Non-Fiction: Clean, Green & Lean by Walter Crinnion

In my lifetime, I have seen diets come and go. You have too. Some of them, when they went, were unlamented. In the 1990s, for example, there was a time when certain diet gurus recommended the avoidance of carbohydrates to such an extreme extent, the health of his followers was at risk. (Bacon? Sure: eat bacon. But go easy on the whole wheat bread.)

The constant to many of these diets is simple: eat to lose weight and keep it off. Whatever the cost might be -- to your health or the environment -- will only be collateral damage and is a price that can be paid.

So it was refreshing to encounter Clean, Green & Lean (Wiley), a diet and lifestyle book written by a leading naturopathic physician. It’s a book that promises to help you lose weight in a healthful way while at the same time helping to save the planet: a combination that’s right for this moment and author Crinnion seems the correct person to bring the message. From the introduction:

But there’s more to this than how great you’ll look and feel. Sure, you'll lose weight without being hungry or increasing the amount of exercise you do. Sure, you'll be healthier, slimmer, and more energetic than you've been in years. But you'll also be helping to save the planet. If you're cleaner and greener, the world will be cleaner and greener.

If there’s a down-side it's that there is a lot of work to do but -- hey! -- no pain, no gain, right? I can’t imagine that Crinnion’s approach to weight loss through toxin attacks won’t lead him to the bestseller list almost immediately. This is the diet book of the moment. The good news? It’s good for you and the planet. May the toxin-fighting begin!

New Today: Looking for a Love Story by Louise Shaffer

Presumably, when Louise Shaffer’s first book was published -- 1994’s All My Suspects -- the new author had a built-in audience. After all, by that point, Shaffer’s face and voice were familiar to millions of television viewers because, as an actress, she’d been appearing in popular soap operas since the 1960s.

Reportedly, when Shaffer got to an age when available roles started thinning, she picked up a pen. First writing for soaps -- from Ryan’s Hope to Another World, General Hospital and others -- and then as a novelist.

It’s not surprising that Shaffer’s books are aimed sharply at women. Considering her platform -- that whole soap thing -- it would be practically irresponsible for her marketing people not to go that route. After all, few writers start out with the sort of potential readership base that she had.

What is surprising are the books themselves: so much more than they need to be and though the titles and the covers would suggest otherwise, Shaffer’s books are far beyond simple romance.

Take, for instance, her latest novel, Looking For A Love Story (Ballantine). The protagonist is an author whose first novel -- a hilarious look at love through the eyes of a dog -- comes too close to home when she splits with her photographer husband and Francesca gets custody of the couple’s beloved pooch. In order to help her over her rough patch, Francesca takes a job ghost writing the memoirs of an elderly woman’s parents. Joe and Ellie were performers who toured the vaudeville circuit in the 1920s. Looking closely at Joe and Ellie’s lives causes Francesca to look deeply at her own and the twinned stories -- one present, one deeply past -- lead her towards her own emotional redemption: though not without some very good laughs.

It is not the easiest thing to bring two timelines to life in a single book. That is, it must be very difficult: we’ve seen it done badly so often. Shaffer makes it work, though. More: she makes it sing.

New This Week: If It Takes A Village, Build One by Malaak Compton-Rock

One of the most refreshing things about celebrity humanitarian Malaak Compton-Rock’s If It Takes A Village, Build One (Broadway) is its accessibility. Part memoir, part guide, Compton-Rock takes Hillary Clinton’s village analogy to heart and runs with it, creating a work that is inspiring in its warmth and simplicity. If you ever thought you wanted step-by-step instructions on how to make a difference, If It Takes A Village, Build One is the book for you.

If Compton-Rock’s name and face are familiar, there are good reasons. In 2008, she was one of the judges on Oprah’s Big Give and she is the (often mentioned, always respected) wife of actor/comedian Chris Rock. Most recently, Compton-Rock founded The Angelrock Project, promoting volunteerism, sustainable change and social responsibility.

The Angelrock Project includes valuable information on how to volunteer, advice on making monetary or in-kind donations, links to life-changing service organizations, recommends wonderful products that you can purchase to sustain third-world artisans, and suggests corporations who donate a percentage of proceeds to worthy non-profit organizations.

If It Takes A Village, Build One feels like Compton-Rock very comfortably walking that walk.

Cookbooks: Eat Ate by Guy Mirabella

I feel absolutely remiss in having not managed to get my hands on Eat Ate (Chronicle) until now. It’s a terrific book in every way and really should have been on January’s best of 2009 list in the cookbook category and perhaps in the art and culture section as well. I should explain that. While Eat Ate is clearly a cookbook -- it has recipes and was written by someone who has become best known as a chef. Australian/Italian Guy Mirabella started out as a book designer and teacher of graphic design. And it shows: oh, yes. It shows.

Before you even get anywhere near the food, Eat Ate is the most beautiful cookbook that ever was. That’s a huge statement, but I defy you to prove it untrue. Quite beyond the stellar photos and fetching recipe designs of other beautiful cookbooks, Eat Ate is an artistic manifestation of the very idea of a cookery book. I’ve never seen anything quite like it and, if I have, it’s not a cookbook at all, but a visual literary adventure as designed by Nick Bantock. That is to say that, in every way imaginable, on the visual front, Eat Ate is unbeatable. Mirabella explains his innovative approach:

Unlike traditional cookbooks, there are no starter, main meal and dessert chapters in this book. Rather, the recipes are organized according to the themes that give me the comfort and freedom to express the way I cook, eat, design and paint.

Nor, when we get to it, does the food disappoint. It is uncomplicated, healthful Italian, most often simply prepared and frequently innovatively presented.

Eat Ate is a perfect cookbook. An art book with food that you’ll never want to part with.

Art & Culture: The Shores We Call Home: the Art of Carol Evans

Those who enjoy the watercolorist’s art or who admire the rugged coastline of British Columbia and the Pacific Northwest will enjoy The Shores We Call Home (Harbour Publishing). Carol Evans is a master watercolorist based on Salt Spring Island in British Columbia’s Gulf Island chain. Beautifully reproduced in The Shores We Call Home, Evans’ work is luminous, surprising: this is the work of an artist is clear control of her materials and confident about the subjects she chooses.

Since shores are the thing that connect the 80 or so watercolors included in the book, we see a lot of light dancing off water under many circumstances and in a lot of different places. Evans knows what that looks like and, more important in this case, she knows exactly how to convey it in both paint and words:

Water hangs in great silken sheets of fog across mountains and inlets. It ripples and reflects along the shore. The wet, delicate, and raw subtleties of watercolour washes are ideal for conveying the gradation of light within clouds or a summer haze, perfect for suggesting shapes and forms barely visible in shrouded mist or streaking rain.... It has a wild quality and although the water can be somewhat controlled, it cannot quite be tamed.

Fiction: Sweetness from Ashes by Marlyn Horsdal

It surpriseed me to learn that Sweetness from Ashes (Brindle & Glass) was Marlyn Horsdal’s debut novel. Those deeply entrenched in Canadian writing -- especially from the Western part of the country -- know her name well. From 1984 until 2002, she was co-publisher of the small but esteemed Horsdal & Schubart Publishing imprint. She has edited many very good Canadian authors and I’ve always known her own voice held clarity and sense, though it turns out I must have known this through her non-fiction and essay work.

