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By Gordon Pinsent 

In this enchanting autobiography celebrated actor Gordon Pinsent revisits stellar highlights of his 60-year career and the high and low points along the way, including his work with fellow artists Judi Dench, Shirley Douglas, Olympia Dukakis, Norman Jewison, Christopher Plummer, Sarah Polley, Kevin Spacey, Donald Sutherland, and Julie Christie, among others. Throughout Pinsent offers his advice to young actors, writers, and directors on how to succeed in film and theatre. Engaging, entertaining, and light-hearted, Next is a must-read account of a fascinating life spent in show business.

The Richest Woman in America: Hetty Green in the Gilded Age

By Janet Wallach 

A captivating biography of America’s first female tycoon, Hetty Green, the iconoclast who forged one of the greatest fortunes of her time.

No woman in the Gilded Age made as much money as Hetty Green. At the time of her death in 1916, she was worth at least 100 million dollars, equal to more than 2 billion dollars today. A strong believer in women being financially independent, she offered valuable lessons for the present times.

Abandoned at birth by her neurotic mother, scorned by her misogynist father, Hetty set out as a child to prove her value. Following the simple rules of her wealthy Quaker father, she successfully invested her money and along the way proved to herself that she was wealthy and therefore worthy.

Never losing faith in America’s potential, she ignored the herd mentality and took advantage of financial panics and crises. When everyone else was selling, she bought railroads, real estate, and government bonds. And when everyone was buying and borrowing, she put her money into cash and earned safe returns on her dollars. Men mocked her and women scoffed at her frugal ways, but she turned her back and piled up her earnings, amassing a fortune that supported businesses, churches, municipalities, and even the city of New York itself.

She relished a challenge. When her aunt died and did not leave Hetty the fortune she expected, she plunged into a groundbreaking lawsuit that still resonates in law schools and courts. When her husband defied her and sank her money on his own risky interests, she threw him out and, marching down to Wall Street, quickly made up the loss. Her independence, outspokenness, and disdain for the upper crust earned her a reputation for harshness that endured for decades. Newspapers kept her in the headlines, linking her name with witches and miscreants. Yet those who knew her admired her warmth, her wisdom, and her wit.

Set during a period of financial crisis strikingly similar to our current one, acclaimed author Janet Wallach’s engrossing exploration of a fascinating life revives a rarely-mentioned queen of American finance.

Grace: A Memoir

By Grace Coddington 

Grace Coddington, at age 70, has been the Creative Director of Vogue magazine for the past 20 years. Her candour, her irascibility, her commitment to her work, and her always fresh and original take on fashion has made her, after Anna Wintour, the most powerful person in fashion. Acquired after an intense auction among every major publisher, this woman who became an unwilling celebrity captured the hearts of everyone when she was revealed in the movie as the creative force behind the throne at Vogue. Having grown up on a backwater island in Wales, she came to London just in time to be discovered as a dazzling model by the famous Norman Parkinson, then went on to shape the pages at Vogue for 19 years where she worked as Creative Director with many luminaries including the young Wintour. Lured by Calvin Klein to run his New York operation she then jumped back to American Vogue when Wintour returned to America in 2003. She has been there ever since.

Let the Eastern Bastards Freeze in the Dark: The West Versus the Rest Since Confederation

By Mary Janigan

The oil sands. Global warming. The National Energy Program. Though these seem like modern Canadian subjects, author Mary Janigan reveals them to be a legacy of longstanding regional rivalry. Something of a “Third Solitude” since entering Confederation, the West has long been overshadowed by Canada’s other great national debate: but as the conflict over natural resources and their effect on climate change heats up, 150 years of antipathy are coming to a head. Janigan takes readers back to a pivotal moment in 1918, when Canada’s western premiers descended on Ottawa determined to control their own future—and as Margaret MacMillan did in Paris 1919, she deftly illustrates how the results reverberate to this day.

101 Letters to a Prime Minister: The Complete Letters to Stephen Harper

By Yann Martel 

From the mailbox of the Prime Minister’s Office to your bookshelf, a list of more than 100 books that every Canadian should read. This largely one-sided correspondence from the “loneliest book club in the world” is a compendium for bibliophiles and those who follow the Canadian political scene. Smart, subversive, signed, sealed, and now available to you…even if your address is not 80 Wellington Street.

The Testament of Mary

By Colm Toibin

In the ancient town of Ephesus, Mary lives alone, years after her son’s crucifixion. She has no interest in collaborating with the authors of the Gospel — her keepers, who provide her with food and shelter and visit her regularly. She does not agree that her son is the Son of God; nor that his death was “worth it;” nor that the “group of misfits he gathered around him, men who could not look a woman in the eye,” were holy disciples. Mary judges herself ruthlessly (she did not stay at the foot of the Cross until her son died — she fled, to save herself), and is equally harsh on her judgement of others. This woman who we know from centuries of paintings and scripture as the docile, loving, silent, long-suffering, obedient, worshipful mother of Christ becomes a tragic heroine with the relentless eloquence of Electra or Medea or Antigone. Tóibín’s tour de force of imagination and language is a portrait so vivid and convincing that our image of Mary will be forever transformed.

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