August 2018 Adult Top 10 Picks

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  1. Starlight
    by Richard Wagamese Canada
    McClelland & Stewart
    Aug 14, 2018
    FICTION / Literary
    Hardback
    Starlight
    by Richard Wagamese Canada
    McClelland & Stewart
    Aug 14, 2018
    FICTION / Literary
    Hardback
    NATIONAL BESTSELLER

    The final novel from Richard Wagamese, the bestselling and beloved author of Indian Horse and Medicine Walk, centres on an abused woman on the run who finds refuge on a farm owned by an Indigenous man with wounds of his own. A profoundly moving novel about the redemptive power of love, mercy, and compassion--and the land's ability to heal us.


    Frank Starlight has long settled into a quiet life working his remote farm, but his contemplative existence comes to an abrupt end with the arrival of Emmy, who has committed a desperate act so she and her child can escape a harrowing life of violence. Starlight takes in Emmy and her daughter to help them get back on their feet, and this accidental family eventually grows into a real one. But Emmy's abusive ex isn't content to just let her go. He wants revenge and is determined to hunt her down.
    Starlight was unfinished at the time of Richard Wagamese's death, yet every page radiates with his masterful storytelling, intense humanism, and insights that are as hard-earned as they are beautiful. With astonishing scenes set in the rugged backcountry of the B.C. Interior, and characters whose scars cut deep even as their journey toward healing and forgiveness lifts us, Starlight is a last gift to readers from a writer who believed in the power of stories to save us.
    View this title on BNC CataList
  2. French Exit
    by Patrick deWitt Canada
    House of Anansi Press
    Aug 28, 2018
    FICTION / Literary
    Paperback / softback
    French Exit
    by Patrick deWitt Canada
    House of Anansi Press
    Aug 28, 2018
    FICTION / Literary
    Paperback / softback

    Finalist for the Scotiabank Giller Prize and an international bestseller, Patrick deWitt’s brilliant and darkly comic novel is now a major motion picture starring Michelle Pfeiffer.

    Frances Price — tart widow, possessive mother, and Upper East Side force of nature — is in dire straits, beset by scandal and impending bankruptcy. Her adult son Malcolm is no help, mired in a permanent state of arrested development. And then there’s the Price’s aging cat, Small Frank, who Frances believes houses the spirit of her late husband, an infamously immoral litigator and world-class cad whose gruesome tabloid death rendered Frances and Malcolm social outcasts.

    Putting penury and pariahdom behind them, the family decides to cut their losses and head for the exit. One ocean voyage later, the curious trio land in their beloved Paris, the City of Light serving as a backdrop not for love or romance, but self-destruction and economic ruin — to riotous effect.


    Brimming with pathos and wit, French Exit is a one-of-a-kind “tragedy of manners,” a riotous send-up of high society, as well as a moving mother and son caper which only Patrick deWitt could conceive and execute. A finalist for the Scotiabank Giller Prize and an international bestseller upon its original publication, French Exit is now a major motion picture starring Michelle Pfeiffer and Lucas Hedges and with a script by Patrick deWitt.

    View this title on BNC CataList
  3. The Saturday Night Ghost Club
    by Craig Davidson Canada
    Knopf Canada
    Aug 14, 2018
    FICTION / Literary
    Hardback
    The Saturday Night Ghost Club
    by Craig Davidson Canada
    Knopf Canada
    Aug 14, 2018
    FICTION / Literary
    Hardback
    SHORTLISTED FOR THE ROGERS WRITERS' TRUST FICTION PRIZE: An infectious and heartbreaking novel from "one of this country's great kinetic writers" (Globe and Mail)--Craig Davidson's first new literary fiction since his bestselling, Giller-shortlisted Cataract City

    When neurosurgeon Jake Baker operates, he knows he's handling more than a patient's delicate brain tissue--he's altering their seat of consciousness, their golden vault of memory. And memory, Jake knows well, can be a tricky thing.

