J. Robert Oppenheimer: reluctant father of the atomic bomb, enthusiastic lover of books, devoted husband and philanderer. Engaging with the books he voraciously read, and especially the Bhagavad Gita, his moral compass, this lyrical novel takes us through his story, from his tumultuous youth to his marriage with a radical communist and the two secret, consuming affairs he carried on, all the while bringing us deep inside the mind of the man behind the Manhattan Project. With the stunning backdrop of Los Alamos, New Mexico, Oppenheimer's spiritual home, and using progressively shorter chapters that shape into an inward spiral, Y brings us deep inside the passions and moral qualms of this man with pacifist, communist leanings as he created and tested the world's first weapon of mass destruction and, in the process, changed the world we live in immeasurably.
Biographical fiction
- Author:Tucker, AaronSummary:
- Author:Pipkin, JohnSummary:
In his scintillating debut, John Pipkin fictionalizes an ignoble event in noted naturalist Henry David Thoreau's life. One year before his historic retreat to the woods around Walden pond, Thoreau struck a match and carelessly started a mammoth fire that would go on to consume 300 acres of forest and farmland. "A superb historical fiction as well as a complex and provocative novel of ideas-Pulitzer Prize material."-Kirkus Reviews, starred review
- Author:Gaynor, HazelSummary:
China, December 1941. Having left an unhappy life in England for a teaching post at a missionary school in northern China, Elspeth Kent is now anxious to return home to help the war effort. But as she prepares to leave China, a terrible twist of fate determines a different path for Elspeth, and those in her charge.
- Author:Pettit, MarySummary:
Home child Mary Janeway runs away from her farm placement, grows into adulthood, and ultimately comes to terms with life in Hamilton, Ontario. Sixteen-year-old Mary Janeway, a home child, is desperate to escape from her rural home child placement and flees to London, Ontario, to find a domestic position. When conditions become unbearable, she moves on, vowing never to relinquish her freedom again.After she arrives in Hamilton as a young bride, she quickly adapts to the urban conveniences and the marvels of new inventions that include electric sewing machines, sulphur matches, street stoplights, a one-horsepower Brunswick refrigerator, the advent of the zipper, and the beginning of radio. But even the latest technology can’t stop the ravages of disease and other family tragedies.Mary lives through two world wars, the Spanish Influenza, and the Great Depression. In spite of many hardships, she remains a strong, resilient woman well into her senior years and makes many contributions to Hamilton, the city she calls home.
- Author:Rhodes, Jewell ParkerSummary:
In mid 19th-century New Orleans, Marie Laveau was the notorious queen of voodoo -- worshiped and feared by blacks and whites alike. Voodoo Dreams reimagines the woman behind this legend, a mesmerizing combination of history and storytelling.
- Author:Rivers, FrancineSummary:
The first in the Lineage of Grace series showing the grace of God in the life of Tamar and her father-in-law, Judah.
- Author:Rivers, FrancineSummary:
"Your God will be my God." It is with these words that Ruth the Moabitess turns her face away from her father's home and idols, and journeys to Bethlehem with Naomi, her mother-in-law. And it is because of that determination, that perseverance, faith, and loyalty that Ruth becomes the great-grandmother of David, king of Israel, and an ancestor of Jesus.
- Author:Winter, KathleenSummary:
“A stunning, spellbinding, poetic triumph." — Toronto Star From Giller-shortlisted author Kathleen Winter (author of the bestseller Annabel ): A stunning novel reimagining the lost years of misunderstood Romantic Era genius Dorothy Wordsworth. When young James Dixon, a local jack-of-all-trades recently returned from the Battle of Waterloo, meets Dorothy Wordsworth, he quickly realizes he’s never met another woman anything like her. In her early thirties, Dorothy has already lived a wildly unconventional life. And as her famous brother William Wordsworth’s confidante and creative collaborator—considered by some in their circle to be the secret to his success as a poet—she has carved a seemingly idyllic existence for herself, alongside William and his wife, in England’s Lake District. One day, Dixon is approached by William to do some handiwork around the Wordsworth estate. Soon he takes on more and more chores—and quickly understands that his real, unspoken responsibility is to keep an eye on Dorothy, who is growing frail and melancholic. The unlikely pair of misfits form a sympathetic bond despite the troubling chasm in social class between them, and soon Dixon is the quiet witness to everyday life in Dorothy’s family and glittering social circle, which includes literary legends Samuel Coleridge, Thomas de Quincy, William Blake, and Charles and Mary Lamb. Through the fictional James Dixon—a gentle but troubled soul, more attuned to the wonders of the garden he faithfully tends than to vexing worldly matters—we step inside the Wordsworth family, witnessing their dramatic emotional and artistic struggles, hidden traumas, private betrayals and triumphs. At the same time, Winter slowly weaves a darker, complex “undersong” through the novel, one as earthy and elemental as flower and tree, gradually revealing the pattern of Dorothy's rich, hidden life—that of a woman determined, against all odds, to exist on her own terms. But the unsettling effects of Dorothy’s tragically repressed brilliance take their toll, and when at last her true voice sings out, it is so searing and bright that Dixon must make an impossible choice.
