Words Jackie LaPlante
Photos Tanner’s Books
Apple in China
Patrick McGee
In an eye-opening account of how China became Apple’s manufacturing base, McGee presents well-researched reasons why Apple is effectively locked into keeping the bulk of its production in China. Through interviews with Apple associates and suppliers, McGee follows Apple as it is lured to China by low running costs and cheap labour, inadvertently sharing its intellectual property by employing local workers who eventually founded the Chinese companies that became Apple’s chief rivals.
A Steady Brightness of Being: Truths, Wisdom and Love
from Celebrated Indigenous Voices
Sara Sinclair and Stephanie Sinclair
This collection of letters, written to ancestors, future generations and ourselves, addresses complex questions about how to modernize our understanding of Indigeneity. Twenty-five renowned Indigenous personalities, ranging from novelists Katherena Vermette and Waubgeshig Rice to journalist Jesse Wente and Manitoba Premier Wab Kinew, draw on their own wisdom and understanding to look at the history that has brought this conversation to the forefront, empowering readers to question what they know and to consider our shared futures.
A Marriage at Sea: A True Story of Love, Obsession and Shipwreck
Sophie Elmhurst
In the 1960s’ spirit of idealistically getting away from it all, a couple decides to sail from England to New Zealand. Practical and ambitious Maralyn Bailey and her awkward, dreamer husband, Maurice, are at sea for nearly a year when a whale damages their boat and they spend several months floating at sea before being rescued. British journalist Sophie Elmhurst’s compelling account is a tale of survival of both the couple and their sorely tested marriage.
Our Evenings
Alan Hollinghurst
Past Booker Prize winner Alan Hollinghurst fondly fictionalizes his experiences of England from the 1960s until mid-Pandemic through the reminiscences of his middle-aged protagonist, a biracial gay actor, the son of a single working mother, who earns a scholarship that sees him at school with the children of English “Society.” Experiencing racial and class bias alongside personal and social success, Hollinghurst is quietly critical of some of his beloved country’s habits, yet beguiling in describing its charms.
The Homemade God
Rachel Joyce
Four adult children travel to Italy to take care of matters pertaining to the death of their artist father. He had recently married a beautiful artist 50 years his junior and had indicated he would soon complete the masterpiece of his career. Yet, there is no masterpiece and no will, only questions about his new wife’s identity. As the siblings revisit their past and face their father’s legacy, they explore the dynamics of family relationships.
The Greatest Possible Good
Ben Brooks
Members of the slightly chaotic Candlewick family are leading what they feel are good lives, when the family patriarch disappears. When he returns, having ingested drugs confiscated from his son and read a book lent by his altruistic daughter, they find he has inexplicably donated much of the family’s wealth to charitable organizations. A wry, amusing yet thoughtful exploration of the reactions of each family member raises discussion of how best we can do good.
Tilt
Emma Pattee
When a major quake hits the Pacific Northwest, a pregnant woman must save herself and her unborn child. As she walks through the devastated city, offering help and being offered kindness in return, the mother-to-be reflects, with honesty and humour, on her relationship with the father of her child and the revised future she imagines for her baby. The earthquake’s terrifying aftermath is ever-present but is balanced by Pattee’s exploration of finding strength during a crisis.
