Hemingway’s time in Toronto unpacked in new novel

The late iconic American author Ernest Hemingway is best known for his unadorned, vivid prose and its impact on the writing style of the 20th century, a literary feat which won him the Nobel Prize in 1954. Since then, certain aspects of Hemingway’s famed life (his four marriages and time spent abroad in Paris, Africa and Cuba) have served as creative fodder for novels by a number of fiction writers.

The most recent writer among them is Toronto author Marianne K. Miller. In fact, her engaging and suspenseful debut historical novel sheds light on a pivotal time in Hemingway’s life that is often overlooked — his stint as a reporter for the Toronto Daily Star.

Miller, a member of the Hemingway Society, completed a creative writing program at the University of Toronto.

Set in Ontario, New York and several midwestern states, the novel occurs between September and December of 1923. At the outset, Hemingway is 24 years old; he and his pregnant wife Hadley have just moved to Toronto from Paris. He takes the newspaper job to earn money for a year to support them, hoping to write fiction at night, but the job saps all his energy.

Trio’s quest a rewarding, charming look at loss, self-acceptance and helping others

A Witch’s Guide to Burning is the third book by Canadian-born cartoonist Aminder Dhaliwal. Like its graphic novel predecessors (the eye-opening Cyclopedia Exotica and Ignatz-winning Woman World), this book began as a comic on Instagram, but instead of being speculative or science fiction, it’s firmly rooted in the fantasy genre.

The book tells the story of Singe, a witch who has barely survived an attempted burning by the villagers of her hometown after being unable to keep up with their demand for her magic. Semi-conscious and disoriented, she is greeted by the witch-doctor Yew-Veda and her toad companion Bufo Wonder. The enchanting pair then take Singe on a quest to restore her strength and memories.

To the duo’s dismay, Singe blames herself for what has happened, at first wishing to return to the villagers to prove her worth to them again. Here, Dhaliwal crafts a clear, incisive parallel to a lack of work-life balance and the ways in which it contributes to burnout and low self-worth — it is telling, for example, that Singe first mistakes Bufo for a dead toad instead of one who is resting, and that she is often frustrated by Yew-Veda’s slow pace and sometimes imperfect spell-casting.

It’s revealed that the witch-doctor is also in recovery from a burning, during which her personal spellbook was also destroyed. As she uses her magic to help Singe, pages from her destroyed tome of spells are reconstructed for the reader, and it is rewarding to see the two witches’ relationship grow along with Yew-Veda’s rebuilt spellbook.

On the night table: Nahlah Ayed

Nahlah Ayed

Author, The War We Won Apart

The book I’m reading right now is by Deborah Cohen, called Last Call at the Hotel Imperial: The Reporters Who Took On a World at War. It’s a really great story of journalists making a difference, really being in touch with what was happening behind the scenes. There was a lot of digging, directly contacting the players in the world and being able to get things as they happened. It’s a very dramatic telling of what these journalists did during the Second World War.

Art expert digs up clues about occult painter

Novelist Sarah Henstra’s follow-up to her Governor General’s award-winning novel The Red Word sees her return to the shadowy politics of academic life while also weaving in the occult and surrealist painting.

Theresa Bateman is an up-and-coming expert in Surrealist art, though she has only managed to secure a precarious position as a sessional instructor; she is strongly affiliated with Dr. Russell Horber, who is a major figure in the field.

Both are most interested in the figure of Lark Ringold, a painter who was affiliated with a mysterious English cult and was killed in a fire in the late 1930s. Part of his allure, Ringold is rumored to have painted a deck of tarot cards, though the current scholarship asserts that the paintings, if they even exist, would have to have been created after his death.

Despite Horber’s elevated status as a Ringold “expert,” it’s Theresa who receives a letter containing a single card from the supposed Ringold tarot and asking that she come to England to verify that the rest of the deck’s images is indeed the work of Ringold.

Stars align for slaying at astrological retreat in debut thriller

Is human experience the result of chance, fate, or free will? Astrology tries to point toward celestial influences on our lives. Opinions, and results, vary.

Whether New York lawyer and writer Carinn Jade’s use of astrology is sincere or a kind of MacGuffin, a Holy Grail or Golden Fleece will depend on the reader. Belief in the influence of the stars is not necessary to appreciate this slowly developing, and finally emotionally explosive, first novel.

Besides being a pun on “house” as an astrological category, the title refers to the novel’s setting, the Stars Harbor Astrological Retreat. The retreat schedule follows a teaser opening description of the climactic scene: “The chaos of the storm cannot outpace the fury convening at this spot. Here, the people will do more damage than the weather… The moment that drove one of them to murder.”

Was murder fated, or arranged? What, exactly, constitutes murder?

Windy City underworld monstrously wicked

In her latest fantasy novella, Chicago-based writer Veronica Roth imagines a rich underworld in the Windy City where monsters from Polish folklore feed on the negative emotions of the humans that surround them.

She even taps into the city’s mafia history for inspiration, as three family-like groups control their own rackets — except instead of liquor, drugs and gambling, these rackets are fear, pain and sorrow.

The story follows Dymitr, a young man from a family of creature-hunting knights. He is on a mission to find Baba Jaga, a famous witch of Eastern European folklore.

