Summer seems to be zipping by, and fall is just around the corner, bringing the busiest season for book publishing.
This year, we will see new works by many well-known authors, but rather than highlight those, I thought I’d focus on some interesting titles that will not receive as much publicity, and may be overlooked as a result.
All books are on order, and can be requested through the Okanagan Regional Library.
NON-FICTION
–– Leonardo and The Last Supper by Ross King. Leonardo da Vinci’s mural depicting Christ’s final meal with his apostles has become one of the most studied, commented on, and debated works in the history of art.
King examines the politics of the age in which the artist was commissioned by his patron Duke Ludovico Sforza, to create the work, culminating in Sforza’s overthrow and da Vinci’s flight from Italy.
–– Journey with No Maps: A Life of P.K. Page by Sandra Djwa. Page was a 20th-century giant of Canadian poetry, yet when she died in 2010 at age 93, no one had written a full-length biography of her life. Djwa, professor emeritus at Simon Fraser University, rectifies this oversight.
–– The Social Media Advantage: An Essential Handbook for Small Business by Amanda Walter. Entrepreneurs can learn how to create and maintain successful social-media strategies in this age of Twitter, Facebook, and Pinterest.
–– Hubble’s Universe: Greatest Discoveries and Images by Terence Dickinson. A visually sumptuous compendium of images from the Hubble Space Telescope.
–– The Goal of My Life by Paul Henderson. The famous hockey player traces his route through the OHL and the NHL, on his way to scoring “the goal of the century.”
FICTION
–– The Selector of Souls by Shauna Singh Baldwin. In the author’s first novel since 2004’s Giller-shortlisted The Tiger Claw, the paths of a Hindu midwife and a Christian missionary intersect in an Indian town.
–– The Deception of Livvy Higgs by Donna Morrissey. An ailing woman is forced to pick apart the lies and secrets buried in her past in what the book’s publisher is calling The Stone Angel of the East Coast.
–– Somewhere in Between by Donna Milner. A married couple buy a cattle ranch in remote B.C., only to discover they have also inherited a reclusive and mysterious tenant named Virgil Blue.
–– Beware This Boy by Maureen Jennings. In this second installment of the author’s Season of Darkness trilogy set in England during the Second World War, Detective inspector Tom Tyler’s investigates a suspicious explosion at a munitions factory.
–– In Sunlight and in Shadow by Mark Helprin. Beginning with a chance encounter on New York City’s Staten Island ferry in 1947, the book is a drama about the illicit romance between an ex-paratrooper and a young singer and heiress engaged to a powerful man.
–– Maureen Curry is chief librarian at the Vernon branch of the Okanagan Regional Library.