It was, however, unsurprising to discover that Sweetness from Ashes is a confident and accomplished debut. An exploration of family feuds and secrets, Horsdal leads her readers across Canada and to parts of Africa on a journey of familial discovery. As those of us who read a great deal of CanLit know, such journeys often end in shame and heartbreak. Refreshingly, though, Horsdal’s vision is a more mature one. She leads us across her vistas with a sort of vibrant abandon. I loved Sweetness from Ashes. It’s a book for which I feel I’ve waited a long time.

Cookbooks: Chocolate Cakes: 50 Great Cakes for Every Occasion by Elinor Klivans

Just in time for Valentine’s Day, let them eat cake.

And though cookbooks that focus on making things that feature chocolate are not so very rare, as the title indicates Chocolate Cakes: 50 Great Cakes for Every Occasion (Chronicle Books) covers a very specific -- but delicious -- area of chocolate fancy: cakes.

As you will expect, with 50 cakes featured, and all of them tied by that single ingredient -- chocolate -- the cakes author Klivans includes in the book run the gamut of cakery. From a Chocolate-Apricot Pudding Cake to Chinese Five-Spice Chocolate Chiffon Cake to a s’mores cake and even a chocolate croquembouche. There is a cake here for all -- and every -- occasion.

Klivans has written for Fine Cooking and The Washington Post, among others. She is also the author of several books, including The Essential Chocolate Chip Cookie Book, Big Fat Cookies and several more.

Chocolate Cakes: 50 Great Cakes for Every Occasion is a splendid book. Many of the recipes are easy, but even the ones that are somewhat complicated -- the New Brooklyn Chocolate Blackout Cake, for instance -- feature concise instructions written in plain language. And the photos and food-styling are stunning. All together, it's a great package. True chocoholics won’t want to miss this one.

New This Week: The Parabolist by Nicholas Ruddock

It’s impossible not to compare debut novelist Nicholas Ruddock’s The Parabolist (Doubleday Canada) to Vincent Lam’s Giller Award-winning debut from 2006, Bloodletting and Miraculous Cures. And not just because Lam has offered up a blurb for Parabolist’s cover: “An inventive, poetic and thoroughly wonderful novel,” Lam offers. In some ways he’s right though, certainly, The Parabolist isn’t a patch on Lam’s very wonderful book. Here’s why: both books include some really graphic and disturbing medical details as a device to move narrative forward in ways that are somewhat new and interesting. (I say “somewhat” because, with both books, there were whole passages I actually couldn’t read for fear of loss of lunch.) And both writers employ a distant, detached narrative voice. From The Parabolist:

A few days after the poetry class, Roberto Moreno called Valerie Anderson. She was in the phone book. There were lots of Andersons but not too many V’s.

Perhaps we can spend the day together, he said.

Sure, she said, okay.

But where Lam’s use of distance seemed intentional -- a creative choice, perhaps used to draw our attention from some of the horror that he showed us -- Ruddock’s storytelling style here is obtrusive. One finds it difficult to let the words just flow away because, every time they do, he jolts us back with a reminder of the distance he is creating.

The story is likewise occasionally awkward and not fully realized. There are problems with the timeline: parts of the story seem to move ahead with an almost blurring speed, while others drag on for months. And while it’s fun to run into familiar faces -- a young Gwendolyn MacEwen, for example, gets a cameo and lots of Canadian literary figures have some sort of role, even if off-camera -- their inclusion provides another off-note. Some sort of distant homage: an inside joke, never fully explained. And those are never fun.

The story takes place in Toronto in 1975. A group of medical students are befriended by a Mexican poet, assigned to add culture to their scientific lives. On a night of drunken revelry, one of the students and the poet prevent a rapist from killing his victim and, in the process of their intervention, the rapist is killed. That sounds like a spoiler, but it is not. All of this happens early enough in the book that it is part of the set-up for the events that will follow.

There are some beautiful moments in The Parabolist and readers with a passion for poetry will be especially entranced. There are some great philosophical thoughts here and, actually, some pretty remarkable original poetry. Students and fans of contemporary Canadian fiction will find much here on which to comment. But, for this reader, some of the choices Ruddock made to tell this story were impossibly off-putting. I wanted to love The Parabolist, and though there were parts that I admired, the book seemed never to really allow me to let go and forget and join in.

New This Week: Alice I Have Been by Melanie Benjamin

Readers who enjoyed 2007’s Loving Frank by Nancy Horan are likely to be similarly enamored by Melanie Benjamin’s view through the looking glass with Alice I Have Been (Delacorte).

Like Loving Frank, Alice I Have Been fictionalizes the life of a real person in a way that is more creative and artful than biographical. Benjamin’s portrayal of the person Charles Dodgson -- who wrote as Lewis Carroll -- based his Alice character upon.

In her portrayal, Benjamin shows Alice Liddell’s entire life to have been directly impacted by having being immortalized as that girl from Wonderland. In Alice I Have Been Benjamin focuses on three periods in Liddell’s life: her childhood, when she actually met Dodgson; her young womanhood at Oxford; and as a wife and mother during World War I.

There has been much historical speculation about the nature of the relationship between the child who was Alice when Wonderland was created and Dogdson. Historically, there are loose ends in the story: ends that are unlikely to ever be tied up. In Benjamin’s telling, however, Dodgson himself fares better than he might have done. For the most part, Benjamin has opted to make her tale a sometimes dark, but gentle one. Considering some of the whispers in the intervening years, Benjamin’s choice was kind. But don’t read Alice I Have Been as a biography, at least, not your first time through. It is a memorable and even magical book. A good story. Sure, the historical relevance offers up some bonus tracks, but if you come to Alice I Have Been just to enjoy the feature, you won’t be disappointed.

Holiday Gift Guide: 29 Gifts: How a Month of Giving Can Change Your Life by Cami Walker

When she was in her early 30s, Cami Walker was living the dream. A young bride, she was doing a job she liked, living in a city she loved and she could see where all of this was leading. She thought. What began as a few pesky symptoms gradually worsened until she began a series of tests that led to the diagnosis of multiple sclerosis.

Fast forward two years. Walker was constantly in pain, depressed, suffering from insomnia and battling an addiction to prescription painkillers. She tried everything to help her cope with the incurable disease. Finally, in desperation, she called a South African medicine woman of her acquaintance, hoping for comfort. What she got instead was the advice that would change her life:

“Cami, I think you need to stop thinking about yourself.”

For a few seconds, I’m shocked silent. I imagine Mbali on the other end of the phone, sitting near her unique altar, her silver hair and bronze skin reflecting in the soft light of her apartment. She’s probably wearing one of the beautiful, colorful necklaces she makes and smiling at my stunned reaction.

“Thinking about myself?” I howl. I start in on her about what a wreck I am, what a wreck my body is, telling her I don’t have room to think about anything except myself right now.

“I know, that’s the problem,” she says. “If you spend all of your time and energy focusing on your pain, you’re feeding the disease. You’re making it worse by putting all of your attention there.”

In the same conversation, Mbali prescribes the thing that will ultimately change not only Walker’s life, but many others. The thing that will come to form the very heart of 29 Gifts: How a Month of Giving Can Change Your Life (Da Capo) and along with it begin a movement that has fans comparing it to the secret of The Secret.

