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New Titles SRING 2012
DAVID HEALY
NINA, THE BANDIT QUEEN
JOEY SLINGER
Non-Fiction
Hugh Brewster Gilded Lives, Fatal Voyage
The Titanic’s First Class Passengers and Their World
T Praise for Gilded Lives, Fatal Voyage: “This is one of those rare books on the subject that provides information both new and relevant, in a scholarly readable way. Highly recommended to anyone interested in the social history of the early 20th century.” Library Journal “Walter Lord’s A Night to Remember and James Cameron’s awardwinning movie set the Titanic bar high. In Gilded Lives, Fatal Voyage, Hugh Brewster clears that bar with ease and shows again why the story never gets old.” Newark Star Journal “Hugh Brewster’s colourful anecdotes and telling details show how 1912 - with it’s love-hate affair with celebrity, its romance with technology and contempt for the power of nature - sounds eerily familiar a century later.” Globe and Mail
he wealthy and glamorous passengers who boarded the Titanic, history’s most famous ship, provide “an exquisite microcosm of the Edwardian era.” But in most books about the doomed voyage, their stories are incidental to the ship’s collision with an iceberg on April 14, 1912. Hugh Brewster, who created several bestselling books on the Titanic, here uses original research to intertwine, for the first time, their lives within the powerful arc of the ship’s dramatic demise. The cast includes artist and writer Frank Millet, the Director of Decorations for the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair; White House aide Archie Butt; John Jacob Astor and Benjamin Guggenheim; and Lady Lucile Duff-Gordon, a leading couturiere, among others. Through these vivid characters, we gain insight into the arts, politics, culture, and sexual mores of a world both distant and near to our own. All converge on the boat deck of the Titanic during the ship’s final hours and we become witnesses to a heartbreakingly poignant scene where some survive and some do not. The final chapters recount the rescue of the passengers in lifeboats by the Carpathia and the trip back to New York with only 705 of the more than 2,200 on board. Some men who survived lived under a cloud of cowardice. Others left a remarkable legacy. Hugh Brewster is a former publisher, who has written and produced award-winning books of fiction and non-fiction for children. This is the book about the Titanic tragedy that he wanted to read.
HarperCollins Canada 2012 Crown/Random House US 2012 Gawsewitch France 2012 Piemme Italy 2012 Mondadori/Random House Spain 2012 Robson Press UK 2012
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History
Timothy Brook Vermeer’s Hat The 17th Century and the Dawn of the Global World
“Vermeer’s Hat ... provides not only valuable historical insight but also enthralling intellectual entertainment.” “a spellbinding book…mind-expanding.”
The Times, UK
“Brook is a wonderful storyteller... I doubt I will read a better book this year.” The Telegraph, UK
“Timothy Brook is one of those historians who can tell world history like an adventure novel and economic history like a crime novel...After reading [this] one sees Vermeer’s world differently. And one’s own too.” Spiegel, Germany
“..provides…not only valuable historical insight but also enthralling intellectual entertainment.” The Washington Post, US
Winner: Lynton Prize in History Bloomsbury US 2008 Chungrim Korea 2008 Edition Tiamat Germany 2009 Europa Konyvkiado Hungary 2009 Gradiva Portugal 2011 Iwanami Japan 2010 Kalima Arabic 2010 Payot & Rivages France 2009 Penguin Canada 2008 Profile UK 2008 Record Brazil 2009 Yuan-Liou Taiwan 2009 Wenhui Press China 2009 Wereldbibliotheek Netherlands 2010
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Michael Dirda, Washington Post
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he story opens in Vermeer’s studio in Delft with his stunning portrait, Officer and Laughing Girl. This intimate tableau, in which the officer wears an extravagant hat of beaver felt, subtly captures the widening world. Beaver fur from northern Canada financed voyages of the explorers looking for a route to the riches of China. Lust for luxury goods drove expansion. Pursuing beaver pelts, Champlain introduced his gun, the arquebus in 1609, and it had a profound and bloody impact on North America’s indigenous peoples. The silken wrap of Paolo’s robe, and Wen’s silver vase reveal much about east-west commerce at the time. The craving for porcelain spawned as much bloodshed as beauty. Astoundingly, tobacco and the spread of smoking is the great unintended consequence of North American discovery. It spread to Asia within decades of North American discovery, thanks to the seeds carried by the sailors. Here also are tales foreshadowing religious conflict. Globalization in cultural, legal, political, and moral spheres is very much with us, but these trail the economic web which began in the 17th Century. Timothy Brook is the author or editor of 12 books on China, including Quelling the People: The Military Suppression of the Beijing Democracy Movement and Opium Regimes: China, Britain, and Japan, 1839-1952. He is editor of a six volume series on China published by Harvard University Press, and until recently held the Shaw Chair in Chinese Studies at Oxford University. He is currently Professor of History at University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada.
Beverley Slopen Literary Agency
Health/Nutrition
Aileen Burford-Mason with Judy Stoffman
Eat Well, Age Better
How to use diet and supplements to guard the lifelong health of your eyes, heart, brain, and bones
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ileen Burford-Mason is a distinguished immunologist and nutritional counsellor who lectures widely to medical professionals and lay audiences while maintaining a private practice in Toronto. Praise for Eat Well, Age Better “In an overfed but undernourished society, this book is a powerful and much-needed reminder that we are, indeed, what we eat. Eat Well, Age Better shows how nutrition is an essential foundation of our physical and mental well-being.” Dr. Gabor Mate, author of When the Body Says No “This book may have been written for the general public but it is a must-read for the medical profession, which has traditionally neglected nutrition as a crucial determinate of health in its curricula for both undergraduate and postgraduate training.” Craig E. Appleyard MD, Chair, Section of Complementary and Integrative Medicine, Ontario Medical Association “Reading this book will make you feel excited and empowered to take safe, sensible and medically sound steps to improve your health, including challenges that may once have seemed insurmountable.” Gillian Deacon, author of There’s Lead In Your Lipstick Thomas Allen Can 2012
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Nothing protects your health more effectively than optimal nutrition, she asserts, and she shows you how to achieve it. Our cells are constantly dying and being remade. Whether your “next” body and the following one will be in good working order depends on the quality of the raw materials out of which new cells are built. The nutrients in food used to be able to provide reliable building blocks for cell renewal but contemporary methods of food processing steal micro nutrients, while urban water purification removes essential minerals from our water. Fatigue, sleep disorders, constipation, the condition of hair, skin and nails, mood, colds and flu, and weight gain are signals of nutritional deficits. Similarly, degenerative diseases that can make aging a misery including arthritis, diabetes, osteoporosis, dementia, muscular degeneration, heart disease and stroke are hastened by nutritional deficits. Aileen Burford-Mason reassures us with clear information and scientific evidence on how to age with health and vigor. After reading this book no one will be able to resist making myriad small changes whether it is applying magnesium gel for cramps and insomnia or taking vitamin D for bone health, or feeling comfortable about adding the right kinds of fat to your diet. Aileen Burford-Mason graduated from University College, Dublin and received a Ph.D in immunology. She is director of a Cancer Research Laboratory at Toronto General Hospital. She has developed a continuing medical education course on the use of diet and nutritional supplements in clinical practice. Learn more at: www.aileenburfordmason.ca Judy Stoffman was book review editor, publishing reporter and arts writer at the Toronto Star for two decades.
Beverley Slopen Literary Agency
Fiction
Laurie Channer Small Dead Things
A gripping plot, surprising twists, depth of character, and insights on animal behavior — including humans. Laurie Channer is a novelist and screenwriter in Toronto. Her debut novel Godblog (Napoleon Books/Dark Star) has been optioned for film. She has won awards for her short stories and works for the Writers Guild of Canada. Learn more at: www.lauriechanner.com
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andy Stoppard is not renowned for her quivering sensitivity. That may have been an advantage in her job as a detective with the Kitchener Police Dept., but when she fails office politics, she is bounced to Victims’ Services to help those impacted by crime. But Sandy can’t let go of loose ends from her previous case. Although the accused serial killer, known as the Riverside Basher, is in custody, Sandy is still obsessed about strange details surrounding him and his life. She also secretly searches dumpsters and landfill for the missing body parts of a little girl kidnap victim from a cold case. Grisly aspects of the work don’t torment Sandy whose own childhood bruises are a bridge to life’s dark side. She fears nothing except intimacy. Yet, Sandy allows her armor to be pierced by her nephews when she joins them in their school project following life in a loon nest via webcam. In a loop of fate, the loon nest leads Sandy to a breakthrough in her former kidnap case, and to the smart, sexy bird biologist Hamlet Mar who is responsible for the webcam project. The twists spiral rapidly with Hamlet Mar’s suspicious connection to a newly-abducted child whose parents are clients of Sandy at VS. Laurie Channer reserves her most terrifying twist for the end when the real Riverside Basher is revealed. In Laurie Channer’s skillful rendering, this police procedural soars beyond genre to become a spellbinding tale layered with fascinating detail and psychological insight.
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Non-fiction
Tiffany Chow The Memory Clinic
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Dr. Tiffany Chow is Senior Clinician-Scientist at the Rotman Research Institute, staff Behavioural Neurologist at Baycrest’s Brain Health Centre Memory Disorders Clinic and holds a dual appointment as Assistant Professor of Neurology and Geriatric Psychiatry with the University of Toronto. She studied or trained variously at Stanford, Rush Medical College, UCLA, and was Clinical Core Director at the University of Southern California Alzheimer’s Research Center with a research program for frontotemporal dementia. Her current research focuses on behavioural disturbances brought on by dementia as well as their apparent opposite, apathy, and how these symptoms relate to brain chemistry as seen with functional neuroimaging. Learn more at: research.baycrest.org/tchow
“ nless you are planning to die before age 65, you too are at risk for dementia, regardless of family history.” This is the sobering observation of Dr. Tiffany Chow, a prominent clinician and researcher in dementia. Yet Dr. Chow also offers knowledge and hope for an illness where there is, as yet, no cure. “This book is a summary of what I’ve learned through my research or from my colleagues about prevention and management of dementia,” she says. “Despite facing a family history of Alzheimer’s disease, there are things that those at risk can do to prevent its onset or progression.” Through her grandmother Ah Quan, born in 1906 in Hawaii of Chinese ancestry, she too, has a genetic legacy for Alzheimer’ s disease. Comparing her life to grandmother’s life, Tiffany probes what she and other women can do mitigate the impact of genetics, through nutrition, exercise, and the concepts of cerebral reserve and brain plasticity. But it is in her front-line role managing the suffering caused by dementia and aiding caregivers where Tiffany’s compassionate voice soars. She notes four goals for caregivers to address each day with the afflicted. Do I feel safe? Do I feel healthy? Do I feel happy? Do I feel loved? Taking action if at least one answer is “no” requires honesty and a higher integration with others. To answer yes to all four questions demonstrates skill at balancing life and is itself part of the protective shield against dementia’s effects. Tiffany Chow, an empathic physician and an accomplished scientist is a reassuring guide through the mysterious twists of the brain and the grace of loving relationships flowering in adversity.
