Administered by the Writers’ Trust of Canada, the Matt Cohen Award was presented yesterday evening along with the rest of the Writers’ Trust Awards at an event held at the Isabel Bader Theatre in Toronto. The Matt Cohen Award is designed to celebrate a lifetime of writing and of contributions to Canadian literature; the winner can be a writer of poetry or prose in English or French. The jury had this to say about Jean Little’s work:

“Jean was a pioneer Canadian writer, standing almost alone as a major, internationally recognized Canadian children’s author. She was an outstanding leader when it came to fearless book promotion. Her school appearances were legendary... let’s just say they could send shivers of fear and joy through children’s spines."

Click here for more information.

This is an inaugural award, titled “The Environmental and Sustainable Development Leader Award”, and is presented by Pollution Probe, one of Canada’s most respected non-profit environmental organizations. The award will be presented at a gala dinner on November 20th, held at the Ritz-Carleton. Jeffrey will be giving the keynote speech to an audience composed of cabinet ministers, CEOs, and other Canadian government and business leaders.

For more information, please visit http://www.pollutionprobe.org/gala.

The award, established in 2005 and worth £30,000, recognizes the book that provides the most valuable insight into contemporary business issues. The decision to award the prize to Private Empire was unanimous, and the judges call it “forensic, nuanced, and extremely well written”.

For more information, please visit The Financial Times, or visit this link for photos of the winner, finalists, and judges.

The awards were presented at a gala ceremony and reception in Toronto yesterday evening. Formerly known as the Canadian Culinary Book Awards, the Taste Canada awards recognize the very best in Canadian food writing across a variety of categories.

For more information, please visit http://tastecanada.org/.

Again, the Cundill Prize, administered by McGill University, recognizes books that have a profound literary, social, and academic impact in some area of history. The winner, who will receive a prize of $75,000, will be announced at a ceremony on November 29th in Montreal. The 2012 Cundill Prize Lecture, given by Sergio Luzzatto from the University of Turin (the winner of the 2011 Cundill Prize), will also take place on November 29th.

Click here for more information. Please join me in congratulating Steven Pinker on being shortlisted for this important prize!

The international prize, launched in 2006 and worth £30,000.00, is one of the most prestigious prizes in the world for young writers, and is aimed at recognizing talented authors at the start of their careers who will surely go on to achieve great things. The prize is presented by the University of Wales, and the shortlist has been described as “thunderingly good” by Welsh media.

The winner will be announced at a gala on November 9th, which is the anniversary of Dylan Thomas’s death.

For more information, please visit the University of Wales Dylan Thomas Prize site.

Mo Yan, born in 1955 in Shandong province in north-eastern China, is the author of many novels, short stories, and essays of social criticism. The Nobel Prize organization notes that “through a mixture of fantasy and reality, historical and social perspectives, Mo Yan has created a world reminiscent in its complexity of those in the writings of William Faulkner and Gabriel García Márquez, at the same time finding a departure point in old Chinese literature and in oral tradition.”

The Nobel Prize in Literature has been awarded 104 times since its establishment in 1901, and recognizes annually a writer who has made an outstanding contribution to literature. The awards ceremony will be held on December 10, 2012. Winners receive a medal, a diploma, and a cash award of 8 million Swedish kronor. For more information, please visit Nobelprize.org.

The Cundill Prize, established in 2008, recognizes books that have a profound literary, social, and academic impact in some area of history. There are six titles on the longlist, and these titles were selected from 143 entries. The winner will receive $75,000; two Recognition of Excellence prizes of $10,000 each will be awarded to the two runners-up.

The shortlist will be announced on October 29, and the winner will be announced at a ceremony on November 29 in Montreal.

For more information about the prize, click here.

The GGs honour works in both English and French across the categories of fiction, non-fiction, poetry, drama, and children’s literature, and recognize work that tells compelling stories and showcases Canadian literary excellence. The nominees were culled from about 1,700 books submitted to the committee this year.

The winners in each category will be announced on Tuesday, November 13, at a press conference at the Conservatoire de musique et d'art dramatique du Québec in Montréal. For more information, please read the news release here.

What the Giller Prize jury had to say:

"Will Ferguson's 419 points in the direction of something entirely new: the Global Novel. It is a novel emotionally and physically at home in the poverty of Lagos and in the day-to-day of North America. It tells us the ways in which we are now bound together and reminds us of the things that will always keep us apart. It brings us the news of the world far beyond the sad, hungry faces we see on CNN and CBC and far beyond the spreadsheets of our pension plans. Ferguson is a true travel writer, his eye attuned to the last horrible detail. He is also a master at dialogue and suspense. It is tempting to put 419 in some easy genre category, but that would only serve to deny its accomplishment and its genius."

Will Ferguson is the award-winning author of Happiness™, Spanish Fly, and Beyond Belfast. He lives in Calgary with his wife and their two sons.

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Word on the Street: Toronto is fast approaching! If you are in Toronto on September 23, make sure you stop by the festival and pop into the Penguin Pavilion! Follow the conversation with @PenguinCanada and the #wotsTO hashtag on Twitter! Get all your Word on the Street news here.

 Check out our Word on the Street authors

Read an excerpt from Y.

The Scotiabank Giller Prize shortlist will be announced on October 4, 2012. Keep up to date on all Giller news here.

For more information about the Penguin Pavilion, including a detailed schedule, visit http://www.thewordonthestreet.ca/wots/toronto/whatson/penguinpavillion.

One of the most anticipated books, and a major in-house favourite of the fall is now on sale! To celebrate this beautiful and moving story, we are giving away 1 of 25 copies through our Facebook page!

Click here to read what everyone has been saying about this amazing debut!

Read an excerpt here and add it to your Goodreads “to read” list!

Check out the first video, Memories of 1982: and the second one, High School. Confidential.

1982 will be released on September 18th, 2012!

Read an excerpt from Rules of Civility, and read our interview with Towles.

Shadow of Night, Deborah Harkness' much-anticipated sequel to her New York Times-bestselling A Discovery of Witches, went on sale from this month to a flurry of publicity including: a rave review on the front page of USA Today's Life section, an interview with NPR's “All Things Considered” this past Friday, Entertainment Weekly's July 2nd article (part of a two-page spread on Harkness) said “its enduring rewards are plenty,” and a People review predicted that fans will be “delighted” with the sequel to A Discovery of Witches. And Chelsea Clinton tagged Harkness in the following post on Facebook:

How many of you enjoyed Deborah Harkness' book The Discovery of Witches as much as I did?! I definitely bought the sequel its first day out...yesterday! Shadow of Night combines a few of my favorite things: Shakespeare, Oxford, science and history. Anyone else is excited to start reading? If you have NO idea what I'm talking about and are curious, you can read a preview and a brief review here from NPR.

Read an excerpt from Shadow of Night and our interview with Harkness.

Anne Rice, writing as A.N. Roquelaure, retells the Beauty story and probes the unspoken implications of this lush, suggestive tale by exploring its undeniable connection to sexual desire. Here the Prince awakens Beauty not with a kiss, but with sexual initiation. His reward for ending the hundred years of enchantment is Beauty's complete and total enslavement to him ... as Anne Rice explores the world of erotic yearning and fantasy in a classic that becomes, with her skillful pen, a compelling experience. Readers of Fifty Shades of Grey will indulge in Rice’s deft storytelling and imaginative eroticism, a sure-to-be classic for years to come.

Richelle just completed a seven-city tour with events in Lansing, Lexington, Fort Lauderdale, Seattle, Santa Monica, Houston, and Vancouver. Watch the webcast of the Vancouver event on Razorbill.ca.

Among the many highlights of the tour was a man proposing to his girlfriend, a Vampire Academy and Bloodlines super-fan, during a Q&A session (she said yes). Recent media coverage includes USA Today, Entertainment Weekly online, MTV.com, The Los Angeles Times, Scripps Howard, Romantic Times, and much more.

Read an excerpt.

David Harsent has published eight collections of poetry. The most recent, Legion, won the Forward Prize for Best Collection 2005 and was shortlisted for both the Whitbread Award and the T.S. Eliot Prize. Night is a collection in which the sureties of daylight become uncertain: dark, unsettling narratives about what wakes in us when we escape our day-lit selves to visit a place where the dream-like and the nightmarish are never far apart.

For more information about the prize and this year’s shortlist, please visit http://www.griffinpoetryprize.com/.

The Publisher of the Year Award is presented annually by the CBA to a Canadian publisher in recognition of an outstanding contribution to the Canadian bookselling industry, based on consistent high quality in author relations, editorial, production and marketing skills, retail support, and commercial success.

Read the press release.

Populated with new faces as well as familiar ones, Richelle Mead's breathtaking Bloodlines series explores all the friendship, romance, battles, and betrayals that made the #1 New York Times bestselling Vampire Academy series so addictive. In this second book the drama is hotter, the romances are steamier, and the stakes are even higher.

With Penguin Canada's contribution, children at the 20 runner-up schools will benefit from the 18,000 books donated to be distributed with First Book Canada and the Indigo Love of Reading Foundation.

Learn more about First Book Canada or read the full press release.

Guy has been awarded the International Goliardos Prize for his work in the literature of the fantastic, is a two-time winner of the Aurora Award, and winner of the 2008 World Fantasy Award for Ysabel. His works have been translated into 25 languages. His most recent novel is Under Heaven.

Like Guy’s page on Facebook or follow Brightweavings on Twitter for future updates on his new novel.

The ceremony, which was part of an event put on by the OLA called the Festival of Trees, took place at the Harbourfront Centre here in Toronto. For information about the Forest of Reading and its various awards, please click here.

Author Neil Pasricha's most recent book is The Book of (Even More) Awesome, new in paperback and #3 on The Globe and Mail bestseller list! He also recently revealed his #1 Awesome Thing, Anything You Want It To Be, at a packed Indigo event.

Rosin's article for The Atlantic on The End of Men generated much debate and discussion. In this landmark book, Rosin reveals how this new state of affairs is radically shifting the power dynamics between men and women at every level of society, with profound implications for marriage, sex, children, work, and more. With wide-ranging curiosity and insight unhampered by assumptions or ideology, Rosin shows how the radically different ways men and women today earn, learn, spend, couple up—even kill—has turned the big picture upside down. And in The End of Men she helps us see how, regardless of gender, we can adapt to the new reality and channel it for a better future.

The award recognizes the best first English-language collection of short fiction by a Canadian author and consists of cash prizes for the top three winners, $10,000 for first prize and $500 for the two runners-up.

The winners will be announced at a morning press conference at Ben McNally Books on Thursday, June 7, 2012. For more information about this year’s shortlist, please click here.

Coverage of the shortlist announcement was extensive, and Skibsrud was featured prominently in the headlines. The Vancouver Sun, Calgary Herald, Montreal Gazette, Edmonton Journal, StarPhoenix, Toronto Star, CBC.ca, MetroNews Canada, the National Post, and many more outlets all carried coverage.

Winstead is off to a great start, with top-tier media across the U.S. including four MSNBC shows, NPR, Howard Stern, and several May long-kead issues.

She's also confirmed for CBC Q on May 17 from NYC, with more to come. With a strong following online, Lizz has been tweeting up a storm about the book (follow her at @LizzWinstead), and recently released this hilarious video trailer for the book. Cleverly disguised as an infomercial, it's a must-watch.

The Book of (Even More) Awesome is also the 2012 Big Rothesay Read. The annoucement was made this month. Over 600 high school students are taking part in the campaign, and they have the next six weeks to complete the book (see photo below).

The Book of (Even More) Awesome, new in paperback, was #1 this last weekend for the second consecutive week.

Watch her fantastic video on the art of the short story to get up to speed.

With this collection of wise, querying stories, Skibsrud introduces us to an astonishing array of characters, showing us through their eyes what even they cannot see and uncorking minor epiphanies in the middle of ordinary days.

Pulitzer Prizes will be awarded at a luncheon ceremony at Columbia University in May.

For more information on the Pulitzer Prize and this year's finalists, please visit http://www.pulitzer.org/.

In addition, The Book of Awesome has been on The Globe and Mail bestseller list for nearly 100 weeks.

Pasricha will be doing major media to promote the book, including interviews with the Toronto Star, Postmedia, 104.5 CHUM FM (Roger, Darren, and Marilyn), and others.

In their massively successful Quinoa 365: The Everyday Superfood, Green and Hemming wrote the first definitive quinoa cookbook on the market and made this ancient superfood a popular choice for families across North America. In Quinoa Revolution, they provide over 150 brand new and great-tasting recipes, all under 500 calories per serving.

Patricia Green and Carolyn Hemming, bestselling authors of Quinoa 365: The Everyday Superfood, are sisters and are both passionate about healthy living. Patricia is a physically active mother of two and Carolyn is also busy balancing family, career, and fitness goals. Both avidly explore the use of superfoods and new meal ideas.

A full-page interview with Lehrer ran in The Globe and Mail's Focus section last Saturday. Read it online here.

