Enter for a Chance to Win Free Books!
49th Shelf members can enter to win a copy of any of the books listed here (please sign up here if you haven’t already). At the end of the giveaway period, we do a random draw, and the publishers ship copies directly to the winners. Good luck!
In a Land without Dogs the Cats Learn to Bark
A Novel
In his wildly ambitious and darkly funny debut novel, Jonathan Garfinkel probes the fractured nature of identity, the necessity of lies, and the bloody legacy of the Soviet Empire.
Spanning generations, continents, and cultures, In a Land without Dogs the Cats Learn to Bark is an electric tale about a nation trying to emerge from the shadow of the Soviet Union to embrace Western democracy. Driven by a complexly plotted mystery that leads from Moscow to Toronto to Tbilisi, punctuated by wild car chases and drunken jazz reveries, and featuring an eccentric cast of characters including Georgian performance artists, Chechen warlords, and KGB spies, Garfinkel delivers a story that questions the price of freedom and laughs at the answer.
With exhilarating prose reminiscent of Rachel Kushner and more twists than a John le Carré thriller, In a Land without Dogs the Cats Learn to Bark is a daring, nuanced, and spectacularly entertaining novel by an exceptional talent.
- Giveaway period ends
- Apr 02, 2023
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- 3
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- 119
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Pandexicon
How the Language of the Pandemic Defined Our New Cultural Reality
This exploration of the many new terms of the Covid-19 pandemic provides insight into the ways an ever-evolving vocabulary helped us cope with our anxiety and adapt to a new reality
When the pandemic struck in early 2020, Wayne Grady started collecting the words and phrases that arose from our shared global experience. Some, such as "uptick" and "pivot," had existed before but now took on new meaning, and others, such as "covidivorce," "quarantini," "covexit," and "shecession," appeared for the first time, their meaning instantly clear. Through this new vocabulary, we became more able to adapt to change, to domesticate it in a sense, and to reduce our fears.
Moving from the very beginning of the pandemic (the "Before Times") and our early response to it through the peaks and troughs of the various waves in countries throughout the world, and ending with a contemplation of what the "After Times" might look like, this book takes us on a journey through the pandemic and illuminates both how this new language has unfolded and how it has changed the way we think about ourselves and each other.
- Giveaway period ends
- Apr 02, 2023
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- 3
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- 48
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Scandal at the Savoy
A Priscilla Tempest Mystery, Book 2
The rich and famous are converging on the iconic Savoy Hotel in swinging ’60s London—including a famous Broadway producer with anger issues, a demanding Indian raja, and a gorgeous film star with certain kinky predilections. All is as it should be—until the murder of a showgirl threatens to scandalize the hotel.
The list of suspects includes Priscilla Tempest, the trouble-prone Canadian head of the Savoy press office. Clearing her name would be easy enough, if only she hadn’t spent the night of the murder with a certain beguiling Canadian prime minister.
Blackmailed by a Scotland Yard detective, wooed by a notorious gangster and hounded by the press, Priscilla must use wit and resourcefulness to survive the treacherous upper echelons of London society and find a killer.
This is the thrilling sequel to Death at the Savoy¸ described by Publishers Weekly as “light, frothy…perfect escapist fare.”
- Giveaway period ends
- Apr 02, 2023
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- 3
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- 62
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All the World's a Wonder
A playwright possessed by her muses, an actress desperate to succeed, and a doctor hauntedby a lost love. Three people cross time and space to meet through the playwright's bizarrecreative process: to create, the playwright must become her characters; to tell her tragic story,the actress must speak from the grave; to heal his harrowing past, the doctor must surrender tohis patient - the playwright.
- Giveaway period ends
- Apr 02, 2023
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- 3
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- 49
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The Remembering Stone
Alice keeps a perfectly round skipping stone in her pocket to remember her grandfather by — but the stone goes missing.
It looked just like a regular stone, but Alice knew it was different: It was perfectly round so you could use it to trace circles, and sometimes she could trick her dad into thinking it was a quarter. It was also how Alice remembered her grandpa, who taught her how to skip stones, and who passed away last winter.
Alice brings the stone to school for Show and Share, but when her classmate asks to see it again at recess, Alice discovers that the stone is gone! Her friends search high and low and can’t find the stone—but their friendship gives Alice an idea of another way that she can remember.
A gentle look at loss, grief, and how small everyday actions can connect us to those we love.
- Giveaway period ends
- Apr 02, 2023
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- 3
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- 66
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Two for the Road
A Novel
Beyond the walls of her romance bookstore, Gigi Rutherford is out of stock when it comes to her own love interests. And instead of enduring one bad date after another, these days she'd rather curl up at home with her favorite audiobook and the only man who makes her heart skip a beat: Zane Wilkenson, the smooth-voiced narrator Gigi is convinced is her soulmate.