More widely referred to “Baba Yaga,” the villain is an old witch known for kidnapping and eating children and has crossed several times into pop culture (it’s even a nickname given to Keanu Reeves’ character in the John Wick movies).

Newlywed suspects her husband’s a murderer in Swanson’s latest thriller

Librarian Martha begins to get these nasty little niggling suspicions about what her husband Alan — whom she didn’t take much time getting to know before their marriage — could be up to at all his conventions. Could he be (gasp!) a serial killer?

Now that may not be the first thing most spouses would usually suspect, nor may it be the first untoward thought to occur to book clubbers about how people away from home on their own can be naughty.

Alan seems to be faithful; he sells novelty educational materials to teachers’ math, science and English lit conferences — where, we all know, it’s all business all the time, and after hours it’s all collaboration and sharing best practices and working well with others.

Martha’s Spidey-sense tingles, and the next thing you know she’s scouring internet sources throughout the northeastern U.S., looking for suspicious deaths and ghastly assaults that match up with where Alan has been and when.

Memoir’s musings on life, nature a trip

In his latest work, 78-year-old author Tom Wayman combines memoir with unrestrained praise for the natural world as he continues a lifelong quest to reach some clarity regarding the purpose of life.

Born in Ontario, Wayman is a longtime B.C. resident and recipient of the province’s prestigious George Woodcock Lifetime Achievement Award, and a plaque on Vancouver’s Commercial Drive honours his work. But he continues to eschew the limelight and urban bustle in favour of a more backwoods lifestyle.

Prone to sparse but profound expression, Wayman’s writing often echoes his generation’s poets/performers like Joni Mitchell and Bob Dylan, whose melodic and haunting lyrics depicted life’s “carousel of time” and humanity’s search for answers “blowin’ in the wind.”

Similar and often ethereal themes can be found throughout Wayman’s literary legacy spanning several decades that includes more than 20 poetry collections, numerous critical and cultural essays, three books of short fiction and a 2009 novel, Woodstock Rising. He has also edited several poetry anthologies.

Salman Rushdie’s alleged assailant won’t see author’s private notes before trial

MAYVILLE, N.Y. (AP) — Author Salman Rushdie does not have to turn over private notes about his stabbing to the man charged with attacking him, a judge ruled Thursday, rejecting the alleged assailant’s contention that he is entitled to the material as he prepares for trial. Hadi Matar’s lawyers in February subpoenaed Rushdie and publisher Penguin Random House for all source material related to Rushdie’s recently published memoir: “Knife: Meditations After an Attempted Murder,” which details the 2022 attack at the Chautauqua Institution. Public Defender Nathaniel Barone said the material he sought contained information not available anywhere else. “You could […]

Second author withdraws from Scotiabank Giller Prize jury over bank’s ties to Israel

TORONTO – A second author has stepped down from this year’s Scotiabank Giller Prize jury over the organization’s refusal to cut ties with its lead sponsor. Indian novelist Megha Majumdar has joined Ethiopian American author Dinaw Mengestu in resigning from the panel that awards the $100,000 prize. With both international jurors having dropped out, only the three Canadian judges remain: authors Noah Richler and Kevin Chong and singer-songwriter Molly Johnson. A protester films herself as she interrupts the Scotiabank Giller Prize in Toronto, on Monday, November 13, 2023. A second author has stepped down from this year's Scotiabank Giller Prize […]

Indigo to remove portraits of Alice Munro from stores; keep books on shelves

TORONTO - Canada's biggest bookseller will remove enlarged photos of Alice Munro from stores, but bookstores large and small say they plan to keep her published works on the shelves.

A spokeswoman for Indigo said the company supports Munro's daughter Andrea Skinner, who published an essay revealing that she had been sexually abused by her stepfather, and her mother did not act.

"Alice Munro’s books are not in violation of our assortment policy, and we will continue to carry her books," Madison Downey said in an email. "Images of Alice Munro appear in some of our stores, and we have determined that it is appropriate for us to remove these."

Indigo's policy is to "carry all books in print" unless experts have declared that a book advocates for "eliminating an entire group in society," contains instructions for making weapons of mass destruction, or is child pornography.

Educators wonder how to teach the writings of Alice Munro in wake of daughter’s revelations

NEW YORK (AP) — For decades, Robert Lecker has read, taught and written about Alice Munro, the Nobel laureate from Canada renowned for her short stories. A professor of English at McGill University in Montreal, and author of numerous critical studies of Canadian fiction, he has thought of Munro as the “jewel” in the crown of her country's literature and source of some of the richest material for classroom discussion.

But since learning that Munro declined to leave her husband after he had sexually assaulted and harassed her daughter, Lecker now wonders how to teach her work, or if he should even try.

“I had decided to teach a graduate course on Munro in the winter of 2025,” Lecker says. “Now I have serious questions whether I feel ethically capable of offering that course.”

Andrea Robin Skinner, daughter of Munro and James Munro, wrote in the Toronto Star earlier this month that she had been assaulted at age 9 by Munro’s second husband, Gerard Fremlin. She alleged that he continued to harass and abuse her for the next few years, losing interest when she reached her teens. In her 20s, she told her mother about Fremlin’s abuse. But Munro, after briefly leaving Fremlin, returned and remained with him until his death in 2013. She would explain to Skinner that she “loved him too much” to remain apart.