For fans of Drive and The Brain That Changes Itself, Lehrer's latest is the story of how we imagine.

For too long we've pretended that creativity is an impenetrable biological gift. As a result, we've clung to a series of myths about what creativity is and where it comes from. Creativity shouldn't be a process reserved for artists, inventors, or other "creative types."

Watch a series of video interviews with Lehrer.

The deal was reported in The New York Times, among other publications.

Inspired by dharma talks between Bridges and his long-time friend Zen Master Glassman, the book explores the meaning of life, laughter, the movies, and trying to do good in a difficult world.

Revealing the inspiration for the book, Bridges said, "Making movies and life have a lot in common. When you’re making a movie you’ve got a finite amount of time to do what you’re going to do. It’s a communal art form, collaborative. You work together with other artists to come up with something groovy, something beautiful. Life’s like that, too."

The book is set for publication in November 2012.

Everything Was Goodbye is also the Bookclub pick in the Chatelaine April issue. An interview with Basran is also in April’s Quill & Quire. More to come.

Raised by her widowed mother and the youngest of six daughters, Meena is a young Indo-Canadian woman struggling to find her place in the world. Heartbreaking and beautiful, Everything Was Good-bye is an unforgettable story about family, love, and loss, and the complexities of living in two different cultural worlds.

Coben is confirmed for a Red Chair interview with George Stroumboulopoulos and will also be interviewed by The Globe and Mail's John Barber.

Three people living lives they never wanted, hiding secrets that even those closest to them would never suspect, will find that the past doesn't recede. Even as the terrible consequences of long-ago events crash together in the present and threaten to ruin lives, they will come to the startling realization that they may not want to forget the past at all. Read an excerpt.

In Canada, both books are to be published under the newly launched Razorbill imprint. Razorbill was officially launched this week at the Bait Shop in downtown Toronto, accompanied by much online buzz, including blogger recaps.

Says Gulland, "I’m so excited to have this chance to explore one of my favourite historical periods from a teen perspective. The story of Josephine's delightfully precocious daughter Hortense is both dramatic and heart-rending, a combination that, as a writer, I find irresistible."

Read the full press release.

In Clancy's upcoming installment, Search and Destroy (strict on sale of June 5), Max Moore is forced to unravel a horrifying plot. America's enemies are uniting and working with forces already in place within the US. Moore is on the trail of heavy weapons that have been stolen from an American military installation when he gets shocking news: someone close to him has been kidnapped by the terrorists. Now he's left with a cold choice: her life or the lives of thousands of innocent people.

Caulfield was recently invited to participate in a panel discussion on obesity for TVO's The Agenda with Steve Paikin and he also wrote an op-ed in The Huffington Post Canada. Watch the trailer.

This new South Africa is where freedom, the "better life for all" that was fought for, is being created, though also still challenged by political and racial tensions and the hangover of moral ambiguities.

Nadine Gordimer is the author of fourteen novels, more than ten volumes of stories, and three non fiction collections. She lives in Johannesburg, South Africa. She's published under the Hamish Hamilton imprint in Canada. Download the sell sheet.

Moneyball, based on the sports memoir by Michael Lewis, leads the Penguin Oscar list with six nominations, including Best Picture, Best Film Editing, Best Sound Mixing, and Best Adapted Screenplay. Brad Pitt received a nod for his portrayal of Oakland A's general manager Billy Beane, while Jonah Hill was nominated for Best Supporting Actor.

The film based upon John le Carre's spy thriller Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy received three nominations for Best Lead Actor (Gary Oldman), Best Original Score, and Best Adapted Screenplay.

Oscar winners will be announced on Sunday, February 26, when the 84th Academy Awards are broadcast on ABC.

Quill & Quire's citation reads: "In her first novel, Suzanne Desrochers recreates the brutal and often cruel circumstances [the filles du roi] endured, combining imaginative insight with meticulous research. Its strength, however, lies in tracing the unique contours of one woman's life against a dramatic backdrop, making it a bookseller favourite and one of the year's unqualified word-of-mouth successes."

Commissioning editor Adrienne Kerr says, "Canadian women are increasingly captivated by novels that explore the lives and struggles of their female ancestors, and Bride of New France has tapped into that rich vein."

Read the full press release.

Almost 30 years ago, Tilly burst onto film screens with The Big Chill and then Agnes of God, for which she was nominated for an Academy Award and won a Golden Globe. She returned to acting this summer, knocking out the critics with her onstage performance of Martha in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf. Next April she will star in Tarragon Theatre’s production of The Real World? by Michel Tremblay.

In A Taste of Heaven, fourth-grader Madison Stokes hasn’t found just that right friend yet. The one whose friendship makes you feel all’s right with the world, the one who gives you that warm feeling inside. When a new girl named Alyssa Hawkins arrives in Rosedale, she and Madison immediately strike up a close friendship. Alyssa always seems perfectly happy to spend time with Madison and her family, including Madison’s rather annoying five-year-old sister Gina, but she never invites Madison over to her own house. Ever. Is Alyssa ashamed of Madison?

Read the full press release.

Green will be joined on the road by his brother Hank Green, a musician and the co-founder of their Vlogbrothers YouTube channel. Green will visit Vancouver for an event on January 31. This event at UBC (a 500 seat venue) is already sold out. The event is presented by the Vancouver International Writers Festival.

Since the The Fault in Our Stars was first announced in June, shooting to #1 on both Amazon and BN.com, the road to publication has been nothing short of ground-breaking with Green signing each and every copy of the 150,000 first print run.

A Chua-penned op-ed essay ran in the Christmas Eve edition of The Wall Street Journal, headlined: "Tiger Mom's Long-Distance Cub; Amy Chua on how she has handled her daughter's departing the den for college. Drilling and discipline from afar? No, not even a growl." More national media this week: Chua appeared on The Today Show on January 3, was interviewed on CNN's Erin Burnett Out Front, and will be a guest on Fox & Friends.

Read an excerpt from Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother.

These essays and articles have never been collected, until now. Some have never appeared in print at all. In addition, Distrust That Particular Flavor includes journalism from small publishers, online sources, and magazines no longer in existence. This volume will be essential reading for any lover of William Gibson's novels. Distrust That Particular Flavor offers readers a privileged view into the mind of a writer whose thinking has shaped not only a generation of writers but our entire culture.

Earlier this fall, Yanofsky was shortlisted for the BC Book Prize (the winner will be announced in early February 2012). And he won the Mavis Gallant Prize for Non-Fiction, awarded by the Quebec Federation of Writers.

A veteran book reviewer, Yanofsky has spent a lifetime immersed in literature (not to mention old movies and old jokes), which he calls shtick. This account of a year in the life of a family describes a father's struggle to enter his son's world, the world of autism, using the materials he knows best: self-help books, feel-good memoirs, literary classics from the Bible to Dr. Seuss, old movies, and, yes, shtick. Funny, wrenching, and unfailingly candid, Bad Animals is both an exploration of a baffling condition and a quirky love story told by a gifted writer.

In film news, 35 new images have been released. Global clothing retailer H&M is releasing a tie-in clothing line, inspired by Lisbeth's punky duds, and a clear indication of the hype surrounding the movie's imminent release. Today, the entire collection was released to the web .

Also released today is a free 6-track sampler of the soundtrack by Trent Reznor, free to download!

David Fincher's highly anticipated U.S. film adaptation, starring Daniel Craig and Rooney Mara, is scheduled for release on December 21.

In non-fiction, Moonwalking with Einstein, Tommy Douglas, One Hundred Names for Love, The Last Act, Incognito, The Swerve, Boomerang, and The End were all named.

Read the full article here.

O, the Oprah Magazine has chosen Rules of Civlity as one of the top fiction books of the year. View the article here. The book has also been named an Indigo Heather's Pick and it was reviewed in Chatelaine.

Rules of Civility is a sophisticated and entertaining debut novel about an irresistible young woman with an uncommon sense of purpose. Set in New York City in 1938, the novel tells the story of a watershed year in the life of an uncompromising twenty-five-year old named Katey Kontent. Armed with little more than a formidable intellect, a bracing wit, and her own brand of cool nerve, Katey embarks on a journey from a Wall Street secretarial pool through the upper echelons of New York society in search of a brighter future.

Media response has been phenomenal. People magazine has endorsed Rules of Civility, giving it 3.5 out of 4 stars. The debut buzz book was tagged on the cover of O, The Oprah Magazine, and it was selected as July's "Unputdownable Read" for Oprah's Book Club. An excerpt was also posted online. A New York Times review is to come.

In the U.S., bookseller reviews are glowing. Said Amada Friss of Three Lives Bookstore in NYC, "This novel is so completely satisfying in all the ways I want a book to be satisfying. It has great characters, is a good story, well told and well written, and effortlessly transports the reader to another world."

Read an author interview, excerpt, and more at Penguin.ca.

Salvage the Bones is a gritty but tender novel about family and poverty in the days leading up to Hurricane Katrina. The Swerve is by one of the world's most celebrated scholars, Stephen Greenblatt, who tells the story of one manuscript, plucked from a thousand years of neglect, that changed the course of human thought and made possible the world as we know it.

Learn more about the awards and finalists at the National Book Awards website.

The elite list compiled by Thinkers50 ranks business gurus accordining to the quality and impact of their ideas. Tapscott ranked 9th, hitting the top 10 for the first time. Tapscott is a guru for the digital age, a bestselling author, and a Rotman adjunct professor. His most recent book is Macrowikinomics, preceded by Wikinomics.

Sir Ken Robinson, author of The Element, came in at #43 (view Sir Ken Robinson's Top 50 Thinkers profile).

View the full list here.

A terrific piece ran in the December issue of Toronto Life (on stands now) featuring the book. Pasricha and Jessica Holmes (from Royal Canadian Air Farce fame) met over coffee to talk about surviving the holidays.

Pasricha will be at Chapters Brampton on Wednesday, November 16 and Oshawa on November 19. See full details here.

McLean will embark shortly on the Vinyl Cafe Christmas Concert Tour, visiting Hamilton, Victoria, Calgary, Edmonton, Saskatoon, Ottawa, Montreal, and many more cities. View the full schedule here.

A winter 2012 tour is also in the works, which will see McLean visiting Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, and Ontario. Tickets for this tour will be on sale this Saturday (November 12), with a few going on sale the next Saturday (November 19). View the full schedule here.

"Sawyer is huge in Canada, so that doesn't surprise me," said Bakka Phoenix Books manager Chris Szego, as quoted in the Quill and Quire.

Booksellers chose Once Every Never by bestselling author Lesley Livingston as their top seller in the YA science fiction and fantasy catagory. Szego said of this title, "We've sold as many of Lesley's books as we have The Hunger Games. That's a thrill for us."

Read the full article.

Read the full press release here

Prisoner of Tehran is the beloved and bestselling memoir by Marina Nemat. In 1982, 16-year-old Marina Nemat was arrested on false charges by Iranian Revolutionary Guards and tortured in Tehran's notorious Evin prison. An extraordinary tale of faith and survival, Prisoner of Tehran is a testament to the power of love in the face of evil and injustice.

Cockeyed is an irreverent, tragicomic, astoundingly articulate memoir about going blind, and growing up. It was shortlisted for the Stephen Leacock Medal for Humor in 2007.

The final books and panelists will be revealed on November 23.

Canadian Tour Dates

October 19 – Vancouver, British Columbia – The Centre for Performing Arts
October 21 – Regina, Saskatchewan – Conexus Arts Centre
October 23 – Edmonton, Alberta – Shaw Conference Centre
October 25 – Winnipeg, Manitoba – Centennial Concert Hall
November 3 – Toronto, Ontario – Massey Hall
November 4 – Montreal, Quebec – Place des Arts

For further info, visit: http://www.behindtheicon.net/shatner.htm.

Trekkie or not: don't miss out on this iconic Canadian's reflections on a life of exploring new frontiers.

Skibsrud kicks off Penguin Canada's stellar IFOA line up on Friday, October 21, with a reading from her already critically acclaimed short story collection, This Will Be Difficult to Explain. Skibsrud is joined on stage by U.K. writer Harry Whitehead, author of the debut novel The Cannibal Spirit. Canadian literary star Joseph Boyden reads from his Scotiabank Giller Prize-winning novel Through Black Spruce on Wednesday, October 26.

Penguin is thrilled to participate in McLuhan 100, a series of readings and interviews in honour of the 100th birthday of media theorist Marshall McLuhan at this year's IFOA. Penguin participants include Clay Shirky, Brooke Gladstone, and Douglas Coupland.

Stand-outs at this year's Young IFOA are New York Times bestselling author Meg Wolitzer and Kathy Reichs, forensic anthropologist and author of the Bones series.

Read the full press release here.

The Ontario Library Association has released its shortlists for the 2012 Forest of Reading program. The winners (chosen by Ontario schoolchildren) will be made public during the Forest of Reading Festival next May.

