Featuring:
Monster Child by Rahela Nayebzadah
The Medusa Deep by David Neil Lee
Please help us welcome these fabulous new books into the world on June 17, 2021 at 7:00 P.M.
About The Books
Radium Girl by Sofi Papamarko
Radium Girl is a collection full of dark wonder where Sofi Papamarko explores the boundaries of love, death, loneliness and justice. In these twelve deft stories, we are introduced to a cast of unforgettable characters: Margie and Lu, teenaged conjoined twins; Rosie who cruises funerals; Pete the predatory magician; the subconscious mind of Marie Curie; Elda the Radium Girl and many more. These are magical stories; they twist and turn in unexpected ways, leaving the reader sometimes shocked, sometimes delighted and often breathless. With pitch-perfect writing, Papamarko shows us how human beings cope, break and triumph in the face of often unbearable circumstances.
Monster Child by Rahela Nayebzadah
In a powerful debut novel author Rahela Nayebzadah introduces three unforgettable characters, Beh, Shabnam and Alif. In a world swirling with secrets, racism and a touch of magic we watch through the eyes of these three children as Nayebzadah's family of Afghan immigrants try to find their way in an often uncaring society. But as a sexual assault on thirteen-year-old Beh unleashes the past and destroys the family the reader is left wondering who is the monster child? Is it Beh, who says she is called a disease? Is it Shabnam, who cries tears of blood? Is it Alif, who in the end declares "We are a family of monsters"? Or are the monsters all around us?
The Medusa Deep by David Neil Lee
Nate Silva is back battling monsters in The Medusa Deep, the long-awaited follow-up to David Neil Lee's award-winning young adult novel, The Midnight Games. After finally finding Sorcerer, the airship that disrupted the last midnight game, Nate is kidnapped by the crew and pressed into dangerous service in the fight against the Great Old Ones, ending up on the shores of the Pacific Ocean. There H.P. Lovecraft reappears and Nate discovers a grandfather he never knew he had, a grandfather who has kept a carefully maintained harpoon gun for decades. With a group of scientists on the scene determined to investigate the uncanny Medusa Deep, things soon start to get complicated. All the while, Nate knows something is happening back home in Hamilton. Will he be able to return in time?
About The Authors
Sofi Papamarko is a former regular columnist for The Toronto Star, Sun Media Newspapers and Metro Canada. She’s also written for The Globe & Mail, Chatelaine, Flare, CBC, Reader’s Digest, Salon, Exclaim! and many other publications, both living and dead. Her short stories have appeared in Taddle Creek, Maisonneuve, Room and The Toronto Star. She lives in Toronto with her partner and his son.
A mother of two, Rahela Nayebzadah holds a PhD in the Faculty of Education from the University of British Columbia. Currently, she is a schoolteacher. Her autobiographical novel, Jeegareh Ma (2012), was based on her family's migration to Canada from Afghanistan.
David Neil Lee is a writer and double bassist. Originally from BC, he spent years in the Toronto art scene and on BC's Sunshine Coast, and currently lives in Hamilton, Ontario. He has just finished a PhD in English at the University of Guelph. In 2012, Toronto's Tightrope Books issued David's first novel, Commander Zero. In 2014, a new and revised edition of David's critically acclaimed jazz book The Battle of the Five Spot: Ornette Coleman and the New York Jazz Field was launched at the New School for Public Engagement in New York City. In 2016, the City of Hamilton awarded the Kerry Schooley award for the book that "best conveys the spirit of Hamilton" to David's Lovecraftian young adult novel, The Midnight Games.