Omens begins with an author's note that promises literary Easter eggs. Before the story even begins. Random House Canada, 2013 So, if readers choose, there are mysteries to be unravelled even before the narrator can make sense of them herself, hidden by the author deliberately. She acknowledges that
"The more I write, the more I discover that the partition between real and invented is as thin as a wall in a cheap hotel room." So says Jeanette Winterson, but thinking of Mary Novik's novel Muse, one might think the partition as thin as the pope's bedroom chamber curtain.
A Tap on the Window feels like the quintessential late-summer read. I have to move indoors with my book sooner on August evenings, because the light doesn't last as long, but the neighbourhood still moves to other summer rhythms. And, so, that old yearning for a page-turner. Doubleday -
Less than a penny. That's how much it costs to read a single letter of DNA. Between 2000 and 2003, the cost fell from $1.50 to less than a single cent. "Suddenly DNA was mass-market." Random House Canada, 2013 Carolyn Abraham hadn't been saving her pennies for this
Is it still a radical idea? The notion that the world can no longer afford to oppress half its population. Apparently so. Random House Canada, 2013 Sally Armstrong's work considers the ways in which the world's largest problems -- poverty, conflict and violence -- are being addressed via efforts