For the Red Maple award (grades 7-8), Penguin has Dust City by Robert Paul Weston, Fly Boy by Eric Walters, and Haunting Violent by Alyxandra Harvey. For the White Pine Fiction award (grades 9-12), Penguin has Something Wicked by Lesley Anne Cowan. For the White Pine Non-Fiction award (grades 9-12), Penguin has The Book of Awesome by Neil Pasricha and Nice Recovery by Susan Juby.

Read the full list of nominees at the OLA website.

Published by Hamish Hamilton Canada in April 2011 to overwhelming critical acclaim, Better Living Through Plastic Explosives is the work of a modern master at the top of her game.

The Vancouver Sun says, "Gartner is fall-out-of-your-chair funny, but the hilarity has a splendid whack of asperity to it for a great combination." The Globe and Mail calls her "an inventive stylist and an old-school fabulist ... She can go from sardonic to plangent, wry to heartfelt, in a couple of clauses."

Gartner will appear at the Vancouver International Writers Festival and at Calgary Wordfest in October.

A New York Times bestseller, The Magician King recently received a rave review in The Globe and Mail. The review called the book "a breakneck read" and mentioned it within the context of the greater fantasy craze right now, including the Harry Potter films and HBO's adaptation of George R.R. Martin's A Game of Thrones.

The Magician King is the riveting sequel to The New York Times bestseller and literary phenomenon of 2009, The Magicians.

The long awaited Extraordinary Canadians Television Series launches nationwide on Citytv and the Biography Channel on October 23, and in three languages on OMNI TV in Spring 2012. Nicely timed for holiday gift giving, the full series is available in hardcover, and the first six books have released in paperback. There is already an Extraordinary Canadian channel on Youtube.

The series of biographies has received unprecedented critical acclaim. The Globe and Mail said of Norman Bethune, "Perhaps the most inspired pairing of author and subject in Penguin Canada's Extraordinary Canadians series to date." Learn more at extraordinarycanadians.com.

The Stratford Festival also recently awarded star Christopher Plummer a Lifetime Achievement Award; he appeared on The George Stroumboulopoulos show in August.

A new trailer was released this week for The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo that offers a more complete picture of what the hotly anticipated film will look and sound like. View the trailer.

A surprise eight-minute preview trailer has also been playing in theatres before screenings of Moneyball and Straw Dogs.

David Fincher's highly anticipated U.S. film adaptation, starring Daniel Craig and Rooney Mara, is scheduled for release on December 21.

Don't miss the 18 character biographies on the official film website for The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. The photography evokes the sinister atmosphere of the website. Read more here. Also check out the Mouth Taped Shut blog that's been getting tons of press. It offers an insider look at the film.

The film premiered to rave reviews at the Venice Film Festival on September 5, and The New York Times featured the film on September 18 in its fall movie previews. The Guardian said of the film, "A marvellously chill and acrid Cold War thriller from Swedish director Tomas Alfredson. Right here, right now, it's the film to beat at this year's festival. Oldman gives a deliciously delicate, shaded performance, flitting in and out of the wings like some darting grey lizard."

The film, which stars Gary Oldman and Academy Award-winner Colin Firth, should be a contender for all the major awards.

The Globe and Mail will also feature an as yet unpublished story from Wilson on their website as part of their coverage. Wilson will appear at the International Festival of Authors and at the Vancouver International Writers Festival at the end of the month.

Young's book, tentatively titled Waging Heavy Peace, will be published in North America by Blue Rider Press, a member of the Penguin Group, in fall of 2012.

"I felt like writing books fit me like a glove; I started and I just kept going. That's the way my daddy used to do it on his old Underwood up in the attic. He said, 'Just keep writing, you never know what will turn up'," Mr. Young said of his newest project.

"Neil's extraordinary music and his influence on American culture is singular," said Blue Rider Press President and Publisher David Rosenthal, who also acquired and published Bob Dylan's Chronicles, Vol. I. "This promises to be a revealing, intimate book that will provide the window into Neil's life and career that fans and admirers have always wanted."

A new book from Clancy will hit shelves on December 13, just in time for the holiday season. The title is Locked On, and the cover (at left) has just been released.

After a seven-year absence, he made a triumphant return last year with Dead or Alive and Against All Enemies, his 14th and 15th consecutive #1 bestsellers. The Hunt for Red October, Patriot Games, Clear and Present Danger, and The Sum of All Fears have been made into major motion pictures. He lives in Maryland, where he is a co-owner of the Baltimore Orioles.

Dead or Alive will be available in paperback on September 27.

David Fincher's highly anticipated U.S. film adaptation, starring Daniel Craig and Rooney Mara, is scheduled for release on December 21. A movie tie-in will be released on November 1 (strict on-sale).

Don't miss the 18 character biographies on the official film website for The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. The photography evokes the sinister atmosphere of the website. Read more here (the link is in the top left of the site). Also check out the Mouth Taped Shut blog that's been getting tons of press. It offers an insider look at the film.

Published by Hamish Hamilton Canada in April 2011 to overwhelming critical acclaim, Better Living Through Plastic Explosives is the work of a modern master at the top of her game.

The Vancouver Sun says "Gartner is fall-out-of-your-chair funny, but the hilarity has a splendid whack of asperity to it for a great combination." The Globe and Mail calls her "an inventive stylist and an old-school fabulist ... She can go from sardonic to plangent, wry to heartfelt, in a couple of clauses."

Gartner will appear at the Vancouver International Writers Festival and at Calgary Wordfest in October.

Read the full press release.

September 22 will mark the first ever Canadian Cookcast with Michael Smith in association with Canadian Living (sign up here). On that date, Canadians can go to the designated website and cook live with Michael and Canadian Living’s Food Director Annabelle Waugh. Canadian Living is supporting this project with editorial coverage of the event in its December issue, an event email to Canadian Living Advantage subscribers (60,000 subscribers), an editorial mention in Canadian Living’s Food for Friend e-newsletter (100,000 subscribers), advertising on the Canadian Living website, and social media promotion.

Marketing for the book includes 2000 postcards distributed at Smith's recent CNE event and via bookstores; a full-page, full-colour ad in The Globe and Mail (September 10); a full-page, full-colour ad in The New York Times Book Review, distributed through the Toronto Star (September 11); Books for Everybody advertising; Atlantic Books Today advertising; an event ad in the Ottawa Festival program;, and online contests via FoodNetwork.ca newsletters, social media, and its website.

Confirmed media includes mention in Best Health magazine's October issue, recipes and the book cover on houseandhomemedia.com, a print interview and recipe in the December issue of Reader ’s Digest, a Breakfast Television appearance on September 12, a Canada AM appearance on October 17, and much more!

Based on the Michael Lewis novel, published by W.W. Norton, and starring Brad Pitt and Robin Wright, Moneyball is picking up big press in Canada this week and opening in theatres nationwide on September 23.

According to a review posted today on Moviefone's blog, when Brad Pitt optioned Moneyball, the book's author famously told him, "I don't know how you're going to make it into a movie, but feel free to give it a try."

In the movie, Pitt plays Billy Beane, the charismatic owner of the Oakland A's. Moviefone says that audiences may look back on this deceptively quiet film and realize that "like a pitcher's duel on a long summer day, it meant more than they realized, and maybe more than anyone had a right to expect." Watch the trailer.

Jack Layton first wrote about homelessness in the late 1990's, finding communities across Canada had been, in a very real sense, left to grapple with a growing crisis with little support from the federal government.

Layton, the former leader of the federal New Democratic Party and a veteran social activist, took a critical look at the reality of the situation, examined the root causes of the crisis, and surveyed the impact of homelessness in every province of the country. Moreover, in trademark style, he talked to the homeless, looking beyond despair and dismissal for a lasting solution to what is largely a hidden epidemic in Canada.

Revised and updated in 2008, Homelessness was Jack Layton's call to Canadians to end the rise of mass homelessness in Canada and the growing crisis in affordable housing.

Layton's torch will now be carried by every person who believes in a better tomorrow, every person who believes in dignity for our seniors and better opportunity for our youth, and by every person who believes through working together, we can make our great country even better.

Read the press release.

In celebration of the 65th anniversary of Penguin Classics, a series of limited edition skateboard decks was created, featuring two of our finest Penguin Classics covers. We know our fans love great books, but we also know that your interests don't stop there!

We want to see photos of your favourite Penguin Classic book taken with a skateboard. To be entered to win, submit a photo that features both a Penguin Classic book and a skateboard. The winner will be drawn on or about September 30 and the winner announced shortly after. Enter the contest here.

Last Saturday's Fall Books Preview in The Globe and Mail listed three of Penguin's titles (Civilization by Niall Ferguson, The Better Angels of Our Nature by Steven Pinker and Boomerang by Michael Lewis) in their Top 10 Must Reads for the fall. Jessica Gamble's The Siesta and the Midnight Sun received special mention as a potential sleeper hit. Read the full article.

Pinker will tour Canada this fall. In November, he will do four major events in three cities, and national and local media are already lining up. On November 17, he will appear at McGill's New Residence (capacity: 500 people). On November 19, he will be at the Ottawa Writer's Festival at the Southminster United Church (15 Aylmer Ave. at Bank St.) at 7 p.m. (capacity: 700 people). The event will be advertised and promoted in all of the fall festival marketing materials.

On November 20, Pinker will be part of the Ben McNally Books and Brunch (capacity: 250 people), and on November 21, he will be the headliner at a U of T Rotman School event.

The final novel in Stieg Larsson's phenomenally bestselling trilogy is on sale in paperback on September 6. The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest was Penguin Canada's bestselling hardcover book ever.

David Fincher's highly anticipated U.S. film adaptation of the The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, starring Daniel Craig and Rooney Mara, is scheduled for release this December; view the trailer and art on the film's website.

This year's fiction phenomenon is undoubtedly The Help. It's currently #1 on The Globe and Mail bestseller list, and is in its 19th week on the list (in paperback). With the film version of The Help releasing this week (August 10), the stellar media coverage and praise continues.

The Canadian reviews for the film have been astounding, with Canada AM calling it "a wonderfully acted, heartfelt story" and the National Post saying, "Sure to be one of 2011's Oscar contenders."

680 News raved, "The Help captures a heartbreaking time beautifully, with engaging characters that pop off the screen and stay with you long after you leave the theatre."

The August 12 issue of Entertainment Weekly is dedicated to The Help. The 10-page cover story includes photos of stars Emma Stone, Octavia Spencer, and Viola Davis reading the book in more than one photo and the book's cover image is featured on the front of the issue.

The People feature on Kathryn Stockett includes an interview and photo shoot with her daughter in their Atlanta home and will run in the issue on stands today. Last Friday's edition of The Wall Street Journal contains an interview with director Tate Taylor (a version of this can be found here), and an interview with Stockett ran online on August 8.

Michael Lewis's acclaimed Moneyball has been made into a feature film, which will appear in Canada this fall at the prestigious Toronto International Film Festival.

The film is directed by Bennett Miller (Capote) and stars Brad Pitt as Billy Beane, the Oakland Athletics' general manager whose unorthodox approach to fielding a team had a major impact on the game. Jonah Hill and Phillip Seymour Hoffman co-star. Watch the trailer.

When Moneyball was released, Janet Maslin of The New York Times raved, "You need know absolutely nothing about baseball to appreciate the wit, snap, economy ... and incisiveness of [Moneyball]. Lewis has hit another one out of the park." Lewis is the author of the popular bestsellers Liar's Poker, The New New Thing, The Blind Side, and The Big Short.

John le Carré's classic tale of espionage will get the big screen treatment this November with the release of a major motion picture starring Colin Firth. The electrifying first trailer has been posted online, and now the film art has been released to the public (view it here).

The movie is directed by Tomas Alfredson (of Let The Right One In, which was one of the hottest films at the Berlin Film Festival earlier this year).

It also stars Gary Oldman (Harry Potter, The Dark Knight), Tom Hardy (Inception), and Mark Strong (Sherlock Holmes, Robin Hood).

Listen to CBC Radio's Writers & Company's interview with the author (part one and part two).

Written with humour, insight, and personal revelation, Room for All of Us explores the immigrant experience through some remarkable people who have helped transform Canada, including an Ismaili doctor, a Doukhobor farmer, a Holocasust survivor and a Vietnam War deserter, many of whom arrived friendless and with a sense of loss.

A host of other top notch Penguin authors are confirmed for this August's Fan Expo in Toronto. Over 70,000 people are expected for this event running from August 25-28 at the Metro Toronto convention centre.

Heather Brewer will be in attendance, and will be promoting First Kill, the first book in the new Slayer Chronicles series, which will release on September 20. Brewer is also the author of the New York Times bestselling series The Chronicles of Vladimir Tod.

Robert Paul Weston, author of the beloved novel in verse Zorgamazoo, will be attending to promote his latest, Dust City, and award-winning science fiction author and futurist Robert J. Sawyer will be on hand to promote his WWW Trilogy. Alyxandra Harvey will be attending to promote Haunting Violet. Lesley Livingston will appear in support of Once Every Never.

