February 2017 Adult Top 10 Picks

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  1. All Our Wrong Todays
    by Elan Mastai Canada
    Doubleday Canada
    Feb 07, 2017
    FICTION / Science Fiction / Time Travel
    Hardback
    All Our Wrong Todays
    by Elan Mastai Canada
    Doubleday Canada
    Feb 07, 2017
    FICTION / Science Fiction / Time Travel
    Hardback
    *Canada Reads 2019 Longlist*

    There's no such thing as the life you're "supposed" to have.

    You know the future that people in the 1950s imagined we'd have? Well, it happened. In Tom Barren's 2016, humanity thrives in a techno-utopian paradise of flying cars, moving sidewalks and moon bases, where avocados never go bad and punk rock never existed . . . because it wasn't necessary.
    Except Tom just can't seem to find his place in this dazzling, idealistic world, and that's before his life gets turned upside down. Utterly blindsided by an accident of fate, Tom makes a rash decision that drastically changes not only his own life but the very fabric of the universe itself. In a time-travel mishap, Tom finds himself stranded in our 2016, what we think of as the real world. For Tom, our normal reality seems like a dystopian wasteland.
    But when he discovers wonderfully unexpected versions of his family, his career and--maybe, just maybe--his soulmate, Tom has a decision to make. Does he fix the flow of history, bringing his utopian universe back into existence, or does he try to forge a new life in our messy, unpredictable reality? Tom's search for the answer takes him across countries, continents and timelines in a quest to figure out, finally, who he really is and what his future--our future--is supposed to be.
    All Our Wrong Todays is about the versions of ourselves that we shed and grow into over time. It is a story of friendship and family, of unexpected journeys and alternate paths, and of love in its multitude of forms. Filled with humor and heart, and saturated with insight and intelligence and a mind-bending talent for invention, this novel signals the arrival of a major talent.
    View this title on BNC CataList
  2. The Impossible Fortress
    by Jason Rekulak
    Simon & Schuster
    Feb 07, 2017
    FICTION / Literary
    Hardback
    The Impossible Fortress
    by Jason Rekulak
    Simon & Schuster
    Feb 07, 2017
    FICTION / Literary
    Hardback
    *MOST ANTICIPATED NOVELS OF 2017 SELECTION BY * ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY * BUSTLE *

    “A sweet, funny, and moving tribute to nerds and misfits everywhere.” —Seth Grahame-Smith, New York Times bestselling author of Pride and Prejudice and Zombies

    Until May 1987, fourteen-year-old Billy Marvin of Wetbridge, New Jersey, is a nerd, but a decidedly happy nerd.

    Afternoons are spent with his buddies, watching copious amounts of television, gorging on Pop-Tarts, debating who would win in a brawl (Rocky Balboa or Freddy Krueger? Bruce Springsteen or Billy Joel? Magnum P.I. Or T.J. Hooker?), and programming video games on his Commodore 64 late into the night. Then Playboy magazine publishes photos of Wheel of Fortune hostess Vanna White, Billy meets expert programmer Mary Zelinsky, and everything changes.

    A love letter to the 1980s, to the dawn of the computer age, and to adolescence—a time when anything feels possible—The Impossible Fortress will make you laugh, make you cry, and make you remember in exquisite detail what it feels like to love something—or someone—for the very first time.
    View this title on BNC CataList
  3. My Not So Perfect Life
    by Sophie Kinsella
    The Dial Press
    Feb 07, 2017
    FICTION / Humorous / General
    Hardback
    My Not So Perfect Life
    by Sophie Kinsella
    The Dial Press
    Feb 07, 2017
    FICTION / Humorous / General
    Hardback
    NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • Part love story, part workplace drama, this sharply observed novel is a witty critique of the false judgments we make in a social-media-obsessed world. New York Times bestselling author Sophie Kinsella has written her most timely novel yet.

    Everywhere Katie Brenner looks, someone else is living the life she longs for, particularly her boss, Demeter Farlowe. Demeter is brilliant and creative, lives with her perfect family in a posh townhouse, and wears the coolest clothes. Katie’s life, meanwhile, is a daily struggle—from her dismal rental to her oddball flatmates to the tense office politics she’s trying to negotiate. No wonder Katie takes refuge in not-quite-true Instagram posts, especially as she's desperate to make her dad proud.

