Canada Day Books

This book is amazing. The writing is different from anything else out there. The plot is excellent, the dialogue is clever and charming and frequently funny, the characters complex. I liked it better than the Fiend in Human. Gray is a truly unusual talent who hopefully will write many more books of this quality.

It's a sad comment on our times that even thrillers centering around serial killers don't give us a chill anymore. So to evoke the slightest ghost of a horrifed shudder, more and more authors are turning to crimes against children - where they will turn when even these fail to appall us? I gave Gray's first Whitty novel, The Fiend in Human, five stars and likened it to a cross between Dickens and Spillane. This sequel is still plenty good, but it didn't have quite as much bite. The previous book's most vivid parts lay in its descriptions of one of 1852 London's most formidable slums. It's difficult to elicit as much color from a Victorian nobleman's country estate, no matter how depraved its residents may be, as this tale tries to do. The Lewis Carroll and "Alice" analogy here is appealing. Too, Gray shows the same solid command of Victorian diction and cadences of speech (which can be so awful when other authors do them badly). Highly recommended.

Edmund Whitty, A London newspaper correspondent who can usually be counted upon for crisp and lurid copy, has fallen on lean times. After his triumphant expose of a notorious serial killer, he has inexplicably lost his knack for sensational reporting. Broke and desperate, he seizes upon a generous offer from a mysterious American to discredit a quack psychic. But how, he ends up wondering uneasily, does the psychic know so much about a scandal involving Whitty's late brother?

When the psychic is brutally murdered, Whitty finds himself accused of the crime and thrown into Milbank prison, the most bizarre institution of its kind in England. Help comes unexpectedly from "the Captain," a gangster not known for charity work. To save his own skin, Whitty must find the men responsible for the disappearance of the Capatin's young niece, Eliza.

Whitty's search takes him to Oxford, where he meets the brillant and eccentric Reverend William Boltbyn, a renowned children's author who delights in playing croquet, devising elaborate stories, and taking artistic photographs of little girls. There he uncovers a looking-glass world, the dark side of Victoriana, and the murder of innocence.

John MacLachlan Gray, who evoked "the mean streets and byways of 1852 London with a skill worthy of Dickens"[Publisher's Weekly] in The Fiend in Human, spins an even more irresistible tale of dark secrets behind the facade of Victorian respectability.

If the highest praise you can give a book is that it leaves you wanting to read more, then White Stone Day deserves top accolades. It has just about everything you need in a novel: a gripping plot, a strong sense of time and place that nonetheless doesn't overwhelm the proceedings, a sure narrative drive, a diverse and well-drawn supporting cast of characters, and perhaps most important, an intriguing and entertaining protagonist. White Stone Day would have been a very good book with any other main character; with cynical, dissolute, at times hapless Edmund Whitty as the protagonist, it's a great book--perhaps even more satisfying than The Fiend in Human, to which this book is a sequel.

Gray plots his second excellent Victorian literary thriller around two activities that were all the rage in mid-19th century England: photography and spiritualism.

Edmund Whitty, the earthy London newspaper writer and man of excess, first seen in "The Fiend in Human," has fallen on hard times. All his best ideas are being uncannily scooped by a rival correspondent and he's in "fearsome debt" to the Captain, a London crime boss, "the result of a wager in the sport of ratting, with compound interest growing like a tumour and default a mathematical certainty."

Approached by an American Pinkerton agent to expose a fraudulent psychic, Whitty seizes the opportunity, but the séance does not go according to plan. His brother David, who died in a rowing accident at Oxford, appears, plaintively proclaiming, "I did not live as you think I lived! I did not die as you think I died!"

Meanwhile, in Oxfordshire, Rev. William L. Boltbyn, based loosely on Lewis Carroll, is singularly enchanted by the Lambert sisters, particularly Emma, who is on the cusp of womanhood, a fact Boltbyn bitterly bemoans. He whiles away hours telling the girls tales and taking pictures of them in various romantic and classical poses, some suggestive.

Before it's over Whitty will be accused of murder and cast into the bowels of Millbank prison, only to acquire a new commission - the breaking of a child pornography ring which may involve both his dead brother and the abducted young sister of the distraught Captain, a girl bearing a strong resemblance to Emma Lambert.

Other viewpoints include a comically psychopathic pair of thugs for hire and the daring, foolhardy Lambert sisters keen on ferreting out the sinister secrets of the local Duke. Steeped in Victorian sensibilities of romance, propriety and the gulf between the classes, redolent with London's stewpots and taverns and bustling streets, Gray's witty, suspenseful story builds to a tense and satisfying climax.