Tom Felton, who plays Draco Malfoy in the Harry Potter films, will also be in attendance (view the full list of Harry Potter books available from Penguin Canada).

Signed copies will also be available at the Penguin booth from Richelle Mead, Lev Grossman, and Charlaine Harris.

Sebastian Barry will be in Toronto on Wednesday, September 21 for an event at Harbourfront and a day of media.

Spanning nearly seven decades, from the Great Depression to World War II and the Vietnam War, On Canaan's Side is the heartbreaking story of a woman whose capability to love is enormous, and whose compassion, even for those who have wronged her, is astonishing.

Warner Brothers announced that Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2 has already broken several records in the days leading up to the release of the series finale. Advance ticket sales have skyrocketed to more than $32 million, a new pre-opening record. Many midnight and first-day showtimes are already sold out across the country, despite the fact that the movie will be showing on more than 11,000 screens in 4,375 locations, a record for the Harry Potter series.

Early reviews of the film have been universally glowing. The Globe and Mail said, "This outing not only doesn't disappoint; it surpasses high expectation" and the National Post commented, "Perfectly paced and entirely satisfying. It is, dare I say?, magical."

Enter Penguin’s Harry Potter contest.

Harris was the Guest of Honour at the Polaris 25 Convention, running July 15 to 16 at the Sheraton Parkway North Hotel in Richmond Hill and signed books at the Indigo Toronto Eaton Centre location at 7 p.m. on July 18.

Harris was interviewed by the Toronto Star on June 25 just prior to the release of the fourth season of True Blood. She confirms that she has two more books to write in the Sookie Stackhouse series. Harris's media schedule while in Toronto included interviews in TVGuide.ca, SPACE TB, KOBO, the National Post, ET Canada, CBC Television, Postmedia newspapers, CBC Radio's Q, and more.

View photos from Charlaine’s Indigo appearance.

Leonard recently did a 30-minute interview on Fan 590 and CBC Radio’s Q (listen to the interview) and was featured in a major profile in the Toronto Star. Print features in The Globe and Mail and Toronto Standard will run in the coming days.

The Big Fight takes readers behind the scenes of a notoriously corrupt sport and chronicles the evolution of a champion, as Leonard prepares for the greatest fights of his life, against Marvin Hagler, Roberto Duran, Tommy Hearns, and Wilfred Benitez. At the same time, Leonard fearlessly reveals his own contradictions and compulsions, his infidelity, and alcohol and cocaine abuse.

During her visit in P.E.I., Catherine, the Duchess of Cambridge was delighted to receive a copy of a Puffin Classics edition of Anne of Green Gables. Several of L.M. Montgomery’s descendants were also on-hand to commemorate the very special occasion.

As highlighted in Publisher’s Weekly, “The Duchess of Cambridge, better known as Kate Middleton, is already a fashion trendsetter, but Penguin Canada will now have a chance to see if she can also be a literary trendsetter. Reports that the duchess loved the Canadian classic Anne of Green Gables as a girl and wanted to visit Prince Edward Island, the province where the series is set, have sparked a lot of interest and media attention during the royal couple’s Canadian tour.”

To watch the book presentation, click here.

As a follow-up to the eagerly anticipated new book by Charlaine Harris entitled Dead Reckoning, the author will be in Toronto for her first official book tour to Canada!

Harris was interviewed by the Toronto Star on June 25th just prior to the release of the 4th season of True Blood. She confirms that she has two more books to write in the Sookie Stackhouse series. As quoted in the Toronto Star "Fans of the books will know what happens in the fourth instalment vis-à-vis a certain Viking-ish vampire losing his memory and needing Sookie’s help and care . . . and you’ll see a major and quite excellent departure from the source material involving Sookie’s other vampire. Can’t have Bill fade into the background on television."

Harris will be the Guest of Honour at the Polaris 25 Convention, running July 15 to 16 at the Sheraton Parkway North Hotel in Richmond Hill and will be signing books at Indigo Toronto Eaton Centre at 7 pm on July 18.

Readers interested in picking the brain of America’s most imaginative neuroscientist should head over to his Goodreads.com forum where he’ll be answering reader inquires July 11 through to 15.

Eagleman, also the author of Sum, has been praised by the likes of Brian Eno and Stephen Frye. Read a fascinating profile of the Houston-based neuroscientist in The New Yorker.

The leak was reported by all major media, including CNN, the National Post and The New York Daily News. Opinion by media such as The Hollywood Reporter is that the trailer was leaked by Sony Pictures to generate publicity and was not illegally filmed in a European theatre, as some believe. It has since been removed by the request of Sony. The official trailer is now available for viewing on the website.

The background music in the trailer is a cover of Led Zeppelin's "Immigrant Song" by Trent Reznor (of the cult band Nine Inch Nails) and Karen O (of the popular indie band the Yeah Yeah Yeah's). Reznor is scoring the entire film along with songwriting partner Atticus Ross.

The film, starring Daniel Craig and Rooney Mara, isn't scheduled to be released until December. The trade edition of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo will be released on July 5.

The Locus Awards are presented to the winners of Locus Magazine's annual readers' poll (Kay is nominated for Best Fantasy Novel), while the Aurora Awards are given out annually for the best Canadian science fiction and fantasy literary novels (Kay is shortlisted for Best SF/Fantasy Novel). In addition, Kay is shortlisted in the Fantasy category for the Romantic Times Awards.

Under Heaven has already received two awards: 2010's ALA Best Fantasy Novel and 2010's SF Book Club Editor's Pick Book of the Year. The Washington Post named it on of the Best Books of the Year, and The Globe and Mail listed it as one of the Top 100 Best Books of the Year.

Inspired by the eight-century Tang Dynasty in China, the novel centres on Shen Ta, whose life is changed forever when the White Jade Princess in Tagur presents him with 250 Sardian horses in recognition of his courage. A paperback edition of Under Heaven was released in April.

The annual prize, worth $20,000, honours Canadian writers living in Ontario. See the full list of English-language book finalists here.

The winner will be announced on June 17 at the Toronto Reference Library. The night before, Winter and the other finalists will read at the TRL's Bram & Bluma Appel Salon. Details are here.

The Globe and Mail called the novel "Extraordinary ... Winter has enacted some of the most powerful storytelling of his career." For The Death of Donna Whalen, Winter has mined the records of the Sheldon Troke case and distilled their raw, naked truth into this mesmerizing work of documentary fiction.

Ronson made an appearance on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart that generated huge online buzz for the book. The Psychopath Test also received a positive review from Janet Maslin on the front page of The New York Times Arts Section and was excerpted in GQ.

In his book, Ronson takes readers into the gripping, bizarre, and hilarious world of psychopaths, the doctors who study them, the regular people who sometimes come up against them, and the public officials who try to protect us from them.

The Griffin Poetry Prize is the world's largest prize for a first edition single collection of poetry written in English. It was founded in 2000 by philanthropist and businessman Scott Griffin.

Heaney's first collection appeared in 1966, and since then he has published poetry, criticism and translations that have established him as one of the leading poets of his generation. Human Chain, his twelfth collection of poems, elicits continuities and solidarities between husband and wife, child and parent, then and now, inside an intently remembered present.

Penguin has commissioned celebrated illustrator Jillian Tamaki to produce hand-sewn covers of three classics: Jane Austen's Emma, Frances Hodgson Burnett's The Secret Garden, and Anna Sewell's Black Beauty.

After posting samples of her work on her blog (see samples here), a number of online venues such as The Casual Optimist and The Atlantic picked up the news, with much accompanying buzz.

The three book covers were produced in just two months. The final covers will be sculpt-embossed, which will keep some of the tactile texture of the original designs.

The three classics will appear as part of Penguin Threads series and are to be released in fall 2011.

Tamaki previously illustrated Hiromi Goto's Half World for Penguin Canada (the book was longlisted for the 2010 IMPAC Dublin Award).

Harris will be appearing in Toronto from July 15-17 for the Polaris fan convention. Dead Reckoning was the lead book review in this week's People magazine.

The Sookie Stackhouse books are the basis for HBO's hit television series True Blood, which has earned a Golden Globe, an Emmy, and a People's Choice Award, among many other honours, and has become HBO's highest rated series since The Sopranos. The fourth season of True Blood, based on the fourth Sookie Stackhouse novel Dead to the World, is set to premiere in June.

Read an excerpt from the book.

A review of Kissinger’s new book On China has already appeared in The New York Times. In On China, Kissinger examines how China has approached diplomacy, strategy, and negotiation throughout its history, and reflects on the consequences for the 21st century.

Bestselling author Tom Clancy is back on June 14 for a thrilling new novel. Against All Enemies is a story that races from the remote, war-scarred landscapes of the Middle East to the blood-soaked chaos of the U.S.-Mexico border.

Ex-navy SEAL Maxwell Moore has worked across the Middle East and behind the scenes for the Special Activities Division of the CIA. When he arrives at a rendezvous to take charge of a high-ranking Taliban captive, the meeting takes a turn for the worst. Barely surviving, he tries to bring to safety a Pakistani colonel with information about the debacle, only to have that mission fall prey to forces more powerful than any he has faced before.

Harperland is now an essential primer for all Canadians on the nature of the new political landscape. In Harperland, prominent Globe and Mail columnist Lawrence Martin focuses on the growth of executive power under Harper and offers a clear picture of a skilled politician at a crucial point in Canadian politics.

Maclean's said of Harperland, "Perhaps the first serious attempt to take stock of Stephen Harper's time in power."

Drawing on interviews with prominent insiders, Martin probes the smearing of opponents, the silencing of the public and diplomatic service, the secrecy, the prorogations, the unprecedented centralizing of power, and the attempted muzzling of the media. He examines controversies such as the existence of a secret dirty-tricks handbook, the Chuck Cadman affair, campaign financing, the dismissal of nuclear power head Linda Keen, the Afghan detainees cover-up, the turning of access-to-information laws into barricades to information, and more.

Media coverage of the details surrounding the raid has been constant, whether concerning found documents that detail a plan to strike the U.S. rail system or Al Qaeda's confirmation of Bin Laden's death (accompanied by threats of retaliation).

Two time Pulitzer Prize-winner Steve Coll's account of the Bin Ladens is essential reading on one of the most elusive families of the twenty-first century. Meticulously researche, The Bin Ladens is the story of a remarkably varied and often dangerous family that has used money, mobility, and technology to dramatically different ends, and what their rise means for globalization, the War on Terror, and America's place in the Middle East.

The book will release in stores in October in advance of the World Junior Hockey Championships in Calgary and Edmonton (December 26, 2011 to January 5, 2012).

Thirty Years of the Game at its Best will feature a chapter dedicated to each of the last thirty years of the game. Contributions from players, coaches, Hockey Canada principals, and journalists such as Stanley Cup and Olympic winning coach Mike Babcock and NHL star Steven Stamkos will take readers behind the scenes and tell stories never told before.

Over the past thirty years, Hockey Canada's Program of Excellence (POE) has attained a level of international accomplishment unmatched in Canadian sports history. The World Juniors have gone from a niche sports property to "the Canadian Super Bowl" and the tournament draws the largest television audiences for an annual sports event in this country.

The award is bestowed in recognition of life time literary achievement. The award was presented to Ghosh in Montreal this Wednesday. Ghosh is the author most recently of Sea of Poppies (shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize), the first in a planned trilogy.

The second book, River of Smoke, will appear from Penguin Canada this September.

Penguin is also re-releasing three novels by Ghosh in paperback format. The three novels, The Calcutta Chromosome, The Circle of Reason, and The Shadow Lines, will be available in Canada for the first time on June 1.

The untitled collection of stories and upcoming novel were acquired in a heated auction.

Said Johanna Skibsrud, "I am very pleased to be working with Penguin. I admire the Hamish Hamilton list, and am excited to be joining it."

Johanna Skibsrud, 30, is the youngest winner and the first debut novelist since 1999 to capture the Scotiabank Giller Prize, Canada's most prestigious literary award.

Hamish Hamilton Canada imprint, the prestigious literary imprint from Penguin Canada, launched in 2009 and currently houses luminaries including Joseph Boyden, Kim Echlin, Zsuzsi Gartner, Andrea Levy, and Miguel Syjuco.

A major motion picture from DreamWorks based on the book will appear in theatres starting on August 12, and this week the trailer was released. View it at thehelpmovie.com.

See Kathryn Stockett in Toronto! She’ll be visiting on May 10 for an event at the Indigo Manulife store at 7pm. Get more information at http://www.chapters.indigo.ca/storeevents/

The Pulitzer Prize is a U.S. award for achievements in journalism, musical composition, and literature. It was established in 1917 and prizes are awarded yearly in twenty-one categories. For more information, visit www.pulitzer.org.

In other awards news, Nicole Krauss' Great House has been shortlisted for the Orange Prize and Caravaggio by Andrew Graham Dixon has been longlisted for the 2011 BBC Samuel Johnson Prize for Non-Fiction. Seamus Heaney is a Griffin Poetry Prize 2011 finalist for Human Chain. Heaney will be doing a public reading on May 31 at Koerner Hall in Toronto. The Griffin Poetry Prize ceremony is on June 1.

