STORYWORLD

As we head into the holidays and possibly into a mad frenzy of shopping, cooking, eating and entertaining, it's a good idea to make some quiet time for reflection and most importantly of all—for reading. This year I've spent a whole lot of my time working on the revisions of my novel THE SAVAGE INSTINCT, which is to be republished in a second, very different edition 2020 by Inkshares, but I've also enjoyed reviewing books for NetGalley and Legend Press, a UK publisher. I've shared below some of my great reads of the year. Hope you can find the time to read one or buy as a gift for friends or family. Happy holidays! FIVE WIVES by Joan Thomas Local Winnipeg writer, Joan Thomas was the most deserving winner of this year's Governor General's Award for fiction with her novel FIVE WIVES, a fictionalized account of the lives of the real women left behind when their husbands were killed in a misguided attempt to contact the Waorani, a reclusive tribe from t

Ruth Dugdall’s new novel, The Sacrificial Man, the second instalment in her Cate Austin series is definitely not a book for the more squeamish reader. Dark in tone and containing grotesque and disturbing details, it tackles the very sensitive question of whether assisting a person to commit suicide is a crime or an act of love. This particular case, however, deals with a very different situation where the main character, Alice Mariani, a brilliant literature professor, obsessed with the Romantic poets, believes it’s an act of ultimate passion. Cate Austin, probation officer, is called in to question Alice in order to recommend a suitable sentence, and discover why she agreed to help Dave, a young man suffering no apparent fatal illness, to die. As she tries to chip at Alice's icy exterior, she begins to dig deeper into the past of this enigmatic, beautiful though rather unlikeable woman and discovers how a painful, early childhood has shaped her into a lonely, unreac