    When growing up in 1980s Niagara Falls, a.k.a. Cataract City--a seedy but magical, slightly haunted place--one of Jake's closest confidantes was his uncle Calvin, a sweet but eccentric misfit enamored of occult artefacts and outlandish conspiracy theories. The summer Jake turned twelve, Calvin invited him to join the "Saturday Night Ghost Club"--a seemingly light-hearted project to investigate some of Cataract City's more macabre urban myths. Over the course of that life-altering summer, Jake not only fell in love and began to imagine his future, he slowly, painfully came to realize that his uncle's preoccupation with chilling legends sprang from something buried so deep in his past that Calvin himself was unaware of it.

    By turns heartwarming and devastating, written with the skill and cinematic immediacy that has made Craig Davidson a star, The Saturday Night Ghost Club is a bravura performance from one of our most remarkable literary talents: a note-perfect novel that poignantly examines the fragility and resilience of mind, body and human spirit, as well as the haunting mutability of memory and story.
    View this title on BNC CataList
  4. I'm Afraid of Men
    by Vivek Shraya Canada
    Penguin Canada
    Aug 28, 2018
    SOCIAL SCIENCE / Gender Studies
    Hardback
    I'm Afraid of Men
    by Vivek Shraya Canada
    Penguin Canada
    Aug 28, 2018
    SOCIAL SCIENCE / Gender Studies
    Hardback
    Named a Best Book by: The Globe and Mail, Indigo, Out Magazine, Audible, CBC, Apple, Quill & Quire, Kirkus Reviews, Brooklyn Public Library, Writers’ Trust of Canada, Autostraddle, Bitch, and BookRiot.

    Finalist for the 2019 Lambda Literary Award, Transgender Nonfiction
    Nominated for the 2019 Forest of Reading Evergreen Award
    Winner of the 2018 Alcuin Society Awards for Excellence in Book Design – Prose Non-Fiction

    "Cultural rocket fuel." --Vanity Fair

    "Emotional and painful but also layered with humour, I'm Afraid of Men will widen your lens on gender and challenge you to do better. This challenge is a necessary one--one we must all take up. It is a gift to dive into Vivek's heart and mind." --Rupi Kaur, bestselling author of The Sun and Her Flowers and Milk and Honey

    A trans artist explores how masculinity was imposed on her as a boy and continues to haunt her as a girl--and how we might reimagine gender for the twenty-first century.


    Vivek Shraya has reason to be afraid. Throughout her life she's endured acts of cruelty and aggression for being too feminine as a boy and not feminine enough as a girl. In order to survive childhood, she had to learn to convincingly perform masculinity. As an adult, she makes daily compromises to steel herself against everything from verbal attacks to heartbreak.

    Now, with raw honesty, Shraya delivers an important record of the cumulative damage caused by misogyny, homophobia, and transphobia, releasing trauma from a body that has always refused to assimilate. I'm Afraid of Men is a journey from camouflage to a riot of colour and a blueprint for how we might cherish all that makes us different and conquer all that makes us afraid.
    View this title on BNC CataList
  5. Magic Triumphs
    by Ilona Andrews
    Ace
    Aug 28, 2018
    FICTION / Fantasy / Urban
    Hardback
    Magic Triumphs
    by Ilona Andrews
    Ace
    Aug 28, 2018
    FICTION / Fantasy / Urban
    Hardback
    Mercenary Kate Daniels must risk all to protect everything she holds dear in this epic, can't-miss entry in the thrilling #1 New York Times bestselling urban fantasy series.

    Kate has come a long way from her origins as a loner taking care of paranormal problems in post-Shift Atlanta. She's made friends and enemies. She's found love and started a family with Curran Lennart, the former Beast Lord. But her magic is too strong for the power players of the world to let her be.

    Kate and her father, Roland, currently have an uneasy truce, but when he starts testing her defenses again, she knows that sooner or later, a confrontation is inevitable. The Witch Oracle has begun seeing visions of blood, fire, and human bones. And when a mysterious box is delivered to Kate's doorstep, a threat of war from the ancient enemy who nearly destroyed her family, she knows their time is up.

