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A witchy book for Halloween always gets me excited. I still recall one of my favourites from last year, The Witches of Moonshyne Manor, which tells the story of a very fun group of witches. It was this excitement that I brought to Big Little Spells by Hazel Beck, the second in a series about…
Not quite a spooky Halloween book, but Getting Huge by John Young is most definitely a story best read in October because it’s all about growing a massive pumpkin. It’s the opposite of a scary book, it centers on a reverend having a mid-life crisis. Not quite funny, but definitely not too serious, I enjoyed…
I saw a brief mention of the short story collection Homebodies by Amy LeBlanc somewhere online, and I decided I just HAD to read it for my spooky October reading series. It’s harder to find Halloween-themed books by small or independent presses, so I’m quite pleased and excited to introduce this Calgary-based author to a…
I originally chose to read Skid Dogs by Emelia Symington-Fedy now because it referenced the murder of a young woman on Halloween night, so I thought this would be perfect for my October reading…until I realized it was a) non-fiction and b) not really about Halloween at all. Yikes! The fun of being scared on…
It’s October, aka spooky reading season, and how could I let this month pass by without reading the new Stephen King novel? I’m not a die-hard fan; he’s far too prolific for me to have read most of his stuff, but I do enjoy a King novel here and there, and despite its 400 pages,…
I wanted to fit this book into my current reading queue as I was delighted to discover it was longlisted for the Scotiabank Giller Prize, and already sitting on my bookshelf. Wait Softly Brother by Kathryn Kuitenbrouwer is a (somewhat?) experimental novel, one that I wasn’t exactly sure I fully grasped, but found myself getting…
Time for another double review! I waited so long to review the first in the series, The Liquor Vicar by Vince R. Ditrich, that the sequel The Vicar’s Knickers came out before I was able to dig the first out of my bookshelf. So, I read the books back to back to get the full…
A few years ago I read and enjoyed the famous book by Shirley Jackson, The Haunting of Hill House. You can find my review of that here. So when a publisher suggested I take a look at a new release coming this fall that had been the first book approved by Jackson’s estate to return…
I wasn’t surprised to see David Bergen’s latest book Away From the Dead make the Scotibank Giller Prize longlist this year. He’s a serious writer, with seriously impressive award wins and nominations in his past. I last read a book of his in 2014, which you can read my review of here, and I felt…
Having never read her first, bestselling book A Mind Spread Out on the Ground, I was excited to pick up Alicia Elliott’s new book, a work of fiction titled And Then She Fell, because I felt like I was missing out on a very new and cool writer if I didn’t. I enjoyed this one,…
When the Scotiabank Giller Prize Longlist was announced in September, I was delighted to learn that a few books on my shelf were part of it, The Clarion by Nina Dunic being one of them. Coming in at a scant 203 pages, this is a short novel published by a very small press; two great…
At first glance, Ordinary Wonder Tales by Emily Urquhart may seem like a book appealing to only academics. It’s a book of essays, a notoriously challenging genre that rarely hits the bestseller list unless it’s written by a celebrity or David Sedaris, but this collection focuses on a somewhat obscure topic too; folklore. However I…
