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The Double Life of Benson Yu

Author : Kevin Chong

Publisher : Simon and Schuster

Page : 240 pages

File Size : 21,55 MB

Release : 2024-02-13

Category : Fiction

ISBN : 1668005514

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Book Description

In a Chinatown housing project lives twelve-year-old Benny, his ailing grandmother, and his strange neighbor Constantine, a man who believes he's a reincarnated medieval samurai. When his grandmother is hospitalized, Benny manages to survive on his own until a social worker comes snooping. With no other family, he is reluctantly taken in by Constantine and soon, an unlikely bond forms between the two. At least, that's what Yu, the narrator of the story, wants to write. The creator of a bestselling comic book, Yu is struggling with continuing the poignant tale of Benny and Constantine and can't help but interject from the present day, slowly revealing a darker backstory. Can Yu confront the demons he's spent his adult life avoiding or risk his own life ... and Benny's?



The Son of the House

Author : Cheluchi Onyemelukwe-Onuobia

Publisher : Dundurn

Page : 268 pages

File Size : 32,46 MB

Release : 2021-05-04

Category : Fiction

ISBN : 1459747100

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Book Description

SHORTLISTED for the Scotiabank Giller Prize 2021 • WINNER of the Nigeria Prize for Literature 2021 • SHORTLISTED for the Chinua Achebe Prize for Nigerian Writing 2021 • WINNER of the SprinNG Women Authors Prize 2020 • WINNER of the Best International Fiction Book Award, Sharjah International Book Fair 2019 “The Son of the House is a compelling novel about two women caught in a constricting web of tradition, class, gender, and motherhood.” — FOREWORD REVIEWS, starred review The lives of two Nigerian women divided by class and social inequality intersect when they're kidnapped, held captive, and forced to await their fate together. In the Nigerian city of Enugu, young Nwabulu, a housemaid since the age of ten, dreams of becoming a typist as she endures her employers’ endless chores. She is tall and beautiful and in love with a rich man’s son. Educated and privileged, Julie is a modern woman. Living on her own, she is happy to collect the gold jewellery lovestruck Eugene brings her, but has no intention of becoming his second wife. When a kidnapping forces Nwabulu and Julie into a dank room years later, the two women relate the stories of their lives as they await their fate. Pulsing with vitality and intense human drama, Cheluchi Onyemelukwe-Onuobia’s debut is set against four decades of vibrant Nigeria, celebrating the resilience of women as they navigate and transform what remains a man’s world.



Batshit Seven

Author : Sheung-King

Publisher : Penguin

Page : 337 pages

File Size : 25,61 MB

Release : 2024-02-20

Category : Fiction

ISBN : 0735245304

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Book Description

*SHORTLISTED FOR THE 2024 WRITERS' TRUST ATWOOD GIBSON PRIZE* From Governor General's Award-nominated author Sheung-King comes a novel about a millennial living through the Hong Kong protests, as he struggles to make sense of modern life and the parts of himself that just won’t gel. Glen Wu (aka Glue) couldn’t care less about his job. He’s returned to Hong Kong, the city he grew up in, and he’s teaching ESL, just to placate his parents. But he shows up hungover to class, barely stays awake, and prefers to spend his time smoking up until dawn breaks. As he watches the city he loves fall—the protests, the brutal arrests—life continues around him. So he drinks more, picks more fights with his drug dealer friend, thinks loftier thoughts about the post-colonial condition and Frantz Fanon. The very little he does care about: his sister, who deals with Hong Kong’s demise by getting engaged to a rich immigration consultant; his on-and-off-again relationship with a woman who steals things from him; and memories of someone he once met in Canada.... When the government tightens its grip, language starts to lose all meaning for Glue, and he finds himself pulled into an unsettling venture, ultimately culminating in an act of violence. Inventive and utterly irresistible, with QR codes woven throughout, Sheung-King’s ingenious novel encapsulates the anxieties and apathies of the millennial experience. Batshit Seven is an ode to a beloved city, an indictment of the cycles of imperialism, and a reminder of the beautiful things left under the hype of commodified living.