In this season of giving, 29 Gifts cuts to the very heart of the thing: giving to enrich and share rather than receive. If it doesn’t change your life, it will at least make you think.

Holiday Gift Guide: Kitchen Scraps by Pierre A. Lamielle

What happens when you take a talented designer and illustrator and send him off to cooking school? If you’re lucky and the stars are aligned, you get Kitchen Scraps: A Humourous Illustrated Cookbook (Whitecap Books).

This is the perfect gift book. To be very honest, I can’t imagine very many people buying this book for themselves. It just isn’t that sort of cookbook: yummy photos, cozy write-ups, inspirational stories. Kitchen Scraps does none of those things, yet the things it does do, it does very well. Lamielle describes what Kitchen Scraps is and is not in his introduction:

It is not a cookbook for busy families, it will not make you a kitchen deity, and it will certainly not make you lose 10 pounds. Kitchen Scraps will delight, offend, and make you hungry.

The recipes are terrific: well thought out and engagingly shared. If some of the recipe names are ridiculous, they are also the point. Additionally, those recipe names will indicate if you share Lamielle’s sense of humor. (Not all will.) Steak and Kidney Cowpie has nothing to do with the business end of a cow. Suzette’s Massacre is an updated (Lamielle says “massacred” ) version of Crepes Suzette. And Lamielle does Brussels Sprouts not one, but three ways: in beer, in junipers and gin and in brandy. And it’s not just the booze that differs: these are three very different approaches to handling an unpopular yet delicious vegetable.

Lamielle’s illustrations are just as impressive as his recipes, but in an entirely unexpected way. These aren’t illustrations of food -- at least, not really. But rather lighthearted riffs through a style and on a subject clearly close to the author’s heart.

A fantastic gift book.

Holiday Gift Guide: Field Guide to Candy by Anita Chu

For some of us, the true meaning of the holidays can’t be found in spiritual lessons. It isn’t in the gifts we give or get or even in the time spent -- or avoided -- with friends and family. Rather -- again, for some -- true holiday meaning can be found in the volume of sweetness we collect, consume and -- if the bounty is sufficient -- share.

Sharing that bounty of sweetness on this holiday might be helped somewhat by Field Guide to Candy (Quirk) an amazing compendium of all that is sweet. In case you’re wondering about that, dig this crazy subtitle: How to Identify and Make Virtually Every Candy Imaginable. Need I say more? Not really. If that was all the information you had, it would be all you need. Except, I guess, that it works. If you’re actually a serious sweet aficionado, this is the sort of book you’ll find yourself referring to again and again. It’s well organized, well and sensibly illustrated and the recipes are boiled right down to basics, with straight-forward instructions and easy to find ingredients.

For gift giving, Field Guide to Candy satisfies almost every requirement. Who doesn’t love candy? And this is a book that includes recipes that even children could make with just a small amount of supervision. A bonus: Field Guide to Candy is small enough to fit into a generous stocking. A sweet gift on several fronts!

Children’s Books: Creature by Andrew Zuckerman and Alphabeasties by Sharon Werner and Sarah Forss

Alphabet books would seem to be one of the most popular categories of children’s picture books. There appears to be an endless supply of “A is for this” and “B is for that.” Think of a topic and you can probably find an alphabet book to match it. The books ranges wildly in quality and content but the sheer number of them sometimes can’t help but make you wonder: does the world really even need yet another alphabet book?

In the alphabet book category, a single theme would seem to rise above the others in popularity. And no matter how often you see “A is for Animal” you know that another book or six on the same topic is just down the turnpike. You’d think that, after a while, it would all just make you want to yawn.

All of this makes it even more interesting that two animal-focused alphabet books published this year both rank full marks for being both innovative and terrific.

Creature (Chronicle Books) by Andrew Zuckerman is gorgeously illustrated by Zuckerman’s own wonderful animal photos. The book is also sharply understated. No “A is for Anything,” here. In fact, there are barely any words at all. Large block letters introduce the idea of the shape of letters and the occasional word (“Bear,” “Insect,” Kangaroo”) is inserted in an appropriate place, but Zuckerman’s photos are always the stars. And they’re wonderful photographs, too: isolated animals cleverly arranged against their stark white backgrounds. A glossary explains the identity of each of the players. (“Jackrabbits, also called hares, can run up to 45 miles per hour…”)

If Creature is a terrific book -- and it is -- Alphabeasties (Blue Apple) is even better. No photographs here, the animals are created with the letters that spell their name. Unsurprisingly, the co-authors are both graphic designers, a demographic I suspect will go crazy for this book. With cut-outs and die-cuts and other fun and creative exercises, along with camels made of Cs and dogs made of Ds and so on, Alphabeasties is a treat for almost all the senses. It’s also extremely well done.

Cookbooks: The Jewish Princess Feast & Festivals by Georgie Tarn and Tracey Fine

There’s almost spirit and humor enough in The Jewish Princess Feast & Festivals (Sterling Books) to match anything written by Amy Sedaris (you’ll note I said “almost”: Sedaris is really funny!). The bonus, of course, is that The Jewish Princess Feast & Festivals is also a very real cookbook and, despite the focus, the food is surprisingly non-denominational.

Though in this book authors Georgie Tarn and Tracey Fine are working up feasts for Purim, Passover, Rosh Hashanah, Chanukah and others, there are recipes here that almost anyone would find interesting and useful. As well, of the 120 recipes included, a very high percentage are vegetarian in nature. In fact, vegetarians looking for a different approach might find a peek through Tarn and Fine’s book very rewarding.

The Jewish Princess Feast & Festivals follows up Tarn’s 2008 Jewish Princess Cookbook in a reasonably organic way. After all, if you’ve indulged yourself in a book of Jewish kitchen classics, one that focuses on the food of the Jewish high days seems a natural progression.

Cookbooks: Gordon Ramsay’s Maze by Gordon Ramsay and Jason Atherton

There are cookbooks that make you instantly want to rush to the kitchen and prepare your tools and there are those that make you want to curl into a comfy chair and peruse. Gordon Ramsay’s Maze (Key Porter Books) is of the latter type. To be honest, I can’t imagine anyone being inspired to actually cook from reading this book. But there’s plenty to look at and to be inspired by and perhaps even to envy.

My first hint that this would be the case came from the foreword: it’s written by Ferran Adriá, the mad genuis chef behind Barcelona’s El Bulli, possibly the most visible practitioner of molecular gastronomy in the world.

While the food in Gordon Ramsay’s Maze is not that, neither is it especially Gordon Ramsay. Maze is the Ramsay owned and backed London restaurant helmed by Ramsay and Adriá protégé, Jason Atherton. Maze has been one of those incredible restaurant industry success stories: people line up, book far in advance and pay vast prices for a peck at Atherton’s food. And a peck is all they’ll get, too. In many ways, it seems the antithesis of Ramsay’s hearty and gorgeous “keep it simple” fare. Atherton’s food is fussy and beautiful. Ramsay has called it “modern tapas” but it really seems much more than that: perhaps the place where tapas meets molecular gastronomy. Food that is fueled by imagination and technology as much as the desire to produce beautiful food from, say, local ingredients. I can not imagine, for instance, the circumstance that would lead me to try my hand at Asparagus with Quail’s Egg and Pink Grapefruit Hollandaise or Mango Soup with Lychee Granita. How about Pineapple Carpaccio with Fromage Frais and Lime Sorbet? Even the simple sounding things appear overworked and precious, but this is as much due to food styling as anything else: sweet little portions artistically arranged. For example, Perfect Scrambled Eggs with Tomatoes on Toast is beautifully framed and shot. From an aesthetic stance, it’s a gorgeous photo. It also looks entirely unappetizing: a runny mess of yellowish material on toast that looks overdone.