Penguin Canada 2013
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Beverley Slopen Literary Agency
History
Modris Eksteins Solar Dance Van Gogh, Forgery, and the Eclipse of Certainty
T The third book in Modris Ekstein’s trilogy on the 20th Century is published in Canada as Solar Dance: Genius, Forgery and the Crisis of Truth in the Modern Age.
Praise for Solar Dance “Subtle and engaging…Eksteins tells his story in a suitably looping and layered manner, with many darts and artful reverses, suing a range of knowledge and allusion reminiscent of his 1989 masterpiece, Rites of Spring.” Globe and Mail “Eksteins is a major historian and Solar Dance, like everything he writes, deserves a wide and attentive readership.” National Post
he 19th century was the century of certainty – of Marx, Darwin, Wagner; it was the century of expansion and empire. It believed that there was a line to be drawn between the subject and the object. It believed in category. The 20th Century was the century of doubt – of Marcel Duchamp, Werner Heisenberg, and Monty Python; it was the century of contraction and decolonization. It disrupted all category. A man whose spirit straddled the two ages was Vincent van Gogh. Repudiated in his own time, he became the most loved and expensive artist of the 20th Century. He was the great synthesizer who captured in his art the exhilaration of life but also its fragility and tragedy. Modris Eksteins, whose subject is the 20th century, approaches the era through the lens of the sensational trial of a Berlin art dealer Otto Wacker and his role in the forgery of 33 Van Gogh paintings. In 1925, Wacker began releasing these hitherto unknown works which he cleverly had authenticated by experts. Through the progress of this drama Van Gogh’s commercial value rocketed skyward. Doubt and disaster also were crucial to Van Gogh’s posthumous success-- his own madness and suicidal end, and the subsequent near-destruction of European civilization in fratricidal war. In the Wacker-Van Gogh story, with its cast of characters who both delight and frighten us, is the story of Weimar Germany, the rise of Hitler and the fall of the Berlin Wall. In this thrilling book, Modris Eksteins illuminates the major themes of the modern world where a culture of vitality, life, and art has overwhelmed one of authority, form, and law.
Knopf Canada Feb 2012 Harvard UP April 2012
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Modris Eksteins is the author of acclaimed books on modernism, Rites of Spring: The Great War and the Birth of the Modern Age and Walking Since Daybreak: A story of Eastern Europe, World War II, and the Heart of Our Century. He is Professor of History at the University of Toronto. Beverley Slopen Literary Agency
History
“Eksteins is as gifted a stylist as he is a scholar. One reads it with fascination and intellectual gratitude.”
Modris Eksteins
Modris Eksteins
Rites of Spring
Walking Since Daybreak
The Great War and the Birth of the Modern Age
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his classic, award-winning book, in print Alfred Kazin since 1989, is celebrated by “…a witty and enterpris- scholars and readers alike. It ing scholar” even inspired a Hollywood Kurt Vonnegut film, Max, starring John “...nothing less than a Cusack. retrospective of our entire century. Art and politics, dance and war, have never been the same. ...It is the start of a new history.” James Carroll
“This provocative and disturbing reappraisal of modernism rings with authority.” Publishers Weekly
Awards
Winner Trillium Award Macmillan UK 2000 OP Houghton Mifflin USA 1989 Key Porter /Can Rowohlt Ger 1990/OP Plon France 1990 OP TBS Britannica Japan Editora Rocco Brazil Standard Uitgeverij Holland PIW Poland Geulhangari Korea
“The Great War was the psychological turning point for modernism,” argues Eksteins. “The urge to create and the urge to destroy had changed places.” With originality and discerning historical analysis, he describes the origins, impact, and aftermath of WWI from the premiere of Stravinsky’s ballet The Rite of Spring in 1913, to the final dance by the denizens of Hitler’s bunker in 1945. This is a remarkable cultural history that redefines the way we look at our past and think about the future.
“A deeply moving and intellectually challenging view of modern history.” Los Angeles Times
“...a beautiful meditation, written with both intellectual and moral urgency.”
n his journey to 1945 and the firestorm in Berlin, Eksteins weaves the story of his family in Latvia into the major events of the era, merging the subjectivity of the modern style with the objectivity of the scholar.
Empire, war, communism, fascism, the Holocaust, Publishers Weekly genocide, the huge tide of European refuges, New “...an important reas- World immigration, freesessment of WWII and dom...These are the markers its outcome...provaca- of our turbulent age. tive and ambitious.”
Kirkus Reviews
Awards Winner Pearson Literary Prize
Standaart Nthlds 2007 Houghton Mifflin US1999 Macmillan UK 2000 OP Key Porter Canada 1999 Atena Latvia 2002
Born in Latvia, Eksteins arrived as a child in 1950 among the displaced in Canada. He surveys the wreckage from two angles: by looking back from 1989 and the collapse of the Berlin Wall and, at the same time, moving forward from the perspective of the 19th century borderlands between Russia and Germany. It is an astute and thrilling panorama from the imperial age of coherence to our current confusions and fragmented logic.
Beverley Slopen Literary Agency
Fiction
Laurie Elmquist Pike Bay Lodge
Winner of the Random House of Canada Student Award in Writing (2009) Photo by Ryan Rock
Advance Praise for Pike Bay Lodge “This novel brims with the details of a certain landscape (and its flora and fauna). With quiet confidence, Laurie Elmquist explores the lives of those who live in this special place. The characters throb with their own distinctiveness. The depiction of Lily, the heroine, is unforgettable. A fine first novel.” Alistair MacLeod “There is an engaging immediacy to Elmquist’s work and her appreciative eye for the natural world is both educational and poetic.” Dede Crane author of Poster Boy Laurie Elmquist teaches creative writing at Camosun College in Victoria, BC. She spent her summers as a teen working at a vacation lodge in Ontario, the setting of her novel, Pike Bay Lodge. Learn more at: laurieelmquist.blogspot.com sites.google.com/site/elmquistl Manuscript Available
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ixteen-year-old Lil Booth is rarely excited by the arrival of guests at her family’s summer resort. It means more towels to be folded, more dishes to be washed, and her life disrupted. But this year, Lil eagerly awaits the arrival of lodge regular Oliver Kribbs, a biology professor at the University of Guelph. Kribbs has made Lil his protégé, inviting her to join him on excursions with his group of naturalists, and welcoming her help in their campaign to save the Eastern Loggerhead Shrikes. When Lil discovers a nest of the endangered songbirds, she sees an opportunity to capture Kribbs’ affection and a future in ornithology. Her brother Jeff, who has been Lil’s rock, is suspicious of Kribbs, but Lil dismisses his warnings. Jeff’’s behaviour has been increasingly erratic and he is acting out by drinking, stealing motorbikes, and playing dead in the middle of the street. When Jeff skips out on one of Lil’s driving lessons, his friend Jimmy Lick volunteers to fill in. Unaccustomed to Jimmy’s careful attention, Lil begins to see her brother’s friend in a new light. But all thoughts of romance are pushed aside when Jeff is arrested and Jimmy Lick fails to share the responsibility. Unable to forgive Jimmy Lick, Lil reaches out to Kribbs, only to discover that he has taken credit for her work. The family crisis signaled by Jeff’s behavior captures her parents’ attention, and is a catalyst for change. In the process, Lil gains their trust and confidence. That summer of heartbreak at Pike Bay Lodge is also the summer of Lil’s growth and strength. In Pike Bay Lodge, Laurie Elmquist has written a sensitive and moving story about family struggle, love and self-discovery. Beverley Slopen Literary Agency
Howard Engel Dr. Zeckeman, Grantham’s wealthy psychiatrist, loses a patient to suicide. Benny suspects homicide.
Benny mixes with Grantham’s elite who buy, trade and steal paintings -- and also murder.
Benny Cooperman Mysteries A CLASSIC DOZEN! Reissues from Penguin Canada
CBC TV Film
Did heiress Gloria Warren collude in her own kidnapping? Where is the money? Benny, the Mob, the cops and Gloria want to know.
Benny’s environmental anxieties fester when a trucker with hazardous cargo is murdered.
Benny suffers a vicious blow to the head and is diagnosed with a rare condition, alexia sine agraphia. No longer having the ability to read, Benny must unmask his assailant.
A Hollywood movie crew is shooting more than film at Niagara Falls.
An old woman whose estate is plundered leads Benny to corrupt lawyers and intrigue at a TV news station.
An old friend pleads for Benny’s help just as he’s on the verge of retirement. Her husband Jake went missing along with their life savings.
Benny is awash in black-flies, cults, and murder in the Canadian wilderness, while tracking a celebrity evangelist.
The local crime boss wants Benny to find out who is trying to kill him, and Benny can’t refuse.
CBC TV Film
The rabbi and the president of Grantham’s synagogue hire Benny when a lawyer absconds with the life savings of the congregation.
Vanessa Moss, the sexy siren in the executive suite, hires Benny to protect her. He gets more trouble than he expected.
Howard Engel’s novels have been published in about 20 countries since his debut in 1980 and have won literary prizes. Two have been adapted for TV films.