    Kate Daniels sees no other choice but to combine forces with the unlikeliest of allies. She knows betrayal is inevitable. She knows she may not survive the coming battle. But she has to try.

    For her child.

    For Atlanta.

    For the world.
    View this title on BNC CataList
  6. Up From Freedom
    by Wayne Grady Canada
    Doubleday Canada
    Aug 14, 2018
    FICTION / African American & Black / Historical
    Paperback / softback
    Up From Freedom
    by Wayne Grady Canada
    Doubleday Canada
    Aug 14, 2018
    FICTION / African American & Black / Historical
    Paperback / softback
    For readers of Colson Whitehead, James McBride, Yaa Gyasi and Lawrence Hill, Up From Freedom is a powerful and emotional novel about the dangers that arise when we stay silent in the face of prejudice or are complicit in its development.

    As a young man, Virgil Moody vowed he would never be like his father, he would never own slaves. When he moves from his father's plantation in Savannah to New Orleans, he takes with him Annie, a tiny woman with sharp eyes and a sharper tongue, who he is sure would not survive life on the plantation. She'll be much safer with him, away from his father's cruelty. And when he discovers Annie's pregnancy, already a few months along, he is all the more certain that he made the right decision.

    As the years pass, the divide between Moody's assumptions and Annie's reality widens ever further. Moody even comes to think of Annie as his wife and Lucas as their son. Of course, they are not. As Annie reminds him, in moments of anger, she and Moody will never be equal. She and her son are enslaved. When their "family" breaks apart in the most brutal and tragic way, and Lucas flees the only life he's ever known, Moody must ask himself whether he has become the man he never wanted to be--but is he willing to hear the answer?

    Stretching from the war-torn banks of the Rio Brazos in Texas to the muddy waters of Freedom, Indiana, Moody travels through a country on the brink of civil war, relentlessly searching for Lucas and slowly reconciling his past sins with his hopes for the future. When he meets Tamsey, a former slave, and her family trying to escape the reach of the Fugitive Slave Act, Moody sees an opportunity for redemption. But the world is on the cusp of momentous change, and though some things may be forgotten, nothing is ever really forgiven.
    View this title on BNC CataList
  7. Women Talking
    by Miriam Toews Canada
    Knopf Canada
    Aug 21, 2018
    FICTION / Literary
    Hardback
    Women Talking
    by Miriam Toews Canada
    Knopf Canada
    Aug 21, 2018
    FICTION / Literary
    Hardback
    A FINALIST FOR THE GOVERNOR GENERAL'S LITERARY AWARD: A transformative and necessary work--as completely unexpected as it is inspired--by the award-winning author of the bestselling novels All My Puny Sorrows and A Complicated Kindness.

    The sun rises on a quiet June morning in 2009. August Epp sits alone in the hayloft of a barn, anxiously bent over his notebook. He writes quickly, aware that his solitude will soon be broken. Eight women--ordinary grandmothers, mothers and teenagers; yet to August, each one extraordinary-- will climb the ladder into the loft, and the day's true task will begin. This task will be both simple and subversive: August, like the women, is a traditional Mennonite, and he has been asked to record a secret conversation.

    Thus begins Miriam Toews' spellbinding novel. Gradually, as we hear the women's vivid voices console, tease, admonish, regale and debate each other, we piece together the reason for the gathering: they have forty-eight hours to make a life-altering choice on behalf of all the women and children in the colony. And like a vast night sky coming into view behind the bright sparks of their voices, we learn of the devastating events that have led to this moment.

    Acerbic, funny, tender, sorrowful and wise, Women Talking is composed of equal parts humane love and deep anger. It is award-winning writer Miriam Toews' most astonishing novel to date, containing within its two short days and hayloft setting an expansive, timeless universe of thinking and feeling about women--and men--in our contemporary world.
    View this title on BNC CataList
  8. Vox
    by Christina Dalcher
    Berkley
    Aug 21, 2018
    FICTION / Women
    Hardback
    Vox
    by Christina Dalcher
    Berkley
    Aug 21, 2018
    FICTION / Women
    Hardback
    THE NATIONAL BESTSELLER • ONE OF ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY'S AND SHEREADS' BOOKS TO READ AFTER THE HANDMAID'S TALE

    “[An] electrifying debut.”—O, The Oprah Magazine
    “The real-life parallels will make you shiver.”—Cosmopolitan

    Set in a United States in which half the population has been silenced, Vox is the harrowing, unforgettable story of what one woman will do to protect herself and her daughter.


