Eight transatlantic clients and their buzzworthy Canadian titles have been included in CBC BOOK’s Spring Reading List for 2023!
Those included in the list are:
DUCKS: TWO YEARS IN THE OIL SANDS by Kate Beaton, published by Drawn & Quarterly.
About the book:
Celebrated cartoonist Kate Beaton vividly presents the untold story of Canada.
Before there was Kate Beaton, New York Times bestselling cartoonist of Hark A Vagrant fame, there was Katie Beaton of the Cape Breton Beatons, specifically Mabou, a tight-knit seaside community where the lobster is as abundant as beaches, fiddles, and Gaelic folk songs. After university, Beaton heads out west to take advantage of Alberta’s oil rush, part of the long tradition of East Coasters who seek gainful employment elsewhere when they can’t find it in the homeland they love so much. With the singular goal of paying off her student loans, what the journey will actually cost Beaton will be far more than she anticipates.
Arriving in Fort McMurray, Beaton finds work in the lucrative camps owned and operated by the world’s largest oil companies. Being one of the few women among thousands of men, the culture shock is palpable. It does not hit home until she moves to a spartan, isolated worksite for higher pay. She encounters the harsh reality of life in the oil sands where trauma is an everyday occurrence yet never discussed. Her wounds may never heal.
Beaton’s natural cartooning prowess is on full display as she draws colossal machinery and mammoth vehicles set against a sublime Albertan backdrop of wildlife, Northern Lights, and Rocky Mountains. Her first full-length graphic narrative, Ducks: Two Years in the Oil Sands is an untold story of Canada: a country that prides itself on its egalitarian ethos and natural beauty while simultaneously exploiting both the riches of its land and the humanity of its people.
Drawn & Quarterly is represented by Evan Brown and Samantha Haywood.
SUPERFAN by Jen Sookfong Lee.
About the book:
A sharply observed memoir in pieces that uses one woman’s life-long love affair with pop culture as a lens to explore family, identity, grief, the power of female rage, and what it’s cost to resist the trap of being a good Chinese girl.
For most of Jen Sookfong Lee’s life, pop culture was an escape from family tragedy and a means of fitting in with the larger culture around her. Anne of Green Gables promised her that, despite losing her father at the age of twelve, one day she might still have the loving family of her dreams, and Princess Diana was proof that maybe there was more to being a good girl after all. And yet as Jen grew up, she began to recognize the ways in which pop culture was not made for someone like her–the child of Chinese immigrant parents who looked for safety in the invisibility afforded by embracing model minority myths.
Ranging from the unattainable perfection of Gwyneth Paltrow and the father-figure familiarity of Bob Ross, to the long shadow cast by The Joy Luck Club and the life lessons she has learned from Rihanna, Jen weaves together key moments in pop culture with stories of her own failings, longings, and struggles as she navigates the minefields that come with carving her own path as an Asian woman, single mother, and writer. And with great wit, bracing honesty, and a deep appreciation for the ways culture shapes us, she draws direct lines between the spectacle of the popular, the intimacy of our personal bonds, and the social foundations of our collective obsessions.
Jen is represented by Samantha Haywood.
IN THE UPPER COUNTRY by Kai Thomas.
About the book:
The fates of two unforgettable women–one just beginning a journey of reckoning and self-discovery and the other completing her life’s last vital act–intertwine in this sweeping, powerful novel set at the terminus of the Underground Railroad.
In the 1800s in Dunmore, a Canadian town settled by people fleeing enslavement in the American south, young Lensinda Martin works for a crusading Black journalist.
One night, a neighboring farmer summons Lensinda after a slave hunter is shot dead on his land by an old woman who recently arrived via the Underground Railroad. When the old woman refuses to flee before the authorities arrive, the farmer urges Lensinda to gather testimony from her before she can be condemned for the crime.
But the old woman doesn’t want to confess. Instead she proposes a barter: a story for a story. And so begins an extraordinary exchange of tales that reveal an interwoven history of Black and Indigenous peoples in a wide swath of what is called North America.
As time runs out, Lensinda is challenged to uncover her past and face her fears in order to make good on the bargain of a story for a story. And it seems the old woman may carry a secret that could shape Lensinda’s destiny.
Traveling along the path of the Underground Railroad from Virginia to Michigan, from the Indigenous nations around the Great Lakes, to the Black refugee communities of Canada, In the Upper Country weaves together unlikely stories of love, survival, and familial upheaval that map the interconnected history of the peoples of North America in an entirely new and resonant way.
Kai is represented by Samantha Haywood.
SONG OF THE SPARROW by Tara Maclean.
About the book:
An astonishing memoir about how song saved a life Singer/songwriter Tara MacLean has had an extraordinary musical career. From being discovered singing on a BC ferry to touring with Dido, Tom Cochrane and Lilith Fair, her solo albums and those with the band Shaye have touched legions of fans. But she hasn’t, until now, disclosed the details of how the power of song saved her from a childhood filled with danger.
From her earliest days in the backwoods of Prince Edward Island, Tara was surrounded by nature, the songs of her musician father and the love of her actor mother. But love was not enough to feed their growing family, nor were the Wiccan, then evangelical Christian teachings her parents followed. Poverty and uncertainty were constant companions, as were the dangers that began to enter her world. Predators can come in many forms from even the most trusted circles, and Tara soon learned that a young girl is never safe. It was only through Tara’s inner strength and the sanctuary she found in singing that she created a refuge and a future for herself.
