Pop-ular reading
Pat St. Germain picks books for Father’s Day.
Yorick and Bones
Jeremy Tankard and Hermione Tankard Harpercollins Canada
Bestselling Vancouver-based artist and author Jeremy Tankard (the Grumpy Bird series) teamed up with his teenage daughter, Hermione, to deliver this graphic homage to William Shakespeare. Described as the first book in a new series, for readers ages eight to
11, it marks the start of a beautiful relationship between Hamlet’s late court jester Yorick and Bones, the dog who digs up Yorick’s skeleton. Having been buried since Elizabethan times, Yorick, who speaks in iambic pentameter, quite naturally yearns for companionship. Unfortunately, he tends to spook the humans he tries to befriend.
The Library of Legends
Janie Chang Harpercollins Canada
Celebrated Vancouver-based author Janie Chang (Three Souls, Dragon Spring Road) has mined her family’s personal stories in past works of historical fiction. This time, she was inspired and informed by her father’s harrowing experience as a university student fleeing the Japanese invasion at the start of the Second World War. The Library of Legends follows a young woman and her university classmates, professors and support staff as they flee Japanese bombs in 1937, walking 1,000 miles from Nanking to reach a safe haven — for themselves and for a 500-year-old treasure they carry with them.
The English Wife
Adrienne Chinn Harpercollins Canada
Two significant historical events — Victory in Europe VE-DAY at the end of the Second World War and 9/11 — have deep impact on the lives of two women whose stories unfold along dual timelines. Sophie Parry is en route to New York City on Sept. 11, when her flight is rerouted to Newfoundland. There, she reluctantly reunites with her estranged aunt Ellie, a British war bride who suffered major hardship after she moved to Canada on her own during the war. On May 8, 1945, instead of celebrating VE-DAY, Ellie was fretting over the fate of her husband, who had been missing in action. Decades later, when Sophie lands on her doorstep, Ellie is asked to reveal the truth behind her family’s postwar parting of the ways. Born in Grand Falls, N.L., and raised in Quebec, Adrienne Chinn put down roots on her father’s home turf in England, where she has run her own interior design business for the past two decades. Her first novel, 2019’s The Lost Letter from Morocco, was also a multi-generational tale with a dual timeline, as a modern-day heroine explored a secret from her father’s past.