October 2019 Adult Top 10 Picks

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  1. The Cure for Hate
    by Tony McAleer Canada
    Arsenal Pulp Press
    Oct 01, 2019
    SOCIAL SCIENCE / Discrimination
    Paperback / softback
    The Cure for Hate
    by Tony McAleer Canada
    Arsenal Pulp Press
    Oct 01, 2019
    SOCIAL SCIENCE / Discrimination
    Paperback / softback

    How does an affluent, middle-class, private-school-attending son of a doctor end up at the Aryan Nations compound in Idaho, falling in with and then recruiting for some of the most notorious neo-Nazi groups in Canada and the United States?

    The Cure for Hate paints a very human picture of a young man who craved attention, acceptance, and approval and the dark place he would go to get it. Tony McAleer found an outlet for his teenage rage in the street violence of the skinhead scene. He then grew deeply involved in the White Aryan Resistance (WAR), rising through the ranks to become a leader, and embraced technology and the budding internet to bring white nationalist propaganda into the digital age. After fifteen years in the movement, it was the outpouring of love he felt at the birth of his children that inspired him to start questioning his hateful beliefs. Thus began the spiritual journey of personal transformation that enabled him to disengage from the highest levels of the white power movement.

    This incisive book breaks commonly held stereotypes and delivers valuable insights into how regular people are drawn to violent extremism, how the ideology takes hold, and the best ways to help someone leave hate behind. In his candid and introspective memoir, Tony shares his perspective gleaned from over a thousand hours of therapy, group work, and facilitating change in others that reveals the deeper psychological causes behind racism. At a period in history when instances of racial violence are on the upswing, The Cure for Hate demonstrates that in a society frighteningly divided by hate and in need of healing, perhaps atonement, forgiveness, and most importantly, radical compassion is the cure.

    View this title on BNC CataList
  2. The Body
    by Bill Bryson
    Doubleday Canada
    Oct 15, 2019
    SCIENCE / Life Sciences / Human Anatomy & Physiology
    Hardback
    The Body
    by Bill Bryson
    Doubleday Canada
    Oct 15, 2019
    SCIENCE / Life Sciences / Human Anatomy & Physiology
    Hardback
    NATIONAL BESTSELLER
    NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER
    INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER

    A NEW YORK TIMES EDITORS' CHOICE

    NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF 2019 BY Maclean'sThe Washington Post USA Today • Indigo


    Bill Bryson, bestselling author of A Short History of Nearly Everything, takes us on a head-to-toe tour of the marvel that is the human body. As compulsively readable as it is comprehensive, this is Bryson at his very best, a must-read owner's manual for everybody.


    Bill Bryson once again proves himself to be an incomparable companion as he guides us through the human body--how it functions, its remarkable ability to heal itself, and (unfortunately) the ways it can fail. Full of extraordinary facts (your body made a million red blood cells since you started reading this) and irresistible Bryson-esque anecdotes, The Body will lead you to a deeper understanding of the miracle that is life in general and you, in particular. As Bill Bryson writes, "we pass our existence within this wobble of flesh and yet take it almost entirely for granted." The Body will cure that indifference with generous doses of wondrous, compulsively readable facts and information.
    View this title on BNC CataList
  3. If You Give a Pig the White House
    by Faye Kanouse
    Castle Point Books
    Oct 01, 2019
    HUMOR / Topic / Politics
    Hardback
    If You Give a Pig the White House
    by Faye Kanouse
    Castle Point Books
    Oct 01, 2019
    HUMOR / Topic / Politics
    Hardback

    A coiffed and blustery pig has shoved his way into the White House! A cleverly worded and illustrated picture book, this is the adult parody of the beloved children’s cautionary tale, If You Give a Pig a Pancake.

    Watch in dismay as the presidential pig gets into trouble, binges on too much Fox News and fast food, and cavalierly threatens national security. If You Give a Pig the White House both lovingly caricatures the original children's book and shows just what can happen when a greedy anti-hero tracks his hooves all over America.