    On the day the government decrees that women are no longer allowed more than one hundred words per day, Dr. Jean McClellan is in denial. This can't happen here. Not in America. Not to her.

    Soon women are not permitted to hold jobs. Girls are not taught to read or write. Females no longer have a voice. Before, the average person spoke sixteen thousand words each day, but now women have only one hundred to make themselves heard.

    For herself, her daughter, and every woman silenced, Jean will reclaim her voice.

    This is just the beginning...not the end.

    One of Good Morning America's “Best Books to Bring to the Beach This Summer”
    One of PopSugar, Refinery29, Entertainment Weekly, Bustle, Real Simple, i09, and Amazon's Best Books to Read in August 2018
    View this title on BNC CataList
  9. The Black God's Drums
    by P. Djeli Clark
    Tordotcom
    Aug 21, 2018
    FICTION / Fantasy / Historical
    Paperback / softback
    The Black God's Drums
    by P. Djeli Clark
    Tordotcom
    Aug 21, 2018
    FICTION / Fantasy / Historical
    Paperback / softback

    Rising science fiction and fantasy star P. Djèlí Clark brings an alternate New Orleans of orisha, airships, and adventure to life in his immersive debut novella The Black God's Drums.

    Alex Award Winner!

    In an alternate New Orleans caught in the tangle of the American Civil War, the wall-scaling girl named Creeper yearns to escape the streets for the air--in particular, by earning a spot on-board the airship Midnight Robber. Creeper plans to earn Captain Ann-Marie’s trust with information she discovers about a Haitian scientist and a mysterious weapon he calls The Black God’s Drums.

    But Creeper also has a secret herself: Oya, the African orisha of the wind and storms, speaks inside her head, and may have her own ulterior motivations.

    Soon, Creeper, Oya, and the crew of the Midnight Robber are pulled into a perilous mission aimed to stop the Black God’s Drums from being unleashed and wiping out the entirety of New Orleans.

    “A sinewy mosaic of Haitian sky pirates, wily street urchins, and orisha magic. Beguiling and bombastic!”—New York Times bestselling author Scott Westerfeld

    View this title on BNC CataList
  10. Rust & Stardust
    by T. Greenwood
    St. Martin's Press
    Aug 07, 2018
    FICTION / Literary
    Hardback
    Rust & Stardust
    by T. Greenwood
    St. Martin's Press
    Aug 07, 2018
    FICTION / Literary
    Hardback

    “Greenwood’s glowing dark ruby of a novel brilliantly transforms the true crime story that inspired Nabokov’sLolita. Shatteringly original and eloquently written....So ferociously suspenseful, I found myself holding my breath.” —Caroline Leavitt,New York Times bestselling author ofPictures of You

    Camden, NJ, 1948. When 11 year-old Sally Horner steals a notebook from the local Woolworth's, she has no way of knowing that 52 year-old Frank LaSalle, fresh out of prison, is watching her, preparing to make his move. Accosting her outside the store, Frank convinces Sally that he’s an FBI agent who can have her arrested in a minute—unless she does as he says.

    This chilling novel traces the next two harrowing years as Frank mentally and physically assaults Sally while the two of them travel westward from Camden to San Jose, forever altering not only her life, but the lives of her family, friends, and those she meets along the way.

    Based on the experiences of real-life kidnapping victim Sally Horner and her captor, whose story shocked the nation and inspired Vladimir Nabokov to write his controversial and iconicLolita, this heart-pounding story by award-winning author T. Greenwood at last gives a voice to Sally herself.

    View this title on BNC CataList

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