Author Paul Murray will visit Toronto for a Harbourfront reading on May 18 (details are here).

Skippy Dies is an epic, tragic, comic, brilliant novel set in and around Dublin's Seabrook College for Boys. It principally concerns the lives, loves, mistakes, and triumphs of overweight maths whiz Ruprecht Van Doren and his roommate, Daniel "Skippy" Juster.

"Arch, caustic and frighteningly true to what courses through the minds of most barely teen boys ... a stellar literary tale."
—Maclean's

Directed by Tomas Alfredson (Let the Right One In), the film stars Gary Oldman and Colin Firth, who recently won the Oscar for best actor for his role in The King's Speech.

Tinker, Tailor, Solider, Spy recently premiered at the European Film Market in Berlin and was very well received, so much so that Universal Pictures has taken over the rights. The acquisition was widely reported by such sources as Slash Film and The Onion's A/V Club. The movie is scheduled for release at the end of this year.

The cold war era tale stars Gary Oldman as a former MI:6 operative who comes out of retirement to uncover the identity of a Soviet double agent in the intelligence organization.

Check out an interview with CBC's The Current that recently aired. An interview with Joshua Foer also ran in The Globe and Mail.

See Joshua Foer in person on May 1; he’ll be appearing at Ben McNally's Books and Brunch.

Moonwalking with Einstein takes readers into the world of competitive memorizing and details the training of these "mental athletes." Foer discovers that their success is not the result of superhuman intelligence but of hours upon hours of training, a process the author underwent himself, which led him to win an event at his first ever USA Memory Championship.

Martin was featured recently on CBC Radio's The Current. Upon Harperland's release, the National Post called it "a potential 276-page guidebook to a Conservative majority." It was also named the Hill Times' #1 book of 2010.

Charlotte Bronte's beloved novel Jane Eyre is getting the big screen treatment again this spring. The new film is directed by Cary Fukunaga and stars Mia Wasikowska, last seen in Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland and the critically acclaimed The Kids Are Alright.

View the rave review in The Globe and Mail, which calls it "[a]n excellent new film, starring a stern-yet-beguiling 19-year-old Mia Wasikowska." Penguin has beautiful editions of the classic novel. View the full selection at Penguin.ca.

The Forest Laird by Jack Whyte is shortlisted for the Ethel Wilson Fiction Prize and Extraordinary Canadians: Marshall McLuhan by Douglas Coupland is shortlisted for the Hubert Evans Non-Fiction Prize.

Jack Whyte's novels, including The Templar Trilogy, have sold over 1 million copies in Canada. Marshall McLuhan met with critical praise from such top outlets as The New York Times. A reviewer for the Toronto Star said of the biography, "I think it's the best of the Extraordinary Canadians series thus far, both for its readability and for its meditations on writing biography in the 21st century."

The awards gala and ceremony will take place on April 21 at the Kay Meek Centre in West Vancouver.

Please see the BC Book Prize website for more information.

Based on a true story and set on the northwest coast of Canada in 1900, The Cannibal Spirit follows events surrounding the trial on charges of cannibalism of George Hunt, a shaman and chieftain among his people (the Kwagiulth), and an assistant to the famed anthropologist Franz Boas. Masterful, unforgettable, and utterly gripping, The Cannibal Spirit brims with nostalgia for a passing world and pounds with relentless tension.

Whitehead has masters degrees in creative writing and medical anthropology, and a Ph.D. from Lancaster University. He teaches creative writing at the University of Leicester, and worked for many years in film and television.

View the full press release.

The news of The King's Speech's win took front page headlines across Canada this week. The King's Speech book is currently #5 on The Globe and Mail bestseller list in its sixth week. Visit Penguin.ca/kingsspeech make link to enter the contest.

The King's Speech is the previously untold story of the extraordinary relationship between an unknown and certainly unqualified speech therapist called Lionel Logue and the haunted young man who became King George VI.

Visit Penguin.ca to view a trailer and excerpt.

Echlin was named as the winner of the fiction category.

The jury said of the novel: "The Disappeared is a powerful and affecting novel, one that's willing to consider the greatest devotion and the most terrible cruelty."

The Discover Awards honour "previously unknown fiction and non-fiction writers."

Get a video interview with Echlin and a reading guide.

The feature touches on his writing life, his home life, his activism, and the First Nations people. Get an excerpt here.

Boyden's follow-up to his Giller Prize-winning novel Through Black Spruce will be published by Hamish Hamilton Canada in 2012.

Syjuco’s inventive and captivating debut also won the 2008 Man Asian Prize as a manuscript, took the Quebec Writers Federation’s 2010 Paragraphe Hugh MacLennan Fiction Prize and has recently been shortlisted for the 2011 Commonwealth Best First Book Prize.

Hamish Hamilton Canada published Ilustrado in May 2010 to tremendous critical acclaim. The Globe and Mail called Ilustrado “an extraordinary debut, at once flashy and substantial, unexpected and fresh, quite unlike anything that has been seen before.”

Learn more about the novel.

"After thousands of fan requests for the stories behind the songs," said Bachman, "I'm thrilled to be able to put out this book. These are some of my favourite personal stories, and they make the songs much more real and precious."

Born in Canada, Bachman is often referred to as the "Canadian architect of rock music" through his talents as a guitarist, songwriter, performer, and producer. Known best for his work in the Guess Who, Bachman-Turner Overdrive, and now in Bachman & Turner, he has earned over 120 gold and platinum album/singles awards around the world for performing and producing, and has sold over 40 million records.

For information, please view the full press release.

Miguel Syjuco's Ilustrado is shortlisted for Best First Book, Canada and Caribbean region. Ilustrado previously won the 2008 Man Asian Literary Prize and the 2010 Hugh MacLennan Prize. A starred review in Quill and Quire said of Syjuco's debut novel, "Ilustrado exceeds all expectations ... a staggering, indelible debut.

Michael Winter's The Death of Donna Whalen is shortlisted for Best Book, Canada and Caribbean region. It was previously shortlisted for the 2010 Rogers Writers Trust Fiction Prize. The Globe and Mail said of Winter's mesmerizing work of documentary fiction, "Extraordinary ... Winter has enacted some of the most powerful storytelling of his career."

The winners of the regional Commonwealth prizes will be announced on March 3, and they will go on to compete against winners from other regions. The winners of the overall prizes will be named in May.

The Washington Post has published an advance article on Known and Unknown.

With the same directness that defined his career in public service, Rumsfeld has filled his memoir with previously undisclosed details and insights about the Bush administration, 9/11, and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. It also features Rumsfeld's unique and often surprising observations on eight decades of history.

Get an excerpt at Penguin.ca.

Penguin has the non-fiction account of the extraordinary relationship between an unknown and unqualified speech therapist named Lionel Logue and the haunted young man who became King George VI. The book is co-written by Sunday Times journalist Peter Conradi and Lionel Logue relative Mark Logue.

True Grit, from the Coen Brothers, comes in at a close second with 10 nominations. The film was overlooked at the Golden Globes, but netted Oscar nods in such categories as Best Picture, Best Actor, Best Supporting Actress, and Best Director.

True Grit the film is based upon the cult-classic novel of the same name by Charles Portis, and this weekend the True Grit movie tie-in edition lands the #1 spot on the New York Times bestseller list! A Canwest article, which ran on January 16, calls the novel "a sublimely brilliant adventure yarn."

Op eds from major Canadian papers continue to pour in, including from the Ottawa Citizen (also picked up in the Calgary Herald), the Canadian Press (picked up in the Winnipeg Free Press), the Montreal Gazette (picked up in the Times Colonist), and the Toronto Sun.

The New Yorker ran an insightful look into why the media and public continue to be fascinated by Amy Chua and her parenting strategy.

Skippy Dies is a dark coming of age story. Ruprecht Van Doren is an overweight genius whose hobbies include very difficult maths and the Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence. Daniel 'Skippy' Juster is his roommate. In the grand old Dublin institution that is Seabrook College for Boys, nobody pays either of them much attention. But when Skippy falls for Lori, the Frisbee-playing Siren from the girls' school next door, suddenly all kinds of people take an interest, including Carl, part-time drug-dealer and official school psychopath.

Read an excerpt and an interview with author Paul Murray at Penguin.ca.

Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother is a global media sensation, and a feature story on the book appears on the cover of TIME magazine's January 21 issue.

Also look for Amy Chua on the NBC Today show on January 25. Newsweek will run a feature piece this week, and People has an interview in their current issue.

Media continue to heatedly discuss Chua's style of parenting, with op eds continuing to run in major publications, including The New York Times, the Globe and Mail, the Ottawa Citizen, the National Post, and the Toronto Star, and one of Chua's daughters even wrote a rebuttal for The New York Post.

The film will debut in May on HBO and be directed by Oscar-winning director Curtis Hanson (L.A. Confidential). Centring on Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, the film will look at the Wall Street financial crisis of 2008, and the men and women who precipitated and weathered it. The cast will include such stars as Oscar-winner William Hurt, Emmy-winner Paul Giamatti, and Topher Grace (Spider Man 3).

Please visit HBO.com for further details.

For more information, please view the official press release.

In Yalta, a landmark book, a gifted Harvard historian puts you in the room with Churchill, Stalin, and Roosevelt as they meet at a climactic turning point in the war to hash out the terms of the peace.

Rooney Mara made her debut (in full costume) as Lisbeth Salander on the cover of W magazine, as reported by New York Magazine, USA Today, People, the National Post’s Ampersand blog, CBS News, and many more. Interest is high in how Mara’s performance will compare with much-loved actress Noomi Rapace’s take on the character in the Swedish film adaptations.

It was announced this week that cult figure and Nine Inch Nails frontman, Trent Reznor, in partnership with long time collaborator Atticus Ross, will compose the score to David Fincher’s American film adaptation. Reznor and Ross scored Fincher’s last movie, The Social Network (they were nominated for a Golden Globe for their work). This news swept online media from The Guardian to The New York Times.

The Globe and Mail talked to Amy about "why Chinese parenting is best," and the resulting article has garnered over 560 comments to date. A Postmedia article was picked up across the Canwest chain, and it ran on the front pages of the National Post and the Ottawa Citizen, and also appeared in the Edmonton Journal and the Vancouver Sun. The Charles Adler Show (syndicated on 14 stations across Canada) did a feature on the book.

Further media include an appearance on The Today Show, a two-page Q&A spread in this week’s issue of Maclean’s, a mention by Lloyd Robertson on CTV’s National News, and numerous op-eds in various Canadian dailies, including this article in the National Post.

Available on the iTunes store in Canada for $13.99, this Amplified Edition of The Pillars of the Earth gives iPad users the opportunity to read the novel and watch key scenes and images from the series over the course of the CBC’s Canadian broadcast of the star-filled program.

More information, including a video demo of the app, is available on The Pillars of the Earth feature page.

Kim Edwards will be travelling to Toronto on February 7 and she’ll conversation with Heather Reisman at Indigo Manulife at 7 P.M. on February 7.

Canada’s prominent book bloggers have been posting glowing reviews of the book, including reviews by A Bookworm’s World, The Crazy Bookworm Blog, Serendipiter Readings, and The Book Chick.

The Lake of Dreams is also the featured book for the Penguin Book Club. Please click here to learn more about the book, and to view an excerpt and reader’s guide.

The Madman and the Butcher, the first book in Penguin Canada’s new Allen Lane non-fiction imprint, is a double biography of Sam Hughes and General Arthur Currie. Harperland, a portrait of the governance of Prime Minister Stephen Harper, received widespread national Canadian media coverage upon release and was a Globe and Mail national bestseller.

For more information visit Writerstrust.com.

Charles Dickens’s A Tale of Two Cities and Great Expectations are both now Oprah-approved picks, and Penguin has packaged them into one handsome volume! This deluxe paperback edition features French flaps, rough-cut, high-quality paper, and complimentary front - and back-cover designs highlighting each novel and including foil and debossing.

A Tale of Two Cities: The lives of two very different men—Charles Darnay, an exiled French aristocrat, and Sydney Carton, a disreputable but brilliant English lawyer—become enmeshed through their love for Lucie Manette. From the tranquil roads of London, they are drawn against their will to the vengeful, bloodstained streets of Paris at the height of the Reign of Terror, and they soon fall under the lethal shadow of the guillotine.

Great Expectations: A terrifying encounter with an escaped convict in a graveyard on the wild Kent marshes; a summons to meet the bitter, decaying Miss Havisham and her beautiful, cold-hearted ward, Estella; the sudden generosity of a mysterious benefactor—these form a series of events that forever change the life of the orphan Pip, and he eagerly abandons his humble origins to begin a new life as a gentleman.

Visit our Oprah feature page to learn more about these extraordinary novels, to download reading guides, and more!