    View this title on BNC CataList
  4. Grand Union
    by Zadie Smith
    Hamish Hamilton
    Oct 08, 2019
    FICTION / Literary
    Hardback
    Grand Union
    by Zadie Smith
    Hamish Hamilton
    Oct 08, 2019
    FICTION / Literary
    Hardback
    The first ever collection of stories from the bestselling and beloved author of Swing Time and White Teeth

    In the summer of 1959, an Antiguan immigrant in north west London lives the last day of his life, unknowingly caught in someone else's story of hate and division, resistance and revolt.

    A mother looks back on her early forays into matters of the human heart--and other parts of the human body--considering the ways in which desire is always an act of negotiation, destruction, and self-invention.

    A disgraced cop stands amid the broken shards of his life, unable to move forward into a future that holds no place for him.

    Moral panic spreads like contagion through the upper echelons of New York City--and the cancelled people look disconcertingly like the rest of us.

    A teenage scion of the technocratic elite chases spectres through a premium virtual reality, trailed by a little girl with a runny nose and no surviving family.

    We all take a much-needed break from this mess, on a package holiday where the pool's electric blue is ceaselessly replenished, while political and environmental collapse happen far away, to someone else.

    Interleaving ten completely new and unpublished stories with some of her best-loved pieces from the New Yorker and elsewhere, Zadie Smith presents a dizzyingly rich and varied collection of fiction. Moving exhilaratingly across genres and perspectives, from the historic to the vividly current to the slyly dystopian, Grand Union is a sharply alert and prescient collection about time and place, identity and rebirth, the persistent legacies that haunt our present selves and the uncanny futures that rush up to meet us.
    View this title on BNC CataList
  5. The Forest City Killer
    by Vanessa Brown Canada
    ECW Press
    Oct 04, 2019
    TRUE CRIME / Murder / Serial Killers
    Lexile measure 1020L
    Paperback / softback
    The Forest City Killer
    by Vanessa Brown Canada
    ECW Press
    Oct 04, 2019
    TRUE CRIME / Murder / Serial Killers
    Lexile measure 1020L
    Paperback / softback

    Recently featured in:

    • The New York Times
    • Bustle
    • Quill & Quire
    • Booklist
    • Publishers Weekly
    • CBC
    • Toronto Star

    A My Favorite Murder recommended read

    “A must for true crime fans.” – Booklist

    “A truly impressive account of this dark chapter in [Ontario’s] history . . . Not just a sharp work of investigative journalism, The Forest City Killer is a poignant portrait of children and young people whose lives were cut short in horrific circumstances and a clarion call for long overdue justice. It is destined to become a classic of Canadian true crime.” — Quill & Quire, starred review

    Dig deep into the unsolved murder of Jackie English and join the hunt for a serial killer

    Fifty years ago, a serial killer prowled the quiet city of London, Ontario, marking it as his hunting grounds. As young women and boys were abducted, raped, and murdered, residents of the area held their loved ones closer and closer, terrified of the monster — or monsters — stalking the streets. Homicide detective Dennis Alsop began hunting the killer in the 1960s, and he didn’t stop searching until his death 40 years later. For decades, detectives, actual and armchair, and the victims’ families and friends continued to ask questions: Who was the Forest City Killer? Was there more than one person, or did a depraved individual commit all of these crimes on his own?

    Combing through the files Detective Alsop left behind, researcher Vanessa Brown reopens the cases, revealing previously unpublished witness statements, details of evidence, and astonishing revelations. And through her investigation, Vanessa posits the unthinkable: is it possible that the Forest City Killer is still alive and, like the notorious Golden State Killer, a simple DNA test could bring him to justice?

    View this title on BNC CataList
  6. Hex Life: Wicked New Tales of Witchery
    by Rachel Autumn Deering
    Titan Books
    Oct 01, 2019
    FICTION / Fantasy / Dark Fantasy
    Hardback
    Hex Life: Wicked New Tales of Witchery
    by Rachel Autumn Deering
    Titan Books
    Oct 01, 2019
    FICTION / Fantasy / Dark Fantasy
    Hardback
    Includes 'How to Become a Witch Queen' shortlisted for the Shirley Jackson Award.
    Brand-new stories of witches and witchcraft written by popular female fantasy authors, including Kelley Armstrong, Rachel Caine and Sherrilyn Kenyon writing in their own bestselling universes!