Beverley Slopen Literary Agency
Fiction
Terry Fallis Up and Down
T In 1995, Terry Fallis switched from government and politics to PR, cofounding Thornley Fallis in Toronto. He co-hosts the popular business podcast Inside PR and is effective in promoting his novels through free advance podcasts of each chapter. He racks up more than 90 appearances a year with book clubs and literary festivals. He is married and the father of two sons. Learn more at: www.terryfallis.com Advance Praise for Up and Down “Terry Fallis has done it again. Up and Down is another hilarious pageturner that also packs an emotional punch. Beautifully written, these characters rocket off the page and straight into your heart. This is satire at its finest.” Ali Velshi, CNN Anchor “A rollicking good ride. Funny one moment, serious the next, always compelling: a reminder that we can all dream.” Marc Garneau, Canada’s first astronaut
erry Fallis is a novelist who has done the impossible. He self-published his first novel The Best Laid Plans, a political satire set in Ottawa, and won the prestigious literary award, The Leacock Medal for Humor. The novel was subsequently re-released by McClelland & Stewart, and in 2011 was crowned the winner of Canada Reads as ‘the essential Canadian novel of the decade.’ It has sold 75,000 copies and a six-part TV mini-series for CBC is in production. Fallis then quickly followed with his bestselling sequel, The High Road, and was a finalist for the Lecock Medal for Humor. Now, with his third comic novel Up and Down set against the background of NASA’s space program, Terry Fallis is poised to reach an international audience. We catch the young hero David Stewart on his first day on the job at the Toronto office of Turner King, an international public relations firm ruled from the towers of New York and Washington. David is assigned to the team charged with boosting flagging public interest in space exploration. His team leader, the chilly Amanda Burke is hostile to him and the Washington account exec is dismissive. Surprisingly, the NASA client approves David’s suggestion—a lottery to find two ordinary citizens –a Canadian and an American –who are eager to strap themselves to a rocket headed to the space station for the trip of a lifetime. The lottery for the American citizen astronaut goes swimmingly—a muscular, sheriff wins. But to everyone’s dismay, David’s draw for the Canadian space traveler yields a 71-year-old physician lesbian bush pilot, adding several unexpected wrinkles to the campaign. Through a series of suspenseful hurdles, Fallis keeps us rooting for David and the aged citizen astronaut Dr. Landon Percival. But it is the beautifully drawn portrayal of Landon and their touching relationship that stay with the reader long after the campaign has been won.
McClelland & Stewart Canada 2012
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Beverley Slopen Literary Agency
Fiction
Terry Fallis
Terry Fallis
The Best Laid Plans
The High Road
Winner of 2011 Canada Reads
Short-listed for Leacock Medal for Humour
Over 75,000 copies sold
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isillusioned by politics and lacerated by romantic betrayal, Daniel Amazon.ca Bestseller - Addison, a young political over 125 days in top 100 speechwriter, wants out. Best Books list But it’s not that easy. Globe & Mail Bestseller since February 2011
“It deftly explores the Machiavellian machinations of political culture.”
Forced to barter his lost idealism with one last obligation, he must cajole a sacGlobe & Mail rificial candidate to contest the election for the Liberal “The Best Laid Plans has a Party in a riding that is a certain charm, some clevhive of Conservatives. er turns of phrase and a well-honed appreciation for the absurdities of political life.” Montreal Gazette
“The plot is advanced with self-deprecating and side-splitting vignettes... The novel is that and much more.” Silhouette’s A&E Magizine
Terry Fallis first selfpublished The Best Laid Plans as a podcast, then as a book. It was later acquired by McClelland & Stewart. Winner of the Stephen Leacock Memorial Medal for Humour 2008
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“…a new brand of pohis deeply funny satire litical satire -- the most continues the story of irreverent, sophisticated Honest Angus McLintock, and engaging CanLit an amateur politician who has seen since Stephen dares to do the unthinkable: Leacock.” Winnipeg Free Press
tell the truth.
Just when Daniel Addison thinks he can escape his job as a political aide, Angus McLintock, the no-hope candidate he helped into Parliament, throws icy water over his plans. Angus has just brought down the governOttawa Citizen Resourceful, Daniel perment with a deciding vote. suades his landlord, Angus “The High Road will No he wants Daniel to manMcLintock, a curmudgeon- entertain. There will age his next campaign. ly Engineering Professor to be snickers, occasional allow his name to be used. It snorting and hooting, Soon Daniel is helping Anwill be an election campaign and almost certainly rip- gus fight an uphill battle with no signs, no rallies, no roaring belly laughs.” against “Flamethrower” Fox, Chronicle Herald speeches, and no budget. a Conservative notorious The campaign headquarters for his dirty tactics. Togethis Daniel’s jalopy. Terry Fallis is a part- er they decide to take “The ner in Thornley Fallis, High Road” and -- against all But politics is filled with a public relations com- odds -- turn the race into a surprises. Suddenly Angus pany in Toronto, and nail-biter with hilarious ups is catapulted to victory and is completing his third and downs, cookie-throwhe and Daniel must exam- novel. ing seniors, and even a Waine their political principles. tergate-style break-in. But They learn how to survive that’s only the beginning of McClelland & Stewart this deft political satire and the political process, the Fall 2010 roughest game around. laugh-out-loud comedy. “an easy-reading page turner...anyone with even a passing or cynical interest in the political process should enjoy The High Road and after the romp be left with some food for thought.”
McClelland & Stewart 2008
Beverley Slopen Literary Agency
Fiction
Joanna Goodman The Seed Man’s Daughter
I Praise for You Made Me Love You “You Made Me Love You is a wonderful novel, full of humour, wisdom, and hope.” Joy Fielding
“I love this novel. It has a wonderful, warm, true sensibility. I couldn’t put it down and was sorry when it ended.” Eliza Clark
Praise for Harmony “Joanna Goodman is such a fine, polished writer. Harmony is an honest heart-wrenching and complex look at the tangled emotions and lives of both mothers and wives.” Michelle Berry
“Goodman’s solid writing is permeated with commentary on the societal pressures to have it all.”
Publishers Weekly
“Joanna Goodman writes with compassion about human connections.” Patti Henry
Manuscript Available
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n this triumphant love story, the lives of two young people are beset by conflicts of class and culture in 1950’s Quebec.
Peggy is the daughter of Wellington Hughes, the “Anglo” who runs a seed business selling mostly to the French-Canadian farmers in the Eastern townships. Her mother Hortense is a French-Canadian who refuses to speak English, but who shares her husband’s ambitions that her children should prosper in the higher status Anglo world. Gabriel Lafleur, the boy from the next farm, poor and orphaned, departs for the factories of Montreal. He had captured Peggy’s adolescent heart, but there are few places in French Canada for a rebellious youth with scant education and thwarted dreams. In the Quebec of her youth, which is dominated by strong-man Maurice Duplessis and the Catholic Church, Peggy is torn between her mother’s world and her father’s petty ambitions. She has to confront the shame of rape and unwed pregnancy, the theft of her daughter, her marriage to a suitable banker, and the gulf of class distinctions that keeps her from Gabriel. Spurred by a longing born of three miscarriages, Peggy’s quest to find her daughter yields a bittersweet, surprise ending. Joanna Goodman draws on the conflicting allegiances of her own Quebecois family for this tale that is specific to its place and time and classic in its themes. Joanna Goodman is author of Belle of the Bayou, You Made Me Love You and Harmony. The daughter of a French-Canadian mother and the wife of a French Canadian man, she is bi-lingual and multi-cultural. Occasionally, she wishes she was firmly rooted in only one identity. They live in Toronto with their two children and operate upscale retail shops Au Lit (for linens) and Liv. Learn more at: www.joannagoodmanauthor.com aulitfinelinens.com, livbyaulit.com Beverley Slopen Literary Agency
Fiction
Catherine Graham Quarry
C Catherine Graham, who holds an MA in Creative Writing from Lancaster University (UK), teaches creative writing at the University of Toronto School of Continuing Studies and is the author of four critically acclaimed poetry collections. She studied with Alistair MacLeod who described her as a “unqiuely wonderful” writer “whose insights will soon inspire the world.” Learn more at: www.catherinegraham.com
aitlin Maharg is only 19 when her mother dies. Her teenage years of swimming in her beloved limestone quarry, of summer jobs, of lust and longing are played out against the drumbeat of her mother’s painful and inexorable death. Permeating the atmosphere is Caitlin’s uneasy relationship with her doting father Don, a handsome salesman, a “romancer” who prefers fabrication to truth. Caitlin’s grandmother, a toxic presence in the sickroom, is cold, disdainful of Don, and vengeful. She is the guardian of the family secret which she will wield like a cudgel. But the winsome Caitlin is not without resources on her path to maturity. A caring boyfriend at university, and a relationship with a married professor offer shelter. And there is Linda, her father’s girlfriend who is there for her when tragedy strikes again and Don is killed in an auto accident.
Advance Praise for Quarry
In time, seeking to honor her parents’ wishes to be buried together, Caitlin summons the confidence to confront her grandmother in a scene that explodes the bitter secret to a fine powder.
“Slim and searing, gentle yet tough, Quarry is a beautifully crafted coming-of-age novel about loss, identity, and a woman’s freedom to choose life over death.” Ibi Kaslik, author of Skinny and The Angel Riots
Catherine Graham, a poet with a gift for comic drama, layers her tale like the open pit mine for which the novel is named. Don takes Caitlin to New York for father-daughter bonding after her mother’s death, but then allows Linda to join them in the same room where they form an awkwardly shaped triangle. Graham’s dark humor also is evident in scenes of Caitlin’s freshman year with her roommate who is known for “room service.”
“Quarry flows through the legacies and layers of grief, and emerges into the joy and shock of discovery. It is a wonderful book.” Ken Murray
Graham weaves spare, lyrically-charged prose to create a hypnotic coming-of-age story of loss, family shame, illicit relationships, and, finally, affirmation. In Caitlin, she has given us a brave young woman, forged by flawed, loving parents who have sent her into the world alone but strong.
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Historical Mystery
Don Gutteridge Vital Secrets A Marc Edwards Mystery
“Puts entertaining round flesh on history’s bones.”
Joan Barfoot
Praise for Vital Secrets: “This third novel in Don Gutteridge’s terrific historical series is the best thus far, and that’s saying a lot, because Gutteridge knows his history and how to build and pace a mystery novel...Gutteridge weaves his tale perfectly, with believable characters and perfect scene-setting.” Globe and Mail Praise for Turncoat: “Too bad most school history teaching lacks the wit and sparkle of this tale.” Quill & Quire Praise for Solemn Vows: “A lively, witty and frequently shrewd portrayal of life before Ontario or Canada existed...that puts entertaining round flesh on history’s bones.”
