Jennifer Keene, Wordfest Board Secretary
Top Picks for 2020
The Innocents by Michael Crummey
*FINALIST FOR THE 2019 SCOTIABANK GILLER PRIZE
*FINALIST FOR THE 2019 GOVERNOR GENERAL’S LITERARY AWARD
*FINALIST FOR THE 2019 ROGERS WRITERS’ TRUST FICTION PRIZE
*WINNER OF THE 2020 THOMAS RADDALL ATLANTIC FICTION AWARD*NATIONAL BESTSELLER
*NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF 2019 BY The Globe and Mail • CBC • Toronto Star • Maclean’s
A brother and sister are orphaned in an isolated cove on Newfoundland’s northern coastline. Their home is a stretch of rocky shore governed by the feral ocean, by a relentless pendulum of abundance and murderous scarcity. Still children with only the barest notion of the outside world, they have nothing but the family’s boat and the little knowledge passed on haphazardly by their mother and father to keep them.
As they fight for their own survival through years of meagre catches and storms and ravaging illness, it is their fierce loyalty to each other that motivates and sustains them. But as seasons pass and they wade deeper into the mystery of their own natures, even that loyalty will be tested.
The Innocents is richly imagined and compulsively readable, a riveting story of hardship and survival, and an unflinching exploration of the bond between brother and sister. By turns electrifying and heartbreaking, it is a testament to the bounty and barbarity of the world, to the wonders and strangeness of our individual selves.
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Owl’s Nest Books | Shelf Life Books
The Finder by Will Ferguson
From the Scotiabank Giller Prize–winning novelist of 419 comes a spellbinding literary adventure novel about precious objects lost and found.
The world is filled with wonders, lost objects—all real—all still out there, waiting to be found:
- the missing Fabergé eggs of the Romanov dynasty, worth millions
- the last reel of Alfred Hitchcock’s first film
- Buddy Holly’s iconic glasses
- Muhammad Ali’s Olympic gold medal
How can such cherished objects simply vanish? Where are they hiding? And who on earth might be compelled to uncover them?
Will Ferguson takes readers on a heroic, imaginative journey across continents, from the seas of southern Japan, to the arid Australian Outback, to the city of Christchurch, New Zealand, after the earthquake. Prepare to meet Gaddy Rhodes, a brittle Interpol agent obsessed with tracking “The Finder”—a shadowy figure she believes is collecting lost objects; Thomas Rafferty, a burnt-out travel writer whose path crosses that of “The Finder,” to devastating effect; and Tamsin Greene, a swaggering war photographer who is hiding secrets of her own.
The Finder is a beguiling and wildly original tale about the people, places, and things that are lost and found in our world. Both an epic literary adventure and an escape into a darkly thrilling world of deceit and its rewards, this novel asks: How far would you be willing to go to recover the things you’ve left behind?
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Owl’s Nest Books | Shelf Life Books
The Glass Hotel by Emily St. John Mandel
The Glass Hotel may be the perfect novel for your survival bunker.
— Ron Charles, The Washington Post
Longlisted for the Scotiabank Giller Prize
A New York Times, Entertainment Weekly, Newsweek, Bustle, Buzzfeed, Goodreads, Houston Chronicle, Writer’s Digest, Medium, Washington Independent Review of Books, The Millions, Boston Globe, USA Today, and Women’s Day Most Anticipated Book of 2020
From the award-winning author of Station Eleven, an exhilarating novel set at the glittering intersection of two seemingly disparate events—a massive Ponzi scheme collapse and the mysterious disappearance of a woman from a ship at sea.
Vincent is a bartender at the Hotel Caiette, a five-star lodging on the northernmost tip of Vancouver Island. On the night she meets Jonathan Alkaitis, a hooded figure scrawls a message on the lobby’s glass wall: “Why don’t you swallow broken glass.” High above Manhattan, a greater crime is committed: Alkaitis is running an international Ponzi scheme, moving imaginary sums of money through clients’ accounts. When the financial empire collapses, it obliterates countless fortunes and devastates lives. Vincent, who had been posing as Jonathan’s wife, walks away into the night. Years later, a victim of the fraud is hired to investigate a strange occurrence: a woman has seemingly vanished from the deck of a container ship between ports of call.
In this captivating story of crisis and survival, Emily St. John Mandel takes readers through often hidden landscapes: campgrounds for the near-homeless, underground electronica clubs, the business of international shipping, service in luxury hotels, and life in a federal prison. Rife with unexpected beauty, The Glass Hotel is a captivating portrait of greed and guilt, love and delusion, ghosts and unintended consequences, and the infinite ways we search for meaning in our lives.
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Owl’s Nest Books | Shelf Life Books
I’m Thinking of Ending Things by Iain Reid
AN NPR BEST BOOK OF 2016
I’m thinking of ending things. Once this thought arrives, it stays. It sticks. It lingers. It’s always there. Always.
Jake once said, “Sometimes a thought is closer to truth, to reality, than an action. You can say anything, you can do anything, but you can’t fake a thought.”
And here’s what I’m thinking: I don’t want to be here.
In this “dark and compelling … unputdownable” (Booklist, starred review) literary thriller, debut novelist Iain Reid explores the depths of the human psyche, questioning consciousness, free will, the value of relationships, fear, and the limitations of solitude. Reminiscent of Jose Saramago’s early work, Michel Faber’s cult classic Under the Skin, and Lionel Shriver’s We Need to Talk about Kevin, I’m Thinking of Ending Things is an edgy, haunting debut. Tense, gripping, and atmospheric, this novel “packs a big psychological punch with a twisty story line and an ending that will leave readers breathless” (Library Journal, starred review).
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Owl’s Nest Books | Shelf Life Books
Trickster Drift by Eden Robinson
Following the Scotiabank Giller Prize-shortlisted Son of a Trickster comes Trickster Drift, a national bestseller and the second book in Eden Robinson’s captivating Trickster trilogy.
Jared Martin, seventeen, has quit drugs and drinking. But his troubles are not over: the temptation to slip is constant (thanks to his enabling, ever-partying mom, Maggie). He’s being stalked by David, his mom’s ex—a preppy, khaki-wearing psycho with a proclivity for rib-breaking. And Maggie, a witch as well as a badass, can’t protect him like she used to because he’s moved from Kitimat to Vancouver for school.
He figures that in order to be safe from both magic, addiction and David, he’s got to get his grades up, find a job that doesn’t involve selling weed cookies, and learn how to live with his Aunt Mave, who has been estranged from the family ever since she tried to “rescue” him as a baby from his mother. Though she smothers him with hugs, Mave is blind to the real dangers that lurk around them—the spirits and supernatural activity that fill her apartment.
As the son of a Trickster, Jared is a magnet for magic, whether he hates it or not. He sees ghosts, he sees the monster moving underneath his Aunt Georgina’s skin, he sees the creature that comes out of his bedroom wall and creepily wants to suck his toes. He also still hears his father in his head, and other voices too. When David finally catches up with him, Jared can’t ignore his true nature any longer. And neither can anyone else he loves.
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Trickster Drift
Owl’s Nest Books | Shelf Life Books
Return of the Trickster (Preorder)