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Media Hits: A WAY TO BE HAPPY, THE EDUCATION OF AUBREY MCKEE, THE NOTEBOOK, and more!

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IN THE NEWS!

A WAY TO BE HAPPY

A Way to Be Happy by Caroline Adderson (Sep 10, 2024) has received a starred review from Kirkus Reviews! The starred review will appear in their August print issue, and was published online on July 4. Check it out here.

Kirkus writes,

“Adderson . . . is a deft, masterful storyteller whose literary fiction surely deserves more attention.”

Order A Way to Be Happy here!

HELLO, HORSE

Hello, Horse by Richard Kelly Kemick (Aug 6, 2024) was listed in Reactor‘s “Can’t Miss Indie Press Speculative Fiction for July and August 2024.” The article was posted on July 3, and you can read it here.

Tobias Carroll writes,

“These stories include a number of strange visions of the not-so-distant future—and throw some ghosts into the mix as well. “

Get Hello, Horse here!

THE NOTEBOOK

Roland Allen, author of The Notebook (Sep 3, 2024), was interviewed on Ryan Holiday’s podcast The Daily Stoic. The episode aired on June 26, and is available to listen to here.

Order The Notebook here!

THE HOLLOW BEAST

The Hollow Beast by Christophe Bernard, translated by Lazer Lederhendler (Apr 2, 2024), was reviewed in the Manhattan Book Review. The review was published online for their June issue, and is available to read here.

Reviewer Eric Smith writes,

“Bernard’s hilarious tome is a hundred-proof fever dream of bizarre scenarios and Canada’s most outlandish cast of characters . . . But readers beware. Your technicolor nightmares will be fueled by The Hollow Beast.”

Grab The Hollow Beast here!

AWARD NEWS!

THE EDUCATION OF AUBREY MCKEE

The Education of Aubrey McKee by Alex Pugsley (May 7, 2024) has been longlisted for the 2024 Toronto Book Awards! The longlist was announced on July 4, and you can read it here.

Toronto Public Library has created a special reading list of the 2024 longlisted titles, here. The shortlist for the 2024 Toronto Book Awards will be announced later this summer and a winner will be named in a prize ceremony November 7.

Grab The Education of Aubrey McKee here!

Or, check out the first book, Aubrey McKee, here.

ON PROPERTY nominated for the TORONTO BOOK AWARDS

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Book cover for Rinaldo Walcott's On Property. Features the author's name and title at the top with "Field Notes" written on the side vertically. Overlapping the title is a security camera.We’re excited to announce that Rinaldo Walcott’s On Property has been nominated for the 2021 Toronto Book Awards! The longlist was announced yesterday on June 29, 2021. Rinaldo Walcott is one of 10 authors on the longlist. The shortlist will be announced in August 2021.

Established by Toronto City Council in 1974, the Toronto Book Awards honour books of literary merit that are inspired by the city. The annual awards offer $15,000 in prize money with shortlisted authors receiving $1,000 each and the winner taking home $10,000.

There are no separate categories: novels, short story collections, books of poetry, books on history, politics and social issues, biographies, books about sports, children’s and young adult books, graphic novels and photographic collections are judged together.

Jurors for the 2021 Toronto Book Awards narrowed the field from a record-setting 93 submissions to just 10 books. The 2021 Book Awards Jury was made up of Geoffrey E. Taylor, Christine Miskonoodinkwe Smith, Andy Stanleigh, Angela Wright, and Sanchari Sur.

The other books on the 2021 longlist are Missing From the Village by Justin Ling (Penguin/Random House), Saga Boy: My Life of Blackness and Becoming by Antonio Michael Downing (Penguin/Random House), Crosshairs by Catherine Hernandez (Simon & Schuster), Æther: An Out-of-Body Lyric by Catherine Graham (Wolsak & Wynn), Swimmers in Winter by Faye Guenther (Invisible Publishing), Speak, Silence by Kim Echlin (Penguin/Random House), Hana Khan Carries On by Uzma Jalaluddin (Harper Collins Canada), The Good Fight by Ted Staunton, & illustrated by Josh Rosen (Scholastic Canada), and Unravel by Sharon Jennings (Red Deer Press). Last year’s winner was The Skin We’re In: A Year of Black Resistance and Power by Desmond Cole (Doubleday Canada).

 

ABOUT ON PROPERTY

Photo Credit: Abdi Osman

From plantation rebellion to prison labour’s super-exploitation, Walcott examines the relationship between policing and property.

That a man can lose his life for passing a fake $20 bill when we know our economies are flush with fake money says something damning about the way we’ve organized society. Yet the intensity of the calls to abolish the police after George Floyd’s death surprised almost everyone. What, exactly, does abolition mean? How did we get here? And what does property have to do with it? In On Property, Rinaldo Walcott explores the long shadow cast by slavery’s afterlife and shows how present-day abolitionists continue the work of their forebears in service of an imaginative, creative philosophy that ensures freedom and equality for all. Thoughtful, wide-ranging, compassionate, and profound, On Property makes an urgent plea for a new ethics of care.

 

ABOUT RINALDO WALCOTT

Rinaldo Walcott is a Professor in the Women and Gender Studies Institute at the University of Toronto. His research is in the area of Black Diaspora Cultural Studies, gender and sexuality.

 

Get your copy of On Property from Biblioasis here!

Events

Cherry Beach: 2026 Toronto Book Awards Prize Ceremony

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Join us in Toronto for the 2026 Toronto Book Awards Prize Ceremony! Cherry Beach by Don Gillmor is a shortlisted title, and the award winner will be announced at the ceremony that night. Author and comedian, Ali Hassan will be joined by this year’s finalists, and other notable Torontonians to celebrate the City and its literary accomplishments.

The event will take place at the Appel Salon inside the Toronto Reference Library on Tuesday, November 10 at 7PM.

Free registration and more details here.

Get Cherry Beach here!

ABOUT CHERRY BEACH

“This is one of the best Canadian crime novels of this or any year . . . Toronto now takes its place with Los Angeles, New York, and Boston as a character in the action and it’s great.”—Margaret Cannon, Globe and Mail

Shortlisted for the 2026 Toronto Book Awards

A brutal murder exposes secret real estate deals, a corrupt police force, and the dark heart of a city simmering with unrest.

When two girls are found murdered in a rundown Toronto highrise, Jamieson Abel and his partner are first on the scene. Abel is a law school dropout turned police detective chronically at odds with his colleagues and perpetually on the brink of being terminated, and Davis is the department’s only female officer of colour. Both understand their being partnered as a form of banishment, but when the details of the murder go public at the start of an excruciatingly hot summer, they find themselves thrust into the centre of a front page investigation that will bring to a head the city’s long history of shady real estate deals and racist disenfranchisement.

Intricately plotted and brilliantly layered, Cherry Beach is a gripping literary crime novel that examines class, race, and corruption in the most multicultural city in the world.

ABOUT DON GILLMOR

Don Gillmor is the author of To the River, which won the Governor General’s Award for nonfiction. He is the author of five novels, Cherry Beach, Breaking and Entering, Long Change, Mount Pleasant, and Kanata; a two-volume history of Canada, Canada: A People’s History; and nine books for children, two of which were nominated for the Governor General’s Award. He was a senior editor at The Walrus, and his journalism has appeared in Rolling Stone, GQ, Saturday Night, Toronto Life, the Globe and Mail, and the Toronto Star. He has won twelve National Magazine Awards and numerous other honours. He lives in Toronto.