Joan Barfoot
T
he adventures of dashing British army officer Marc Edwards were hailed in his first two outings. “This witty combination of mystery and history is enormous fun,” wrote Isabel Huggan. “A most satisfying mystery,” wrote Maureen Jennings. In Vital Secrets, Marc, posted at Fort York in Toronto in 1837, is chafing under his usual duties with his regiment. The arrival of a touring theatrical company in the British colony promises light diversion. But events turn nasty when his friend Rick Hilliard falls for a young actress and is accused of murdering his rival for her affections by stabbing him with his sabre. Marc’s investigation reveals that the victim was selling smuggled American rifles to local rebels agitating for the expulsion of British rulers. Was it a political murder or a crime of passion? Marc’s involvement with the theater troupe yields an astounding revelation about the secret of his own identity. This series vividly portrays life in British North America under the reign of Queen Victoria, when Americans were eyeing Canada for annexation, and the Canadians were agitating for autonomy from both Britain and the United States. Fans of Patrick O’Brian and Bernard Cornwell will embrace Marc Edwards as a hero and as a man torn between his loyalty to the Crown and his growing sympathy for the democratic reform movement. Don Gutteridge, an acclaimed poet and novelist, has drafted 12 novels in this landmark series!
Simon & Schuster Canada 2011
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Historical Mystery
“Too bad most school history teaching lacks the wit and sparkle of this tale.” Quill & Quire
“Gutteridge is not only master of this historical period, he writes like a veritable visitor from it. Canadian history has never been more gripping and enlightening. Fans of Bernard Cornwell and Patrick O’Brian will love Don Gutteridge and his Marc Edwards Mysteries.”
Don Gutteridge
Don Gutteridge
Turncoat
Solemn Vows
A Marc Edwards Mystery
A Marc Edwards Mystery
M
S
arc Edwards, disenchanted with legal studies in London and eager for action, joins the British army in 1835. Alas, he is posted to Fort York in Toronto, a colonial backwater north of Buffalo and Detroit. No place for glory. The British have lost their southern American colonies and now a fractious populace north of the border chafes under British rule.
“A lively, witty and frequently shrewd portrayal of life before Ontario or Canada existed... that puts entertaining round flesh on history’s bones.”
The investigation takes Marc and his colleagues from the “Gutteridge has a fine offices of the rebels strugear for Victorian voices, gling against the British to a keen eye for style and the mansions of ruling elite. Joan Barfoot
gets the characters just right.” Margaret Cannon
In Turncoat, Marc joins the ruling circle to investigate a murder. Was it a political Don Gutteridge, ac- killing by rebels trying to claimed poet and nov- oust the British masters? Or elist, has completed 12 was it a personal attack? Terry Fallis Author The Best Laid Plans
novels in this landmark series starring the dashing Marc Edwards. They will appeal to fans of Patrick O’Brian or Bernard Cornwell.
Simon & Schuster Canada/ US 2010
It takes them into the lives and bedrooms of several charming ladies. And it increases Marc’s tension between his duty to the crown and his love for Beth, an American-born widow who continues to be active in the reform movement.
Marc’s loyalty to the British crown becomes complicated when he falls in love with Beth, a Reformer and he finds his sympathies drifting. Marc solves the crimes but his romance awaits other episodes.
olemn Vows opens with Marc’s humiliation in the pursuit of an assassin, and the murder of a prominent politician during a public rally.
Simon & Schuster Canada/ US 2011
Beverley Slopen Literary Agency
Non-Fiction
David Healy Pharmageddon DAVID HEALY
P Praise for Pharmageddon: “This meticulously documented book makes extraordinary claims with far-reaching intellectual and practical ramifications. It is the most powerful critique of the contemporary medical-industrial complex that I know.” Andrew T. Scull author of Hysteria and Madness “Pharmageddon is Healy’s most important book to date. It will make a real contribution towards healing our sick system of pharmaceutical-driven medicine and helping doctors provide better care for their patients.” Elizabeth Siegel Watkins author of The Estrogen Elixir “[Pharmageddon] is provocative, challenging, and informative, and ultimately it serves as a powerful manifesto for rethinking modern medicine.” Robert Whitaker author of Anatomy of an Epidemic
harmageddon has arrived. The large pharmaceutical companies have hijacked healthcare and the results are alarming.
Healy, who was the first to draw attention to the now well-publicized suicide-inducing side effects of many antidepressants, presents a searing indictment of problems in health care that are leading to a growing number of deaths and disabilities. Also, often culpable are wellmeaning physicians who under the sway of drug companies diagnose for risks using “numbers” handed to them. Only a small percentage of drugs now target disease. The bestselling drugs are “lifestyle” or “risk management” drugs: antidepressants, cholesterol-lowing statins, blood-sugar-lowering hypoglycemics, and treatments for osteoporosis and sexual dysfunction. Moreover, many newer generations of drugs under patent are often less effective than earlier versions. The survival of pharmaceutical companies is tied to the development of blockbuster drugs, so that they must overhype benefits and deny real hazards. He is also critical of industry-controlled drug trials and the corrupted “evidence-based medical system.” These trends have basically ended the possibility of universal health care in the United States and elsewhere around the world. Dr. Healy concludes with suggestions for reform, which must come soon. David Healy is Professor of Psychiatry at Cardiff University in Britain, a former Secretary of the British Association for Psycho-pharmacology, and the author of more than 20 books and 350 artciles. He has written seminial histories of antidepressants, antipsychotics, and bipolar disorder.
U of California Press World English March 2012
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Mystery
Mary Jackman Spoiled Rotten SPOILED ROTTEN Mary Jackman A Liz Walker
Mystery
Praise for Spoiled Rotten: “Liz Walker, [is] a lively and believable character... and grabs your attention. She’s a gem.” The Star Pheonix “Jackman’s entertaining debut, centered on a cozy Toronto bistro, is sure to appeal to anyone interested in the restaurant business.” Publisher’s Weekly
L
eggy, sexy Liz Walker is the owner of Walker’s Way, a funky, hip restaurant and a breeding ground for young, soon-to-be famous chefs. Liz, smart and savvy, the mother of a 20-year-old son, knows how to deal with transient staff and temperamental cooks. But she is shocked when the butcher Mr. Tony, where she buys meat, is found hacked to death, the victim of a grisly murder. Moreover, she is worried when her talented young chef Daniel hasn’t shown up for work and becomes the main suspect. Liz goes looking for Daniel and winds up in the middle of a delicious plot that includes real estate machinations, a scam for selling illegal work visas, and betrayal. The fact that the police investigator on the case, David Winn, is falling for Liz adds zest to the adventure, but also raises the stakes. Mary Jackman, like her delightful heroine Liz Walker, owns a cool and funky restaurant, the Peter Pan in Toronto’s Queen St neighborhood where a few celebrity chefs (Susur Lee) got their start. In her new venture, she gives us an insider’s view of the restaurant and food business with all of its allure and some of its tribulations. Spoiled Rotten will entertain and enlighten anyone who has ever worked in a restaurant, dreamed of owning a restaurant, or eaten in a restaurant.
Dundurn World Rights Spring 2012
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Memoir
Jack Kuper Child of the Holocaust
“Marvellous . . . The charm and fascination of the book lie in the dual role of survival and growing up.” London Times Literary Supplement
Remarkable . . . Gripping . . . a child’s struggle for survival”
The Globe and Mail
“Astounding . . . a work that amounts to a letter from inside a nightmare . . . A miraculous example of the human spirit at its most resilient.” Toronto Star
“Artfully rendered . . . testifying to the spirit of a man who emerged whole from a childhood of shame and despair.” Saturday Review
“He reveals the terror, the mental and physical sufferings, and the hope and courage of a youngster’s desperate will to survive.” Seattle Times
J
ack Kuper was only nine years old when he came home to find everyone in his family gone. The night before, Germans had come to his village in rural Poland and taken away all the Jews. Now alone in the world, he has to change his name, forget his language and abandon his religion in order to survive. Jack wanders through Nazi occupied Poland for four years, with no place to hide and no one to trust. The harrowing true story of how he survives has been hailed as a classic, as powerful as The Diary of Anne Frank, and celebrated for its rare beauty. It has been in print in various editions in English and a dozen other languages since 1966. Jack Kuper escaped Poland and immigrated to Canada at the age of 15. He spent much of his career in advertising, producing and directing award-winning TV commercials. As a filmmaker he has written and directed several shorts. His film RUN! was honoured at the Venice Film Festival. He is also the author of After the Smoke Cleared, the sequel to this book. He now lives in Toronto with his wife Terrye and speaks often to groups about his experiences during the Holocaust.
Mexico Diana/Planeta 2009 Dozens of translations/editions US, Can rights available
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Beverley Slopen Literary Agency
Non-Fiction
Dona Matthews and Joanne Foster The Intelligent Child: Secrets of Raising Smarter Kids
T
here are thousands of books about dealing with problem children, but very little about the needs of the intelligent child and raising smarter kids.
Dona Matthews (Right) and Joanne Foster
Dona J. Matthews, Ph.D was founding director of the Center for Gifted Studies and Education, Hunter College, City University of New York. In 2008, she received the Upton Sinclair award for her “outstanding contribution to the field of education in America.”
Intelligence is not fixed from an early age. Smart kids can do poorly and ordinary kids can excel. Two internationally recognized experts in gifted education and highlevel development, use their extensive experience with children, families, and schools to give parents techniques to improve their children’s success in school and life, whether they are gifted or “ordinary.” Both Dona and Joanne were “intelligent” children, designated as “gifted.” Each has children who were enrolled in the gifted stream, and they have been grappling with the challenge as parents and educators.
Joanne F. Foster, Ed.D is a leading authority on gifted education. She teaches courses in educational psychology and gifted education at the University of Toronto, provides consultancy services to teachers, and serves on advisory committees. She writes a featured column in the journal Parenting for High Potential.
What is intelligence? What can parents and teachers do to nurture it when it isn’t obvious, and support it when it is?
Learn more at: www.raisingsmarterkids.net
They draw on insights from current brain research to show that intelligence is not a fixed capacity. Through myriad anecdotes from their case files, and in a warm reassuring voice, they offer practical suggestions and strategies for raising smart, well-balanced, happily productive children.
Manuscript available
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In The Intelligent Child, they reveal how parents can identify a child’s abilities, foster creativity, bolster effort and persistence, prevent or alleviate emotional and social problems, and provide a balance of support and challenge at home and at school. They show how to embrace failures as learning opportunities and to praise children not for their intelligence but for their efforts.
Dona Matthews and Joanne Foster are the authors of the award-winning Being Smart about Gifted Education, a finalist in the National Best Books 2009 Awards sponsored by USA Book News.