- Author:Sileika, AntanasSummary:
A tragic love triangle set in a forgotten place during an invisible war. Inspired by true events, Underground tells the story of a troubled romance between Lukas and Elena, two members of the underground Lithuanian resistance movement in mid- 1940s. After shooting up a room full of Soviet government workers during their engagement party, Lukas and Elena become folk heroes to their political cause, but are forced deep into hiding in order to escape punishment for their role in the massacre. When their secret bunker is discovered, Lukas is nearly captured. Believing his beloved Elena has been killed in the raid, Lukas is forced to flee the country and the increasingly hopeless resistance movement that he has defended over the years. Finding himself stranded in Paris, Lukas tries in vain to generate some political interest in the plight of his country. Settling quietly in Europe, Lukas falls in love again, remarries, and begins his life anew. When an unexpected crisis arises back home, the tranquility of Lukas’ new life is shattered. Stealing back into his former country, Lukas embarks on the most important fight of his life. Based on true historical revelations and fragments of the author’s family history, Underground is an engaging literary thriller and love story that explores the narrow range of options open to men and women in desperate situations, when history crashes into personal desires and private life.
- Author:Hedley, CaraSummary:
Isabel Norris has never left the ice. Her father was a hockey legend who died before she was born, and her grandparents have raised her in his skates. When Iz leaves her grandmother behind to play for the Winnipeg University Scarlets, she struggles to fit in on this team of hard-hitting, tough-talking women with a penchant for buffets, beer bongs and raunchy humour - and a fierce loyalty to one another and to their sport. But in their raucous midst, Iz can't quite find her own place in the game. As she moves between the rowdy hilarity of the Scarlets' dressing room and quiet, lyrical contemplations, Iz tries to navigate the ways loss plays out on the ice. Based largely on author Cara Hedley's three seasons on the University of Manitoba Bison, Twenty Miles celebrates women's hockey and offers an uncompromising look at the ways in which the sport both haunts and redeems the women who play it. '[A] work of literary fiction that is surprisingly touching, honest, engaging and unusual - both in terms of its subject matter and perspective ... Hedley stickhandles her way around Iz's conundrum with beautiful agility, using deftly lyrical prose and insight to describe the rough and tumble of a hard-hitting game and the harsh realities of life.' - Winnipeg Free Press
- Author:Sherman, JasonSummary:
The issue of loyalty and betrayal is dramatized through dialogue in the Governor-General's-Award-winning Three in the Back, Two in the Head, which appears to have been based on the assassination of Gerald Bull, the brilliant Canadian scientist who designed the first Star Wars system twenty years before Reagan announced his version. Bull ran afoul of the Pentagon and the CIA by his dealings with China, Chile, Yugoslavia, and Iraq. But Sherman's play is not a docudrama in any sense, for it merely uses some of the circumstances of the murdered scientist's career in order to concentrate on questions of personal and state morality as these circumscribe issues of loyalty and betrayal.
- Author:McCaffrey, AnneSummary:
Ashamed of her illegitimate birth, Mirelle Martin, a dutiful wife and mother, meets the warm, accepting concert pianist James Howell and emerges from her heartache to discover her talent as a sculptress and becomes her own woman.
- Author:Friesen, Victor CarlSummary:
Henry David Thoreau is remembered as a foremost nature writer. He was an ecologist before the term was invented. A man of many parts, including social critic, he is known to have had an influence on such internationally recognized leaders as Gandhi and Martin Luther King. "Victor Carl Friesen, author of The Spirit of the Huckleberry, an astute analysis of Henry David Thoreau’s prose, again demonstrates his affinity for the Walden sage with this unique volume of poems and photographs. Taking a series of quotations demonstrating Thoreau’s sensuousness, he writes a poem for each and then illustrates them with outstanding colour photographs. The poems, mostly written in the blank verse form, have sturdy strength and remarkable insight into both Thoreau and nature."- Walter Harding, Founding Secretary, The Thoreau Society Inc., State University of New York, Genesco "Friesen is particularly qualified as a Thoreau scholar, for his personal interests extend well beyond literature to include natural history, a subject very much at the centre of Thoreau’s writings."- Canadian Book Review Annual
- Author:Nandan, SatendraSummary:
Divided into four parts, this novel offers an insight into life as an Indian in Fiji from the 1950's to the late post-coup 1980's. Here, lovingly chronicled, are all the comic and poignant vagaries of village life on an island of splendid tropical color.