    Then, just as she’s finding her feet—not to mention a possible new romance—the worst happens. Demeter fires Katie. Shattered but determined to stay positive, Katie retreats to her family’s farm in Somerset to help them set up a vacation business. London has never seemed so far away—until Demeter unexpectedly turns up as a guest. Secrets are spilled and relationships rejiggered, and as the stakes for Katie’s future get higher, she must question her own assumptions about what makes for a truly meaningful life.

    Sophie Kinsella is celebrated for her vibrant, relatable characters and her great storytelling gifts. Now she returns with all of the wit, warmth, and wisdom that are the hallmarks of her bestsellers to spin this fresh, modern story about presenting the perfect life when the reality is far from the truth.

    Praise for My Not So Perfect Life

    “A sparkling, witty novel about social media and the stories we tell ourselves.”People (Book of the Week)

    “The soul of this book concerns female friendship. . . . What ensues has a touch of real wisdom [and] will satisfy Kinsella diehards as well as new readers.”—The Washington Post

    “You’ll relate hard and root harder for Londoner Katie, whose quarterlife crisis feels even worse thanks to the Insta-perfect people all around her.”Cosmopolitan

    “A joy to read . . . Themes of friendship, love and living your true life rise to the top.”—USA Today

    “[There are ] many laugh-out-loud hilarious moments in this feel-good novel about social media and personal branding, and the hectic realities behind our perfect online lives.”Bustle

    “Pure escapist fun.”PopSugar

    “Sophie Kinsella keeps her finger on the cultural pulse, while leaving me giddy with laughter. I loved it.”—Jojo Moyes

    “Katie is a winning heroine. . . . Kinsella creates characters that are well-rounded, quirky, and a complete joy to read.”Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

    “Driven by Katie’s witty observations and numerous missteps as she attempts to reconcile various aspects of her identity, this novel is smartly satirical and entertaining.”Publishers Weekly

    “Another outstanding novel . . . a perfect combination of fun, laughable moments rounded out with some deep-seated family and relationship issues.”Booklist
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  4. A Conjuring of Light
    by V. E. Schwab
    Tor Books
    Feb 21, 2017
    FICTION / Fantasy / Action & Adventure
    Hardback
    A Conjuring of Light
    by V. E. Schwab
    Tor Books
    Feb 21, 2017
    FICTION / Fantasy / Action & Adventure
    Hardback

    Witness the fate of beloved heroes and notorious foes in the heart-stopping conclusion to V.E. Schwab’s New York Times bestselling Shades of Magic trilogy.

    *Kirkus' Best Fiction of 2017*


    As darkness sweeps the Maresh Empire, the once precarious balance of power among the four Londons has reached its breaking point.

    In the wake of tragedy, Kell—once assumed to be the last surviving Antari—begins to waver under the pressure of competing loyalties. Lila Bard, once a commonplace—but never common—thief, has survived and flourished through a series of magical trials. But now she must learn to control the magic, before it bleeds her dry.

    An ancient enemy returns to claim a city while a fallen hero tries to save a kingdom in decay. Meanwhile, the disgraced Captain Alucard Emery of the Night Spire collects his crew, attempting a race against time to acquire the impossible.

    Shades of Magic series
    1. A Darker Shade of Magic
    2. A Gathering of Shadows
    3. A Conjuring of Light

    View this title on BNC CataList
  5. The Dark and Other Love Stories
    by Deborah Willis Canada
    Hamish Hamilton
    Feb 07, 2017
    FICTION / Literary
    Hardback
    The Dark and Other Love Stories
    by Deborah Willis Canada
    Hamish Hamilton
    Feb 07, 2017
    FICTION / Literary
    Hardback
    LONGLISTED FOR THE 2017 SCOTIABANK GILLER PRIZE

    Winner of the 2018 Western Canada Jewish Book Awards - Fiction - The Diamond Foundation Prize

    Nominated for the 2018 OLA Evergreen Award

    Energized, irreverent, novelistic stories full of longing, strange humour, and the complications of human entanglement from Governor General’s Award nominee Deborah Willis



    The characters in these thirteen masterful and engaging stories exist on the edge of danger, where landscapes melt into dreamscapes and every house is haunted. A drug dealer’s girlfriend signs up for the first manned mission to Mars. A girl falls in love with a man who wants to turn her into a bird. A teenage girl and her best friend test their relationship by breaking into suburban houses. A wife finds a gaping hole in the floor of the home she shares with her husband, a hole that only she can see. Full of longing and strange humour, these subtle, complex stories—about the love between a man and his pet crow, an alcoholic and his AA sponsor, a mute migrant and a newspaper reporter—show how love ties us to one another and to the world. The Dark and Other Love Stories announces the emergence of a wonderfully gifted storyteller whose stories enlarge our perceptions about the human capacity to love.
    View this title on BNC CataList
  6. Stolen Beauty
    by Laurie Lico Albanese
    Atria Books
    Feb 07, 2017
    FICTION / Historical / General
    Hardback
    Stolen Beauty
    by Laurie Lico Albanese
    Atria Books
    Feb 07, 2017
    FICTION / Historical / General
    Hardback
    “A powerful and important tale of love and war, art and family…I was transported.” —Allison Pataki, New York Times bestselling author