Gordon Ramsay’s Maze is a beautiful, interesting book. It’s stunningly photographed, well organized and the recipes are sensibly put down and shared. I know this is entirely subjective -- the nature of review -- but there was little here I found inviting. I say this knowing full well that this may well be an early glimpse of the food that is to come.

Another thing: I know this is likely silly and it was something I tried to overcome but, ultimately, could not: though he owns the restaurant, sticking Gordon Ramsay’s name in this book’s title seems deliberately misleading. It may be Ramsay’s joint, but this is Jason Atherton’s book.

Cookbooks: The Foodie Handbook by Pim Techamuanvivit

The very first paragraph of The Foodie Handbook (Chronicle Books) describes the journey on which you’re about to embark:

Relationships that matter most in our lives are often complicated. Think of the one with your mother or your current love, and perhaps the most perplexing, food. These liaisons can be fraught with love, hate, joy, fear, trust, suspicion, and a whole lot of other emotions. Sometimes it is nearly enough to make us wish we were orphans, turn us celibate or, worse yet, vegan.

Many foodies have met Techamuanvivit through her food blog, Chez Pim, where the Silicon Valley dropout brings foodie stuff to many thousands of visitors every week. The Foodie Handbook is better. And why? Because it is the physical embodiment of Techamuanvivit’s passionate, knowledgeable spirit. Foodie lore, recipes, advice from Techamuanvivit and other, more famous, chefs: it’s all here, just as on Chez Pim. But the book stuffs the blog into the shade. You can hold the book in your hands, flip through it, bury yourself in it and learn. And enjoy. The (Almost) Definitive Guide to Gastronomy is what the book is subtitled. And it’s that -- sure it is. But, oh, so much more.

Cookbooks: The Entertaining Encyclopedia by Denise Vivaldo

Today I dropped by my local Home Depot only to be met with a shock: the rows upon rows of barbecues I’d seen there just a few weeks ago had disappeared and been mysteriously replaced with ... fake Christmas trees and decorations. After I’d recovered and had gotten my too-hard-beating heart under control I stopped and took stock. After all, the time between when you see the first Home Depot Christmas tree of the season and when seasonal entertaining begins is not necessarily very long.

Upon my return home, I remembered the copy of The Entertaining Encyclopedia (Robert Rose) by Denise Vivaldo that I’d been perusing for the last few weeks. Suddenly its presence in my lair made sense.

Vivaldo is, after all, a sort of catering queen to the stars. Los Angeles-based, she’s catered the Academy Awards Governors Ball and she’s cooked for some of Hollywood’s top names. That being the case, it seems as though she’s a good person to look to advice for when it comes to holiday entertaining -- or any other kind, for that matter.

“It might sound too simple to be true,” she begins, “but the best way to ensure that your guests are having a great time is to have one yourself.” But it’s a big, fat book. Even in paperback. Loads of recipes, lots of advice: a lot of it, in the end, dedicated, to helping you be proficient enough with the idea of entertaining that you will have a good time, despite yourself.

The Entertaining Encyclopedia: Essential Tips and Recipes for Perfect Parties is a great primer on ... well, everything to do with entertaining. Identifying and choosing glassware. Stocking a bar. How to handle coffee service. How to garnish a plate. Choose a location. Get a hard-partying guest to leave when the party is over.

And then the food: which is fantastic. Even if you have no intention of ever hosting a party, you’ll find useful recipes here. Some very good versions of old standards -- chicken satay, cheese fondue, spare-ribs, barbecue sauce. Scones. Some sophisticated modern dishes and the thing that I found most arresting: Vivaldo’s casual approach to food. For example, an hors d’oeuvres party appears almost as magically as if it had been waved in by a wand. Several pages of elegant hors d’oeuvres that are so simple, they seem almost to make themselves. And hors d’oeuvres are, of course, just the very beginning. There are over 200 recipes in the book.

If you have questions about entertaining or planning a party, you’ll find sensible answers in Denise Vivaldo’s The Entertaining Encyclopedia.

New This Month: When Autumn Leaves by Amy S. Foster

You might not have heard her name before but, chances are, you’ve heard her words. Amy S. Foster has written lyrics for Josh Groban, Diana Krall, Eric Benet, Michael Bublé, Destiny’s Child and Andrea Bocelli. Even with that kind of star power and international coverage, When Autumn Leaves (Overlook Press) is Foster’s debut novel.

The magic in When Autumn Leaves is sweet and charming. Even, in an odd way, calming. The book takes place in a tiny Pacific Coast hamlet called Avening, where there is magic in the every day.

When Autumn Leaves is a gentle, intelligent book. Foster’s premise here provides opportunity for escape, but her lovely prose brings it right home. A lyricist’s touch, a poet’s heart and the gift for helping us delve into our own personal magic.

Biography: After the Falls by Catherine Gildiner

Ten years after the publication of Too Close to the Falls, the critically acclaimed biography of growing up Gildiner in Lewiston, New York, clinical psychologist -- and sometime writer -- Catherine Gildiner brings us another chunk of her life in After the Falls (Knopf Canada). This time out Gildiner explores her precocious coming-of-age in the 1960s.

Pretty much as After the Falls opens, Gildiner bridges her old life with the one that’s about to begin:

As the car chugged toward the top of the escarpment, I, like Lot’s wife, looked back at the town below me. I had no idea then that I was leaving behind the least-troubled years of my life. Strange, since I felt there was no way I could cause more trouble than I had in Lewiston.

On the surface of things, there’s not much here. Let’s face it: book one dealt with the childhood years of a non-celebrity. Someone who most of us probably would not be that interested in knowing more about. Book two deals with the same person’s teenage years. And a third book (one can only imagine the Falls allusions) is currently under Gildiner’s pen. But Gildiner’s successful telling of these tales is as much about her perspective as it is about her experience. That, of course, and charm. Is there sometimes too much charm? Maybe just a little. But she is an ordinary person doing -- mostly -- fairly ordinary things, but relating them in an extraordinarily skillful way. In the end, I think, she entertains us by reminding of us our own specialness. A fantastic gift.

Film rights have been optioned.

Cookbooks: Clean Food: A Seasonal Guide to Eating Close to the Source and How It All Vegan

If the idea of green food appeals, then Clean Food (Sterling Epicure) may well be for you.

Author Terry Walters is a certified holistic health counselor and it shows. Clean Food is a gorgeous book, beautifully produced and while it is long on intent and sustainability, the recipes are more serviceable than inspired. In truth, though, and considering the thrust, for this particular book, that may be enough.

At one point Walters writes that “a perfect diet alone will not fully nourish us. What we need is connection -- to our bodies, hearts and spirits, to our families, to community, to the environment, the land, the season and to a purpose.”

