This was one of the first Orange Prize nominees that I bought. Last year, two debut novels on the longlist made my personal shortlist. (Anna Peile's and Samantha Hunt's) Serpent's Tail, 2012 I had high hopes for this novel and, in many ways, I was rewarded for my
Nathacha Appanah's The Last Brother Translator Geoffrey Strachan (French) Graywolf Press, 2011 A Graywolf Press publication, a contender for The Tournament of Books, with a gorgeous and haunting cover image: all excellent reasons for picking up a copy of The Last Brother without reading a single word. And then you meet
The Time In Between is essential reading for those who thought that reading about the Spanish Civil War meant Hemingway and Orwell. In her lush and sprawling novel, María Dueñas presents the era via the perspective of "an independent woman in difficult times". There was no room for a seamstress like
William Loren Katz's Black Indians: A Hidden Heritage 25th Anniversary Edition Though Canadian students are not taught American History in any detail, most can likely name Plymouth Rock as the first foreign colony in the United States. Some might even dredge up Jamestown, or the Lost Colony of
Of a 16-year-old's devotion Margaret Mitchell's Gone with the Wind (1936) Avon Books, 1973 This is my original copy of this novel, which I first read when I was sixteen years old. You've seen one like it, right? It's the copy that I remember seeing on the shelves