Then, she's presented with the chance of a lifetime: a ten-day bus tour through the hilly English countryside, taking in the sights and sounds of a world an ocean away from her bookstore--all in the presence of the man of her dreams, Zane, as he leads the tour . . . in person.
But things don't go as planned. When Gigi arrives at the bus terminal in London, Zane is nowhere to be found. Until he shows up, she's stuck with an eclectic group of fellow travelers she'd rather not be with on a long road trip, including the brooding bus driver, Taj, who Gigi finds infuriating but also incredibly alluring.
Will Gigi find a happy ending with Zane? Or will each stop on the tour bring her closer to a completely different destination?
- Giveaway period ends
- Apr 02, 2023
- Copies available
- 3
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- 50
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I (Athena)
When Athena was a young girl in the 60s, she lost her hearing to a childhood fever but was misdiagnosed as "profoundly retarded" and institutionalized for thirty years. Now she's out of the institution, awkward and bookish, and learning to integrate with mainstream society where nothing works quite like she thinks it should. Athena researches her past, trying to understand why she was institutionalized in the first place and why the people looking after her made such a huge mistake. At the same time, she tries to find a way to live with the man who was her lover in the institution, uncovering all sorts of surprises along the way.
Funny, tough, and serious-minded, Ruth DyckFehderau's I (Athena) recalls the work of Barbara Gowdy and Elizabeth Strout.
- Giveaway period ends
- Apr 02, 2023
- Copies available
- 3
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- 45
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Return Stroke
essays & memoir
These graceful, probing personal essays by award-winning fiction writer Dora Dueck engage with a diverse range of ideas (becoming a writer, motherhood, mortality, the ethics of biography, a child's coming-out) because in non-fiction, she writes, “the quest for meaning bows to the experience as it was.” Yet within Return Stroke, one theme in particular does resonate—change. “How wonderful,” the author writes, that our “bits of existence, no matter how ordinary, are available for further consideration—seeing patterns, facing into inevitable death, enjoying the playful circularity of then and now.”
The book’s title, Return Stroke—the title of one essay, where it literally refers to lightning—suggests such a dynamic: “When I send inquiry into my past, it sends something back to me.” The topic of memory, in all its malleability, impermanence, and surprising power, is especially central to the collection’s concluding piece, an absorbing memoir of the author’s 1980s life in the Paraguayan Chaco. Whether she is discovering the more meaningful part that imagination holds within her religious faith or relating with astonishing clarity and honesty the experience of giving birth away from her home country, Dora Dueck’s beautifully written essays and memoir make her an insightful and generous companion.
- Giveaway period ends
- Apr 02, 2023
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- 3
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- 34
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Good Morning Poems
a start to the day from famous English-language poets
Canadian literary legend George Bowering lays bare his process as reader and lover of poetry in this curated collection of poems to be read in the morning.
In a series of deeply astute and conversational essays, two-time Governor General's Award winner and inaugural Parlimentary Poet Laureate of Canada George Bowering travels through five hundred years, give or take, of English-language literature, adding historical, political, feminist, socio-economic, anecdotal, and literary context to each poem and poet. His selection of poems ranges from the best known to the barely known, each piece treated with depth and reverence, while demonstrating his razor-sharp wit and skill as writer, critic, and reader.
Recalling the work of George Saunders and Sina Queyras, in their interactions with established literature, George's insight in the poetic mind is invaluable, making this is must-read collection for anyone interested in reading or writing poetry.
- Giveaway period ends
- Apr 02, 2023
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- 3
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- 36
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Crying Wolf
A Memoir
It's a tale as old as time. Girl meets boy. Boy wants girl. Girl says no. Boy takes what he wants anyway.
After a violent sexual assault, Eden Boudreau was faced with a choice: call the police and explain that a man who wasn't her husband, who she had agreed to go on a date with, had just raped her. Or go home and pray that, in the morning, it would be only a nightmare.
In the years that followed, Eden was met with disbelief by strangers, friends, and the authorities, often as a result of stigma towards her non-monogamy, sex positivity, and bisexuality. Societal conditioning of acceptable female sexuality silenced her to a point of despair, leading to addiction and even attempted suicide. It was through the act of writing that she began to heal.
Crying Wolf is a gripping memoir that shares the raw path to recovery after violence and spotlights the ways survivors are too often demonized or ignored when they belong to marginalized communities. Boudreau heralds a new era for others dismissed for "crying wolf." After all, women prevailing to change society for others is also a tale as old as time.
- Giveaway period ends
- Apr 02, 2023
- Copies available
- 3
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- 40
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