Beverley Slopen Literary Agency
Non-Fiction
Ken McGoogan How The Scots Invented Canada
“...[written with] lively intelligence and [a] keen eye for detail... How the Scots Invented Canada provides a pleasurable way to get to know many of the most colourful men and women in our history.” Globe & Mail
“McGoogan’s How the Scots Invented Canada isn’t presenting Scottish influence as absolute on the evolution of Canada, but certainly an essential one... A magnificent, rich compilation of Canadian (and Scottish) histories.” Author Rob McLennan
“All in all, there are about five million good reasons to read McGoogan’s book.” Winnipeg Free Press
No matter where you enter the history of Canada – through exploration, politics, business, education or literature -- you find that the Scots and their descendants have played a leading role. Today, almost five million Canadians identify themselves as Scottish, and their influence is felt throughout the land. Starting with his own deep roots in Scotland and early Canada, Ken McGoogan has created a lively, entertaining narrative that focuses on more than sixty Scots who have led the way in shaping this country. Early arrivals included explorers Alexander Mackenzie, Simon Fraser and the “Scotch West Indian,” James Douglas. Later, Scots such as Lord Selkirk and John Galt encouraged thousands to immigrate. Nation-builders followed, among them John A. Macdonald, James McGill and the reformer Nellie McClung. Then came the visionaries, Scottish Canadians such as Tommy Douglas, Doris Anderson and Marshall McLuhan, who have turned Canada into a nation that revels in diversity. McGoogan commemorates the first settlers to land at Pictou, Nova Scotia, and celebrates such hybrid Canadians as the Cherokee Scot John Norton, Thérèse MacDonald Casgrain and the kilt-loving John George Diefenbaker. He honours the war contributions of Scottish Canadian regiments, and he toasts Sir Walter Scott and the beloved Robbie Burns. Beautifully illustrated and handsomely packaged, How the Scots Invented Canada is an exuberant celebration of the building of a nation. Ken McGoogan is the bestselling, author of three previous books on Arctic explorers and adventurers, Fatal Passage, Ancient Mariner and Lady Franklin’s Revenge. His awards include the Christopher Award, the Pierre Berton Award, the Drainie-Taylor Biography Prize. Fatal Passage, the story of explorer John Rae and his confrontation with Lady Jane Franklin and Charles Dickens, has been adapted for an acclaimed film, which was released in the UK, US and Canada in 2008.
HarperCollins Canada 2010
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Non-Fiction Highlights
“His biography is detailed and compulsive.” The Mail on Sunday (London)
“...an exhaustive and scrupulously researched biography.”
Sara Wheeler Times of London
HarperCollins Canada 2005 Bantam United Kingdom 2007
Ken McGoogan
Ken McGoogan
Lady Franklin’s Revenge
Fatal Passage
Born into a wealthy London family in 1791, Jane Griffin was denied the opportunities available to men of her class. Yet she became a world traveler, and with her husband Sir John Franklin presided over Tasmania. She helped Franklin seize the leadership of a Royal Navy expedition to find the shortcut to China. After he disappeared in the Arctic, Jane dispatched seven doomed expeditions to find him, and became the most important person in Arctic exploration.
“In Ken McGoogan’s artful telling, John Rae emerges from the shadows to take his place among the most intriguing of the 19th century arctic explorers. This is delightful reading.” Andrea Barrett
Carroll & Graf USA 2002 Bantam Press UK 2002 HarperCollins Canada 2001 Film PTV
The Observer
“A gripping tale of genuine adventures, very well told.”
Kirkus Reviews
Bantam Press UK 2004 Carroll & Graf USA 2004 HarperCollins Canada 2003
Rae’s heroic achievements were almost wiped from history by Franklin’s widow who enlisted Charles Dickens in her campaign against him.
Ken McGoogan
Ken McGoogan
Ancient Mariner
Race to the Polar Sea
Samuel Hearne, the first European to reach the Arctic coast of North America, made a remarkable 3500mile journey over land in his quest for copper.
“Brisk, readable books don’t come much better than this.”
In May 1854, John Rae, a young Scottish doctor, achieved the goal dozens of Arctic explorers had attempted and failed. He discovered the key link in the Northwest Passage, and he learned the shocking truth of cannibalism among the starving crew of the expedition led by Sir John Franklin.
The harrowing expedition culminated in the infamous massacre of Bloody Falls in 1771. Later, Hearne was captured by the French in a siege against his Arctic outpost. He was torn away from his lover, a native woman, who tragically died before he could return to her.
Elisha Kent Kane, a young Philadelphia doctor, is often proclaimed to be America’s Shackleton. He led two gruelling expeditions in the 1850s to the North Pole. “An impressive case for the bravery and importance of the explorer who first identified the Greenland ice sheet.”
The young adventurer’s rightful place in Arctic legend was ruined by his love for an unsuitable woman.
Publishers Weekly
“Terrifically accessible.”
Kirkus
Counterpoint US 2008 HarperCollins Canada 2008
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Non-Fiction
Michael McGuire Believing: The Twilight of Truth Working Title
M
ichael McGuire is a psychiatrist by training, a neuroscientist by occupation and a preeminent figure in brain-behaviour research.
Michael McGuire is author or coauthor of 5 books, notably Darwinian Psychiatry (Oxford University Press) and God’s Brain. His research findings on serotonin levels and its links to dominance in vervet monkeys has been featured in the New York Times and Newsweek. His distinguished academic career includes positions at Harvard Medical School, University of California Medical School , Director UCLA’s non-human primate research facility for 20 years and Director, Gruter Institute of Law and Behavior. He lives in northern California.
In examining belief, McGuire diverges from the work of cognitive psychologists whose studies indicate that the brain creates beliefs which often can’t be justified by evidence. McGuire’s problem is that their benchmark is the rational brain and that they deal with the “mind” as a construct separate from biology. McGuire takes the brain as it is–neither rational nor irrational–and examines the mechanisms of the brain that contribute to beliefs, and the divides or gaps between beliefs and evidence. Some key points: *Belief does not cause action; action often comes first. *We believe we have made a decision or a plan, that we have free will, and that choices are not random but biology says otherwise. *The default state of beliefs is resistance to change. *The brain is the product of millions of years of evolution and the mechanisms responsible for belief are unperceived in awareness. * The brain, its mechanisms and its ways of processing information are unlikely to change soon. McGuire addresses features of Thinking Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman and The Believing Brain by Michael Shermer. For Kahneman two systems characterize the ways our brains handle information. System 1 is intuition, our fast and unconscious system which makes instant judgments and leads to instant beliefs and action. System 2 is our slower analytic system which reasons and often corrects System 1’s judgments. Shermer focuses on the brain’s tendancies to find patterns and infuse them with meaning. The biological mechanisms responsible for these tendancies remain to be specified. Is is these that McGuire addresses.
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In writing on the science of belief, McGuire uses lively examples drawn from the experiences of human and non-human primates. Beverley Slopen Literary Agency
Memoir
Shannon Moroney Through The Glass
W
Shannon Moroney speaks widely on restorative justice. She is also a teacher in Toronto. Learn more at: www.shannonmoroney.com Praise for Shannon Moroney: “A compelling documentation of a flawed penal system, a nuanced look at the humanity of a violent criminal, and a snapshot of the cognitive dissonance required by romantic love. Most of all, it’s a meditation on forgiveness.” - Maclean’s “A remarkable story... of love and betrayal, of a horribly broken man’s hidden bbrutality and his ex-wife’s boundless capacity to forgive.” - National Post
hen Shannon Moroney married in October of 2005, she had no idea that her happy life as a newlywed was about to come crashing down. One month after her wedding, a police officer arrived at her door to tell her that her husband, Jason, had been arrested and charged in the brutal assault and kidnapping of two women. In the aftermath of these crimes, Shannon dealt with a heavy burden of grief, the stress and publicity of a major criminal investigation, and the painful stigma of guilt-by-association, all while attempting to understand what had made Jason turn to such violence. In this intimate and gripping journey into prisons, courtrooms and the human heart, Shannon exposes the far-reaching impact of Jason’s crimes, the agonizing choices faced by the loved ones of offenders and the implicit dangers of a correctional system and a society that prioritizes punishment over rehabilitation, and victimhood over recovery. Through it all, Shannon retained unwavering support from her closeknit family and golden circle of friends. In forging her own path to forgiveness –to let go of hope for a better past-- she won a fellowship to complete a Master’s degree in International Child Welfare in England at the University of East Anglia. She speaks internationally on restorative justice and has extensively toured Canada and the U.S., addressing university and high school students, prison inmates, legal and mental health professionals and law-enforcers on the ripple effects of crime for all victims and for society at large. She is a volunteer with Leave Out ViolencE and is a contributor to The Forgiveness Project, an international charity that encourages people to explore the nature of forgiveness and alternatives to revenge.
Doubleday Canada Fall 2011 Simon & Schuster US 2012 Simon & Schuster UK 2013
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Fiction Highlights
Donna Morrissey
Donna Morrissey
What They Wanted
Sylvanus Now The time is the 1950s and the place is Canada’s Atlantic coast at the edge of the great Newfoundland fishing banks.
Sylvie Now fevers for the larger world, both for herself and her vulnerable, artistic brother Chris.
“An absolute terrific original.” David Adams Richards
Brother and sister journey west to the booming oilfields to earn quick, hard cash, joining rough characters. In that throbbing angry earth, their lives are changed. Yet, out of pain and piercing grief, there is reconciliation and renewal.
“Morrissey summons energy ... the writing is poised, charged and tactile, almost biblical in places.” The Sunday Times (London)
“A splendidly unique novel.”
Alistair MacLeod
Penguin Canada 2005 Hodder & Stoghton UK 2005 W.W.Norton U.S.A. 2006 Premium/DTV Germany 2007
Penguin Canada Fall 2008 DTV Germany 2008
“A Newfoundland Thomas Hardy...Morrissey’s work is a performance, an almost oral folk epic.” The Globe and Mail
Aoyama Japan 2003 Forum Sweden 2004 Houghton Mifflin US 2003 Hodder & Stoughton UK 2002 Penguin Canada 2002
This is the love story of Sylvanus Now and the fiery Adelaide. With their heartbreaking loss and renewal of passion, we are aware that Sylvanus Now’s eternal, beloved sea is on the cusp of cataclysmic change. A powerful tale of two people caught in the upheaval of personal, social, and global change of unimagined proportions.
Donna Morrissey
Donna Morrissey
Downhill Chance
Kit’s Law
Job Gale, a fisherman, hunter, logger, joins the army in World War II, leaving his distraught wife and two young daughters. When Job returns, he is broken in body and tortured with a secret shame that cascades over the family.
