Jane Urquhart, LL.D is a Canadian novelist and poet born in Geraldton, Ontario. She is the internationally acclaimed author of seven award-winning novels, three books of poetry and numerous short stories. As a novelist, Urquhart is well known for her evocative style which blends history with the present day. Her first novel, The Whirlpool, gained her international recognition when she became the first Canadian to win France's prestigious Prix du Meilleur Livre Etranger. Her subsequent novels were even more successful. Away, published in 1993, won the Trillium Award and was a national bestseller. In 1997, her fourth novel, The Underpainter, won the Governor General's Literary Award.
Carol Ann Shields, was an American-born Canadian novelist and short story writer. She is best known for her 1993 novel The Stone Diaries, which won the U.S. Pulitzer Prize for Fiction as well as the Governor General's Award in Canada.
Outlander is a historical fantasy novel by Diana Gabaldon first published in 1991. Initially set around the time of the Second World War, it focuses on nurse Claire Beauchamp, who travels through time to 18th-century Scotland, where she finds adventure and romance with the dashing Jamie Fraser. It is the first novel in the Outlander series, with ten books planned. The television adaptation of the series premiered on Starz in the US on August 9, 2014.
The Spoils of Poynton is a novel by Henry James, first published under the title The Old Things as a serial in The Atlantic Monthly in 1896 and then as a book in 1897. This novel traces the shifting relations among three people and a magnificent collection of art, decorative arts, and furniture arrayed like jewels in a country house called Poynton. Mrs. Gereth, a widow of impeccable taste and iron will, formed the collection over decades only to have it torn away from her when her son Owen decides to marry a frivolous woman. The story is largely told from the viewpoint of Fleda Vetch, a keenly intelligent young woman of straitened circumstances who, shortly after becoming the intimate friend and companion of Mrs. Gereth, falls in love with Owen. Sympathetic to Mrs. Gereth's anguish over losing the fine things she patiently collected, Fleda shuttles between the estranged mother and son, becoming ever more involved in their affairs.
James Cañón is a Colombian-American writer. He's the author of the award-winning Tales from the Town of Widows. Cañón was born and raised in Ibagué, Colombia. He writes fiction primarily, though he has also written essays. His short stories and essays have been published in numerous magazines in the U.S., Belgium and France. He holds an MFA in creative writing from Columbia University.
The Prix du Meilleur Livre Étranger is a French literary prize created in 1948. It is awarded yearly in two categories: Novel and Essay for books translated into French.
Tales from the Town of Widows is a 2007 lyrical novel written by Colombian-born author James Cañón. It tells the story of Mariquita, a mountain village that is forever altered the day a band of communist guerrillas forcibly recruits all but three of its men. Left to fend for themselves with an ethically challenged priest, a transvestite and a withdrawn gay man, the virtual widows slowly emerge from their supporting roles as wives and daughters to become unwitting founders of a remarkable new society: an all-female utopia far greater than any revolutionary's imagined ideal society. Interspersed with the central narrative are blunt and brutal first-person accounts that serve as reports on the men. They are all fighting, displaced, or brutally murdered, including left-wing rebels, right-wing paramilitary soldiers, Colombian national army soldiers and the civilians that are caught between all these forces. These are designed to remind the readers of the very unmagical reality the women are rejecting.
The Gathering Storm is a fantasy novel by American writers Robert Jordan and Brandon Sanderson, the twelfth book in the series The Wheel of Time. It was incomplete when Jordan died on September 16, 2007, from cardiac amyloidosis. His widow Harriet McDougal and his publisher Tom Doherty chose Sanderson to continue the book.
Susanna Mary Clarke is an English author known for her debut novel Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell (2004), a Hugo Award-winning alternative history. Clarke began Jonathan Strange in 1993 and worked on it during her spare time. For the next decade, she published short stories from the Strange universe, but it was not until 2003 that Bloomsbury bought her manuscript and began work on its publication. The novel became a best-seller.
Tessa Dare is a New York Times and USA Today bestselling American historical romance novelist. She has authored fifteen novels and novellas and created four different series. In 2012, she won the prestigious Romance Writers of America RITA award for Best Regency Historical Romance for her book A Night to Surrender.
Affliction is a 2013 urban fantasy novel by American writer Laurell K. Hamilton, the 22nd book in the Anita Blake: Vampire Hunter series. The novel follows Anita Blake and her various lovers as she travels to Colorado and works to uncover a series of murders and infections involving flesh-eating zombies.
The Underpainter is a novel by Jane Urquhart that won the 1997 Governor General's Award for English-language fiction, and in the same year was a finalist for the Rogers Writers' Trust Fiction Prize.
Gentleman Jole and the Red Queen is a science fiction novel by American writer Lois McMaster Bujold. It is an installment in Bujold's Vorkosigan Saga. Bujold has described it as "not a war story. It is about grownups."
Kim Fu is a Canadian-born writer, living in Seattle, Washington. She was born in Vancouver, British Columbia to immigrant parents from Hong Kong, Fu studied creative writing at the University of British Columbia.
The Secrets of Midwives is a fiction novel written by Sally Hepworth. Set in New England, the novel is about three generations of midwives and secrets within the family. The novel was published by St. Martin's Press in 2015.
Patternmaster (1976) is a science fiction novel by American author Octavia E. Butler. Patternmaster, the first book to be published but the last in the series' internal chronology, depicts a distant future where the human race has been sharply divided into the dominant Patternists, their enemies the "diseased" and animalistic Clayarks, and the enslaved human mutes. The Patternists, bred for intelligence and psychic abilities, are networked telepaths. They are ruled by the most powerful telepath, known as the Patternmaster. Patternmaster tells the coming-of-age story of Teray, a young Patternist who learns he is a son of the Patternmaster. Teray fights for position within Patternist society and eventually for the role of Patternmaster.
Elizabeth Edmondson, also known under the names Elizabeth Aston and Elizabeth Pewsey, was an English author who wrote primarily in the mystery, historical, and contemporary fiction genres. She studied Jane Austen while a student at St Hilda's College, Oxford, and many of her published stories were adaptations and sequels of Austen's works, beginning with Mr. Darcy's Daughters in 2003. Edmondson also founded a youth holiday orchestra to provide musical opportunities for local young people in the York area, an organisation that has operated since 1992. Her son, Anselm Audley, is a fantasy author.
Mrs. Ted Bliss is a 1995 novel by American author Stanley Elkin, published by Hyperion Books. It concerns the last eventful years in the life of an old widow. Elkin won the 1995 National Book Critics Circle Award in the fiction category for this work.
Jane Whitefield is a crime and mystery novel series written by Thomas Perry. The series features Jane Whitefield, a Native American (Seneca) who has made a career out of helping people disappear. The series is usually narrated in third-person perspective. Perry weaves Native American history, stories, theology, and cultural practices into each novel.
Bad Ronald is a 1973 horror novel by Jack Vance first published by Ballantine Books. It was adapted into a made-for-television thriller, also called Bad Ronald, in 1974, as well as a French production, Méchant garçon, in 1992.