    “Albanese artfully weaves Adele’s story with Maria’s harrowing life under the Nazis, but it’s hard to read Stolen Beauty without seeing ugly echoes in today’s headlines. Seven decades after World War II, have we learned nothing?” —USA TODAY

    From the dawn of the twentieth century to the devastation of World War II, this exhilarating novel of love, war, art, and family gives voice to two extraordinary women and brings to life the true story behind the creation and near destruction of Gustav Klimt’s most remarkable paintings.

    In the dazzling glitter of 1900 Vienna, Adele Bloch-Bauer—young, beautiful, brilliant, and Jewish—meets painter Gustav Klimt. Wealthy in everything but freedom, Adele embraces Klimt’s renegade genius as the two awaken to the erotic possibilities on the canvas and beyond. Though they enjoy a life where sex and art are just beginning to break through the façade of conventional society, the city is also exhibiting a disturbing increase in anti-Semitism, as political hatred foments in the shadows of Adele’s coffee house afternoons and cultural salons.

    Nearly forty years later, Adele’s niece Maria Altmann is a newlywed when the Nazis invade Austria—and overnight, her beloved Vienna becomes a war zone. When her husband is arrested and her family is forced out of their home, Maria must summon the courage and resilience that is her aunt’s legacy if she is to survive and keep her family—and their history—alive.

    Will Maria and her family escape the grip of Nazis’ grip? And what will become of the paintings that her aunt nearly sacrificed everything for?

    Impeccably researched and a “must-read for fans of Kristin Hannah’s The Nightingale and Paula McLain’s Circling the Sun” (Christina Baker Kline, #1 New York Times bestselling author), Stolen Beauty intertwines the tales of two remarkable women across more than a hundred years. It juxtaposes passion and discovery against hatred and despair, and shines a light on our ability to love, to destroy, and above all, to endure.
    View this title on BNC CataList
  7. The Chilbury Ladies' Choir
    by Jennifer Ryan
    Crown
    Feb 14, 2017
    FICTION / Historical / General
    Hardback
    The Chilbury Ladies' Choir
    by Jennifer Ryan
    Crown
    Feb 14, 2017
    FICTION / Historical / General
    Hardback
    NATIONAL BESTSELLER • “A delightful debut.”—People

    For readers of Lilac Girls and The Nightingale, The Chilbury Ladies' Choir unfolds the struggles, affairs, deceptions, and triumphs of a village choir during World War II.

    As England becomes enmeshed in the early days of World War II and the men are away fighting, the women of Chilbury village forge an uncommon bond. They defy the Vicar’s stuffy edict to close the choir and instead “carry on singing,” resurrecting themselves as the Chilbury Ladies’ Choir. We come to know the home-front struggles of five unforgettable choir members: a timid widow devastated when her only son goes to fight; the older daughter of a local scion drawn to a mysterious artist; her younger sister pining over an impossible crush; a Jewish refugee from Czechoslovakia hiding a family secret; and a conniving midwife plotting to outrun her seedy past.

    An enchanting ensemble story that shuttles from village intrigue to romance to the heartbreaking matters of life and death, Jennifer Ryan’s debut novel thrillingly illuminates the true strength of the women on the home front in a village of indomitable spirit.
    View this title on BNC CataList
  8. The Book of Mirrors
    by E. O. Chirovici
    Atria/Emily Bestler Books
    Feb 21, 2017
    FICTION / Literary
    Hardback
    The Book of Mirrors
    by E. O. Chirovici
    Atria/Emily Bestler Books
    Feb 21, 2017
    FICTION / Literary
    Hardback
    An elegant, page-turning thriller in the vein of Night Film and Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter, this tautly crafted novel is about stories: the ones we tell, the ones we keep hidden, and the ones that we’ll do anything to ensure they stay buried.

