BEA Most Wanted: Canadian Edition
Every year there's always a few titles that are in high demand. As the Canadian International Liasion I wanted to highlight some of this years highly anticipated reads from Canadian authors. I'm not sure if all the books in this post will be at BEA but they''re all highly anticipated reads and definitely must have additions to your TBR pile.
Descendant by Lesley Livingston
(Starling #2)
The last thing Mason Starling remembers
is the train crossing a bridge. An explosion . . . a blinding light . . . then
darkness. Now she is alone, stranded in Asgard—the realm of Norse legend—and
the only way for her to get home is to find the Spear of Odin, a powerful relic
left behind by vanished gods. The Fennrys Wolf knows all about Asgard. He was
once trapped there. And he’ll do whatever it takes to find the girl who’s
stolen his heart and bring her back—even if it means a treacherous descent into
the Underworld. But time is running out, and Fenn knows something Mason
doesn’t: If she takes up the Spear, she’ll set in motion a terrible prophecy.
And she won’t just return to her world . . . she’ll destroy it.
Ink by Amanda Sun
On the heels of a family tragedy, the
last thing Katie Greene wants to do is move halfway across the world. Stuck
with her aunt in Shizuoka, Japan, Katie feels lost. Alone. She doesn’t know the
language, she can barely hold a pair of chopsticks, and she can’t seem to get
the hang of taking her shoes off whenever she enters a building. Then there’s
gorgeous but aloof Tomohiro, star of the school’s kendo team. How did he really
get the scar on his arm? Katie isn’t prepared for the answer. But when she sees
the things he draws start moving, there’s no denying the truth: Tomo has a
connection to the ancient gods of Japan, and being near Katie is causing his
abilities to spiral out of control. If the wrong people notice, they'll both be
targets. Katie never wanted to move to Japan—now she may not make it out of the
country alive.
The Oathbreaker’s Shadow by Amy
McCulloch
Fifteen-year-old Raim lives in a world
where you tie a knot for every promise that you make. Break that promise and
you are scarred for life, and cast out into the desert. Raim has worn a simple
knot around his wrist for as long as he can remember. No one knows where it
came from, and which promise of his it symbolises, but he barely thinks about
it at all—not since becoming the most promising young fighter ever to train for
the elite Yun guard. But on the most important day of his life, when he binds
his life to his best friend (and future king) Khareh, the string bursts into
flames and sears a dark mark into his skin. Scarred now as an oath-breaker,
Raim has two options: run, or be killed.
Rebel Spring by Morgan Rhodes (Falling
Kingdoms #2)
Auranos has fallen and the three
kingdoms—Auranos, Limeros, and Paelsia—are now united as one country called
Mytica. But still, magic beckons, and with it the chance to rule not just
Mytica, but the world...When the evil King Gaius announces that a road is to be
built into the Forbidden Mountains, formally linking all of Mytica together, he
sets off a chain of events that will forever change the face of this land,
forcing Cleo the dethroned princess, Magnus the reluctant heir, Lucia the
haunted sorceress, and Jonas the desperate rebel to take steps they never could
have imagined
Rush by Eve Silver
When Miki Jones is pulled from her
life, pulled through time and space into some kind of game—her carefully
controlled life spirals into chaos. In the game, she and a team of other teens
are sent on missions to eliminate the Drau, terrifying and beautiful alien
creatures. There are no practice runs, no training, and no way out. Miki has
only the guidance of secretive but maddeningly attractive team leader Jackson
Tate, who says the game isn’t really a game, that what Miki and her new
teammates do now determines their survival, and the survival of every other
person on this planet. She laughs. He doesn’t. And then the game takes a deadly
and terrifying turn.
Summer Days, Starry Nights by Vikki
VanSickle
It's 1962, and thirteen-year-old Reenie
Starr comes alive the minute guests begin to arrive at her family's summer
resort. She dreams of the day she can run Sandy Shores, and she spends her time
helping out at the resort, swimming, climbing trees, and singing under the
stars. One day, Reenie's mother announces that she thinks the resort could use
some entertainment. She invites Gwen, her best friend's almost-grown daughter,
to come and teach a dance class. Although Gwen seems sad and remote, Reenie's
thrilled to have her there. As Reenie starts to learn more about the world
beyond Sandy Shores, she comes up with a plan that could really put it on the
map. She also finds herself caught between the simpler world of her childhood
and all of the wonderful new discoveries (boys) and heartaches (boys) that
growing up can bring. Reenie thought she wanted Sandy Shores to never change,
but after this summer nothing will ever be the same again.
Tag Along by Tom Ryan
It's junior prom night. Andrea is
grounded for getting her older brother to buy booze for her, Paul is having
panic attacks, Roemi has been stood up by his Internet date, and Candace is
busy tagging a building (before she gets collared by a particularly tenacious
cop). By happenstance, the four near-strangers end up together, getting into
more trouble, arguing and ultimately helping each other out over the course of
eight madcap hours.