Blair was discovered by U.K. agent Peter Robinson (who represents Ian Rankin and Denise Mina) after she was shortlisted for the 2010 Debut Dagger at the Harrogate Crime Festival, and The Beggar’s Opera was acquired from Canadian agent Anne McDermid in a two-book deal for world English rights. Rights to the series have been sold to Rowolt in Germany, Cappelen in Norway, and to Unieboek in Holland.

The Beggar’s Opera is a brilliantly plotted and deeply imagined crime novel that evokes the crumbling beauty of Old Havana, as well as its bureaucracy and political corruption. The character at the heart of the novel is the hardworking inspector of the Major Crimes Unit of the Cuban National Revolutionary Police Force, a man who is suffering from the same dementia that killed his grandmother, making him see ghosts of the victims of unsolved murders. When the abused body of a young Cuban boy is discovered at a popular tourist spot, the evidence points the inspector to a Canadian police officer on vacation.

Entertainment Weekly gave Matched a full page review in the December 3rd issue, saying "Matched is the hottest YA title to hit bookstores since The Hunger Games," as well as mentioning it again in the December 10th issue, and featuring it as a coveted "Pick of the Week" on EW.com.

Reminiscent of Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale and Aldous Huxley’s A Brave New World, Matched is a futuristic, dystopian novel that tells the story of a teen-aged girl who has waited seventeen years to find out who "the Society" will select for her ideal mate, only to find herself falling in love with someone else.

The Wall Street Journal called Matched "A superb dystopian romance," and it was the #1 Indie Next List pick, and it received starred reviews from both Kirkus and Publishers Weekly.

Check out the website and the Facebook app and get Matched!

From Penguin’s Canadian fiction list, Under Heaven, Ilustrado, The Long Song, Nemesis, Our Kind of Traitor, and The Death of Donna Whalen all made the list (please click through to read the individual Globe and Mail reviews for each title).

From Penguin’s Canadian non-fiction titles, Nice Recovery, Invisible Chains, and Harperland were all featured.

Other listed titles include the 2010 Man Booker winner, The Finkler Question, The Big Short, Packing For Mars, Lives Like Loaded Guns, If the Dead Rise Not, Great House, Madame Bovary, and Fall of Giants.

A plethora of other Penguin titles made the list, including the Man Booker-shortlisted The Long Song and the blockbuster conclusion to Stieg Larsson’s Millennium Trilogy, The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest.

The Spirit Level received rave reviews in Canada on its original publication, including this from The Globe and Mail: “An impressive body of evidence, presented in an easily digestible form, which is highly relevant for debates here in Canada.” The book was featured on CBC Radio’s Sunday Edition.

Co-author Richard Wilkinson will tour Canada this month, visiting Toronto, Ottawa, Calgary, and Vancouver. He will attend two public events and a series of meetings with federal and provincial ministers and economic associations. Visit penguin.ca/events for details.

Thirteen years ago, Moab Is My Washpot—Fry’s autobiography of his early years—was published to rave reviews and was a huge bestseller. In the years since, the author has moved into a completely new stratosphere, both as a public figure and as a private man. Now he’s also an author, director and presenter. The Fry Chronicles details some of the most turbulent and least well-known years of his life with writing that will excite you, make you laugh uproariously, move you, inform you, and above all, surprise you.

View a video of Fry talking about The Fry Chronicles.

Ilustrado has previously won both the Man Asian Literary Prize and the Palanca Award (the top prize in the Philippines), and received strong critical acclaim upon its release.

Ilustrado begins with Crispin Salvador, lion of Philippine letters, dead in the Hudson River. To understand the death, Syjuco scours Salvador’s life, charting his trajectory via his poetry, stories, interviews, novels, polemics, and memoirs. The literary fragments become patterns become stories become epic: a family saga of four generations tracing 150 years of a country’s history forged under the Spanish, Americans, and Filipinos.

Quill & Quire unveiled its top picks for 2010 fiction titles, and Miguel Syjuco’s Ilustrado and Michael Winter’s The Death of Donna Whalen both made the list. The Book of Awesome was also selected as a non-fiction pick. View the entire list here.

Quill & Quire said of Ilustrado, “Despite the hype, Syjuco proves himself to be a serious novelist with a bent for stylistic experimentation.” In May’s Quill & Quire, reviewer Lisa Foad called Ilustrado “a staggering, indelible debut.” The novel won the Man Asian Literary Prize and the Palanca Award (the top prize in the Philippines).

Regarding The Death of Donna Whalen, Quill & Quire wrote, “In retelling the story of the murder and its muddled aftermath, Winter is much more than an editor cobbling together pieces of documentary material: he is a genre-bending novelist operating at the top of his craft.” The book was shortlisted for the Rogers Writers Trust Fiction Prize and has garnered critical acclaim from such sources as The Globe and Mail, which called it “extraordinary ... Winter has enacted some of the most powerful storytelling of his career.”

This hot topic has increased interest in the upcoming Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother (9781594202841 / Penguin Press / January 11). Interviews with author Amy Chua have already been booked with Maclean’s and the Globe and Mail, to run on publication.

Chua’s memoir is an awe-inspiring, often hilarious, and unerringly honest story of one mother’s exercise in extreme parenting, revealing the rewards—and costs—of raising children the Chinese way.

Skippy Dies was also longlisted for the 2010 Booker Prize, was named an Amazon Best Book of the Month (September 2010), Amazon Best Books of 2010 (Literature & Fiction), and is an Amazon 2010 Editors’ Pick. Maclean’s called it “Arch, caustic and frighteningly true to what courses through the minds of most barely teen boys...a stellar literary tale.”

The winners will be announced on January 5. The Book of the Year (spanning all five categories) will be announced on January 25.

The Costa Book Awards is one of the most prestigious literary prizes in the U.K. and recognizes some of the most enjoyable books of the year by writers based in the U.K. and Ireland. The winner in each category receives £5,000. One of these five books is selected as the Book of the Year and receives a further £30,000, making a total prize fund of £55,000. These prizes began in 1971 as the Whitbread Literary Awards.

For more information visit the Costa Books Awards website.

Penguin Classics is proud to announce the launch of a new line of (PENGUIN CLASSICS)^RED editions for World AIDS Day on December 1. Sixteen of these new classics will be released in Canada in time for the 2010 holiday gift-giving season.

Penguin will contribute 50 percent of the profits from (PRODUCT)^RED™ editions to the Global Fund to help eliminate AIDS in Africa. The Global Fund invests 100 percent of the (RED) money it receives in HIV and AIDS programs in Africa.

To date, (RED) partners have contributed over $140 million to the Global Fund, and this money has supported Global Fund programs that have reached more than five million people with testing, treatment, and support. Some of the most sought-after brands around the world have created (PRODUCT)^RED items through a successful partnership with (RED), including Apple, Dell, Nike, and Starbucks.

To celebrate the partnership with (RED), Penguin’s design team has commissioned original artwork for each title. These beautiful, eye-catching designs break from the conventional black in their use of red and exclusively utilize typography.

For more information about (RED), visit www.joinred.com.

The 2011 International IMPAC Dublin longlist was announced this week at a ceremony in Dublin, Ireland.

Margaret Hayes, Dublin City Librarian, announced the longlist, comprising 162 titles. The €100,000 award is the world’s most valuable annual literary prize for a single work of fiction published in English.

Penguin has 22 titles represented in the longlist, including the following from Penguin Canada:

• The Disappeared, Kim Echlin
• Half World, Hiromi Goto
• The Solitude of Prime Numbers, Paolo Giordano
• The Selected Works of T.S. Spivet, Reif Larsen
• Under This Unbroken Sky, Shandi Mitchell

The shortlist will be made public on April 12, 2011 and the winner will be announced on June 15, 2011.

More information can be found at www.impacdublinaward.ie.

News of MacCulloch’s win was picked up by major media across the country, including The Globe and Mail, the National Post, the Toronto Star, Montreal’s Gazette, CBC.ca, the Canadian Press (this story ran in Maclean’s), and the Winnipeg Free Press.

The National Post will also publish a five-part series of excerpts from the book. One 1,000-word excerpt will run on each of the five days leading up to Christmas (December 20–24).

Benjamin Perrin, author of Invisible Chains, the recent explosive exposé on human trafficking, was photographed with Prime Minster Stephen Harper this week while in Ottawa for a Minister’s meeting, press conference and public event in Ottawa.

Perrin continues to appear in the media as an expert on human trafficking. A recent Calgary Herald article called Invisible Chains “necessary reading.” The Literary Review of Canada also praised the book as “highly necessary, superbly researched, and an unparalleled intellectual contribution to its field.”

In Invisible Chains, Perrin, an award-winning law professor and policy expert, exposes cases of human trafficking and argues that the global problem of human trafficking is only beginning to be recognized in Canada, even though it has been hidden in plain sight.

In celebration of its 10th anniversary, CBC Canada Reads, the popular radio debate show, has opened its book selection to the general public. Book lovers chose the Top 40 Essential Canadian Novels of the Past Decade and another round of public voting determined the Top 10.

Panelists will choose the final five from this Top 10. CBC Q host Jian Ghomeshi will host the debates in February 2011.

Please visit the CBC Canada Reads website for more information.

Publishers Weekly has just announced its Best Books of 2010, and Penguin has five titles on the list—three adult and two young adult.

On the adult list, PW praised Chang-rae Lee, author of The Surrendered (9781594489761 / Riverhead), for his ability to “…craft a sentence.” Of Michael Lewis’s The Big Short, PW proclaimed, “Lewis has written the briskest and brightest analysis of the crash of 2008.” Also making the top 10 is Brady Udall’s The Lonely Polygamist, a tragicomic look at the life of a fundamentalist Mormon with four wives and 28 children.

On the PW young adult list are Ally Condie’s Matched, a dystopian romance (the film rights have already been bought by Disney)–check out the website, complete with trailer and Facebook app, here. Catherine Fisher’s Incarceron, a star-crossed romance that flips between two worlds, also made the list.

Fisher’s follow-up, Sapphique, and Matched are both included in Penguin’s Breathless Reads.

Push was adapted into a major motion picture, Precious, which won numerous awards, including an Oscar. Publication is slated for Summer 2011.

"Sapphire never fails to render the hardest material comprehensible by coming from a place of love," Ann Godoff said of the acquisition. "In her second novel, she fearlessly explores the young life of an African American boy as he approaches manhood; alone, brutalized and with the soul of an artist. It is an honor for The Penguin Press to have the opportunity to publish this extraordinary book."

McLean spoke with booksellers from Russell Books, McNally Robinson, and Bookmark, and mentions several others. This special program will air on Saturday, November 20, at 9:00 a.m. on CBC Radio Two; on Sunday, November 21, at 12 noon on CBC Radio One; and on Tuesday, November 23, at 11:00 p.m. on CBC Radio One.

Please click here to download the poster for McLean’s favourite stores.

McLean’s Canadian tour will take him to 14 cities across Canada from November 20 to December 20. Please visit penguin.ca/events for details.

Book adaptations abound in this year’s crop of holiday films, as noted by The New Yorker, and four of those movies have been adapted from Penguin books.

The Swedish film adaptation of The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest—the third book in the international sensation that is Steig Larsson’s Millennium trilogy—has already been released in Canada (view the trailer here, discuss the books and films at the Millennium Trilogy Facebook page here).

Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels will hit the big screen on December 22 in Canada and will feature stars Jack Black and Emily Blunt. The movie tie-in edition is available now. View the trailer for the film here.

True Grit is the latest from the Coen Brothers and is based on Charles Portis’s novel of the same name; it will release on December 25.

Also appearing this holiday season is The King’s Speech, starring Colin Firth. The film will have wide release in Canada on December 24. It’s already earned rave reviews at festivals and is being touted as Oscar-worthy. View the trailer here. Penguin has the non-fiction inspiration for the film, also titled The King’s Speech.

This Saturday, Tim will be featured on CBC Television’s One on One with Peter Mansbridge, on Tuesday he will be featured on CTV National News, and he will once again be a guest commentator on CTV’s Remembrance Day coverage with Lloyd Robertson from 10:00 a.m. to 12:00 p.m.

Canadian media picked up the news of the acquisition—both the Toronto Star and the National Post wrote about the deal. Much more media is expected.

33 Men is an absorbing, authoritative, and ultimately uplifting account of one of the longest human entrapments ever, as told by a journalist with unrivaled access. Franklin started following this story from the day the miners were first trapped underground on August 5.

Penguin is planning to publish the book in hardcover in February 2011.

Other first-week publicity included interviews on NBC’s Today Show, ABC’s The View, and on the Ryan Seacrest Show (syndicated in Canada), and a major feature story in People magazine.

Martin also appeared on Larry King Live on November 9.

In Me, Martin, who has sold more than 60 million albums worldwide, opens up for the first time about his early childhood, experiences in the famed boy band Menudo, struggles with his identity during the Livin’ la Vida Loca phenomenon, reflections on coming to terms with his sexuality, relationships that allowed him to embrace love, and life-changing decisions such as devoting himself to helping children around the world and becoming a father. Me is an intimate memoir about the very liberating and spiritual journey of one of the most iconic pop stars of our time.

