“It opens up in the aftermath of a car crash, and does not let up from that brutal, mid-crisis opening. Away from Everywhere is dotted with slamming phones, speeches regretted after-the-fact, and the pain of silences.”

- Ashley Fitzpatrick, The Telegram

Click here to buy or read more about Away from Everywhere

Breakwater Books is pleased to announce that the French World Rights to the novel Silence of Stone have been sold to Guy Saint-Jean Éditeur Inc., a Quebec-based publisher.

Silence of Stone, the third novel from author Annamarie Beckel, is a critically acclaimed re-imagining of the true story of a young French noblewoman, Marguerite de Roberval, who was abandoned by her guardian on the Isle of Demons, a small island near Newfoundland and Labrador in 1542.  Critics have described the novel as “a deeply emotional tale” (Downhome), “well-written and stylistically distinctive” (Current Magazine) and “succinct, graphic, and lyrical” (The Telegram).

Formerly an ecologist and science writer and then a newsletter editor on an Ojibwe Indian reserve, Annamarie Beckel now lives in Kelligrews, NL. Her first novel, All Gone Widdun, won the first place fiction prize from the Midwest Independent Publishers Association and was acclaimed as “richly imagined, beautifully structured… a captivating story, very well told.” (Globe and Mail). Her second novel, Dancing in the Palm of His Hand, was hailed by critics as “remarkably well researched” (Atlantic Books Today) and “powerful, thought-provoking, highly recommended” (Hi-Rise).

If you are interested in interviewing Annamarie Beckel or receiving a book for review purposes, or using the above images in an article, contact Breakwater.

Click HERE to buy or read more about Silence of Stone

The top-10 titles are:

1. No Great Mischief by Alistair MacLeod
2. Anne of Green Gables by L. M. Montgomery
3. The Colony of Unrequited Dreams by Wayne Johnston
4. The Mountain and the Valley by Ernest Buckler
5. Fall on Your Knees by Ann-Marie MacDonald
6. Barometer Rising by Hugh MacLennan
7. Random Passage by Bernice Morgan
8. The Lost Salt Gift of Blood by Alistair MacLeod
9. Mercy Among the Children by David Adams Richards
10. Rockbound by Frank Parker Day

Also in the top 100: Percy Janes’s classic, House of Hate, cited by famed authors Michael Winter and Joel Thomas Hynes a book that really got them into writing.

Click the title to read more about or buy Random Passage or House of Hate

“A fascinating new memoir by the renowned Canadian artist provides new insight into his mind, work, and influences. Pratt’s journal entries on his creative process, from the 1950s to 2007, reveal many of his thoughts and artistic beliefs, and they say quite a bit about his attitudes and feelings about his home province — and about his work within that context. Without so much defending his style and subjects in this book, Pratt clearly feels the need to explain his realist beliefs.

“The subject matter is important to me,” he says. “I am not immersed in the world or philosophies of art; I am not concerned with movements, isms or manifestos, or their small and big ‘p’ politics. “Ordinary Things” by Christopher Pratt, one of Canada’s greatest living artists, is an accessible, revealing and honest book.”

Click here to buy or read more about this book.

“Pratt’s history can be read and his thoughts heard through the works … The entries reflect time spent by Pratt all over the province – in Placentia, Salmonier, Carbonear, Gambo, the coasts of Labrador and dozens of other regions, inland towns and outport communities.

The entries also make mention of occassions in Halifax and Ottawa; London and Glasgow (where Pratt attended the Glasgow School of Art).

The notes provide Pratt’s thoughts, at certain points in his own history, on everything from the Newfoundland Railway, the Burgeo highway, an artist’s use of colour and the place of Atlantic Canada in the art world.”

Read the Full article here!: http://www.thetelegram.com/index.cfm?sid=292882&sc=84

Click here to buy or read more about Ordinary Things

Reps from Newfoundland publishers, left to right: Garry Cranford (Flanker Press), Donna Francis (Creative Books), Gavin Will (Boulder), Rebecca Rose and Anna Kate MacDonald (Breakwater Books)

Authors present from these publishers included: Nellie Strowbridge (Flanker), Trudy Morgan-Cole, Christopher Pratt, Syr Ruus, and Kirby Walsh (Breakwater), Mike Heffernan and Robin McGrath (Creative).

Breakwater's Anna Kate MacDonald (Publicist), Trudy Morgan-Cole (author of By the Rivers of Brooklyn), and Rebecca Rose (President)

Donna Francis (Creative Books), TLA agents Shaun Bradley and Don Sedgwick, Rebecca Rose (Breakwater)

Don and Shaun graciously helped in decorating the Newfoundland publishers’ booth at Word on the Street:

Newfoundland Publishers' Booth at Word on the Street

Breakwater author Chad Pelley’s short story “Holes to China” made the 2009 Cuffer Prize shortlist the same week his debut novel, Away from Everywhere, was released. Chad was also a finalist for last year’s Cuffer Prize, taking third place with his story “Subtle Difference.”

Click here to buy or read more about Chad’s new novel, Away from Everywhere