Song of the Sparrow is a daring, heartbreaking and provocative memoir of a life filled with music, told with the same raw, open and elegant poetry that Tara’s fans have come to expect. From Tara’s childhood in PEI through her teenage years in BC to her meteoric rise in music, Song of the Sparrow reveals her remarkable strength and shows that a song and a wide-open heart are the best weapons for fighting monsters.
Tara is represented by Carolyn Forde.
THE STORY OF US by Catherine Hernandez.
About the book:
From the author of Canada Reads finalist Scarborough, a stunning new novel about the unbreakable bond of family and the magic that can happen when we meet in the middle
Like many Overseas Filipino Workers, Mary Grace Concepcion has lived a life of sacrifices. First, she left her husband, Ale, to be a caregiver in Hong Kong. Now, she has travelled even farther, to Canada, in the hopes of one day sponsoring Ale and having children of their own.
But when she arrives in Toronto, she must navigate a series of bewildering and careless employers and unruly children. Mary Grace seeks new employment as a Personal Support Worker and begins caring for Liz, an elderly patient suffering from Alzheimer’s disease, whose health is as fragile as her rundown bungalow beside the Rouge River in Scarborough. While Mary Grace’s time with her charge challenges her conservative beliefs, she soon becomes Liz’s biggest ally, and the friendship that grows between them will turn out to be just as legendary as Liz’s past.
Beautifully narrated by the all-seeing eye of Mary Grace’s newborn baby, The Story of Us is a novel about sisterhood, about blood and chosen family, and about how belonging can be found where we least expect it.
Catherine is represented by Marilyn Biderman.
A DEATH AT THE PARTY by Amy Stuart.
About the book:
In this tense, spellbinding thriller set over the course of a single day, a woman prepares for a party that goes dreadfully wrong—for fans of Ashley Audrain and Lisa Jewell.
Nadine Walsh’s summer garden party is in full swing. The neighbors all have cocktails, the catered food is exquisite—everything’s going according to plan.
But Nadine—devoted wife, loving mother, and doting daughter—finds herself standing over a dead body in her basement while her guests clink glasses upstairs. What happened? How did it come to this?
Rewind to that morning, when Nadine is in her kitchen, making last-minute preparations before she welcomes more than a hundred guests to her home to celebrate her mother’s birthday. But her husband is of little help to her, her two grown children are consumed with their own concerns, and her mother—only her mother knows that today isn’t just a birthday party. It marks another anniversary as well.
Still, Nadine will focus just on tonight. Everyone deserves a celebration after the year they’ve had. A chance for fun. A chance to forget. But it’s hard to forget when Nadine’s head is swirling with secrets, haunting memories, and concerns about what might happen when her guests unite.
Amy is represented by Samantha Haywood.
THE FAKE by Zoe Whittall.
About the book:
A con artist can make you feel like the luckiest person on earth just to be in their presence. But when the jig is up, they ghost, and you’re left wondering if you ever mattered
After the death of her wife, Shelby feels more alone than ever—until she meets Cammie, a charismatic woman unafraid of what anyone else thinks and whose own history of trauma draws Shelby close. When Cammie is fired from her job and admits she is in treatment for kidney cancer, Shelby devotes all her time to helping Cammie thrive. But Shelby’s intuition tells her there are things about Cammie’s past that don’t add up. Could the realest thing about Cammie be that she’s actually a scammer?
Gibson is almost forty, fresh from a divorce and deeply depressed. Then he meets and falls in love with Cammie. Suddenly, he’s having the best sex of his life with a woman so attractive he’s stunned she even glanced his way, and for the first time ever he feels truly known. This is the kind of desire and passion that musicians have been writing love songs about for centuries. But Gibson’s friends are wary of Cammie, and eventually he too has to admit that Cammie’s dramatic life can feel a bit over the top.
When Shelby and Gibson find out Cammie is a pathological liar, they struggle to understand what they really want from her—sometimes they want to help her heal from whatever causes her to invent reality, and sometimes they want revenge. But the biggest question of all is: how honest can Shelby and Gibson be about their own characters?
Zoe is represented by Samantha Haywood.
THE BERRY PICKERS by Amanda Peters.
About the book:
A four-year-old girl goes missing from the blueberry fields of Maine, sparking a tragic mystery that will remain unsolved for nearly fifty years
July 1962. A Mi’kmaq family from Nova Scotia arrives in Maine to pick blueberries for the summer. Weeks later, four-year-old Ruthie, the family’s youngest child, vanishes mysteriously. She is last seen by her six-year-old brother, Joe, sitting on her favourite rock at the edge of a berry field. Joe will remain deeply affected by his sister’s disappearance for years to come.
In Boston, a young girl named Norma grows up as the only child of an affluent family. Her father is emotionally distant, her mother frustratingly overprotective. Norma is often troubled by recurring dreams and visions that seem more like memories than imagination. As she grows older, Norma slowly comes to realize there is something her parents aren’t telling her. Unwilling to abandon her intuition, she will spend decades trying to uncover this family secret.
A stunning debut by a vibrant new voice in fiction, The Berry Pickers is a riveting novel about the search for truth, the shadow of trauma and the persistence of love across time.
Amanda is represented by Marilyn Biderman.
To read more, follow the link:
https://www.cbc.ca/books/32-canadian-books-to-read-in-spring-2023-1.6802496?fbclid=IwAR26OkDR4zaaihs38QJ8RofDDwp_5yjrXTpCFSeJWQu2xFma-2njOwFa8yo
Congratulations everyone!