Thornhill by Kathleen Peacock (Hemlock
#2)
Mac can’t lose another friend. Even if
he doesn’t want to be found. The ripple effect caused by Mac’s best friend
Amy’s murder has driven Mac’s new love, Kyle, to leave Hemlock and disappear
from her life forever. But Mac knows that Kyle plans to enroll in a
rehabilitation camp, where he can live with other werewolves. She refuses to
accept his decision, especially since the camps are rumored to be tortuous. So
she sets out in search of Kyle with a barely sober Jason—and Amy’s all-seeing
ghost—in tow. Clues lead Mac to find Kyle in a werewolf den in Colorado—but
their reunion is cut short by a Tracker raid. Now Mac and Kyle are trapped
inside the electric fences of Thornhill, a camp for young werewolves. As she
devises an escape plan, Mac uncovers dangerous secrets buried within the walls
of Thornhill—and realizes that the risk to the people she loves is greater than
ever before.
Adult
The Firebird by Susanna
Kearsley
Nicola Marter was born with a gift.
When she touches an object, she sometimes sees images; glimpses of those who
have owned it before. It’s never been a gift she wants, and she keeps it a
secret from most people, including her practical boss Sebastian, one of
London’s premier dealers in Russian art. But when a woman offers Sebastian a
small wooden carving for sale, claiming it belonged to Russia’s Empress
Catherine, it’s a problem. There’s no proof. Sebastian believes that the plain
carving—known as “The Firebird”—is worthless. But Nicola’s held it, and she
knows the woman is telling the truth, and is in desperate need of the money the
sale of the heirloom could bring. Compelled to help, Nicola turns to a man she
once left, and still loves: Rob McMorran, whose own psychic gifts are far
greater than hers. With Rob to help her “see” the past, she follows a young
girl named Anna from Scotland to Belgium and on into Russia. There, in St.
Petersburg—the once-glittering capital of Peter the Great’s Russia—Nicola and
Rob unearth a tale of love and sacrifice, of courage and redemption…an old
story that seems personal and small, perhaps, against the greater backdrops of
the Jacobite and Russian courts, but one that will forever change their lives.
Maddaddam by Margaret Atwood
Months after the Waterless Flood
pandemic has wiped out most of humanity, Toby and Ren have rescued their friend
Amanda from the vicious Painballers. They return to the MaddAddamite cob house,
which is being fortified against man and giant Pigoon alike. Accompanying them
are the Crakers, the gentle, quasi-human species engineered by the brilliant
but deceased Crake. While their reluctant prophet, Jimmy -- Crake's one-time
friend -- recovers from a debilitating fever, it's left to Toby to narrate the
Craker theology, with Crake as Creator. She must also deal with cultural
misunderstandings, terrible coffee, and her jealousy over her lover, Zeb. Meanwhile, Zeb searches for Adam One, founder
of the God's Gardeners, the pacifist green religion from which Zeb broke years
ago to lead the MaddAddamites in active resistance against the destructive
CorpSeCorps. Now, under threat of an imminent Painballer attack, the
MaddAddamites must fight back with the aid of their newfound allies, some of
whom have four trotters. At the centre, is the extraordinary story of Zeb's
past, which involves a lost brother, a hidden murder, a bear, and a bizarre act
of revenge.
Omens by Kelley Armstrong
Twenty-four-year-old Olivia Taylor
Jones has the perfect life. The only daughter of a wealthy, prominent Chicago
family, she has an Ivy League education, pursues volunteerism and philanthropy,
and is engaged to a handsome young tech firm CEO with political ambitions. But
Olivia’s world is shattered when she learns that she’s adopted. Her real
parents? Todd and Pamela Larsen, notorious serial killers serving a life
sentence. When the news brings a maelstrom of unwanted publicity to her adopted
family and fiancé, Olivia decides to find out the truth about the Larsens.
Olivia ends up in the small town of Cainsville, Illinois, an old and cloistered
community that takes a particular interest in both Olivia and her efforts to
uncover her birth parents’ past. Aided by her mother’s former lawyer, Gabriel
Walsh, Olivia focuses on the Larsens’ last crime, the one her birth mother
swears will prove their innocence. But as she and Gabriel start investigating
the case, Olivia finds herself drawing on abilities that have remained hidden
since her childhood, gifts that make her both a valuable addition to Cainsville
and deeply vulnerable to unknown enemies. Because there are darker secrets
behind her new home, and powers lurking in the shadows that have their own
plans for her.
The Orenda by Joseph Boyden
A visceral portrait of life at a
crossroads, The Orenda opens with a brutal massacre and the kidnapping of the
young Iroquois Snow Falls, a spirited girl with a special gift. Her captor,
Bird, is an elder and one of the Huron Nation’s great warriors and statesmen.