    When literary agent Peter Katz receives a partial book submission entitled The Book of Mirrors, he is intrigued by its promise and original voice. The author, Richard Flynn, has written a memoir about his time as an English student at Princeton in the late 1980s, documenting his relationship with the protégée of the famous Professor Joseph Wieder. One night just before Christmas 1987, Wieder was brutally murdered in his home. The case was never solved. Now, twenty-five years later, Katz suspects that Richard Flynn is either using his book to confess to the murder, or to finally reveal who committed the violent crime.

    But the manuscript ends abruptly—and its author is dying in the hospital with the missing pages nowhere to be found. Hell-bent on getting to the bottom of the story, Katz hires investigative journalist John Keller to research the murder and reconstruct the events for a true crime version of the memoir. Keller tracks down several of the mysterious key players, including retired police detective Roy Freeman, one of the original investigators assigned to the murder case, but he has just been diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimer’s. Inspired by John Keller’s investigation, he decides to try and solve the case once and for all, before he starts losing control of his mind. A trip to the Potosi Correctional Centre in Missouri, several interviews, and some ingenious police work finally lead him to a truth that has been buried for over two decades...or has it?

    Stylishly plotted, elegantly written, and packed with thrilling suspense until the final page, The Book of Mirrors is a book within a book like you’ve never read before.
    View this title on BNC CataList
  9. Pachinko (National Book Award Finalist)
    by Min Jin Lee
    Grand Central Publishing
    Feb 07, 2017
    FICTION / Historical / General
    Hardback
    Pachinko (National Book Award Finalist)
    by Min Jin Lee
    Grand Central Publishing
    Feb 07, 2017
    FICTION / Historical / General
    Hardback
    NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FINALIST * A NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW TOP TEN OF THE YEAR * NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK OF 2017 *A USA TODAY TOP TEN OF 2017 * JULY PICK FOR THE PBS NEWSHOUR-NEW YORK TIMES BOOK CLUB NOW READ THIS * FINALIST FOR THE 2018 DAYTON LITERARY PEACE PRIZE

    Roxane Gay's Favorite Book of 2017, Washington Post

    NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER * #1 BOSTON GLOBE BESTSELLER * USA TODAY BESTSELLER * WALL STREET JOURNAL BESTSELLER * WASHINGTON POST BESTSELLER

    In this gorgeous, page-turning saga, four generations of a poor Korean immigrant family fight to control their destiny in 20th-century Japan, exiled from a home they never knew.

    "There could only be a few winners, and a lot of losers. And yet we played on, because we had hope that we might be the lucky ones."

    In the early 1900s, teenaged Sunja, the adored daughter of a crippled fisherman, falls for a wealthy stranger at the seashore near her home in Korea. He promises her the world, but when she discovers she is pregnant--and that her lover is married--she refuses to be bought. Instead, she accepts an offer of marriage from a gentle, sickly minister passing through on his way to Japan. But her decision to abandon her home, and to reject her son's powerful father, sets off a dramatic saga that will echo down through the generations.

    Richly told and profoundly moving, Pachinko is a story of love, sacrifice, ambition, and loyalty. From bustling street markets to the halls of Japan's finest universities to the pachinko parlors of the criminal underworld, Lee's complex and passionate characters--strong, stubborn women, devoted sisters and sons, fathers shaken by moral crisis--survive and thrive against the indifferent arc of history.

    *Includes reading group guide*


    View this title on BNC CataList
  10. This I Know
    by Terry O'Reilly Canada
    Knopf Canada
    Feb 28, 2017
    BUSINESS & ECONOMICS / Marketing / General
    Hardback
    This I Know
    by Terry O'Reilly Canada
    Knopf Canada
    Feb 28, 2017
    BUSINESS & ECONOMICS / Marketing / General
    Hardback
    Canada's most famous adman spills a career's worth of marketing secrets, so anyone can compete with the best in their business--whatever that business might be.

    Big companies spend a fortune marketing their wares and services. Can yours? Invariably people ask advertising veteran and CBC Radio host Terry O'Reilly one question more than any other: How does a little business compete with the big guys? After decades at the helm of an award-winning advertising production company, and over a decade exploring the art and science of marketing for CBC Radio, O'Reilly delivers all the answers they--and anyone with something to sell--ever wanted to know.
    Following his bestselling Age of Persuasion, O'Reilly collects a lifetime of marketing wisdom into an indispensable guide to competing for your customers' attention. From understanding what business you're really in and foregoing the extra mile in favour of the extra inch, to the benefits of counterintuitive thinking and knowing an opportunity when you see one, This I Know will help anyone understand the fundamentals of good marketing strategy and building the relationships that turn good marketing into great results, no matter how big or small your budget.
    View this title on BNC CataList

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