At 14, never having known her father, Kit becomes responsible for her mentally handicapped mother when her grandmother dies. She fends off village busybodies who try to place mother and daughter in institutions.
His young daughter Clair escapes by becoming a teacher at nearby Rocky Head, then falls in love with Luke, who courts her from afar with a story which reveals his own secret sorrow.
“Irresistible...Masterful... The rich, rocky terrain of Newfoundland has borne a native storyteller with talent to burn in Donna Morrissey.” Sunday Tribune, Dublin
Throughout the turmoil, Kit is sustained by a kindly doctor and the love of Sid, son of Reverend Ropson. Confronted by shattering revelations, Kit retains her courage and resilience.
Cairo Italy 2009 Aoyama Japan 2003 Houghton Mifflin US 2003 Heyne Germany 2001 Hodder & Stoughton UK 2002
Beverley Slopen Literary Agency
Memoir
Memoir
Marina Nemat
Marina Nemat
Prisoner of Tehran
After Tehran Marina Nemat
Finalist for 2012 Canada Reads
O Grinzane Book Award Italy 2008 The FreePress US 2007 John Murray UK 2007 Penguin Canada 2007 Artemis Netherlands 2007 Weltbild Germany 2007 Cairo Italy 2007 Quidnovi Portugal 2007 Espasa Calpe/Planeta Spain 2007 Forum Sweden 2007 TV2Forlag Danish 2007 Psichogios Greece 2007 Tammerraamat Estonia 2007 Kinneret Israel 2007 Wisdom Korea 2007 Concept Marathi 2007 Jota Czech 2007 Planeta Brazil 2007 Trivium Kiado Hungary 2007 BWP Taiwan 2008 Alnari Serbian 2008 Duc In Altum Polish 2008 Gawsewitch French 2008 Pustaka Alvabet Indonesia 2008 Ucila Int’l Slovenia 2009 Pegasus Yayincilik Turkey 2010 Kalimat Arabic 2010 Sarasavi Sinhalese 2011 Film option Stage Adaptation
n January 15, 1982 Marina Nemat was arrested and sentenced to death for political crimes. It was a deadly time in Ayatollah Khomeini’s new regime, when her mildly critical article of the state in her high school newspaper put her on a watch list. Marina was seized from her family’s apartment in Tehran and taken to Evin prison. In a bizarre twist, one of the Revolutionary Guards, Ali, fell in love with her and plucked her from the firing squad with only minutes to spare. In return, he demanded that she marry him. If she didn’t, he said he would ensure that her family was harmed. After Ali was gunned down by rival factions and died in her arms, Marina was eventually released.
Bestseller in Germany, Italy, Canada • 5 printings in Portugal • 2 printings in Netherlands
After tehrAN A Li fe recLAiMed
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“...an account as graceful, honest, and revelatory as her original.”
hen Marina Nemat walks out of the notorious Evin prison at age 18, Maclean’s Magazine after being incarcerated for 2 years, 2 months, and 12 days “[a] portrait of an artist for political crimes, and crossand the evolution of an es the busy Jordan Highway activist.” Globe & Mail in Tehran to rejoin her family, she hopes to resume her life. “...a fascinating study of one woman’s struggle to But release from prison promwin back her life from ises a freedom that is elusive. the ravages of a trau- Her loving but flawed parmatic past.” ents are wary of probing the Quill & Quire details of torture and rape. Praise for Prisoner of Her high school sweetheart Andre has waited for her. Yet, Tehran she can’t tell him about her “Gripping, elegantly forced marriage to her captor, written memoir…mas- Ali, a Revolutionary Guard, or about Ali’s death, and the terly.” The Wall Street Journal miscarriage she had suffered. “Her story is unforgettable.”
She and Andre manage to leave Iran to come to CanaVogue da in 1991 and to raise two “It is an act of bravery, sons. Despite her attempts to compartmentalize her presthis book” The Globe and Mail ent from her past, survivor guilt, the burden of secrets, Penguin Canada 2010 and flashbacks of the agonies Cairo Italy Nov 2010 she suffered, intrude on her Droemer Germany 2012 life as a housewife and mother Kinneret Israel 2012 with a job as a waitress at a suburban fast food restaurant.
Beverley Slopen Literary Agency
Fiction
James W. Nichol
James W. Nichol
Death Spiral
Transgression
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A
NOVEL
OF
LOVE
AND
WAR
}
∏ransgression james
w. nichol
“This is a fake quote. This is a fake quote. This is a fake quote. This is a fake quote.” —ROBIN BILARDELLO
Wilf McLauchlin, a Spitfire fighter pilot returns 2010 Arthur Ellis Award home only to be plagued for Best Crime Novel with dark and violent crimes as he discovers Evergreen Award, Ontario body after body. Short-listed:
Library Association
McArthur & Co. Canada 2009 C&T Poland 2011
Wilf begins to suspect whether he is the common motivating element in all these crimes.
HarperCollins US 2009 der Club book club Germany Goldmann Germany 2007 McArthur Canada 2008 C&T Poland 2011
James W. Nichol
James W. Nichol is a
prominent playwright and screenwriter. His book Midnight Cab was
Midnight Cab
Mass market reissue McArthur & Co. Canada 2007 Sony Japan 2006 Newton & Compton Italy 2006 Droemer Germany 2005 Canongate U.S.A. 2005 Fleuve Noire France 2005 Luitingh-Sijthoff Netherlands 2005 AST Russia 2005 C & T Poland 2005 Canongate UK 2004 Knopf Canada 2002 Rest of World: Canongate
Walker has come to the city to unearth the mystery of his early life. At age three, he was found abandoned on a deserted country road. He only has two clues to his identity: a photograph and a letter from a teenage girl.
When Adele Georges’ father is captured by the German forces, she makes inquiries at the local authorities. A German soldier tries to help her navigate the bureaucracy. Love grows across the enemy lines, with devastating consequences.
James W. Nichol
published in several countries including Germany where it is a best seller with sales in excess of 500,000 copies. It was short listed for the Gold Dagger award in the UK, and won the Canadian Crime Writers Award for the best first novel. He is also author of the suspenseful literary tale Transgression (HarperUS 2009). He lives in Stratford, Ontario, Canada.
Beverley Slopen Literary Agency
Non-Fiction
Terry O’Reilly and Mike Tennant The Age of Persuasion How Marketing Ate Our Culture CBC Radio’s Age of Persuasion won five New York Festivals International Radio Awards, including the 2011 Grand Prize in Business and Consumer Affairs
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“A lively, anecdotal primer...filled with smart and breezy tales told from an insider’s perspective.”
itty, erudite, and irrepressibly irreverent, Terry O’Reilly and Mike Tennant offer a lively social history of advertising and its impact as a major cultural force in modern life.
“[A]n instant classic on media literacy.”
Terry O’Reilly is the perfect guide to the age of persuasion. As the host, creator and co-writer with Mike Tennant of two wildly popular CBC Radio series on advertising, he is known as a delightful raconteur and scholar of media literature. But unlike academics, his day job as one of the top directors of radio and TV commercials affords him a unique perspective on marketing and how it has driven a change in the way we react to media.
Washington Post
Movie Entertainment
“Witty and insightful... this ragbag of pop culture references, anecdotes, solid research, and advice will be indispensable to marketers or anyone curious about the power and ubiquity of advertising in modern culture.” Publishers Weekly
“O’Reilly and Tennant are exceptionally talented writers...In a straightforward, popular style, The Age of Persuasion is easy-to-read and often subversive.”
Globe & Mail
Terry O’Reilly has won hundreds of advertising awards and is the co-founder of Pirate Radio and Television. The Age of Persuasion is broadcast on CBC Radio and NPR’s WBEZ Chicago.
The age of persuasion dawned in the 1880s with the rise of ad agencies. In its fledgling years, advertising was defined as “salesmanship on paper.” That concept was left in the dust with the explosion of media and consumerism. Radio in the 1920s and television in the 1950s spawned market research and the idea of persuasion as a “science.” The creative explosion in the 1960s, however, revealed persuasion to be a delicate “art.” In the 1980s, the arrival of a multi-channel universe and MTV’s rapid-fire editing of images and sound, forever altered our attention span and notions of fast and slow, short and long. The authors also explore such topics as ad clutter, the implied contract advertisers have with consumers and the peril of breaking it. They chart the rise and fall of branded entertainment, disclose new language of persuasion and candidly reveal examples of opportunism and cynicism. But they also appreciate the inventiveness, craft and art in creating the best ads that add colour to daily life.
Knopf Canada 2009 Counterpoint US 2010 Cheers Publishing China 2010
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Beverley Slopen Literary Agency
Fiction
David Penhale Passing Through
A moving and witty novel about starting over in a changed world David Penhale lived in Dubai for several years. A published poet, he has honed his novel at writing workshops at the University of Iowa. He lives in Toronto where he teaches writing and is working on a second novel. Learn more at: www.davidpenhale.com
D
aniel Foster has a plan. A quick stop in Toronto to fix his daughter’s life, then off to Thailand. After years working as an oil executive in Dubai, he has a small fortune, enough to fund a comfortable life under the palms. Mary, his daughter, and Shawna, his 11 year-old granddaughter, are struggling to make ends meet in a rundown neighbourhood. A few days to put their finances in order, and Foster will get back on a plane. So much for plans. A bank crash wipes out Foster’s savings. He’s marooned in a city he scarcely recognizes. His managerial skills are staledated, he is told. He prides himself on his people skills, but when it comes to love, he has a lot to learn. The tense relationship with his daughter Mary and the growing warmth between Foster and young Shawna are pitch perfect. Foster’s cautious, cool romance with Jessica, an artist and a fellow victim of the bank collapse, is layered and revealing. We visit the dunes and wadis of the Arabian Peninsula, whose stark beauty has touched Foster deeply, and we explore the edgy, multi-ethnic city that becomes his home. Other pleasures are the wry social observations on big box, post-modern culture which arise from Foster’s attempts to get a job and rebuild his life. A family drama reminiscent of the novels of Anne Tyler, Passing Through is a profound comic novel of contemporary life and society. With Daniel Foster, we discover what it means to belong, and what it takes to love.