--Portsmouth Herald

I find this book to be really interesting. What makes it the most interesting is that the person on the front cover of this book is me. I found this out by just happening to be in a book store and looking at hockey books. I looked under the Tampa Bay Lightning and their was my picture with my name by it. I really made me mad. No one told me they were going to put my picture in a book or my name. I don't even have a book for myself. I wish they still made them so I could have one. I feel they should have sent me a book or at least told me I was on the cover and my name was inside the book. Don't you think.

The photos and the stories in this book are amazing. So much more goes on in the NHL then I ever realized. This book is a great read if you're a Hockey fan.

This book has the most spectacular photographs of the NHL that have ever been amassed. The book not only captures the energy of the game that is played on the ice, but also the drama that occurs behind the scenes. Experience firsthand how much preperation goes on as a hockey team of 25 players plays two games on back to back nights in cities that are hundreds of miles apart. If you ever wanted to lace up the skates and live the life of an NHL hockey player for a day, this is the book you MUST EXPERIENCE

This is a neat coffee table book for hockey fans. Because it's compiled under the supervision of the NHL, it isn't going to reveal anything that Gary Bettman doesn't want you to know. I did find some interesting content in it, though. It's loaded with some great photos and short essays on the daily doings of the NHL as they happened on March 23, 1996. What I mainly liked about it was that it didn't just stick with a few teams, but almost all of them appear in one part, or another. It also talks about travel, workouts, pre-game prep (including what equipment crew are doing when ESPN and Fox Sports Net aren't around), ice rink conversion, press, fans, games, coaches, the dressing room, hotels, broadcasters, Gretzky, Keenan, St. Michael's, kids, arena crews, and trainers. It doesn't give the whole picture on everything, but it's an adequate scratch at the surface.

I have been trying to find this book for sale for about a year without any luck.Maybe this note will bring this book to my possession.I am just your average Joe looking for a book that has my picture in it next to the Stanley Cup.I would love to purchase this book if anybody has it.

This is not a book I would have chosen for myself. However, I just finished reading it for my bookclub and I must admit.....I couldn't put it down. I had borrowed it from my local library and I have just purchased it.....if you need to remember innocence and what it was like to be a child and carefree.....this is a must read.

An absolutely refreshing and captivating read that mere words cannot describe.

I can but echo the words of the gentleman who wrote the first review for this book. As a 41 year old business owner living and working in downtown Toronto, I rarely get moved by fairy tales. Kingfisher Days, is much more than that.

I too listened with great interest to the CBC's captivating production where the author warmly and intelligently read this wonderful book. I have attended a number of Soulpepper productions (the theatre company that she and her husband started), it is a soul expanding experience to see one of their plays.

The best part of being Canadian? Small things. Like the CBC's 'sometimes' greatness in bringing books like this to an audience starved for art that touches your soul. Like the Soulpepper theatre company, who does the same much more consistently. And like Susan Coyne, who if she had been raised somewhere else in the world, may never have written this wonderful book.

When I was young and we were new in this country, I sometimes wished that my parents and I would have emigrated to New York or Paris or some other 'exciting' place instead of Toronto. Reading Kingfisher Days, I am glad they did not.

I haven't read the book yet, but I've been listening to it being read by Susan Coyne herself on the CBC. Normally I have no time for fairy stories, Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings etc., which I suppose makes me a grumpy old man, but I was totally entranced by the CBC production. Don't you love people who review a book without reading it! I would normally never do that but I couldn't resist. The reading on the air was more than wonderful, enough so that even though I am a rock hard cynic and a scientist I was totally captivated.

Jack Bennett's journey to all of Canada's Highpoints makes for great adventure reading. If you're excited about what you've just read he has the beta about how to get you to each of the these places (bring your own mosquito netting). The book is an easy read, has outstanding photographs and maps, route diagrams and profiles of the actual climbing routes. The only thing missing from this book is the discomfort of wet feet and the itch of bug bites. A must adventure read. Go Jack!

Great Book! I've always thought about doing some kind of project like Bennett's here in the states. His honest (and sometimes very dramatic) recounting of his climbs and the straightforward, detailed guide section seems to make an accomplishment like his just possible enough for us mere mortals.

As a U.S. highpointer (my number is 14 as of 8/01), I wondered if anyone had tackled the Canadian highpoints yet and once I found Bennett's book, I got my answer.
For any highpointer who does U.S. spots like Iowa's Hawkeye Point or even Utah's King's Peak, the Canadian summits are typical highpointing trips, but to the extreme limit. Bennett gives a good chapter description of each summit attempt and includes pictures to let interested parties know what they are in store for. And frankly, none look to easy.

