Today marks the halfway point of our #unwrapALU picks: scary how fast time has gone by! These picks are also scary: Nathan Niigan Noodin Adler’s Wrist (Kegedonce Press) features the legendary Indigenous spirit the Wiindigo, and Cthulhu is the tentacled baddie in David Neil Lee’s The Midnight Games (Wolsak & Wynn). It’d be truly monstrous if you missed out.
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Everyone has one – that tricky booklover on your list for whom you’re stymied on what to buy. Fret no longer: we’ve rounded up twenty books for hyper-specific people. Check our recommendations, and buy on. BONUS: get a set of our holiday gift cards FREE when you buy any of our featured books.
Wrist is The Addams Family meets Morriseau – an Indigenous monster story written in the tradition of the horror genre (think Frankenstein, Dracula and Anne Rice’s vampires), but focuses on Indigenous monsters like the Wiindigo, and employs an Indigenous world-view and culture. The story is set in a fictional town called Sterling and a reserve called Ghost Lake – both based on Ontario geography (in particular Lac Des Mille Lacs and Cape Croker). In the story, it’s 1871 when two dinosaur hunters become embroiled in the battle over a discovery of fossils in Northern Ontario, but their excavation crews are driven mad by the superstitious belief in the Wiindigo and forced to abandon the site. Fast-forward to the present, and main character Church and his Wiindigo family must find a way to ward off vampire oil prospectors.* * *
The recent winner of the Kerry Schooley Award capturing “the spirit of Hamilton,” The Midnight Games does indeed feature a spirit: the deadly Cthulhu. This YA novel set in Hamilton follows Nate, who sneaks into Ivor Wynne Stadium while the cult-led midnight games are taking place. What he discovers could cost him his life.* * *Fun fact: we featured both of these books at Halloween time in our CanLit Monster card game! Cards continue to feature: buy either (or both) of these recommendations and receive a set of our holiday gift cards FREE to go along with your perfect present. We’ve got five more days of #unwrapALU picks next week, or see the first ten that have come to pass.
