Mark Your Calendars (if you have them!)

It's a bit of good news, bad news this morning.

First, the good news. Penguin Canada announced this morning that they will be publishing, through their Hamish Hamilton imprint, A Suitable Girl by Vikram Seth, the sequel to his 1993 bestseller A Suitable Boy.

The bad news? It won't be published until 2013.

Ah well. Isn't anticipation more than half the fun?

The World More Full of Weeping

My apologies in advance if this seems a touch self-serving... it really is more in the way of a public service announcement, though.

*cough*

Chizine Publications has announced the release, this fall, of The World More Full of Weeping, a new novella by Robert J. Wiersema, author of the bestselling novel Before I Wake.

To quote from their synopsis: "When eleven-year-old Brian Page disappears in the woods, the entire community of Henderson rallies around his family, sending searchers into the darkening forest. But what appears to be a simple nature walk gone wrong takes an ominous turn when his father Jeff is reminded that he disappeared into the same woods a quarter century earlier, an incident of which he has no memory. What secrets lie in the mysterious forest? Will Brian follow in his father’s footsteps, and emerge shaking into the arms of his family, or will he be claimed by the eternal twilight of the trees?"

The World More Full of Weeping will be published in two editions, both of which will include, in addition to the novella, a lengthy essay entitled Places and Names, describing how the town of Henderson came to be the recurring setting for some of Wiersema's fiction.

(By the way, these are going to be beautiful little books, smaller than your average volume, with a gorgeous, haunting cover by Erik Mohr. It's not a long book, probably about 120 pages -- it is a novella, after all -- but it IS a good one. )

The trade paperback edition of The World More Full of Weeping will be published in September, and priced at a very appealing $12.95. We'll be carrying the book as regular stock, and, why yes, there will probably be a launch at the store, if we can get Wiersema to agree to it.

There will also, however, be a limited collector's edition hardcover published later in the fall (with a very reasonable price of about $35).

This hardcover, which as a bonus will include The Small Rain Down, a previously unpublished short story also set in Henderson, will be published in November. It will be signed by both the author and the cover artist, and will be numbered. (The print run of the limited edition will be determined by the number of people who pre-order it between now and mid-August -- once the pre-order period ends, no further copies will be printed. Ever.)

As a rule, ChiZine's limited editions have only ever been available for direct order on-line. Through a special negotiation with the publisher, however, Bolen Books has arranged to have a limited number of these books available for in-store sale upon its publication.

If you are interested in purchasing this very limited edition, please pre-order it now via email to books@bolen.bc.ca.

(I remembered to say please, right?)

Okay, dispensing with the official-like third person, let me just say, this is going to be a great little book. ChiZine is a small press, and their publishing program is the very definition of "labour of love". They make good stories into beautiful books, and isn't that what it's all about?

2009 CBA Libris Awards

Every industry has its awards night, and the Canadian book industry is no exception. The 2009 Libris Awards -- voted on by independent booksellers across the country -- were presented by the Canadian Booksellers Association last weekend.

Joseph Boyden was the big winner of the night (and, really, can you think of anyone more deserving?), but here's the whole list of honourees:

Bookseller of the Year

Presented in Memory of Roy Britnell

McNally Robinson Booksellers, Winnipeg, Saskatoon, Toronto

Campus Bookseller of the Year

Titles Bookstore – McMaster University

Specialty Bookseller of the Year

Little Sister’s Book & Art Emporium

Fiction Book of the Year

Through Black Spruce, by Joseph Boyden (Viking Canada)

Non Fiction Book of the Year

Payback: Debt and the Shadow Side of Wealth, by Margaret Atwood (House of Anansi Press)

Author of the Year

Joseph Boyden

Children’s Author of the Year

Mélanie Watt

Children’s Illustrator of the Year

Mélanie Watt

Small Press Publisher of the Year

Cormorant Books

Publisher of the Year

House of Anansi Press

Distributor of the Year

North 49 Books

Editor of the Year

Marc Côté, Cormorant Books

Sales Representative of the Year

Presented in Memory of Gordon S. Garner (Central Region)

Adrienne Kerr, Penguin Group (Canada)

Marketing Achievement of the Year

Extraordinary Canadians Campaign, Penguin Group (Canada)

Book Design of the Year

Skim, designed by Jillian Tamaki (Groundwood Books)