Kathy Reichs will be in Toronto on Wednesday, November 17 (click here for event details) and in Montreal on Thursday, November 18. Toronto bus shelter advertising has been booked for the month of November.

With more than 6 million copies of Bones sold in paperback and a hit television show in its fifth season with over 10 million viewers per week, Kathy Reichs is a tour de force that kids will love. James Patterson raved, “If you like the TV show Bones (I do) or Maximum Ride, you’ll love Virals. Fourteen year old Tory Brennan has ’gifts’, and she really knows how to use them." R.L Stine, the Stephen King of the children’s world lauded, “Mystery ... fantasy ... science ... and heart-stopping action—this book is DANGEROUS. After I ready Tory Brennan’s first adventure, I wanted more more MORE.” New York Times bestselling YA author Anthony Horowitz boasted, “Kathy Reichs gets it dead right with sharp writing and a plot that throws a bunch of very real teens into a deadly adult world.”

For more information please visit the Virals website, or view the trailer.

In celebration of its 10th anniversary, CBC Canada Reads, the popular radio debate show, has opened its book selection to the general public. Starting on October 5, a three-week public campaign was launched to determine the Top 40 Essential Canadian Novels of the Past Decade. Book lovers were asked to nominate their favourite titles.

The Top 40 was revealed on October 28, and Joseph Boyden’s Three Day Road and Through Black Spruce, Stephen Finucan’s The Fallen, and William Gibson’s Pattern Recognition are all on the list.

Another round of public voting will determine at the Top 10 Essential Novels of the Past Decade. Panelists will choose the final five from this Top 10. Jian Ghomeshi will host the debates in February 2011.

Please visit the CBC Canada Reads website to vote.

The Ontario Library Association has announced the list of nominees for the Forest of Reading Awards, and Penguin Canada has three books on the list.

Wounded by Eric Walters and Whispers from the Ghettos by Kathy Kacer and Sharon McKay are nominated for the Red Maple Award, and The Christmas Tree by David Adams Richards is nominated for the Golden Oak and Evergreen Awards.

For more information, please visit The Canadian Children’s Book Centre website.

More than 200 bloggers applied for approximately 100 spots on the judging panels of the Cybils, now in its fifth year. Many of them have been actively blogging and tweeting about the Cybils and Cybils books, and generating lots of buzz. You can see recent tweets about the Cybils using the #cybils hashtag on Twitter (click here to view).

Please visit the Cybils website for more details.

The Sitch is no stranger to media. As the hottest star in reality TV, he’s appeared on various late night and morning shows, and he’ll be everywhere promoting Here ’s the Situation. Last night the book was mentioned on the Jersey Shore reunion show on MTV. He’ll be appearing on both the 8 a.m. and 10 a.m. hours of The Today Show on November 2, he’ll be on Sirius XM’s The Howard Stern Show and Opie & Anthony, and will be featured in The New York Daily News and The New York Post.

Throughout the last few weeks, The Sitch has been all over the web. Mentions of his book appeared on Perez Hilton, Jezebel, People, The Frisky, Star Magazine, the Washington Post, and more.

Jacobs is also scheduled to “appear” at Knit-o-matic in Toronto (November 4) and Make1Yarns in Calgary (November 9), via Skype, as part of the Yarn Shop Virtual Tour. A Canadian blog tour is scheduled for the week of November 8. Five of our top commercial fiction bloggers will post a review and Q&A every day that week and host a signed-copy giveaway for their readers.

In addition, from now until the holidays, there is a Twitter and Flickr hashtag campaign. Fans can upload pictures of themselves with a copy of the book and mark it with the hashtag #KnitTheSeason. Weekly winners will get a tote bag emblazoned with the book cover, and the grand prize winner will receive a trip to Los Angeles and lunch with Jacobs. U.S. and Canadian citizens are eligible to enter the contest, and the participants of the November 8 blogger tour will promote the contest in their posts.

Read an excerpt from Knit the Season.

A collection of essays where celebrities and ordinary people in the LGBT community share their personal and inspirational stories, It Gets Better was inspired by the hugely popular YouTube videos that have gone viral since Dan and Terry created the first on September 22nd. Since then the project has taken off, with more than 700 videos posted and 1.6 million views, including videos from celebrities such as Tim Gunn, Michael Kors, Ellen Degeneres, Neil Patrick Harris, Chris Colfer, Kathy Griffin, among many others. Just this week, President Obama posted his contribution to the campaign. Every video that's posted generates dozens and sometimes hundreds of comments, many of them from grateful teens. Check out the official site here.

The Quebec Writers’ Federation will announce this year’s prize winners at its annual awards gala at the Lion d’Or in Montreal on Tuesday, November 23.

Syjuco’s Illustrado won the Man Asian Literary Prize for an unpublished work. Moore was awarded the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize for his first novel, Prisoner in a Red-Rose Chain.

The buzz for Nightshade began earlier this year with bloggers calling it "amazingly epic," "jaw-dropping," and "a fantastically romantic, mysterious, soul-searching journey," among other things. In response to the massive online buzz, on September 7th Penguin launched an interactive, multi-media campaign that aimed to invite readers into the Nightshade universe. In the campaign, one of Nightshade’s main characters, Shay Doran, jumped off the page and began interacting with fans via Facebook posts, blog entries, and webisodes that featured him exploring the mysterious new mansion he had moved to in Vail, CO. Fans who interacted with Shay online were invited to become characters in the official Nightshade prequel, which Andrea Cremer wrote based on the campaign events. The prequel, entitled Shadow Days, is currently available for free download on Amazon.

Learn more about Nightshade on the official website.

Kalooki Nights, longlisted in 2006, was hailed by critics as “a work of genius, a novel of genius, standing toe to toe with the greats ... colossal ... and a masterpiece.”

On Tuesday evening Sir Andrew Motion, the judges' Chair, made the announcement, which was broadcast by the BBC from the awards dinner at London's Guildhall. Andrew Motion commented:

The Finkler Question is a marvelous book: very funny, of course, but also very clever, very sad and very subtle. It is all that it seems to be and much more than it seems to be. A completely worthy winner of this great prize.

Further information can be found on the Man Booker website.

Elizabeth Abbott's book, A History of Marriage, is by far the most comprehensive book written on the subject. The research that has gone into this book is tremendous in scope. The writer throws light on the evolution of the institution in straightforward language that will appeal to readers of all levels.

The winners will be announced at a ceremony in Montreal on November 16.

EW notes that Putnam/Berkley author Nora Roberts sells 27 books every minute. Nora's latest novel Happy Ever After, the fourth book in the #1 New York Times bestselling Bride Quartet, comes out next month. For more information on Nora, visit her recently revamped website.

Ace author Charlaine Harris is acknowledged as the only writer ever to have nine titles simultaneously on the New York Times bestseller list, a feat she achieved with her Sookie Stackhouse series. Her most recent release is Death's Excellent Vacation, a short story collection co-edited with Toni L. P. Kelner. For more information on Charlaine Harris, visit her website.

Click here to view the full list.

Then read the first two chapters of The Magicians here.

In response to the book's publication, the Prime Minister's Office immediately responded with the comment that Harperland " ... should be read through the prism of Mr. Martin being a big–L Liberal sympathizer.”

Early reviews, however, acknowledge Martin's balanced approach, with media left, right, and centre weighing in on what is undeniably a well–informed analysis of Harper's “Politics of Control.” the National Post recently called Harperland, “a potential guidebook to Conservative majority.”

As articles, interviews, and discussions continue to pour in the public discourse is growing, with over 550 reader comments posted on TheGlobeandMail.com, and more in response to pieces by CBC's The National, CTV's Canada AM, the Ottawa Citizen, the National Post, CTV.ca, CBC.ca, The Winnipeg Free Press, The Vancouver Sun, and The Toronto Sun.

Join the discussion – take our poll and monitor Twitter commentary at www.harperland.ca.

A full list of tour dates is available on The Vinyl Cafe website. McLean also spoke to a packed crowd at Penguin's tent at Word on the Street Toronto in late September. View photos from the event on our Flikr page.

Selected from 15 years of radio-show archives and re-edited by the author, this wonderfully eclectic essay collection gives us a glimpse into the thoughtful mind at work behind The Vinyl Cafe. From meditations on peacekeeping to praise for the toothpick, The Vinyl Cafe Notebooks runs the gamut from considered argument to light-hearted opinion.

Perrin appeared on CBC's The National on Wednesday, October 6 (watch the interview online here). He was also interviewed on CBC's The Current, in which he commented on the Swedish model, where human trafficking is prevented by criminalizing the purchase of sex, not just the selling of it, with impressive results. The interview is online here.

Further information can be found at www.endmoderndayslavery.ca.

Since its national launch in 2002, the Postmedia Raise–a–Reader campaign has raised $17 million for family literacy programs across Canada. This fundraiser will take place on Thursday, October 14, at 7:00 p.m. at the Alumnae Theatre at 70 Berkeley Street. Tickets are available at the door. For further details please visit the website.

Cullen's latest novel is The Prince of Two Tribes book two in the Changeling series. The first book, The Prince of Neither Here Nor There is a finalist for the 2010 Toronto Book Award and will be excerpted in the Toronto Star.

Cullen's stage and screen credits include CBC's Seán Cullen Show, The Tonight Show with Jay Leno, and the Toronto stage production of The Producers. He is the winner of two Gemini Awards.

The winners will be announced on October 29 at a ceremony at Library and Archives Canada. Past winners of the Ottawa Book Award include Elizabeth Hay, Charlotte Gray, and Roy MacGregor. Further information can be found on the Ottawa Arts website.

René Lévesque was previously shortlisted for the 2010 Charles Taylor Prize for Literary Non–Fiction. The biography takes a look at a most unlikely leader: straightforward, uninterested in personal wealth, unprepossessing. Yet his charisma affected even those who disliked his politics. Acclaimed novelist and translator Daniel Poliquin offers a unique portrait of Lévesque the man and politician, at once affectionate, critical, and incisive.

The Globe and Mail featured a story in Thursday's issue that centred on Harperland's disclosure that the PM considered appealing to the Queen over prorogation (the online article has generated over 450 comments!). CTV's Canada AM interviewed author Lawrence Martin on Thursday. The clip is online here.

The Prime Minister's Office's response to the book, calling Martin's account “absolutely false,” generated a landslide of heated national coverage, from such sources as CBC's The National, the Ottawa Citizen, The National Post, CTV.ca, CBC.ca, The Winnipeg Free Press , The Vancouver Sun, and The Toronto Sun.

Events:

• October 17: Ben McNally Books and Brunch, Toronto
• October 25: Ottawa Writers Festival, Books and Brunch

The Death of Donna Whalen, a work reminiscent of Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood, has been featured by the media across Canada. It’s the story—based on extensive access to court transcripts—surrounding the murder of a young woman in St. John’s. The Globe and Mail called it “extraordinary ... Winter has enacted some of the most powerful storytelling of his career.”

A well–attended public event at George Brown College followed on Monday. McEwan signed copies of the book for his many fans—photos from the event are online here.

The Toronto Star ran an interview with McEwan on Thursday.

In its first week on sale, Great Food at Home became the #1 bestselling cookbook in Canada in the Globe & Mail’s Cookbook category.

MTV’s Dan Levy and Jessi Cruickshank hosted the inaugural Teen Read Awards on Saturday, September 25. The event, held in Toronto, featured a packed house of excited teen readers.

The 10 awards were determined by 334,000 votes from teens across Canada. Penguin’s Richelle Mead won in the category of Best Series for her blockbuster YA Vampire Academy series. The sixth and final book in the series, Last Sacrifice, will be released in North America on December 7.

J.K. Rowling also won two awards (the complete Harry Potter backlist, including new editions of the books, will be released by Penguin Canada in 2011). Rowling sent the following message upon hearing of her win:

“Wow. I've just received the news that the Harry Potter books received 40,000 votes in the Indigo Teen Read Awards! And won in two categories! And what is more, the awards went to my two favourite books in the series. Thank you, thank you, thank you to everybody who voted. I'm thrilled, honoured, and humbled to receive the awards, especially from Canada, where I have spent many happy hours with some of Harry's most devoted and knowledgeable fans ... [I] send my love and gratitude to the Canadian branch of Dumbledore's Army.”

A finalist was Carrie Jones’s Captivate, nominated for Best Lip Lock. The third book in the series, Entice, will appear on December 7.

Dutton, an imprint of Penguin USA, will publish Matched, the first installment of a trilogy, in November. The novels will feature a governing body called The Society, which dictates what people read, watch, and believe, and whom they are partnered with. The protagonist, Cassia, trusts The Society to make the right choice for her, but when a glitch in the matching system occurs, she can’t stop thinking about Ky, the alternate choice she was never supposed to see.