This spirit is echoed throughout the book, which is long on recipes that will help round out the repertoire of someone just begin to play with the idea of a vegan diet or who wants to add a few vegan and veganish dishes to their old standbys.

What Clean Food lacks in flights of foodie fancy it makes up for in sheer volume. As the subtitle says: “With More Than 200 Recipes for a Healthy and Sustainable You.” There are many options here and a lot of the bases are covered and covered well.

For pure and joyous vegan inspiration, try the tenth anniversary edition of How It All Vegan (Arsenal Pulp Press) by Tanya Barnard and Sarah Kramer. Since the publication of the first edition in 1999, How It All Vegan has won numerous awards, inspired several sequels and been reprinted 14 times. This edition includes new recipes and, perhaps more importantly, has been updated to reflect a way of eating that has moved more firmly into the mainstream over the past decade.

As the title implies, How It All Vegan is a celebration of the vegan way of life. “Healthy lifestyles should begin by making conscious decisions about the food we eat and things we do to make it a better world.” For all of that, though, the recipes are great: easy-to-follow and potentially life-changing.

Cookbooks: The New Thanksgiving Table by Diane Morgan

Over the years, we’ve reviewed a number of Diane Morgan’s excellent cookbooks at January Magazine. And, in general, we like them quite a lot. Morgan’s approach to food is sensible. Though she stays aware of trends and her food is always modern, there is nothing of faddishness about a Morgan cookbook.

All of these things can also be said of The New Thanksgiving Table (Chronicle Books), the latest addition to the Morgan oeuvre. If I have a single quibble, it’s that the title is a bit misleading. One arrives expecting Thanksgiving-specific recipes. And while those are all there -- and then some -- there is so much more here, as well.

I’ll tell you what I mean. Of course there is turkey. And turkey. And then turkey. In fact, aside from basic turkey know-how (buying, defrosting, brining) Morgan has included eight ways to cook a turkey, including the very trendy -- and perhaps even slightly faddish -- Spatchcocked turkey. Some of the eight would seem to have a broader appeal than others. Perhaps that’s to be expected? But while I have no trouble at all imagining hordes of home chefs settling in to prepare Herb Butter-Rubbed Turkey with Giblet Gravy, thinking about the Roast Turkey with Vidalia Cream Gravy makes me feel a little queasy.

As impressive as a book with eight (eight!) turkey recipes might sound, to my mind, the most significant recipes in The New Thanksgiving Table would seem to me to have very little to do with Thanksgiving at all. Crostini with Fig and Calamata Olive Tapenade. Tex-Mex Honey Pecans. Sizzlin’ Corn and Jalapeño Bread with Bacon. Oyster Stew. Roasted Chestnut Soup. Forget Thanksgiving. In some ways, Morgan’s new book is autumn delivered straight to the table. Which is not a bad place to be come Thanksgiving.

The New Thanksgiving Table is another winner for Morgan.

Cookbooks: Slow Cooker Comfort Food and Slow Cooker: The Best Cookbook Ever

There’s certainly not much less cool than slow cooker cooking. A combination of things. First you start with the name. Crock pot. A brand name, sure, but one that’s stuck like a Xerox copy. Like Tampax. Like Coke. You show someone that deep, electric vessel -- especially if that someone is of a certain age -- and you can say “slow cooker” until your face is blue, but they’re gonna call it something else; that’s just how it will go.

“My concept of comfort food is warm and welcoming and provides a sense of sustenance,” writes Judith Finlayson in Slow Cooker Comfort Food (Robert Rose), “a kind of culinary haven in a heartless world.”

Finlayson is the slow cooker queen. She is the author of The Healthy Slow Cooker. 175 Essential Slow Cooker Classics, The 150 best Slow Cooker Recipes and others. Slow Cooker Comfort Food itself contains 275 “soul-satisfying recipes.” If it can be said about slow cooking, Finlayson has said it, maybe even a couple of times in different ways.

This latest book is large and friendly. A color guide on each page lets readers know if the recipe is “entertaining worthy,” “vegan friendly,” “vegetarian friendly” or suitable for halving. The type is large and the recipes are easy to follow. The food styling and photography is, unfortunately, not that great. In fact, some of this food looks awful: homogenous and bland in some places; too glossy and overly manipulated-looking in others. And while, yes: a lot of this food sounds comforting, some of it just has no business being done in a slow cooker. I don’t understand the sense of poaching quinces for eight hours when a similar effect could be accomplished in minutes -- and not a lot of them -- on top of the stove. Ditto all of the dips with shrimp and/or crab. Please: nothing with either of those delicate meats should be allowed anywhere near a slow cooker. Ever.

Many, many of these recipes, however, are of the type that slow cookers were intended for: the type of low maintenance, high return dishes working families most need. Just a few of these: Moroccan-Style Lemon Chicken with Olives; Simple Soy-Braised Chicken; Corned Beef and Cabbage; Old-Fashioned Beef Stew with Mushrooms; Pinto Bean Chili with Corn and Kale.

In Slow Cooker: The Best Cookbook Ever (Chronicle Books) veteran cookbook author Diane Phillips takes a different approach. “Whenever I look at my slow cooker,” Phillips writes, “I think of the lyrics to that old Sinatra standard, ‘I’m not much to look at, nothing to see,’ but upon closer inspection the slow cooker is like the girl in high school who everyone said had a nice personality.”

That said, Best Slow Cooker is by far the more attractive of this particular pair of books. The type is not as large, and the pages are not as shiny but the design is completely contemporary, as is the approach to recipe description. Instructions are not needlessly wordy. As a result, even complicated recipes appear more simple. That said, does anyone really need 400 slow cooker recipes? There are definitely some good ones here (I especially loved the Chicken, Artichoke, and Mushroom Casserole and the Pork Tenderloin Osso Bucco-Style is practically genius) but, as with Finlayson’s book, after a while it seems like a bit of a reach. An artichoke spinach dip that spends two to three hours in a slow cooker? Who would even want that? It just seems contrary to everything slow cookers excel at.

All of that said, if you have an interest in slow cooking or the kind of lifestyle that could benefit from this type of culinary intervention, either of these books would serve very well. Both books include many very good recipes along with the silly ones. And both books talk about slow cook rationale as well as why and how to do it. As well, both authors take a very different approach to their topics even if, in some ways, they end up at a similar place. In fact, the recipes are varied enough, if you’ve the means, you might reasonably opt not to make it a competition at all. Perhaps you don’t have to decide between them: in the end, you might decide you want both.

Children’s Books: By the Light of the Harvest Moon by Harriet Ziefert, illustrated by Mark Jones

It’s difficult to imagine a prettier fall book than By the Light of the Harvest Moon (Blue Apple Books) by veteran children’s author Harriet Ziefert. Mark Jones’ illustrations hold a luminous, full-bodied quality.

In some ways, the story is unremarkable: a farm in the midst of autumn’s hold. Yet there is a difference here in a special fall magic that sees the leaf people emerge from their sylvan retreats and get busy with their own fall fair-type celebrations.

The story is sweet and the illustrations, as previously stated, are luminous. If you’re looking for a book that will help you and your child celebrate autumn in charming style, you’d have a tough time going wrong with By the Light of the Harvest Moon.

