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Author Leo McKay Jr. joins Lindsay to discuss What Comes Echoing Back, his poignant new coming-of-age novel, 10 years in the making. He shares how his experiences as a teacher and father helped him to feel at home writing about teens; how he crafted a tender friendship between protagonists, Sam and Robot, amidst balancing their respective traumas; how social media impacts young people; and the mystic quality of reverb and how echoes can bring waves of pain and joy, in both music and life.  

The dog days are NOT over. They are here. They are hot. And they are humid. So, it's only fitting Lindsay and Amanda bring you some summer lit recs straight from their own TBR lists. Both mood readers, they've got an eclectic mix of thrillers, beach (or deck) reads, non-fiction, and naturally, some East Coast must-reads including a charming fish-out-of-water story set in Cape Breton; a heart-wrenching drama following the experiences of two women, an IVF mixup and the one daughter they are both fighting for; and a coming-of-age novel about two teen outcasts who bond amidst echoes of past trauma. Get ready to add to the pile!

When memory is gone, what is left behind? Award winning author, Susan Sinnott, joins us from her home in Newfoundland to chat about her recent novel, The Remembering. The book—which Lindsay gives five enthusiastic stars—follows three generations of Newfoundland women as they navigate the triumphs and difficulties of life and explores how memory—in its many forms—impacts our lives. Susan shares a bit about her writing process and how she creates "mountains of backstory" for her characters, why she chose to explore themes of dementia and memory, what types of books she thinks her characters would read and more. 

About The Remembering:

Some memories are treasured, re-read like a favourite book. Some are traumatic and won’t stay buried. But memories can be unreliable, can fade and mutate. They affect our actions and choices.Memories of a happy marriage comfort Liz through widowhood, while flashbacks to a devastating sexual assault overwhelm her youngest daughter, Eve. Her middle daughter, Carlie, is building a new life in another country but longing for home is pulling her back, while Ginny, the eldest, takes on everyone?s problems as her own. Eve’s daughter, Rosie, remembers nothing of her absent father and yearns to track him down against her family’s wishes.Then Liz is diagnosed with dementia, and the family’s resilience is tested as the matriarch begins to falter. If life is all memory, what is left when it’s gone?Memory is at the core of all these women’s lives: elusive, intrusive, helpful or misleading. What’s revealed is a story about the struggle to maintain a sense of family, home, and self, amidst all life can throw at you.

Nimbus Publishing's Managing Editor, Whitney Moran, is back with a brand new list of expert book recs. And this time, it's all about the backlist. An ode to the beautiful books that become buried in "best of" lists and TBR piles once the shiny new thing emerges on scene, Whitney shares some of her favourite backlist titles from Vagrant Press (Nimbus' adult fiction imprint) and their mainstream comps to help you discover the must read books you may have missed the first time 'round.

Becca Babcock joins Lindsay to give a behind the scenes glimpse into her writing process and the inspirations behind her compelling and timely new novel, Some There are Fearless. Hear how she drew inspiration from her own experiences coming-of-age in military driven Cold Lake, how she works to craft deeply human characters and immersive settings, and her approach to writing engineering in a way that makes it appealing to all readers. Plus, Lindsay and Becca dive into many of the novel's themes including the complexities of motherhood and its parallels to working with nuclear energy—volatility, managing risk, mitigating disaster, the obsessive need for control and inevitably, powerlessness.  

About Some There are Fearless:

Jessica Manchaky’s life has been shaped by the threat of nuclear disaster. She’s a child when she hears news of the Chernobyl nuclear accident, and the disappearance of Ukrainian relatives, growing up on a northern Alberta military base during the Cold War. From that moment on, all she wants is to keep danger at bay.But living in a household with a domineering and volatile mother and a rebellious older brother in isolated Cold Lake, Alberta, Jessica never feels fully safe. When she comes of age, she leaves her suffocating small town for Halifax, Nova Scotia, where she meets her future husband and eventually becomes a nuclear engineer in charge of risk assessment and management at nuclear power plants. But even as she shields the world from nuclear disaster, she is constantly facing personal tragedies—like a strained marriage, a misogynistic workplace, and severe postpartum anxiety—that she never quite manages to predict. When her young daughter is afflicted with a mysterious and potentially deadly illness, Jessica must learn to accept that not all risk can be managed.Beginning with the threat of the Cold War and the ripple effects of the Chernobyl nuclear accident, and punctuated by other disasters both natural and manmade, Some There Are Fearless is an intimate and vulnerable exploration of the thin line between control and chaos from the author of the “terrific debut” (Globe and Mail) One Who Has Been Here Before.

Lindsay and Amanda (Book Me's Producer) dive into one of their favourite topics, children's books. They chat about the types of books that shaped them as children and the best local picture books to add to your library today. Plus Lindsay shares her tips on how to cultivate a bookworm providing real steps you can take to instill a love of reading within the littles in your life. AND our favourite correspondent, Nina, gives a young person's perspective on what makes a great book.