The Rise and Fall of Magic Wolf

Author : Timothy Taylor

Publisher : Dundurn

Page : 313 pages

File Size : 36,91 MB

Release : 2024-09-10

Category : Fiction

ISBN : 1459753216

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Book Description

“A sumptuously written story about culinary ambition, restaurant-world vice, and the frailties of the heart.” — KEVIN CHONG, author of The Double Life of Benson Yu Restaurateur Teo Wolf’s culinary fame is peaking just as a series of scandals and reckless decisions threaten to destroy everything. Teo’s life as a Paris brasserie apprentice is filled with challenges and triumphs, as well as all the regular abuses of slammed commercial kitchens. Still, he rises through the ranks, eventually returning to his hometown of Vancouver to open Rue Véron, a French restaurant that goes on to become a sensation. His second restaurant, Orinoco, is also successful. But on the cusp of opening his third, a news story breaks filled with troubling accusations against Rue Véron’s popular executive chef, Frankie. The media firestorm and subsequent public relations disaster threaten to destroy Teo’s empire, as well as his own personal life. And when the compounding consequences lead to unimaginable tragedy, Teo is left to question the impact of both individual action and people acting in great numbers.



Buzz Books 2023: Spring/Summer

Author :

Publisher : Publishers Lunch

Page : 1267 pages

File Size : 21,89 MB

Release : 2023-01-13

Category : Fiction

ISBN : 1948586576

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Book Description

Buzz Books 2023: Spring/Summer is the 22th volume in our popular sampler series. As always, Buzz Books presents passionate readers with an insider’s look at 54 of the buzziest books due out this season. Such major bestselling authors as Ryan Holiday, Nancy Horan, Kate Morton, and Abraham Verghese are featured, along with literary greats Jamel Brinkley, Eleanor Catton, Patrick DeWitt, and Cathleen Schine. Other sure-to-be readers’ favorites are a fiction debut by celebrated nonfiction author Helen MacDonald and an adult debut by acclaimed YA author Elizabeth Acevedo. Buzz Books has had a particularly stellar track record with highlighting the most talented, exciting and diverse debut authors, and this edition is no exception. Shelly Read’s Go As A River, one of a bumper crop of 23 debuts titles, has already been sold to 27 countries. Among the others are Monica Brashears, Tembe Denton-Hurst, Katherine Lin, Janika Oza, and Tyriek White. Our robust nonfiction section covers such fascinating subjects as the native peoples in America; a literary memoir of growing up with a reggae musician father who was a member of a strict Rastafari sect; and a definitive biography of Martin Luther King, Jr. Bestselling stoicism guru Ryan Holliday offers wisdom for dads, while David Von Drehle provides wisdom from a 102-year-old. Finally, we present early looks at new work from young adult authors, including: Throwback by Maurene Goo, Queen Bee by Amalie Howard, and Lucha Of The Night Forest by Tehlor Kay Mejia. Be sure to look out for Buzz Books 2023: Fall/Winter, coming in May.



The Plague

Author : Kevin Chong

Publisher : arsenal pulp press

Page : 191 pages

File Size : 45,95 MB

Release : 2018-05-29

Category : Fiction

ISBN : 1551527197

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Book Description

At first it was the dead rats. They started dying in cataclysmic numbers, followed by other city creatures. Then people begin experiencing flu-like symptoms as well as swellings in their lymph nodes. The citizenry reacts in disbelief when the diagnosis comes in and later, when a quarantine is imposed on the increasingly terrified city. Inspired by Albert Camus’ classic 1948 novel, Kevin Chong’s The Plague follows Dr. Bernard Rieux’s attempts to fight the treatment-resistant disease and find meaning in suffering. His efforts are aided by Megan Tso, an American writer who is trapped in the city while on a book tour, and Raymond Siddhu, a city hall reporter at a daily newspaper on its last legs from the latest round of job cuts. Told with dark humor and an eye trained on the frailties of human behavior, Chong’s novel explores themes in keeping with Camus’ original vision--heroism in the face of futility, the psychological strain of quarantine—but fraught with the political and cultural anxieties of our present day.



Time Squared

Author : Lesley Krueger

Publisher : ECW Press

Page : 328 pages

File Size : 45,13 MB

Release : 2021-09-28

Category : Fiction

ISBN : 1773058061

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Book Description

A richly atmospheric portrait of women’s agency and the timelessness of love, Time Squared explores the enduring roles of rights, responsibility, and devotion throughout history The game will change when you remember who you are Robin and Eleanor meet in 1811 at the British estate of Eleanor’s rich aunt Clara. Robin is about to leave to fight in the Napoleonic Wars, and her aunt rules out a marriage between them. Everyone Eleanor knows, including Robin, believe they’ve always lived in these times. But Eleanor has strange glimpses of other eras, dreams that aren’t dreams but memories of other lives. And their time jumps start as their romance deepens. Robin fights in the Boer War, the First and Second World Wars, in Vietnam and Iraq. Meanwhile, Eleanor struggles to figure out what’s going on, finally understanding that she and Robin are being manipulated through time. Who is doing this, and why? Arriving in modern times, Eleanor sets off to confront the ones she discovers are behind this — chessmasters playing her like a pawn. Eleanor’s goal? To free herself to live out her life on her own terms. Time Squared examines the roles women are forced to play in different centuries, the power they’re allowed, the stresses they face — and what this does to their relationships.