- Author:Gregory, PhilippaSummary:
A knight's widow in 1461, Elizabeth employs her considerable charms to reel in the biggest catch of all--virile King Edward IV. When their clandestine marriage comes to light, powerful enemies eye Elizabeth with contempt. After Edward dies suddenly in 1483, his brother usurps the throne, imprisoning Elizabeth's sons--the rightful heirs--and forcing her to flee. Humiliated and grief-stricken, Elizabeth unleashes her most effective weapon--her eldest daughter.
- Author:Gregory, PhilippaSummary:
Passionately in love with Richard III in spite of her arranged marriage to pretender to the throne Henry Tudor, Princess Elizabeth of York is forced to marry the man who murdered her lover and create a royal family under the controlling gaze of his mother, Margaret Beaufort.
- Author:Stenson, FredSummary:
The Hudson's Bay Company is about to exercise its uncontested monopoly over the lands drained by Hudson Bay. The first step is to find a new source of beaver pelts and profits, and the only hope lies in the unmapped territory held by the Blackfoot-speaking Indian tribes. The new governor mounts an expedition into the heart of this unknown land, a journey that will test the mettle of a new generation of Hudson's Bay Company men. With a new format and price, this brilliant novel tells an incredible story of those who were ruled by the often brutalizing fur trade. It is a story of love and economics and of how European culture, including religion, tried-and often failed-to root itself in this anarchic place. In the end, it is the story of how the mighty fur trade was rolled under by the greater forces of change and history.
- Author:Abbott, LindaSummary:
I never imagined I would die this way. Young, surrounded by thousands, yet alone and far away from home. I thought I would be afraid, but I’m not. The pain in my chest has dulled to a mild ache. Maybe if I close my eyes I’ll see my home, see Mom one last time. She’ll be upset if I don’t say goodbye. Dad will understand the sacrifice I made for king and country. And little Joanie. She’ll miss me the most, I think. I open my eyes and my breath comes out as a shudder. Can I still be here among the dead and dying in this barren place? This no man’s land? – Private Ronald Marrie, Beaumont Hamel, July 1, 1916
Ron Marrie of St. John’s enlisted with the Newfoundland Regiment in 1914 to join those who were fighting overseas in war-torn Europe. The Tin Triangle follows him through recruitment, training, and his first deadly clash with the enemy at Gallipoli. But that battle would pale in comparison to the fateful morning of July 1, 1916, when Ron and his comrades went over the top to engage the enemy at Beaumont Hamel.
Ron’s story, inspired by the author’s grandfather, is a tribute to the hundreds of Newfoundlanders who paid the ultimate price on foreign shores during World War I. The Tin Triangle is Linda Abbott’s third book and a storytelling masterpiece.
- Author:Boyle, T. CoraghessanSummary:
As climate change threatens the earth, eight scientists have been selected to live in a prototype of a possible off-earth colony. But as these "Terranauts" face increased scrutiny and a host of disasters, their mantra: "Nothing in, nothing out," becomes a dangerously ferocious rallying cry.
- Author:Marello, LauraSummary:
Laura Marello writes, through the voice of Eduard Steichen, that “… all these powerful artists are so invulnerably weak.” Rodin, his lover Camille Claudel, Picasso, Rousseau, Nijinski, Matisse, Rilke and others, all tenants of Hôtel Biron, and all brilliantly and excitedly human, presented by manuscripts fictionally collected. The result is an appropriately cubist look at each, because we see each from several subjective vantages. This is a brilliantly conceived work of reflective and self-reflective parts. With Marello we get to imagine, as war is coming on, the confusions and certainties of competing artists, conflicting and collaborating geniuses in a world of misunderstood avant-garde where gallery patrons sometimes slashed canvases. The tenants, as a “decadent” group in much of the public eye, were entropic, burning up on mutual energy but producing lasting art and reputation. And there is a love story at the core: Rodin and Claudel, medieval in its passion and constraint, physical and spiritual amidst wild theologies of art. As each character speaks to us from manuscript and letters, their mutual story moves on. Chaucer would have loved it.