New This Month: The Confessions of Edward Day by Valerie Martin

What is the price of success? That’s the unspoken question in Orange Prize-winning author Valerie Martin’s latest outing, The Confessions of Edward Day (Nan. A Talese/Doubleday). In a blurb, actor Blythe Danner notes that the book “reminded me of how exciting New York theater really was in the seventies.” It is that world that we come to know through Martin’s well drawn characters.

Though an actor’s New York in the 1970s provides the physical backdrop for The Confessions of Edward Day, a love triangle provides the emotional one. That triangle consists of Edward Day, the title character; the beautiful Madeline Delavergne and Guy Margate, an actor who saves Edward’s life on a fateful evening that alters the trio’s life.

The 13th novel by the author of Mary Reilly and the Orange Prize-winning Property, The Confessions of Edward Day reveals a journeyman storyteller exploring yet another new-to-her world. And aren’t we lucky to have such great seats for the ride?

Fiction: Godmother: The Cinderella Story by Carolyn Turgeon

In a season of reimaginings, Carolyn Turgeon (Rain Village) delivers Godmother: The Cinderella Story (Three Rivers Press). Turgeon’s retelling finds Cinderella’s fairy godmother banished from her fairy world and working as a bookseller in New York. For her fairy faux pas, she has been pulled away from her life, though if it seems to her that if she can contrive one selfless and beautiful act, all will be forgiven.

Godmother is exquisite: oddly chic, dark, sweet and elegant... and not a zombie in sight. Turgeon has a light but meaty touch. The author has said that after her challenging debut, she was determined to work on something simpler. “I just wanted to work with something wonderful -- a fairytale -- and play,” Turgeon has said.

Godmother is a delicious departure.

New This Week: Sacred Hearts by Sarah Dunant

Clearly, a novel where the action focuses around life in a 16th century convent is not going to be a laugh riot and, in that regard, Sarah Dunant’s Sacred Hearts (Virago) delivers no surprise.

Over the last two decades, Dunant has been quietly building an international reputation as one of the most watch-worthy historical fictionists writing today. Sacred Hearts is Dunant’s ninth novel, but the third in a triptych set in the Italian Renaissance, after The Birth of Venus and The Company of the Courtesan. But Sacred Hearts is a jewel of a novel. Not a tiny, delicate one, either. But a big, robust, showy diamond that will hold its own with any going. Dunant is the whole package: trained historian, seasoned storyteller, fabulous writer.

“Before the screaming starts,” Sacred Hearts begins, “the night silence of the convent is alive with its own particular sounds.”

Sacred Hearts might be the very best of a the superior field of historical fiction published in the summer of 2009.

Fiction: The Best of Men by Claire Letemendia

Even in a season reasonably stuffed with weighty works of historical fiction, The Best of Men (McClelland & Stewart) stands out. Debut author Claire Letemendia has the right sort of academic pedigree to get the details right in her vast epic tale of England in the middle of the 17th century. But even with a doctorate in Political Theory, Letemendia doesn’t write like an academic. Rather, she drops us deftly right into the center of her story and we find ourselves in England in 1642, with Laurence Beaumont, newly returned from the wars that have changed the map of Europe.

For all of Letemendia’s knowledge and the intricacies of her plotting here, there are times when the reader is aware of every single one of the book’s nearly 700 pages. The reduction -- or even elimination -- of some of the less important storylines would have created a more tense, exciting read. As it stands, there are times when the action seems to come almost to a standstill.

Fortunately, the bogged down moments in The Best of Men are infrequent and, for the most part, the reader is swept away in the world Letemendia shares. And that’s a good thing as The Best of Men won’t be a one-off: the author has promised a trilogy.

Fiction: The Road to Jerusalem: Book One of the Crusades Trilogy by Jan Guillou

Though not at all well known in North America -- yet -- Jan Guillou is one of Sweden’s most popular literary personalities. A journalist and broadcaster, he is also the author of the Coq Rouge novels, one of the most popular series of Swedish spy novels ever created. Guillou’s Crusades Trilogy has been translated into 20 languages and has sold 2.5 million copies in Sweden alone.

The first book in the trilogy, The Road to Jerusalem (Harper), has just been released in English. Steven T. Murray did the skillful translation. Since it was Murray -- using a pseudonym -- who translated the first two of Stieg Larsson’s books to be published in English (The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo and The Girl Who Played with Fire), it seems a safe guess to call Murray the top Swedish translator working today. And in The Road to Jerusalem, once again, the translation is seamless. One never senses a falter or a misstep.

The Road to Jerusalem tells the story of a young Swedish nobleman who ends up conscripted into the Knights Templar. But this is a thick and engaging novel: I’ve taken a very short route to tell the story. Guillou’s path is much less direct, and far more exciting. And while details of a U.S. film production will likely be announced soon, Swedish film and television productions are at various stages, and have been for several years.

Fans of historical fiction -- particularly those with an interest in Crusades-era material -- simply must read The Road to Jerusalem. The huge international following this series has attracted will only continue to grow now that it’s available in English.

Selected Poems by Robert Bringhurst

A new book by Robert Bringhurst is always a noteworthy event. Bringhurst is an author, typographer, translator and award-winning poet and each of his books is a work of art on every level.

It seems to me there is something even more special about Selected Poems (Gaspereau Press), a single volume that brings together selections from several of Bringhurst’s collections including The Beauty of the Weapons and The Calling. It also includes a new series of poems called “The Living.”

The ear of language rests
On the breast of world,
Unable to know and unable to care
Whether it listens inward or outward.

Everything about Selected Poems is extraordinary. The first hint of it is in the plain black cover, no image. The title and the author’s name are printed in silver ink in a plain, serif font. This stark understatement is typical of Bringhurst. And the book’s deceptively simple production speaks volumes for the work itself. Just enough, always. A little less, perhaps, than another might give, but it’s the correct less. The right less. Somehow defining the work by what is not there as much as by what is.

Those who already enjoy Bringhurst’s work will want to add Selected Poems to their collections. And if you’ve never before encountered his sparse, elemental imagery will find this collection a perfect place to start.

Fiction: Fishing for Bacon by Michael Davie

I’m beginning to think that 2009 might well be remembered as the year that potential Canadian YA masterworks got lost in the waterfall of mainstream fiction.

First there was Alan Bradley’s lively but clearly juvenile The Sweetness of the Bottom the Pie (Doubleday Canada). Now comes Calgarian Michael Davies’ cheerfully abrupt Fishing for Bacon (Newest Press). The book features fresh-from-high school lost youth, Bacon Sobelowski who claims, almost from the very first, that he has bad timing. He gets stuck with the name “Bacon” during his birth, when his mother can think of nothing but her breakfast.

Afterward, when a nurse informed my mother that I was a boy, she curled around her pillow and sighed, “Bacon.” When the nurse asked her if she had a name for Baby Boy Sobelowski, my mother starred at the cold, grey wall and sniveled, “Bacon.”

The writing is crisp and sharp and though the story is somewhat thin, so is the book. While some of the theme’s are clearly adult, Bacon’s youthful verve would have been much tougher to resist in a slightly refocused package.

New This Month: The French Gardener Santa Montefiore

As I sniffled and sighed my way through The French Gardener (Touchstone Fireside), I longed for the beach. It’s just the sort of book that begs a quiet cottage on a rainy day, or a languid one on sand and under an umbrella.