    These are tales of witches, wickedness, evil and cunning. Stories of disruption and subversion by today's women you should fear. Including Kelley Armstrong, Rachel Caine and Sherrilyn Kenyon writing in their own bestselling universes.

    These witches might be monstrous, or they might be heroes, depending on their own definitions. Even the kind hostess with the candy cottage thought of herself as the hero of her own story. After all, a woman's gotta eat...

    EIGHTEEN TALES OF WITCHCRAFT FROM THE MISTRESSES OF MAGIC

    ANIA AHLBORN
    KELLEY ARMSTRONG
    AMBER BENSON
    CHESYA BURKE
    RACHEL CAINE
    KRISTIN DEARBORN
    RACHEL AUTUMN DEERING
    TANANARIVE DUE
    THEODORA GOSS
    KAT HOWARD
    ALMA KATSU
    SHERRILYN KENYON
    SARAH LANGAN
    HELEN MARSHALL
    JENNIFER MCMAHON
    HILLARY MONAHAN
    MARY SANGIOVANNI
    ANGELA SLATTER

    BRING OUT YOUR DREAD
    View this title on BNC CataList
  7. So You're a Little Sad, So What?
    by Alicia Tobin Canada
    Arsenal Pulp Press
    Sep 25, 2019
    HUMOR / Topic / Men, Women & Relationships
    Paperback / softback
    So You're a Little Sad, So What?
    by Alicia Tobin Canada
    Arsenal Pulp Press
    Sep 25, 2019
    HUMOR / Topic / Men, Women & Relationships
    Paperback / softback

    With her just-right combination of sensitivity, vulnerability, and hilarity, comedian and podcaster Alicia Tobin has won fans among the biggest names in contemporary comedy, from Paul F. Tompkins to Rob Delaney. In her prose debut, the host of Retail Nightmares and Super! Sick! Podcast! takes readers through the funniest parts of sadness and the saddest parts of funniness. While tackling topics ranging from advice on how to be depressed at Christmas to traumatic memories of Velcro shoes, from Vancouver's inexplicable combination of grey rain and palm trees to Montreal's brutal winters and mime couture, from new crushes to old breakups, Tobin softens a barbed wit with a gentle touch in the tradition of the best personal essayists. This frank, tender, and hilarious collection gives one of the brightest (and darkest) lights of Canadian live comedy room to flourish on the page, and the results are unforgettable. Grab a tissue - for either tears or allergies - and treat yourself.

    So You're a Little Sad, So What? is the latest title to be published under the Robin's Egg Books imprint. Robin's Egg Books features some of the freshest, smartest, and above all funniest writing on a variety of culturally relevant subjects. Titles in the imprint are curated and edited by comedian, playwright, and author Charles Demers.

    View this title on BNC CataList
  8. Radiant Voices
    by Carla Bergman Canada
    TouchWood Editions
    Oct 08, 2019
    LITERARY COLLECTIONS / Women Authors
    Paperback / softback
    Radiant Voices
    by Carla Bergman Canada
    TouchWood Editions
    Oct 08, 2019
    LITERARY COLLECTIONS / Women Authors
    Paperback / softback

    A collection of essays inspired by EMMA Talks, a speakers’ series committed to amplifying the voices of thinkers, activists, scholars, artists, and community builders who are also women-identified, trans, and gender-nonconforming folks.

    From Idle No More to Black Lives Matter to the Me Too movements and more, one thing is certain: There is a burgeoning collective desire to hear non-dominant voices in subtle, curious, generative ways.

    The Vancouver-based EMMA Talks speakers’ series amplifies the voices of women-identified, trans, and gender-nonconforming folks. Curated by carla bergman, the series showcases a diversity of writers, thinkers, activists, scholars, artists, and community builders. Radiant Voices is the anthology inspired by EMMA Talks.

    Through engaging essays by Leanne Betasamosake Simpson, Silvia Federici, Vivek Shraya, Chief Janice George, dr. amina wadud, Astra Taylor, and others, seasoned writers align with emerging writers who share from a worldview that promotes anti-racism, anti-sexism, anti-ageism, and anti-ableism, and much more. Themes of connection, rediscovery, creating, social justice, celebration, and matriarchy are revealed in these 21 essays.

