McNally Robinson's Best of the West list -- a list of Manitoba's fiction bestsellers -- has been released for 2012. The list includes three Turnstone Press titles: Thunder Road by Chadwick Ginther, Dating by Dave Williamson and What You Get at Home by Dora Dueck.
Read the full list on the McNally Robinson website.
----------
Thunder Road: In a flash, Ted Callan’s world exploded and amid the flames he saw the incomprehensible, the burning figure of the fire giant Surtur. Before long, Ted learns that the creatures of Norse folklore walk among us and his fate is forever tied to them. Ted wants nothing more than to have his old life back. No more magic. No more smart-ass gods. To get it, Ted is willing to fight his way through any creature of legend. The problem is, if he succeeds, it might just be the end of the world.
----
Originally from Morden, Manitoba, Chadwick Ginther has been a bookseller with McNally Robinson’s booksellers for the last ten years and has been twice nominated for the Harper Collins Handselling Award, which he won in 2008. Previously, he was Aqua Books’ Emerging Writer-in-Residence. Chadwick is a regular contributor to Quill & Quire, the Winnipeg Review and Prairie Books NOW and has done guest blogs for Manitoba Scene. His short fiction has also appeared in On Spec Magazine. He lives and writes in Winnipeg. Thunder Road is his first published full length work.
----------
Dating: Jenkins never dreamed he’d live long enough to be dating again. Old folks acting like teenagers was unheard of in his parents’ generation. Less than two years after his beloved wife’s death, Jenkins finds himself sheepishly slinking past her portrait to take another woman out to the movies. With good (and sometimes not-so-good) memories of his youth, Jenkins recalls his dating experiences through the decades — and finds that he is still no wiser than a schoolboy. Especially when he learns his high school grad date is back in town and newly widowed. Will she be the same sweet Janie who made his grad night perfect or will age have taken its toll? Things don’t look good when her son greets him at the door with a list of rules. The tables have turned and the parents are now the children. Boomers will connect on many levels with this outrageously funny portrayal of their generation grappling with the realities of old age.
----
Dave Williamson has written four previous comic novels, drama for television and stage, reviews and non-fiction. Founder of the Creative Communications program at Red River College, he was Dean of Business and Applied Arts there, retiring in 2006. Dave has served as President of the Manitoba Writers' Guild, Chair of The Writers' Union of Canada, and Chair of the Winnipeg Arts Council. His short fiction collection, Accountable Advances, and his most recent novel, Dating, are both published by Turnstone Press. He lives in Winnipeg.
----------
Full of longing and melancholy, the stories in What You Get at Home find comfort and understanding in the unlikeliest of places. In “The Rocking Chair” a piece of furniture simultaneously divides a family and heals old wounds. The narrator in the title story finds a sense of belonging and purpose in a small pool of light and her favourite book. In “Chopsticks” a piano in a personal care home reminds a woman of the sense of wonder and admiration she had for her father as a child. With the power of memory the characters that inhabit What You Get at Home find the strength to carry on when life is at its most challenging.
----
The second oldest of a family of eight children, Dora Dueck grew up in a Mennonite community in Alberta. An editor, writer and historian, Dora has published two previous novels, Under the Still Standing Sun (1989) and This Hidden Thing (2010) for which she won the McNally Robinson Book of the Year Award. What You Get at Home is Dora's first collection of stories. She currently lives and writes in Winnipeg.