Cormorant Canada 2011
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Beverley Slopen Literary Agency
Historical Thriller
Roberta Rich The Midwife of Venice
H “Roberta Rich introduces a unique heroine, and her wry humour leavens a serious subject.” Globe & Mail
“The Midwife of Venice is a compelling and engaging novel, a well-researched high-stakes drama written with elegance and compassion. Fascinating!” Sandra Gulland
“Not only did Roberta Rich transport me to 16th century Venice with its seductive tapestries of smells, sights, textures, and beliefs, she involved me in a poignant story of seasoned love. Katherine Ashenburg
Globe and Mail Bestseller No. 1 BESTSELLER on Amazon.ca, and over 11 weeks on Top 100 list Doubleday Canada February 2011 Bloomsbury Berlin Germany 2011 Gallery US February 2012 Inkilap Kitabevi Turkey 2012 Ebury UK 2012 Juritzen Forlag Norway 2012 Medialive Content Spain 2012 Tericum Kiado Hungary 2012 Hermes Books Bulgaria 2013 Novo Seculo Brazil 2013 Israel Kinneret 2013 Courte Echelle French Canada 2013 Alnari Serbia 2013
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annah Levi, a midwife in the Venetian ghetto is put in terrible danger. She has gained renown for her skill in coaxing reluctant babies out of their mother’s bellies using her “birthing spoons” as rudimentary forceps. One night a Christian nobleman, Conte Paolo di Padovani, appears at Hannah’s door in the Jewish ghetto with an impossible request. He implores Hannah to help his dying wife and save their unborn child. But a Papal edict has made it a crime, punishable by death, for Jews to give medical treatment to Christians. The Conte offers her a huge sum of money, enough to enable her to sail to Malta to ransom her beloved husband, Isaac. He was captured at sea and is a slave of the Knights of St. John. Hannah acquiesces and delivers the infant, Matteo, a child who captures her heart. As she prepares to depart for Malta to rescue Isaac, she discovers that the baby’s uncles are plotting to murder the child in order to seize the family fortune. In the absence of the Conte and his wife who are in Ferrara on urgent business, Hannah believes she must safeguard Matteo. She enlists her sister Jessica who is a courtesan and living as a Christian outside the ghetto. An outbreak of the plague traps them in Venice and makes them easy prey for the baby’s murderous uncles. Woven through Hannah’s travails are Isaac’s hardships as a slave in Malta. Blessed with wit and charm, he earns scraps of food as a scribe and pins his hopes for freedom on bartering his precious silkworm eggs. To reach Isaac, who believes she has died in the plague, Hannah must outsmart the Padovani family and sail to Malta before Isaac manages to buy his passage to a new life in Constantinople. Roberta Rich has crafted an enthralling story that makes 16th Century Venice throb with life and suspense. Her next novel will be set in Constantinople. She divides her time between Vancouver and Mexico. Learn more at: www.robertarich.com Beverley Slopen Literary Agency
Fiction
Hilary Scharper Perdita
H Hilary Scharper
istorian Garth Hellyer is bemused when he is assigned to interview Marged Brice, a resident of Clarkson Home for The Aged as part of his work on the Longevity Project. Official records indicate that she is 134 years old, arousing suspicions of bureaucratic error or major fraud. When Garth finally meets her, he is intrigued. Marged, looking as old as polished stone, her sharp mind occasionally drifting to reverie, tells him she wants to die but Perdita won’t let her. Not too old to be charmed by Garth, she entrusts him with her journal which he takes with him to his cottage near the Cape Prius lighthouse of Marged’s childhood. This remote peninsula on the Great Lakes was a summer respite for the elite, including a renowned artist who may have been Marged’s lover, and a prominent ornithologist whom Marged assisted. But Garth is also driven by his curiosity about Perdita, the name of the infant girl in Shakespeare’s The Winter’s Tale who is left on a seacoast to die but is rescued by shepherds. Hilary Scharper masterfully constructs Marged’s story set in the dawn of the 1900s and its impact on the unresolved issues in Garth’s life, offering us a glorious romance of gothic and modern. Fans of Jane Eyre, Rebecca, and Possession will enjoy the rich pageant of conflicting passions, wild storms, and the mystery of the supernatural. Hilary Scharper, who lives in Toronto, spent a decade as a lighthouse keeper on the Bruce Peninsula with her husband. She also is the author of a story collection, Dream Dresses and God and Caesar at the Rio Grande (University of Minnesota Press) which won the Choice Outstanding Academic Book Award. She received her Ph.D. from Yale and is currently Associate Professor of Cultural Anthropology at the University of Toronto.
Canadian Offer being finalized
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Fiction
Joey Slinger
NINA, THE BANDIT QUEEN
Nina, The Bandit Queen
JOEY SLINGER
“It’s a fun ride that does what farce is meant to do: enjoyably fill the time.” - Toronto Star Joey Slinger’s wild and dark imagination, his subversive humor, and his surprising arcs of fancy have attracted passionate fans to his humor column which appeared several times a week in the Toronto Star. He has published two collections of his columns: No Axe Too Small to Grind, which won the Leacock Medal for Humour and If It’s A Jungle Out There, Why Do I Have to Mow the Lawn? Praise for Nina, The Bandit Queen “Funny, engaging and and original. I enjoyed it thoroughly.” Joy Fielding
“Joey Slinger’s best book yet. Nina ...is the kind of person who would steal your heart and steal your wallet...Read this book and weep. With tears of laughter.” Rod McQueen
“It’s a fun ride that does what farce is meant to do: enjoyably fill the time.”
Toronto Star
N
ina Dolgoy grew up in a part of town so beaten down that even prostitutes and drug dealers have written it off. Still, she imagines that if the neighbourhood pool wasn’t boarded up, a rigorous swimming program might keep her four daughters from falling into degradation. The bitterly self-proclaimed “welfare queen” leads her community on a fund-raising, pool-fixing, self-improvement campaign. Unfortunately, the only way she can think to raise money herself is by robbing a bank. Unfortunately she isn’t very good at it. Coincidentally, her brother Frank gets out of jail and robs one. But it’s a put-up job, and unfortunately he double-crosses the bad guys who hired him and takes off with the loot. After accidentally knocking him off, the bad guys conclude that he stashed the cash in Nina’s house and start dismantling it around her ears. As mother-lion courageous as this makes her, it’s no use when even trusted friends turn out to want the money for themselves and believe she’s got it and is holding out on them. Nina and the girls have to flee for their lives. But what happens when their escape in a yellow school bus turns into a sublimely bizarre slowmotion chase? With the world watching live, she somehow has to find a way to to pull the wool over everybody’s eyes. This caper-in-reverse about an unfortunate, and unfortunately misunderstood, woman would be really sad if it wasn’t presented with a frankness so staggering it knocks the legs out from under you. It’s hard for your heart to break when you’re laughing out loud.
Dundurn World 2012
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Non-Fiction
Lionel Tiger and Michael McGuire God’s Brain
G
od’s Brain is not about whether God exists or not. It is not an assertion about whether or not religions are good, noble, necessary, a sign of infirmity, or catalogues of grand silliness.
“This is easily the best book on the nature of religion to appear for a long time.”
This book answers the essential questions of existence. What is the purpose of religion? What is its source? Why does 80% of the world’s population have some religious affiliation?
“The book is a well-written, easy to read, unique perspective on religion.”
God’s Brain describes why, how, and what the brain does as part of religious experience and organization. Neurophysiology and neuroanatomy are as necessary to understanding religion as knowing about the leg’s muscles and blood circulation is necessary to train hurdlers.
Robin Fox, University Professor of Social Theory, Rutgers University
Jay R. Feierman, editor, The Biology of Religious Behavior
“Recent, often bitter debates have lacked a scientific take on religion that is not at the same time trying to destroy it. This lively, creative account helps fill that gap. It may even help you with your own trials of faith.” Melvin Konner, author of The Tangled Wing: Biological Constraints on the Human Spirit
“Tiger and McGuire have concocted an amazing and insightful look—based on sound science— into how the human brain ‘seeks’ religion.”
R. Curtis Ellison, MD, professor of medicine and public health, Boston University School of Medicine Prometheus Books 2010 Wise Book Korea 2011 Lannoo Dutch 2011 Alfa Turkey 2011
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In God’s Brain, the authors consider religion’s role in socialization, its relentless obsession with regulating sex, its conceptions of an after-life, its influence on law, and the similarities between non-human primate and human social groups. They also demonstrate religion’s ability to help the brain adjust to stress and anxiety in lieu of modern-day drugs and therapy. This answer to Dawkins and Hitchens is without judgment but is scientifically and socially judicious. The story is told by a master neuropsychiatrist and an accomplished detective about the mysteries of human behavior. It is the most important book on the subject of religion to appear, for both the religious and non believers alike. Michael McGuire, MD, is the author or editor of 10 books including Darwinian Psychiatry (with A. Troisi), and he is the primary discoverer of seratonin’s crucial role in brain chemistry. He is President of the Biomedical Research Foundation, and Director of the Bradshaw Foundation and the Gruter Institute of Law and Behaviour. Lionel Tiger is the bestselling author of Men in Groups, The Imperial Animal (with Robin Fox) and The Pursuit of Pleasure. His articles have appeared in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, Rolling Stone, Harvard Business Review and Brain and Behavioural Science. He is the Charles Darwin Professor of Anthropology at Rutgers University. Beverley Slopen Literary Agency
Morley Torgov is an award-winning author of six previous novels. The Outside Chance of Maxmillian Glick, was made into a movie that took the main prize at the Toronto International Film Festival and was the basis of a 26 part CBC TV sitcom. His first book A Good Place to Come From was adapted for TV and for 3 full length stage plays by Israel Horovitz, that have enjoyed productions at numerous community theatres in the U.S.
Morley Torgov
Morley Torgov
The Mastersinger
Murder in
From Minsk
A-Major
An Inspector Hermann Preiss Mystery
An Inspector Hermann Preiss Mystery
In the city of Munich, 1868, composer Richard Wagner has finally completed the libretto and score for his new opera “Die Meistersinger von Nuremberg.” After a string of extremely difficult years - Wagner’s reputation and financial stability depend on the success of his new work.
When an anonymous note arrives threatening Wagner’s premiere, Inspector Hermann Preiss is called to investigate. With the premiere less than two months away, and an enemy list Praise for The Masters- stretching from one opera act to another, discoveringer from Minsk: ing the perpetrator before “You don’t have to be a opening night will be Preiss’ classical music lover to Magnu Opus. enjoy this one.” Publisher’s Weekly
Join Dusseldorf ’s top detective for another mystery in the world of classical rock stars, where life and death hang on a single note. The second installment in the Hermann Preiss Series.