Among the Canadian highpoint adventures are a world-class mountaineering expedition (Mt. Logan in the Yukon), a 4-wheel mud-bogging drive through the Canadian shield (Saskatchewan), a orienteering nightmare in Nova Scotia, a canoeing portage trip through the backwoods of Ontario, an Arctic adventure at the top of the world (Nunavut) and a technical climbing test in some of the most remote country in North America (Mt. Nirvana in the Northwest Territories).

Bennett does attempt to give the reader some trail maps and directions to each summit but they are a bit confusing and not as precise as the directions in the Winger's U.S. Highpointing Handbook. Then again, Bennett must think no one is crazy enough to try and repeat his feat, especially after reading about his close calls in the book.
I ripped through this book in two days and was begging for more info afterwards. It is a highly addicting read and the reader will start to get the all-to-common 'highpointing itch' about half-way through th book.

A great book, I highly recommend it, and who knows, maybe we will be discussing it atop Mt. Fairweather someday.

Happy highpointing!

SOOOOO glad I purchased this book (and so is my hubby!)

I have read all of Lou Paget's books, and have waited anxiously for this release. As usual, Ms. Paget presents her ideas with taste and tact, combined with her signature sense of humor and savvy. My husband and I can't wait to try each and every one of her ideas....and keep OUR fires burning all year long!

I found this book to be absolutely wonderful. As well as giving an insight and background to the goings on around the time of the Irish potato famine, it also transported me to a village I only had a picture of in my head. Through reading the book, I felt I was in the village and personally knew the charachters. I often cried and rejoiced with them. It was so sad to leave them when I had finished the book, but it wasn't long till I went back and read it again. Elaine Crowley has a fantastic gift of making you feel a part of her book.

Anyone who has any interest at all in the potato famine,or Ireland should read this book. It tells the story of Katie and Jamsie, and allows the reader to understand the pain and suffering of this time.

Bob Patterson's review really captured a lot of what I was feeling. As a former member of the Canadian Army, I was not only able to see in my mind's eye the scenes that Christie was describing, I was able to see many of the soldiers, often because I actually knew those men. The Canadian Army is not big - and the Army of West is probably about 6,000 Regulars and a few more thousand reservists - that's not a very big town, and all of the larger than life characters tend to become known by all - men like Mars Janek, whom I had the honor to serve with back in 1995, and who features prominently in this book as the extraordinary soldier that he is. Canadians really have no idea how lucky they are that these bright young men and women are willing to put their lives on the line in the service of their country.

Christie did a great job with this book, and clearly she wrote it her own way. My only real citicism is that I would have liked her to spend a bit more time of the achievements and field operations, and a little bit less on deaths, but I understand why she went the route that she did.

The Canadian army is very small - many organizations claim to be like a "family" but the Canadian Army is a family. In the larger world there may be 6 degrees of separation but in the Canadian Army there may be only two. So every loss is a wound for all. Every loss is indeed the death of a brother.

This remarkable book is a revelation of what it may mean to be part of a true Band of Brothers - a world where the most senior general lends a master corporal his own wedding ring so that he can ask his girl to marry him - a world where the entire platoon comes to the home of a fallen comrade and spends a week in the community celebrating his life - a world where a 40 plus year old widow enlists so that she can continue to be part of the family - a world where Colonels weep for their men.

The book also causes the reader to think more deeply about war and soldiers. It is politically correct to feel that all war and everything about it is bad. But we discover, that for all its terror and for all the losses, for a soldier war is what he lives for. It is when he also discovers whether he is any good at his life's work. We discover how good our soldiers are. Surprisingly, for we always think the less of ourselves, in Afghanistan, we are considered the heavy weights who punch well above our weight.

We discover that while war exhausts a person more than any other activity, it also makes him more alive.

We discover that PTSD is much more prevalent in peacekeeping than in the kind of situation that we find in Afghanistan. In peacekeeping the kit was awful and the impotence high - imagine simply witnessing atrocity? But in Afghanistan our soldiers can take the initiative and they are very well equipped and have rules of engagement that make sense.

We discover a new kind of woman soldier - who are at home in this strange world, as is of course the "Blatch", and who are no longer seen as odd.

We discover how the families of our soldiers have been integrated into the mission and we see how the worst of all news is given and how the families are supported when what they all fear the most occurs.

This is not the civil service in green that was the sadness of our forces for many years. Implicit throughout the book is that someone really knows that he is doing. I think that someone might be called Rick Hillier.

We discover how great our local field leadership is too which also says something more about General Hillier -

Brig- Genl Dave Fraser to LTC Ian Hope, in radio orders given at 11.30pm on July 17 "You need to recapture Nawa and Garmser by 1600 hours.

