2012 Alberta Literary Awards Shortlist
Created by 49thShelf on April 12, 2012
The Antagonist
Shortlisted for the 2011 Scotiabank Giller Prize
Against his will and his nature, the hulking Gordon Rankin ("Rank") is cast as an enforcer, a goon -- by his classmates, his hockey coaches, and especially his own "tiny, angry" father, Gordon Senior.
Rank gamely lives up to his role -- until tragedy strikes, using Rank as its blunt instrument. Escapin …
Monoceros
Longlisted for the 2011 Scotiabank Giller Prize! Winner of the W.O. Mitchell Book Prize! Winner of the 2012 Relit Award for Best Novel!A seventeen-year-old boy, bullied and heartbroken, hangs himself. And although he felt terribly alone, his suicide changes everyone around him.His parents are devastated. His secret boyfriend&x2019s girlfriend is re …
Kalila
Kalila chronicles the lives of Maggie and Brodie, whose joy collides with devastation when their daughter’s birth also heralds the news of her congenital heart condition. In this startlingly inventive novel, Rosemary Nixon braids light and darkness into a narrative chain pulled exquisitely taut. Through Maggie and Brodie’s shifting viewpoints, …
Ghost Messages
Pursuing the thief who stole her father's treasure, a young Irish girl encounters some strange characters, most of whom are alive, when she stows away on the ship that is laying the first transatlantic telegraph cable in 1865.
The Boy
In 1959 Ray and Daisy Cook and their five children were brutally slain in their modest home in the central Alberta town of Stettler. Robert Raymond Cook, Ray Cook's son from his first marriage, was convicted of the crime, and had the infamy of becoming the last man hanged in Alberta. Forty-six years later, a troublesome character named Louise in a …
Empire of the Beetle
"A compelling look at what may be the single biggest impact of climate change, and a harbinger of life to come on a warming planet." -- Jim Robbins, The New York Times
Beginning in the late 1980s, a series of pine beetle (also known as the bark beetle) outbreaks unsettled iconic forests and communities across western North America. An insect the siz …
Tenderman
"I grew up in a blue-collar town ten minutes down the road from a white-collar town. And I've spent most of my life uncomfortable in both places."
With these opening words, accomplished poet Tim Bowling outlines the central tension that acts as a vital force in his newest book, Tenderman--the dichotomy between the sensitive poetic observer and the t …