How to Order the Universe

Author : María José Ferrada

Publisher : Tin House Books

Page : 84 pages

File Size : 50,98 MB

Release : 2021-02-16

Category : Fiction

ISBN : 1951142314

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Book Description

A San Francisco Chronicle and Southwest Review Best Book of the Year and A World Literature Today Notable Translation of the Year “A dreamscape of a book. I adored this compelling, wise, and utterly unique coming-of-age tale.” —Tara Conklin For seven-year-old M, the world is guided by a firm set of principles, based on her father D’s life as a traveling salesman. Enchanted by her father’s trade, M convinces him to take her along on his routes, selling hardware supplies against the backdrop of Pinochet-era Chile. As father and daughter trek from town to town in their old Renault, M’s memories and thoughts become tied to a language of rural commerce, philosophy, the cosmos, hardware products, and ghosts. M, in her innocence, barely notices the rising tensions and precarious nature of their work until she and her father connect with an enigmatic photographer, E, whose presence threatens to upend the unusual life they’ve created. María José Ferrada expertly captures a vanishing way of life and a father-daughter relationship on the brink of irreversible change. At once nostalgic, dangerous, sharply funny, and full of delight and wonder, How to Order the Universe is a richly imaginative debut and a rare work of magic and originality.



The Parcel

Author : Anosh Irani

Publisher : Knopf Canada

Page : 259 pages

File Size : 19,92 MB

Release : 2016-09-06

Category : Fiction

ISBN : 0345816765

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Book Description

Finalist for the Writers' Trust Fiction Prize and for the Governor General's Literary Award, this powerful new work, about a transgender sex worker in the red-light district of Bombay who is given an unexpected task, is a gripping literary page-turner--difficult and moving, surprising and tender. Anosh Irani's best novel yet, and his first with Knopf Canada. The Parcel's astonishing heart, soul and unforgettable voice is Madhu--born a boy, but a eunuch by choice--who has spent most of her life in a close-knit clan of transgender sex workers in Kamathipura, the notorious red-light district of Bombay. Madhu identifies herself as a "hijra"--a person belonging to the third sex, neither here nor there, man nor woman. Now, at 40, she has moved away from prostitution, her trade since her teens, and is forced to beg to support the charismatic head of the hijra clan, Gurumai. One day Madhu receives a call from Padma Madam, the most feared brothel owner in the district: a "parcel" has arrived--a young girl from the provinces, betrayed and trafficked by her aunt--and Madhu must prepare it for its fate. Despite Madhu's reluctance, she is forced to take the job by Gurumai. As Madhu's emotions spiral out of control, her past comes back to haunt her, threatening to unravel a lifetime's work and identity. This is a dark, devastating but ultimately redemptive novel that promises to be one of the most talked-about publications of the year.



Chasing Zebras

Author : Margaret Nowaczyk

Publisher : Wolsak and Wynn

Page : 280 pages

File Size : 44,86 MB

Release : 2021-10-19

Category :

ISBN : 9781989496411

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Book Description

When Margaret Nowaczyk immigrated to Canada with her family from Poland she was determined to be Canadian, whatever that meant, and she was equally determined to be a doctor. Arriving as a teen with an English vocabulary deeply influenced by the few English books she had, including Somerset Maugham's The Painted Veil, Margaret made her way through medical school at the University of Toronto, followed by residencies at Toronto's SickKids until she settled in at McMaster University Hospital as a clinical geneticist. From leaving Communist Poland to enduring the demands of medical school, through living with a long undiagnosed mental illness to discovering the fascinating field of genetics, plunging into the pressures of prenatal diagnosis and finally finding the tools of writing and of narrative medicine, Margaret shares a journey that is both inspiring and harrowing. This is a story of constant effort, of growth, of tragedy and of triumph, and most of all, of the importance of openness. In the end, Dr. Nowaczyk invites us all to see that "life is precious and fragile and wondrous and full of mistakes." And to keep trying.