The Thread is Victoria Hislop's third novel. Like her first novel, The Island, The Thread is set in Greece. Beginning with the great fire fo Thessaloniki, which burned 9,500 houses, The Thread tells the story of this city in northern Greece through the romance of Katerina and Dimitri. Anchoring the novel to the present is their grandson, who must decide if he will continue their legacy of keeping the histories of Thessaloniki or leave the island behind. Victoria says she finds inspiration by "visiting unfamiliar foreign cities, sitting in cafés and wondering what goes on in the lives of the people there." We're very pleased to have this wonderufl guest blog about how her visit to a dress shop in Thessaloniki gave birth to the character of Katerina. *** Thessaloniki is more than a backdrop to The Thread.  For me it is one of the most important characters in the novel, one that plays a main role in the story, suffering and surviving the various events and catastrophes thrown at it, just as Katerina, Dimitri and many others. I made my first trip there five years ago.  For several decades, I had been island hopping, stayed in Athens a…

It's 1984 and in the town of South Wakefield, 14-year-old Chris Lane is sure that he can see the future, or at least guess what’s inside of Christie Brinkley's mind. Unfortunately, he can’t foresee the closing of Joyland, the town's only video arcade. As the arcade fades from his life, Chris is forced to find a new source of entertainment, and ends up getting more than he bargained for  A summer of teenage lust and violence. Set to the digital pulse of video games and the echoes of hair metal, Joyland is about the impossibility of knowing the future, about bringing the Cold War home. Illustrations by Eisner Award winner Nate Powell head up each chapter, and this new paperback edition includes an alternate ending and an author interview that provides new insights into this powerful piece of fiction. *** Q: To start, why write about vintage video games? Were they a jumping-off point for your story or a layer you added later on? Emily: Joyland the novel began when I was twenty-six or twenty-seven years old, more than a decade ago now. I believe it started with the title — Joyland was the name of an arcade in my hometown, long…

When Hurricane Hazel tore through Toronto on October 15, 1954, it left its mark on both the city and its inhabitants. In the aftermath, a young cop named Ray Townes emerges as a hero numerous accounts detail the way he battled the raging Humber River to save those trapped in their homes and his story is featured prominently in the newspapers, thrusting him into the spotlight as a local celebrity. Meanwhile, his wife Mary is wrestling with doubts about her husband's heroism. While performing her own miracles the night of the storm as a nurse at a mud-filled, overcrowded emergency room, Mary met a woman disoriented and near death with a disturbingly peculiar recollection of events. While Mary tries to shake her suspicions about Ray as they rebuild their life in the shell-shocked city, she can’t help but wonder about her husband and that fateful night. When a reporter comes knocking 50 years later to revisit that horrendous night, the truth begins to surface and threatens to destroy them. Cleverly constructed with meticulous research, this work of historical fiction includes a new section filled with author interviews, new insights in the work, and bonus work from the author. The Indigo…

The Leap:  How to Survive and Thrive in the Sustainable Economy The revolutionary follow-up to Chris Turner’s Governor General’s Literary Award and National Business Book Award nominee, The Geography of Hope.The most vital project of the twenty-first century is a shift from our unsustainable way of life to a sustainable one--a great lateral leap from a track headed for economic and ecological disaster to one bound for renewed prosperity. In The Leap, Chris Turner presents a field guide to making that jump, drawing on recent breakthroughs in state-of-the-art renewable energy, cleantech and urban design. From the solar towers of sunny Spain to the bike paths and pedestrianized avenues of the world’s most livable city--Copenhagen, Denmark--to the nascent "green-collar" economies rejuvenating the former East Germany and the American Rust Belt, he paints a vivid portrait of a new, sustainable world order already up and running.In his 2007 book, The Geography of Hope, Chris Turner wrote about an emerging world of clean-tech possibility. This led to a two-year stint as sustainability columnist for the Globe and Mail, during which many of the fringe developments covered in his book became vital. By the time those two years were up his reporting tracks were…