Matched is one of five “Breathless” debut novels garnering buzz from teen readers and media this fall. Published for the young adult market, one of the fastest growing categories in fiction, the novels include Matched, The Eternal Ones, The Replacement, Sapphique, and Nightshade. Visit the “Breathless” site here.

Betancourt is the author of the just–published Even Silence Has an End, the astounding tale of her captivity in the Colombian jungle.

At the age of 32, Betancourt gave up a life of comfort and safety to return to Colombia to become a political leader. In 2002, while campaigning as a candidate in the presidential elections, she was abducted by the FARC. Nothing could have prepared her for what came next. She would spend the next six and a half years in the depths of the jungle as its prisoner. Even Silence Has an End is her deeply personal, moving account of that ordeal.

On September 18, Montreal’s Gazette published the rave review from the previous weekend’s National Post, and the Toronto Star ran a review on September 19.

Previous media includes a full–page feature in the National Post, a review in the Winnipeg Free Press, and an interview on CBC's Day Six .

Gibson is the award-winning author of several previous novels, including Neuromancer, Pattern Recognition, and Spook Country. He lives in Vancouver.

Read more about this eye-opening documentary on the CBC website.

The book was previously adapted into an award–winning film of the same name that has been re–broadcast numerous times on CBC.

Norman Doidge, M.D., is a psychiatrist, psychoanalyst, and researcher at the University of Toronto's Department of Psychiatry, as well as an author, essayist, and poet. He divides his time between Toronto and New York.

"Yes, it's a techno-thriller, but that shouldn't keep it from being recognized as one of the major novels of the year by one of Canada's outstanding writers."

Zero History was also reviewed in last weekend's Winnipeg Free Press, where the reviewer wrote of Gibson, "The coolhunter subculture he presents–filled with those addicted to riding the wave of emerging trends–is engrossing and exciting." Read the full review here.

An interview with Gibson kicked off the first show of the brand new CBC Radio One program Day Six with Brent Bambury last Saturday. The show is available online here.

The first book of The Chronicles of the Misplaced Prince series is set in a world where faeries exist, hidden in the cracks of our reality. Brendan, the hero of the stories, discovers that he is a faerie who was lost in the human world. The second book will be The Prince of Two Tribes.

The author, comedian Seán Cullen, is the winner of two Gemini Awards and was a member of the highly influential musical comedy troupe Corky and the Juice Pigs. His stage and screen credits include CBC's Seán Cullen Show and The Tonight Show with Jay Leno.

Judge Lionel Barber, editor of the Financial Times, said: "This year's shortlist combines compelling narrative with trenchant analysis of the big questions facing the business and financial world, two years on from the collapse of Lehman Brothers." The winner of the award will receive £30,000 pounds and be announced on October 27th in New York.

The Big Short was a #1 national bestseller in Canada for three weeks and has been on the list for a total of 25 weeks.

Andrea Levy is the author of four books, including Small Island, which won the Orange Prize for Fiction 2004 and the Commonwealth Writers' Prize. The Long Song is the story of July, a slave girl emancipated following the Baptist War in Jamaica in 1831. View the full press release here.

Howard Jacobson is the author of eight previous novels, including The Act of Love (9780143170655 / Penguin Canada) and Kalooki Nights (9780143170891 / Penguin Canada). In 1999, he won the Everyman Wodehouse Award for comic writing for The Mighty Walzer.

Attracting particular notice is The King's Speech, a gala film at TIFF. Oscar buzz is building online with the media calling Colin Firth and Geoffrey Rush "sure-thing nominees" for best lead and supporting actor. View the trailer here.

Penguin will publish the non-fiction inspiration for the film, also titled The King's Speech (9780143178545 / Penguin Canada / November 30). It is based on the true story of George VI, Queen Elizabeth's father, and his remarkable friendship with maverick Australian speech therapist Lionel Logue.

A recent Toronto Star article cited The King's Speech, as well as Miral, as films to watch, saying, "Both are already being touted as serious contenders for awards season honours." Miral, from Julian Schnabel, the acclaimed director of The Diving Bell and the Butterfly and Basquiat, stars Frieda Pinto (of Slumdog Millionaire fame). View the trailer here.

A tie-in edition of the novel that inspired the film, Miral (9780143116196 / Penguin / October 26), is slated to appear next month.

Miral is the visceral, first-person diary of a young girl growing up in East Jerusalem as she confronts the effects of occupation and war in every corner of her life.

The eye-popping and inventive book, developed with the input of Weiner, AMC, and Lionsgate, is inspired by the artistic styles that defined 1960s advertising, which are prominent on the TV series. Moe explores such topics as office culture, including secretary etiquette and hangover workarounds; the cocktail craze, with Sally Draper's cocktail menu; pastimes and fads, such as Pete and Trudy's dance lessons and Bert Cooper's art; boardroom and bedroom shenanigans; the burgeoning suburban lifestyle; and fabulous fashion, including hairstyle how-tos and bonus paper dolls of Joan Holloway.

Mad Men was the winner of the 2010 Emmy for Outstanding Drama Series and is currently in its fourth hit season.

Read an interview with the author here.

The idea to create an album that combines Folds' unique songwriting abilities with Hornby's insightful prose was conceived during a dinner conversation between the two friends one night in 2009. After that, Hornby began regularly emailing lyrics to Folds, who then turned them into Lonely Avenue's twelve musical short stories.

Hornby's most recent novel Juliet, Naked is out in trade paperback this week, and Nonesuch Records will release Lonely Avenue on September 28th. Nick and Ben will appear together next month at several events in New York and Washington, D.C., and the duo have been interviewed by NPR's Morning Edition, Entertainment Weekly, New York Magazine, Billboard, and The Atlantic Monthly.

Read an excerpt from Juliet, Naked.

The following radio stations will be doing on-air giveaways of the book:

• 99.9 FM's Virgin Breakfast Show, Toronto
• 98.5's Virgin Morning Show, Calgary
• 95.5 FM's Morning Show, Belleville, Ontario
• 570 AM, Kitchener, Ontario
• Q92, Timmins, Ontario
• CHAT-FM, Redcliff, Alberta
• Lite 96, Calgary

Justin Bieber, a native of Stratford, Ontario, is a global singing sensation and teen heartthrob whose debut single "One Time" was released in 2009 and went into the top 30 in 10 countries.

It all started when Justin's mom posted videos on YouTube of her 13-year-old boy singing cover songs. Hits on the site started building almost immediately, and it wasn't long before he had fans of all ages, all over the world. When, in 2008, music-industry professional Scooter Braun became his manager, this young star was on his way.

• Zero History by William Gibson (9780399156823 / Putnam / September 7))
• Before You Suffocate Your Own Fool Self by Danielle Evans (9781594487699 / Riverhead / September 28)
• How To Read The Air by Dinaw Mengestu (9781594487705 / Riverhead / October 19)
• Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert, trans. Lydia Davis (9780670022076 / Viking / September 28)
• The Petting Zoo by Jim Carroll (9780670022182 / Viking / November 9)

In addition, Where Good Ideas Come From: the Natural History of Innovation by Steven Johnson (9781594487712 / Riverhead / October 5) and Washington: A Life by Ron Chernow (9781594202667 / The Penguin Press / October 5) were also included in the extended list for October releases.

See the full list here.

Watch this video where William Gibson explains what Zero History is about.

Explore the reading group guide to How to Read the Air.

At the core of its success is the fist-pumping, girl-chasing, hair-gel-applying, tanning-bed-frequenting mega-breakout star Mike "The Situation" Sorrentino.

In Here's the Situation (9781592406425 / Gotham / November 2), Sorrentino lays out the tenets of "guido"-dom for anyone who wants to live (or mock) the Jersey Shore lifestyle.

Sorrentino will be making national American TV and radio appearances at the time of publication, and national American magazine features and interviews are expected. The book deal was reported widely on such websites as CBC.ca and MTV.ca.

Zero History is the third book in a trilogy that includes Spook Country (9780425221419 / Berkley) and Pattern Recognition (9780425192931 / Berkley), and features the return of such memorable characters as Hollis Henry and Milgrim.

William Gibson is scheduled to tour the following Canadian cities this October:

• October 13: WordFest—University of Calgary
• October 21–22: Vancouver International Writer's Festival
• October 24: Ottawa International Writer's Festival
• October 26–27: International Festival of Authors, Toronto
• October 29: Drawn & Quarterly, Montreal
• October 31: Paragraphe Books & Breakfast, Montreal
• November 1: Bolen Books, Victoria

"The clash of ... different viewpoints results in a true and authentic-feeling vision of the here and now. Gibson's writing is richly textured, dense with information but never intrusively so."
—Quill & Quire

White said, "Much as I love what I do for a living in show business, I love writing even more—so I am thrilled to be working on not only one new book but two of them."

The first book, Listen Up!, to be published in hardcover in spring 2011, will draw upon life lessons learned during White's incredibly varied, decades-long career in Hollywood, with an emphasis on the extraordinary past 15 years. With her unique brand of irreverent wit and wisdom, she will offer her observations on a wide range of topics, including television, aging, life, love, sex, and celebrity, as well as her recent resurgence, including her headline-making turn as the guest host of Saturday Night Live.

The second book, The Zoo and I: Betty and Her Friends, to be published in hardcover in 2012, will be filled with stories and photographs that capture the daily life of her animal friends at the zoo. White is a long-time member of the board of the Los Angeles Zoo, and throughout her life she has been a passionate supporter of animal health and welfare.

The announcement was reported by top Canadian media such as CTV National News, the Canadian Press, the Toronto Star, The Globe and Mail, CBC.ca, and Sun Media, and by dozens of community papers across the country.

Mara bested some of Hollywood's best-known young actresses to win the role of Lisbeth Salander in the upcoming Hollywood film adaptation of Steig Larsson's The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo.

The film, due in theaters in 2011, will also star Daniel Craig and is to be directed by David Fincher.

Logue, a commoner and an Australian to boot—dubbed "the quack who saved a king"—single-handedly turned the nervous, tongue-tied Duke of York into the man who became king. Had Logue not saved Bertie (as George VI was always known) from his debilitating stammer and pathological nervousness in front of a crowd or microphone, then it is almost certain that the House of Windsor would have collapsed.

The King's Speech is also the inspiration behind a new major motion picture starring Colin Firth, Geoffrey Rush, and Helena Bonham Carter. The film will premiere, with gala positioning, at the Toronto International Film Festival in September, and it is scheduled to be released as a major feature film across Canada on December 10.

"Two of the hottest buzz movies getting their premieres at the festival will be The King's Speech and Miral ... serious contenders for awards season honours. There's little doubt that Harvey Weinstein ... will be in full campaign mode for both."
—Toronto Star

International superstar Ricky Martin, who has sold more than 60 million albums worldwide, opens up for the first time about memories of his early childhood, experiences in the famed boy band Menudo, struggles with his identity during the Livin' la Vida Loca phenomenon, reflections on coming to terms with his sexuality, relationships that allowed him to embrace love, and life-changing decisions such as devoting himself to helping children around the world and becoming a father.

The publication of Me was announced in USA Today on August 19. A full-hour appearance on The Oprah Winfrey Show has already been confirmed for the on-sale date, and additional national television interviews are also planned.

The Gryphon Project has already been named an Honour Book for the 2010 CLA Young Adult Book Award. And on Saturday, April 24, at the Lieutenant Governor's BC Book Prizes Gala, The Gryphon Project won the Sheila A. Egoff Children's Literature Prize, beating out titles by Sylvia Olsen, Robin Stevenson, Kristin Butcher, and Rachelle Delaney.

Victoria's Deborah Willis read from her Governor General Literary Award nominated short story collection at the IFOA on October 26.  Willis closed the evening, reading both the father and daughter parts from the short story The Weather, and the power of her sharp prose shone through every word.  A portion of her reading aired on CBC's As It Happens on October 28, and you can listen to the full reading on the Globe and Mail's online books section.

Booklist has released their top ten first novels list, which includes the critically-acclaimed Under This Unbroken Sky by Shandi Mitchell (9780670068081 / Viking Canada). Reviewer Brad Hooper writes "The author's screenwriting skills serve her well in this remarkable portrait of a Ukrainian farming family in Alberta during the late 1930's."

Toronto, October 13, 2009 – Penguin Group (Canada) announced today it will publish GREAT FOOD AT HOME by celebrity ;chef, restaurateur, and Food Network TV Host of The Heat, Mark McEwan.

The book was acquired by Andrea Magyar, Managing Director at Penguin, who said: "Penguin Group (Canada) is absolutely thrilled to be publishing Mark McEwan's cookbook. ;Mark is one of ;the best chefs in Canada ;and GREAT FOOD AT HOME will definitely be a must-have for all our kitchens."

The news was announced October 6th at a press conference at the Four Seasons Hotel in Toronto. The five finalists were selected by an esteemed jury panel made up of celebrated American novelist and short story writer Russell Banks, acclaimed UK author and journalist Victoria Glendinning, and distinguished professor and award–winning author Alistair MacLeod. The shortlist was chosen from 96 books submitted for consideration.