It has been years since the murder of his family and yet they are never far
from his mind. In Snow Falls, Bird recognizes the ghost of his lost daughter
and sees the girl possesses powerful magic that will be useful to him on the
troubled road ahead. Bird’s people have battled the Iroquois for as long as he
can remember, but both tribes now face a new, more dangerous threat from afar.
Christophe, a charismatic Jesuit missionary, has found his calling amongst the
Huron and devotes himself to learning and understanding their customs and
language in order to lead them to Christ. An emissary from distant lands, he
brings much more than his faith to the new world.
Red Planet Blues by Robert J Sawyer
Alex Lomax is the one and only private
eye working the mean streets of New Klondike, the Martian frontier town that
sprang up forty years ago after Simon Weingarten and Denny O’Reilly discovered
fossils on the Red Planet. Back on Earth, where anything can be synthesized,
the remains of alien life are the most valuable of all collectibles, so
shiploads of desperate treasure hunters stampeded to Mars in the Great Martian
Fossil Rush. Trying to make an honest buck in a dishonest world, Lomax tracks
down killers and kidnappers among the failed prospectors, corrupt cops, and a
growing population of transfers—lucky stiffs who, after striking
paleontological gold, upload their minds into immortal android bodies. But when
he uncovers clues to solving the decades-old murders of Weingarten and
O’Reilly, along with a journal that may lead to their legendary mother lode of
Martian fossils, God only knows what he’ll dig up...
Worst Person Ever by Douglas Coupland
Worst. Person. Ever. is a deeply
unworthy book about a dreadful human being with absolutely no redeeming social
value. Raymond Gunt, in the words of the author, "is a living, walking,
talking, hot steaming pile of pure id." He's a B-unit cameraman who enters
an amusing downward failure spiral that takes him from London to Los Angeles
and then on to an obscure island in the Pacific where a major American TV
network is shooting a Survivor-style reality show. Along the way, Gunt suffers
multiple comas and unjust imprisonment, is forced to reenact the "Angry
Dance" from the movie Billy Elliot and finds himself at the centre of a
nuclear war. We also meet Raymond's upwardly failing sidekick, Neal, as well as
Raymond's ex-wife, Fiona, herself "an atomic bomb of pain."
Don't forget Gabriel's Redemption by Sylvain Reynard. It's the last book in the trilogy and due out on December 3rd :)
ReplyDeleteI love Canadian fiction! Hadn't heard of Firebird but it sounds really interesting, and I didn't realize Joseph Boyden had a new book coming out!
ReplyDeleteI've been dying to read RUSH! I've heard so many good things about it.
ReplyDeleteThanks for highlighting Canadian fiction! I'm currently reading Firebird and I've read VanSickle's middle-grade trilogy. Looking forward to her new one.
ReplyDeleteCanadian fiction ROCKS! Not that I am biased or anything :P
ReplyDeleteHappy Day Three of Armchair Bea!
I didn't realize a 3rd book in the MaddAddam series was releasing this year, nice! I'm really looking forward to Rush as well.
ReplyDeleteI am Proud to be Canadian! I knew Lesley Livingston was Canadian but had absolutely NO Idea about the others! Thanks for the highlight!
ReplyDeleteThanks for highlighting Canadian fiction. It's so nice to be included. There's some great selections for me to add to Mt. TBR.
ReplyDeleteAH@Badass Book Reviews
I'm really excited to get my hands on Ink by Amanada Sun and Rush by Eve Silver. The covers are absolutely gorgeous.
ReplyDeleteAnd Margaret Atwood! I had no idea she had a new book coming out!
Canadian fiction is just as great as the US fiction! But I'm extremely excited to read Rebel Spring! Falling Kingdoms was AMAZING.
ReplyDeleteYeah, there is a few I want to read there.... but you forgot Chevy Stevens and her new book in June, Always Watching. I've read it and it was fab!
ReplyDeleteI've read Ink by Amanda Sun and I really can't wait to own a physical finished copy. I had no clue some of these authors were Canadian and a few of these are new to me. Thanks for the highlight post!
ReplyDeleteI had the pleasure of meeting Eve Silver recently - what a wonderful woman. Can't wait to read Rush, but I have added quite a few books from this fabulous list. Thanks for sharing!
ReplyDeleteI didn't know that Morgan Rhodes (Michelle Rowen ) was Canadian.
ReplyDeleteLots of great Canadian new releases not listed..
ReplyDeleteMurray Pura's Aston Park and next release Beneath the Dover Sky out this summer... fab reading! Downtown Abbey epics
Yeah ! Long live paper books !!!
ReplyDeleteTHORNHILL!!! I need that book so badly!!'
ReplyDelete- Juhina @ Maji Bookshelf
It's too funny that this list went up today because I'm working on a post all about Canadian literary fiction!
ReplyDeleteOH, I really want Descendant by Lesley Livingston!! I love all her books!
ReplyDeleteI will be adding some if these books to my TBR pile, like INK for sure!
ReplyDelete