interlinked stories.

The hipless boy tries to live his life like an open heart, a curious cat, meeting and mingling with a collection of oddballs. He finds love, loses love, learns to like cross-dressing, and finds something else, a litle harder to define. Along for the ride are his best friends Minerva and Owen. She is a semi-bisexual private-school drop-out. He is an art-school fabulist who constantly conjures up new ways to court controversy.

Crisp linework resonating with clean writing, the short stories collected here reveal an interwoven community of new adults, struggling to find familes of their own making. Sully's warmth and hounour renind us that the hipless are human too.

Travelling Heroes: Greeks and their Myths in the Age of Homer
By Robin Lane Fox
Penguin 978 0 140 24499 1
$21.00 History

The myths of the ancient Greeks have inspired us for thousands of years. Where did the famous stories of the battles of their gods develop and spread across the world? The celebrated classicst Robin Lane Fox draws on a lifetime's knowledge of the ancient world, and on his own travels, answering this question by pursuing it through the age of Homer. His acclaimed history explores how the intrepid seafarers of eighth-centurt Greece sailed around the Mediterranean, encountering strange new sights and weaving them into the myths of gods, monsters and heroes that would become a cornerstone of Western civilization.