ONTARIO AUTHORS OFFER A BOUNTY OF STORIES FOR ALL TASTES

With our warmest season upon us, Ontarians are scouring their local bookstores and libraries for great reads to take them through the lazy, hazy days of summer. Whether it's a steamy novel for the cottage or more serious fare for a rainy day, Ontario's crop of homegrown authors has something to please everyone's literary palette. The finalists for the Ontario's government's 22nd Trillium Book Awards are a great place to start.

Perfect for a lazy day at the beach is Nino Ricci's latest masterpiece, The Origin of Species. From the brilliant Toronto storyteller (Lives of the Saints) comes the humorous and poignant tale of Alex, a Montreal grad student in the 1980s in search of love, meaning and guilt-free sex while trying to overcome the scars of an ill-fated trip to the Galapagos.

Looking for something out of the ordinary? Why not try In the Land of Long Fingernails by Thunder Bay author Charles Wilkins. Based on true events, Wilkins draws on his personal experience as a gravedigger while a student at the University of Toronto. In this coming-of-age memoir, Wilkins takes readers through bizarre events from the unusual summer job, to a midsummer gravediggers' strike, to the unearthing of a victim of an unsolved murder.

For those in need of lyrical inspiration, Revolver, Kevin Connolly's highly-anticipated follow up to the award-winning poetry collection drift, is a brilliant book of poems that examine an array of themes, with such intriguing titles as Powder Keg to Really Need Ted Lilly to Throw the Hook. Using a gamut of unexplored poetic possibilities, each poem tackles different subject matter with a different structure, which fuses the Toronto author's technical skill and explosive imagination.

Rock fans can get a front row view of the lives of a fictitious Montreal indie band in The Angel Riots by critically-acclaimed author Ibi Kaslik, who makes her home outside of Cambridge. Told through the eyes of the band's members, The Angel Riots reveals the pressures of road-life that come with the band's rising stardom and how success starts complicating their relationships.

More sombre fare for those grey days can be found with Coventry by Helen Humphreys. The Kingston author uses her signature poetic style to recreate the terror of the infamous Second World War bombing raid on the British town of Coventry. Drawing on actual events from 1940, Humphreys touches on themes of love, loss, loneliness and remembrance. The Withdrawal Method by London's Pasha Malla is a haunting and fresh collection of short stories that takes readers inside a variety of worlds - the forbidden, complex world of children acting out half-understood fantasies of adulthood; the familiar, modern world of young couples exploring emotional turns; a near-future world where Niagara Falls has run dry; and a long-ago world where a frustrated chess-master unwittingly invents a sinister machine that will affect the lives of generations to come.

So pick your pleasure and get settled in for a great local read this summer! To learn more about these authors visit http://www.omdc.on.ca .

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Charmaine Khan
Charmaine.khan@mediaprofile.com

Dane Gergovich
dane.gergovich@mediaprofile.com
416-504-8464