Dundurn Canada/US 2012
“It’s still easy to see why, in the early days of his long writing career, Toronto’s Morley Torgov won two Leacock medals for humour... This is so even in his first venture into crime genre fiction, which shifts back in time to the 19th-century European world of what has become known as classical music.” Joan Barfoot London Free Press
T
ake one of the crowning musical geniuses of midnineteenth centry Europe, surround him with enemies, add several scoundrels, including one who ends up murdered under highly mysterious circumstances...and there you have the world of Robert and Clara Schumann in Germany of the 1850s. This is a historical mystery that explores what or who was driving Robert Schumann mad. It takes the reader into the world of mid-nineteenth century music, where classical composers were stars, and their egos were just as monstrous as the rock stars of today.
“This is a story well told: Setting, character, plot, enriched by the lifestyles and colours of the time. Murder is investigated, clues unearthed, expanded and timed to keep the reader turning Inspector Preiss tackles a the pages. Music and mysterious off-key A on the mystery make captivatSchumanns’ piano, but are ing partners.” Hamilton Spectator
all mysteries meant to be solved? Inspector Preiss has the final answer.
Metaixmio Publishing Greece 2009 Sallim Publishing Korea 2009 Actes Sud France 2009 Napoleon RendezVous US/ Canada 2008
Beverley Slopen Literary Agency
Parenting
Michael Ungar, Ph.D. I Still Love You:
Nine Tips for Parenting Really Difficult Kids
M
ichael Ungar, who is world-renowned on topics of families and youth in crisis, knows about troubled children. He knows what puts them at risk and he knows what makes them safe and resilient.
Michael Ungar is a Professor of Social Work, and a marriage and family therapist, based in Halifax at Dalhousie University. He is internationally recognized for his work in more than a dozen countries on resilience and at-risk youth. Learn more at: www.michaelungar.com
In this beautiful and helpful book, Michael Ungar takes us into his world each Wednesday when he meets with three families with very troubled children. But here, Michael is not the all-knowing therapist. He, too, had been a troubled teen, growing up in an emotionally neglectful and physically abusive home, and he shares his struggles. In the group, Michael discusses nine strategies for raising problem free and flourishing children. They are: structure, consequences, parent-child connections, lots of peer and adult relationships, a powerful identity, a sense of control, a sense of belonging, spirituality and life purpose, fair and just treatment by others, and safety and support. Hopeful in tone, and using knowledge gathered across cultures, I Still Love you: Nine Tips for Parenting Really Difficult Kids does more than just tell parents what to do. Recounting the stories of three struggling families, Ungar shows that it is never too late to help a child. I Still Love you is not only a guide for parents and a gritty tale of the everyday heroics of parenting challenging kids, but it is also a singular work of literature. Dr. Ungar is also the author of We Generation: Raising Socially Responsible Kids, Too Safe for Their Own Good: How Risk and Responsibility Help Teens, and Playing at Being Bad: The Hidden Resilience of Troubled Teens. He appears regularly on radio and TV and is in demand as a lecturer and keynote speaker at conferences and workshops for parents and professionals. For details see his web site www.michaelungar.com
Manuscript available
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Fiction
Rangeley Wallace Love Is Merely A Madness “Rangeley Wallace is a hard, fresh wind from the south, with a voice full of particularity and a born sense of story.” Rangeley Wallace moved from the South to Washington, D.C. where she is an author and a lawyer. She is the author of No Defense (St. Martin’s Press). Learn more at: www.rangeleywallace.com
Praise for No Defense “Wallace avoids any Grishamcome-lately clichés in this interesting novel of southern justice... This page-turner of a novel is refreshing in it’s uncommon perspective, as opposed to the usual legal novel that focuses on lawyers.” Booklist
“Rangeley Wallace has written a taut, compelling Southern drama that is cut from the same cloth as Harper Lee and the early William Faulkner.” Winston Groom, author of Forrest Gump
“A riveting courtroom drama… Another fine story in the Southern literary tradition.”
Library Journal
Manuscript Available
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Anne River Siddons
I
t seems like a benign case of wedding jitters when Alexa Cunningham’s ambivalence about her forthcoming marriage to the glamorous David Lassiter grips her. But in this beautifully told tale, rich in the cultural texture of the contemporary South, it points to Alexa’s unresolved issues from her past. Four years earlier, Alexa’s happy life script was written. She and her boyfriend Nick and her dearest friend Kat had moved to Carsonville, Alabama. Their plans included marriage to Nick and a position in the family business for Alexa, legal training for Nick, and medical studies for Kat. Then tragedy strikes. When Alexa and Kat are horseback riding, Kat suffers a terrible fall on one of Alexa’s horses. It leaves Kat a paraplegic, and an ensuing lawsuit against Alexa’s family envelops everyone in anger. Relationships are ruptured. Confused, abandoned by her friend, and guilt-ridden, Alexa flees her hometown and Nick, and reestablishes herself as an investment banker in Atlanta where she is swept away by the sophisticated jewellery designer David. Coming back to Carsonville to be with her father, stirs Alexa’s longings for Nick, the family construction business, and the life she expected to have. To her shock, Kat also is back in Carsonville, and once again is close to her family. Ironically, everyone has moved on except Alexa. And she has lost her footing. Can she go back? With compassion, humor and deep understanding, Rangeley Wallace weaves a story of family, friendship and love to engage the heart. Beverley Slopen Literary Agency
Sports Memoir
Brock Walsh Die Happy Golf, Life, and the Perils of Par
I Advance Praise “Die Happy is a delight. I’ve never played golf and thought I had zero interest in it. But I’m drawn to literary tales about drive and obsession, about the need to extract lessons from painful experience, about the tireless search for aesthetic perfection. On all these levels, Walsh succeeds admirably. To my amazement, I found myself following the book’s final eighteen holes with tense fascination. Walsh gives us a big-hearted adventure.”
Brad Leithauser Author of The Art Student’s War
“Stirring, instructive and beautifully written, Walsh’s tale of his quest for par golf is a free drop for anyone whose life has gotten lost in the woods.”
Roger Director Author of I Dream In Blue
“Brock Walsh has captured the essence of the game of golf-- it is the quest!”
n a chaotic and uncertain world, the goals we set can soothe our fears and guide our destiny. Brock Walsh, a Los Angeles songwriter and avid golfer, pursued a two-year quest to shoot a round of “level par,” a feat achieved by one amateur in a thousand. What he didn’t know was that life was cuing up its own slew of challenges that would test him far more. Walsh takes us on a wild ride of harrowing reversals and surprising victories. He is betrayed by his business partner, loses his job, has to fight to keep his home, while his wife battles a life-threatening drug resistant bacteria. Staring into this dark vista, he is forced to contemplate deeper issues of aging, courage and self. For Walsh, who has had a sterling career writing songs for the major stars of his generation, the change in fortune could not have been more vertiginous. Die Happy is a golf story, a love story, and a life story. Whether he takes us backstage with the Rolling Stones, into the studio with Michael Jackson, or down the tree line at the municipal golf course with the dawn patrol, Walsh weaves a tale that is smart, funny, and heartbreakingly real. After graduating from Harvard, Brock Walsh began his professional life as a touring musician and back-up singer for Linda Ronstadt, Karla Bonoff, and Andrew Gold with whom he produced such hits as “Lonely Boy” and “Thank You For Being a Friend.” He was a staff producer for Quincy Jones and has written and produced hits for such artists as Christina Aguilera, Celine Dion, The Pointer Sisters, and Aretha Franklin. He lives in Santa Monica with his wife and three children.
Eddie Merrins Author Playing A Round With the Little Pro
Manuscript available
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Beverley Slopen Literary Agency
Beverley Slopen Literary Agency 131 Bloor Street West, Suite 711,Toronto, Canada, M5S 1S3 Telephone (416) 964 9598 email: beverley@slopenagency.ca www.slopenagency.com
Client List Andrew Allentuck Henry Aubin Dave Bagby John Ballem Lisa Bendall Lita-Rose Betcherman Hugh Brewster Timothy Brook Bonnie Buxton Pat Capponi Laurie Channer Ann Charney Michael Decter Ron Dembo Linda Silver Dranoff Dorothy Eber Modris Eksteins Laurie Elmquist Howard Engel Michael Enright Terry Fallis Robert Fulford Sheree Fitch Joanne Foster
Joanna Goodman Philippe Gigantes Catherine Graham Lyndsay Green Francesca Grosso Don Gutteridge Rob Harasymchuk David Healy Tod Hoffman Blanche Howard David Israelson Mary Jackman Basil Johnston Martin Knelman Jack Kuper Tom Koppel Will Kymlicka Elliott Leyton Dr. Mailis-Gagnon Michael Marrus Dona Matthews Leon Major Rona Maynard Jack McClelland
Ken McGoogan Michael McGuire David McMahon Sally Melville Alan Mendelson John Miller Henry Mintzberg Shannon Moroney Donna Morrissey Marina Nemat James W. Nichol David Onley Terry O’Reilly David Penhale David Posen Bruce Allen Powe David Pratt Nick Pron Peter Rehak Robert Remington Roberta Rich Pamela Richardson Jeffrey Rosenthal Hilary Scharper
Edward Shorter Sean Simmans Philip Slayton Joey Slinger Daniel Stoffman Jaron Summers Carole Tanenbaum Mike Tanner Mike Tennant Stephen Tesher Lionel Tiger Morley Torgov Harold Troper Michael Ungar Rangeley Wallace Brock Walsh Morton Weinfeld William Weintraub Jennifer Welsh Margaret Wente Richard Worzel Beryl Young Sherri Zickefoose Ania Vesenny
Representatives
Brazil RIFF Agency Rio De Janeiro
Greece JLM Literary Agency Athens
Japan Tuttle-Mori Tokyo
Scandinavia Licht & Burr Agency Denmark
China Gray Tan Taiwan
Hungary Katai & Bolza Budapest
Korea Eric Yang Agency Seoul
Spain Julio Yanez Barcelona
Netherlands Internationaal Literatuur BV Amsterdam
Turkey Akcali Copyright Istanbul
Russia Alexander Korzhenevski Moscow
United Kingdom David Grossman London
France Michelle Lapautre Paris Germany Paul & Peter Fritz AG Zurich
Israel Harris/Elon Agency Jerusalem Italy ALI Milan Poland Ilene Kreshka
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