All Lit Up Press Picks for the Holidays: NeWest Press

Why I’m Here by Jill Frayne

Selected by Christine:

“This is a beautiful and reflective book. Jill writes about both the stark landscape of the Yukon, and the complex people in it with warmth. Magically weaving together both the inner and outer worlds. I love a book with characters that are complex and unforgettable, this book delivers that in spades. Why I’m Here feels like a secret that we need to share. A stunning novel.”

Find Why I’m Here here on All Lit Up or use the Shop Local button to purchase from your local indie bookstore.

How to Hold a Pebble by Jaspreet Singh

Selected by Meredith:

“This collection allows space to be held for the beauty, solitude, complexity, and contradictions of modern life in and through the Anthropocene. Jaspreet’s poetry can be conversational and funny at times, but it is also cathartic, ruminating, questioning, and meditative. It holds a particular ability to create the everyday as poetic while drawing out the complex mess of thoughts, feelings, and anxieties that makes our particular moment unique — now that we have language to more accurately describe our contemporary relationship to the earth and the environment. There’s a poem about plastic-wrapped strawberries which is an image that has stayed with me since I first read it, and I think about it almost every time I’m at the grocery store. In the poem “You a Genius,” Jaspreet points out, with unquestionable and rather delightful precision, the flaws in our societal kicking the can down road with regards to climate change because of course, one day, the road will come to an end, and what then?”

Find How to Hold a Pebble here on All Lit Up or use the Shop Local button to purchase from your local indie bookstore.

To Those Who Killed Me by J.T. Siemens

Selected by Matt:

“This high-octane debut thriller introduces readers to Sloane Donovan, a former cop-turned fitness coach-turned unorthodox private investigator who is looking into the supposed suicide of her friend Geri Harp. What she finds when she starts digging is a conspiracy that goes all the way through Vancouver’s social strata, from the destitution in the Downtown Eastside to the corridors of power.

J.T. Siemens writes like he’s been publishing crime novels for fifty years, but amazingly enough this is his first. For bone-crunching action and a canny nose for social mores, To Those Who Killed Me is the perfect choice for your true crime podcast-addicted best friend, or your parents who devour UK detective TV.”

Find To Those Who Killed Me here on All Lit Up or use the Shop Local button to purchase from your local indie bookstore.

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For more Press Picks for the Holidays, click here.