Margaret Atwood is so in tune with scientific and environmental issues she manages to write futuristic books that could be reality tomorrow. Expanding on her world created in "Oryx and Crake', she tells a parallel story of the people left in the outside world after the "waterless flood". Rather than conveying a sense of hopelessness and despair in this distopia, her characters are interesting, hopeful and even amusing at times. Atwood is an amazing author.

A fun, fast-paced mystery set in a small mountain town in British Columbia. Smith and Winters, the police team who are the mainstays on the case, both come with backgrounds and baggage that makes us want to know more about their histories, which we hope the author will provide through additional books in the series. Written with a great sense of place and character development.

Chris Bohjalian has certainly tackled a myriad of subjects: midwives and the stigma of birth defects in the early 60s, trans-gendered relationships in the present day and even revisiting the Great Gatsby. In his latest novel we are drawn into the end of World War II as Germany is collapsing. As usual, his characters are fascinating, multi-dimensional people we want to know more about. Getting the story from the German perspective as the family flees their homeland we gain an appreciation of what the ordinary German population was living through at the time. The parallel story of the Jewish women having to march through the countryside from the concentration camp gives us an appalling, clear view of the tragedies of war - especially this one. Having also recently read "The True Story of Hansel and Gretel" by Louise Murphy, I find I want to learn more about this devastating period in our history.

This book is an intriguing, extremely fast-paced literate psychological mystery. The protagonist is a fascinating character, a circus clown with an extremely acute sense of hearing as well as an unusual talent for sensing each person's musical key which gives him insight into their character and current state of mind. Although the book is confusing at the outset, it very quickly grabs you with short chapters and lots of action. I felt I was viewing a Cirque du Soleil production where there is a multitude of things happening that are all very interesting but need to be observed for a while before a connection and continuity can be established between the events.