The French Gardener has it all: an attractive mysterious Frenchman -- named Jean-Paul, of course -- arrives to repair both a garden and a damaged family. It’s not just romance, but also family drama traditionally done so well by fellow Brit Rosalind Pilcher, with whom Montefiore is often compared.

“Posh tosh,” said The Mirror when The French Gardener was published in the United Kingdom early in 2008, “but oddly gripping.” Just the thing to gnaw away at while under that umbrella.

Children’s Books: Nibbling on Einstein’s Brain by Diane Swanson

Nibbling on Einstein’s Brain (Annick Press) is a newly revised edition of a book that was initially published in 2001. This new edition is more-ish in every way: it’s longer, brighter and better realized, intended to provide children with a gentle foundation for scientific learning.

In a way, the book is based on the idea that a little science can take you quite a distance, especially when it comes to dispelling the myths that bad science spread around.

Nibbling on Einstein’s Brain is really quite good. Where non-fiction books aimed at this age group can be overly simplistic and facile, Swanson is expert at sharing information in a fashion that is both lucid and interesting. And, truth be told, she should be good at it: she’s over 70 books into a career of doing just that!

Subtitled The Good, The Bad and the Bogus in Science, Nibbling on Einstein’s Brain is the perfect primer to the way science works in our lives and the various roles it can play. In some ways, the book does even more than that: touching at times on ideas that are quite philosophical in nature, at others sharing skills crucial to critical thinking. Nibbling on Einstein’s Brain is a whimsically illustrated treasure trove of learning for young minds.

New this Week: East of the Sun by Julia Gregson

Julia Gregson’s debut novel puts one instantly in mind of The Far Pavilions, M.M. Kaye’s epic 1978 novel of mid-19th century India. While there are similarities, they are largely on the surface. As befits its early 20th century setting and the sharp, smart voice of its journalist author, East of the Sun (Touchstone Fireside) takes a grittier run at India during the time of the British Raj. It’s an enjoyable and transporting experience.

East of the Sun introduces us to Viva Holloway who travels to India in the fall of 1928 aboard the Kaisar-l-Hind as chaperone to a young bride on her way to marry a man she barely knows, and her two friends.

East of the Sun was a Richard and Judy pick in the UK last summer, where the book became an instant bestseller under the duo’s Oprah-like bounce. It seems likely that, now that the book is available in North America, it will continue to stun readers on the far side of the pond.

Gregson delivers 1928 India in livid, vivid color. East of the Sun is a fantastic book, one that endures in the mind long after the final page is turned.

New this Month: Sea Changes by Gail Graham

At the beginning of this journey, you think you’re heading off on a beach read. You know what I mean: standard issue relationship novel. A dead husband, a woman’s personal crisis, a lot of angst and wringing of hands. And, honestly, as wry as that assessment might sound, there’s nothing wrong with any of that (which is no doubt why so many books that vaguely fit that description are published every year) but that’s just wouldn’t describe Sea Changes (Jade Phoenix) at all.

When Sarah Andrews tries to kill herself (All that angst, remember?) by drowning, she discovers a civilization under the water. When she wakes up on the beach, alive, Sarah quite understandably thinks It Was All A Dream. Further developments convince her this was not the case.

Sea Changes is about transformation and rediscovery. Incredibly difficult to describe, it’s also very hard to put down. Sea Changes is about loss and rebirth and, in certain ways, it’s about resilience of spirit and of fact. It’s a magical book.

Fiction: Perfecting by Kathryn Kuitenbrouwer

Kathryn Kuitenbrouwer just keeps getting better. And that’s saying something, because everything she’s offered thus far has been worthy of note.

Kuitenbrouwer’s debut novel, The Nettle Spinner, was included in January Magazine’s 2005 Best of the Year. “Here is a very clever tale that bites as much as the nettle,” said January’s reviewer at the time. “Kuitenbrouwer writes with such confidence and authority that discovering this is her first novel seems almost as astonishing as the feat of those nettle spinners, separated in time by centuries but joined by shared themes.”

Four years later, Kuitenbrouwer is back with an intensely ambitious tale that moves her readers over 30 years, from New Mexico to Ontario and from roadside crime to the community and machinations of a rural cult.

Perfecting (Goose Lane) is slender, but there are hints of the epic here and though Kuitenbrouwer’s style is muscular and spare, one gets the feeling that more would have been better. Perfecting is tight, certainly and it’s not that anything has been left out, but I found myself wanting more.

Still, that’s a quibble and, indeed, a high class complaint. Kuitenbrouwer has fulfilled the promise of The Nettle Spinner. This Toronto-based author continues to be one of the hot new Canadian voices to watch.

Non-Fiction: An American Trilogy by Steven M. Wise

I think it’s possible that the publication date of Steve M. Wise’s latest book was unfortunate. The best laid plans. An American Trilogy: Death, Slavery & Dominion on the Banks of the Cape Fear River (Da Capo) was published about a week before the strain of influenza most popularly known as swine flu started getting a lot of ballyhoo from CNN and other experts in the art of the sensational. That is to say that the book was published at a time when even staunch animal activists aren’t feeling especially compassionate about the fate of pigs. And, really? That’s a shame because, once again, Wise has written a trenchant and important book.

Wise is a lawyer who has taught at Harvard, Lewis and Clark and other places. He is president of the Center for the Expansion of Fundamental Rights. And he cares very deeply about both human and animal rights, as he demonstrated in several previous books, including Though the Heavens May Fall and Rattling the Cage.

In An American Trilogy Wise trains his sharp eye on Tar Heel, North Carolina, home of the largest slaughterhouse in the world, once the site of atrocities to African American slaves and before that home to indigenous Americans.

At times, An American Trilogy is a difficult book to read. There are some things here a lot of people don’t really want to know. In the book’s prologue, Wise explains that he was deeply affected by the material that moved him to write the book and that passion shows up on every page though, as he tells us, “In this book, I do not recite the atrocities we perpetuate on pigs. Instead, I discuss why we think it’s okay to inflict them. And that discussion will bring us to the study of history.”

In that study, Wise examines why American accept the type of cruelty he shows us in Bladen County, North Carolina. More: he connects it with cruelty to native Americans as well as African American slaves. He does all of this with the style and grace that always marks his work. An American Trilogy is a remarkable book.

The Old Woman and the Hen by P.K. Page

Fans of the poet P.K. Page -- and I imagine there to be platoons of them -- will have to get their hands on a copy of The Old Woman and the Hen, a charming chapbook that would make a lovely gift, a sweet read to a child or even a nice self-indulgence for fans of 93-year-old Page, even though publisher Porcupine’s Quill advises that the book is “a small treasure intended to be shared by grandmothers, grandfathers -- or other doting adults -- with beloved youngsters between the ages of 5 to 8.”

Canadian poet Page won the Governor General’s Award for poetry in 1957 and was appointed a Companion to the Order of Canada in 1999. In 2002 her collection, Planet Earth, was short listed for the Griffin Poetry Prize. She is one of Canada’s most celebrated and beloved poets.

The Old Woman and the Hen is illustrated withy original woodcut engravings by Alberta artist Jim Westergard. It’s a tiny, special, lovely little book clearly intended to be cherished.

New this Month: Twilight of Avalon by Anna Elliott

How is it that the Arthurian legends never seem to run out of steam? Hemlines can rise and fall, hairlines can decline and cultural mores can change from generation to generation, but somehow we always come back to the comfort of the grudges, wounds and triumphs of King Arthur’s golden court.