    This is an era in which the marginalized can publicly share their stories en masse. Now is the time to celebrate the eruption of all these radiant voices.

    View this title on BNC CataList
  9. Do You Mind If I Cancel?
    by Gary Janetti
    Flatiron Books
    Oct 22, 2019
    HUMOR / Form / Essays
    Hardback
    Do You Mind If I Cancel?
    by Gary Janetti
    Flatiron Books
    Oct 22, 2019
    HUMOR / Form / Essays
    Hardback

    The Instant New York Times Bestseller

    "From “Family Guy” to his own Instagram account, Janetti has been behind some of his generation’s greatest comedy. This book of essays is no exception."
    — The New York Times

    Fans of David Sedaris, Jenny Lawson, and Tina Fey… meet your new friend Gary Janetti.

    Gary Janetti, the writer and producer for some of the most popular television comedies of all time, and creator of one of the most wickedly funny Instagram accounts there is, now turns his skills to the page in a hilarious, and poignant book chronicling the pains and indignities of everyday life.

    Gary spends his twenties in New York, dreaming of starring on soap operas while in reality working at a hotel where he lusts after an unattainable colleague and battles a bellman who despises it when people actually use a bell to call him. He chronicles the torture of finding a job before the internet when you had to talk on the phone all the time, and fantasizes, as we all do, about who to tell off when he finally wins an Oscar. As Gary himself says, “These are essays from my childhood and young adulthood about things that still annoy me.”

    Original, brazen, and laugh out loud funny, Do You Mind If I Cancel? is something not to be missed.

    View this title on BNC CataList
  10. Before and After
    by Judy Christie
    Ballantine Books
    Oct 22, 2019
    FAMILY & RELATIONSHIPS / Adoption & Fostering
    Hardback
    Before and After
    by Judy Christie
    Ballantine Books
    Oct 22, 2019
    FAMILY & RELATIONSHIPS / Adoption & Fostering
    Hardback
    The compelling, poignant true stories of victims of a notorious adoption scandal—some of whom learned the truth from Lisa Wingate’s bestselling novel Before We Were Yours and were reunited with birth family members as a result of its wide reach

    From the 1920s to 1950, Georgia Tann ran a black-market baby business at the Tennessee Children’s Home Society in Memphis. She offered up more than 5,000 orphans tailored to the wish lists of eager parents—hiding the fact that many weren’t orphans at all, but stolen sons and daughters of poor families, desperate single mothers, and women told in maternity wards that their babies had died.

    The publication of Lisa Wingate’s novel Before We Were Yours brought new awareness of Tann’s lucrative career in child trafficking. Adoptees who knew little about their pasts gained insight into the startling facts behind their family histories. Encouraged by their contact with Wingate and award-winning journalist Judy Christie, who documented the stories of fifteen adoptees in this book, many determined Tann survivors set out to trace their roots and find their birth families.

    Before and After includes moving and sometimes shocking accounts of the ways in which adoptees were separated from their first families. Often raised as only children, many have joyfully reunited with siblings in the final decades of their lives. Christie and Wingate tell of first meetings that are all the sweeter and more intense for time missed and of families from very different social backgrounds reaching out to embrace better-late-than-never brothers, sisters, and cousins. In a poignant culmination of art meeting life, many of the long-silent victims of the tragically corrupt system return to Memphis with the authors to reclaim their stories at a Tennessee Children’s Home Society reunion . . . with extraordinary results.

    Advance praise for Before and After

    “In Before and After, authors Judy Christie and Lisa Wingate tackle the true stories behind Wingate’s blockbuster Before We Were Yours, of the orphans who survived the Tennessee Children’s Home Society. With a journalist’s keen eye and a novelist’s elegant prose, Christie and Wingate weave together the stories that inspired Before We Were Yours with the lives that were changed as a result of reading the novel. Readers will be educated, enlightened, and enraptured by this important and flawlessly executed book.”—Pam Jenoff, author of The Orphan’s Tale and The Lost Girls of Paris
    View this title on BNC CataList

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