Hope to Fraser: "Roger that. Recapture Nawa and Garmser by 1600 hours."

Fraser: "Any questions?"

Hope: "Just one: Where are Nawa and Garmser?'

Not only do we routinely pull off tough missions, but the Cols take all the risks that their men do - they lead by example. They also tend to do the really terrible things like personally extract the burnt and mutilated bodies of their dead so that the buddies in the platoon would not have to remember their friend like that. There is all this bull in the public service about "Servant Leadership". Here you see it for real at all levels from the LTC down to the Master Corporal.

We discover the central frustration of the mission. That we have to go back again and again and take the same ground because the ANP, the police, cannot hold it - we learn how complex this work is.

But most of all, we learn how fortunate we are to have those wonderful people wearing our uniform.

It is a mystery to me how, in a nation, so cut off from the reality of war, that we can once again have the kind of army that we had in 1917. A pathfinder Army.

A small army that can think and adapt. A small army that is lead by men and women of an integrity and skill that put our business and public organizations to shame. A small army largely made up from men and women from small town Canada who have that can do attitude that used to be the hallmark of Canadians.

Who else could tell this story but "Blatch"? A woman who acknowledges that she knows of only two soldiers who swear more than she. A woman who shares the hardships, the joys, the terrors, the losses and the fun. A woman who loves her boys and who is loved back.

She writes with such a love and a passion - I could not put the book down except when my eyes were so full of tears that I could no longer see.

It is exciting, it's very funny, it's very sad. But in the end it is heroic. Not in a little boy's view of heroic but in the most mythic sense of people who live for each other in undertaking a very hard task.

At the end of the book, "Blatch" goes back to see everyone to see how they are.

"Eight months later, Hope (LTC Ian Hope) answers my email form an airport lounge somewhere. I wrote back to tell him of one of the stories - bawdy and funny, loving and sad, always brutally honest - I'd heard from the troops.

You must miss them so xxxxxx much," I said. " I can hardly bear to write about them sometimes. I find them so beautiful."

"You understand what I miss," he wrote back. "I am Odysseus."

This is a wonderful book about wonderful people written by a wonderful person - who has by the way a wonderful dog but that is another story.

On par with Mark Z's other books, particularly Juno. A very, very important addition to any WWII history collection, especially since this subject is overlooked in so many ways. Very refreshing.

It is well known that the invasion at Omaha beach was the worst. What isn't nearly as well known or perhaps appreciated is that the Canadians going ashore at Juno suffered almost as high a percentage of casualties as did the Americans at Omaha (relatively speaking Sword, Gold, and Utah) were pretty mild. Further, the Canadians even reached their assigned targets for D-day in some places (the only ones to do so). The story of the Canadians landing at Juno is told in Mr. Zuehlke's 'Juno Beach' (still available).

'Holding Juno' picks up at midnight, the morning of June 7th where the Germans are massing for an attack to throw the invaders back into the sea, and the Canadians are fighting to work further inland and to consolidate the invasion beaches (at midnight there was still a gap between Juno and Sword).

This book ends on June 12. By then neither the Canadians or any of the other divisions that assaulted the beaches on June 6th were capable of more than holding actions. But by then 326,547 men had landed and the battle to hold the beaches was done.

This book is an important contribution to the story of D-Day.

Through Hollywood and TV, people have become familiar with the western Indian tribes such as the Lakota and Cheyenne. But in the East, the Wabanaki-Abenaki peoples have had a tremendous influence on American history as well.

This Abenaki-English dictionary captures an extremely difficult language and fosters cross-cultural understanding. Although it's a bit awkward to look up specific terms because the Abenaki terms are listed first, not the English ones, this is a valuable treasure to writers, scholars and anyone seeking to gain greater knowledge of the Abenaki people.

This thorough dictionary includes more than 13,000 Abenaki words, including many related word forms illustrating the complexity of Abenaki verbs. There's also a glossary of word roots and sections on pronunciation, orthography, and grammar, as well as some comments on dialects and loanwords. The main drawback to this book is that it is volume 1 of a two-volume set, presenting an Abenaki-English dictionary only. For some reason the second volume, an English-Abenaki dictionary, is not carried by amazon.com, even though it would probably be of more interest to the general readership.

Using the Brookman Stamp Price Guides, along with Scotts USA Specialized, do help a lot in making good auction bids for many of those missing spaces in anyone's album - Scott catalogue values versus Brookman values - the winning bid is always somewhere in between. A must have philatelic reference tool for any serious collector of USA and/or BNA.