In her debut novel, Anna Elliott focuses on the story of Trystan and Isolde, freshening things up by going back to the roots of the tale. Elliot has based Twilight of Avalon (Touchstone Fireside) on the earliest written versions of the story of a misunderstood queen and her unlikely love.

Twilight of Avalon is the first novel in an intended trilogy. Elliott is off to a great start here, with a sharp magic that rivals that found in Arthur’s court.

Young Adult: Fate by Jennifer Lynn Barnes

I loved it when Publishers Weekly described Fate (Delacorte) as being in the “teens-with-special-powers-and-destinies genre” and that really doesn’t miss the mark. Let’s face it, between PC Cast and Stephanie Meyers, this a deliciously well followed part of “literature” these days.

Barnes’ offering is not worse than many others and, in many ways, it’s quite a bit better. I share PW’s issue with the author’s use (overuse?) of italics. Barnes uses them for protagonist Bailey’s trips into the otherworld when she moves beyond being a high school student and becomes the third fate, she who holds the destiny of the world in her slender hands.

Fulbright scholar Barnes writes intelligently and -- for the most part -- engagingly. Did the world actually need yet another ancient mystical being? Sales appear brisk so, apparently, it did. Fate is recommended for readers 12 and up. The book follows 2007’s Tattoo.

New This Month: The Secret Lives of Litterbugs by M.A.C. Farrant

Fans of west coast Canadian writer M.A.C. Farrant can be forgiven if they feel there’s a shadow of the familiar in her latest book, The Secret Lives of Litterbugs (Key Porter). That’s because she partly mines territory already covered in 2004’s My Turquoise Years, a memoir that takes place in 1960, Farrant’s 14th summer. But don’t let possible redundancy scare you away: it doesn’t happen here.

The Secret Lives of Litterbugs is a collection of personal essays about Farrant’s own youth in the 1960s, as well as some that reflect her own experiences as a mother: the coin, then, is viewed from both sides.

Where My Turquoise Years is bathed in a certain nostalgic light -- 14 in 1960, somehow those numbers seem to just want to add up to nostalgia -- Litterbugs deals with a broader spectrum in terms of both timeline and emotion. It seems to me there’s a sharpness here that was lacking in the earlier book. But, whatever it is, The Secret Lives of Litterbugs is bright and fresh and real, a deeply enjoyable slice of family life, then and now.

New This Month: Inferno by Robin Stevenson

Aside from being a name to watch in the world of young adult publishing, Robin Stevenson’s story is the type of overnight success that really is one. While on maternity leave from her job as a social worker and counselor in 2005, Stevenson began to write seriously. Four years later, she is the author of six books.

The most recent of these is Inferno (Orca), Stevenson’s take on the teen angst novel. She does a terrific job, capturing the impossibly large emotion and the power that propels teenage girls. I think back on that age and shudder. One gets the feeling that Stevenson is able to recreate that feeling for herself with ease. Or it feels like ease, at any rate though, admittedly, good writing almost always looks like that.

In Inferno we meet 16-year-old Emily, though we meet her as Dante, after a series of events have caused her to rethink herself. Having read The Divine Comedy, she recreates herself as Dante because, as she tells someone early on, she liked what the author said about “how we need to take responsibility for the world. As individuals, I mean.”

Clearly, Dante is intelligent and somewhat different. These things, together with Stevenson’s understanding of human nature and developmental behaviors, combine to create a character young readers will have no trouble relating to. We all feel different sometimes. We all feel a desire for reinvention on occasion and so we relate to Dante who seems, at times, hell-bent on creating a divine comedy of her own.

Are there elements of the story and aspects of Dante’s character that seem stereotypical to this subgenre? I think so. But where do stereotypes come from? Readers who are on the other side of Dante’s 16 will remember that age and identify with the character. This is skillful writing featuring a strong female protagonist. A good story well told.

Children’s Books: A World Full of Ghosts by Charis Cotter, illustrations by Marc Mongeau

A World Full of Ghosts (Annick Press) comes this close to being a really terrific book. Certainly, the idea is a good one: a catalog of ghost stories from around the world -- 25 of them in all -- skeleton spirits of Alaska, Jamaica’s rolling calf, the legless Yurei of Japan, background for Halloween and the Day of the Dead.

Presented in picture book form with luminous illustrations by Marc Mongeau, the information is good, the illos are great and there’s no problem at all with the idea.

How does A World Full of Ghosts fall short? In a way, it’s in the planning that it doesn’t quite come together. The stories are uneven, both in content and in the telling. For example, some of the stories are told in a straight-up, no nonsense non-fiction style. (“In Hawaii, the ghost gods are everywhere: in the trees, the roaring wind, the mighty volcanoes, and the pounding waves of the sea.”) Others are told from a more personal viewpoint. (“We had two cats: Loki, a white cat, and Bear, a beautiful Siamese.”) Was A World Full of Ghosts initially envisioned as two books that got blended into one? I’m not sure, but I think children might find this overlapping narrative voice somewhat confusing. I know I did.

That said, there is much here to recommend the A World Full of Ghosts, not the least of these are well told encounters with a dimension most children ages eight to 10 will find exciting.

New This Month: A Sandhills Ballad by Ladette Randolph

It strikes me that A Sandhills Ballad (University of New Mexico Press) is a nearly perfect book. The harsh Nebraska landscape is a complete character in its own right. Unforgiving. Somewhat distant. Aloof. Home. The human characters are more yielding, but only just. And the sum of what author Ladette Randolph creates here is unforgettable.

We meet Mary Rasmussen as she’s awakening from a six week coma after an accident in which the bride lost her husband.

In that deep sleep she dreamt about the wind. She heard it whistle under the windowsills and through the cracks of an empty house, heard it rattle the loose No Hunting sign on a weathered post, and slam open and shut again the sagging door of an old barn.

A husband is not all Mary lost in the accident and, over the fullness of A Sandhills Ballad, her emotional awakening is like a rebirth.

The most startling thing about A Sandhills Ballad is the fact that Randolph does not have a wider following. A winner of the Nebraska Book Award (for the collection, This Is Not the Tropics), she is also the recipient of a Norcroft fellowship, a Pushcart Prize and the Virginia Faulkner Award. With the publication of this exquisite novel, perhaps her name will become better known.

Fiction: In the Hands of Anubis by Ann Eriksson

Despite an epic canvas and a delicate touch that sears the heart, there’s something sweetly naive about In the Hands of Anubis (Brindle & Glass) a novel that looks at love and unhappiness in entirely new ways.

Trevor Wallace is a tractor salesman from Calgary on his way to Africa on business. In a German airport he has a chance encounter with a woman in her 70s, and they end up traveling together to Cairo. Constance is traveling the world with the ashes of her three husbands in plastic containers -- their names carefully lettered on the lids -- in her suitcase.

The pair end up stuck in Cairo, just long enough to tour the pyramids. Trevor returns home to Calgary not long after, but she’s touched him somehow -- or those ancient structures have -- emotionally, spiritually: it’s all the same. Only his world, his life are different.

In the Hands of Anubis is a lovely little book. It seems at times to touch on all the humor, the sadness, the joy of the human spirit.