Books about Canadians from Amazon.com

The most up-to-date information on application procedures and deadlines, tuition and student fees, and statistics on acceptance rates from every accredited medical school in the United States and Canada. For people who are just thinking about medicine as a career, we've also provided an overview of the entire application and medical school process, with a timeline to help you get started..
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From the celebrated author of The English Patient, comes another breathtaking, unforgettable story, this time about a family torn apart by an act of violence Divisadero is a rich and rewarding read, one that Jhumpa Lahiri, in her guest review for Amazon.com (see below), calls "Ondaatje's finest novel to date." --Daphne Durham

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Guest Reviewer: Jhumpa Lahiri

Jhumpa Lahiri was awarded the 2000 Pulitzer Prize for fiction, as well as the PEN/Hemingway Award for her mesmerizing debut collection of stories, Interpreter of Maladies. Her poignant and powerful debut novel, The Namesake was adapted by screenwriter Sooni Taraporevala, and released in theaters in 2007.

My life always stops for a new book by Michael Ondaatje. I began Divisadero as soon as it came into my possession and over the course of a few evenings was captivated by Ondaatje's finest novel to date. The story is simple, almost mythical, stemming from a family on a California farm that is ruptured just as it is about to begin. Two daughters, Anna and Claire, are raised not just as siblings but with the intense bond of twins, interchangeable, inseparable. Coop, a boy from a neighboring farm, is folded into the girls' lives as a hired hand and quasi-brother. Anna, Claire, and Coop form a triangle that is intimate and interdependent, a triangle that brutally explodes less than thirty pages into the book. We are left with a handful of glass, both narratively and thematically. But Divisadero is a deeply ordered, full-bodied work, and the fragmented characters, severed from their shared past, persevere in relation to one another, illuminating both what it means to belong to a family and what it means to be alone in the world. The notion of twins, of one becoming two, pervades the novel, and so the farm in California is mirrored by a farm in France, the setting for another plot line in the second half of the book and giving us, in a sense, two novels in one. But the stories are not only connected but calibrated by Ondaatje to reveal a haunting pattern of parallels, echoes, and reflections across time and place. Like Nabokov, another master of twinning, Ondaatje's method is deliberate but discreet, and it was only in rereading this beautiful book--which I wanted to do as soon as I finished it--that the intricate play of doubles was revealed. Every sign of the author's genius is here: the searing imagery, the incandescent writing, the calm probing of life's most turbulent and devastating experiences. No one writes as affectingly about passion, about time and memory, about violence--subjects that have shaped Ondaatje's previous novels. But there is a greater muscularity to Divisadero, an intensity born from its restraint. Episodes are boiled down to their essential elements, distilled but dramatic, resulting in a mosaic of profound dignity, with an elegiac quietude that only the greatest of writers can achieve. --Jhumpa Lahiri

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Wonderfully eclectic, The Best American Short Stories 2007 collects stories by undeniable talents, both newcomers and favorites These stories examine the turning points in life when we, as children or parents, siblings or friends or colleagues, must break certain rules in order to remain true to ourselves. In T.C. Boyle's heartbreaking "Balto," a 13-year-old girl provides devastating courtroom testimony in her alcoholic father's trial. Aryn Kyle's charming story "Allegiance" shows a young girl caught between her despairing British mother and motherly American father. In "The Bris," Eileen Pollack brilliantly writes of a son struggling to fulfill his filial obligations, even if this requires a breach of morality and religion. Kate Walbert's stunning "Do Something" portrays one mother's impassioned and revolutionary refusal to accept her son's death. And in Richard Russo's graceful "Horseman," an English professor comes to understand that plagiarism can reveal more about a student than original work.

Questions for Best American Short Stories Series Editor Heidi Pitlor

Each year's edition of the Best American Short Stories is edited by a prominent guest editor who makes the final selections for the collection--for 2007, it's Stephen King. But working alongside the guest editor is the series editor, who reads thousands and thousands of stories all year long and passes the best on to the guest editor. For years, Katrina Kenison held that one-of-a-kind role for the Best American Short Stories, but in 2007 she handed the reins over to Heidi Pitlor, a former editor at Houghton Mifflin and a novelist in her own right (her debut, The Birthdays, came out in 2006). We asked Pitlor a few questions about what many would consider a dream job.

Amazon.com: Congratulations: you now have one of those jobs that must make people say to you, "Oh my goodness, you just sit around reading stories all day! What a life!" Please dispel all relevant myths.

Pitlor: The key is to have young children. I have one-year-old twins, so I have yet to hear the question above.

I used to imagine Katrina Kenison, the former series editor, swinging in a hammock on a sunny day (there was always a hammock in my mind, and always sunshine), lost in her short stories, the twitter of birds somewhere nearby, a bonbon in her hand. I can assure you that none of the above applies to my day-to-day life--and I'm guessing it didn't apply to hers. Reading this volume of fiction requires intense concentration, large amounts of coffee, total quiet, a babysitter for my kids, and sadly, no bonbons, at least not on a regular basis. Still, I have no complaints. I do love my job and being able to read this much.

Amazon.com: Can you explain the process of selecting the best American short stories? What's your relationship as series editor with the year's guest editor (in this case, Stephen King)?

Pitlor: Magazines that publish fiction send copies to me. Literary journals, mainstream magazines, you name it. I probably receive three to four magazines a day. Typically, I read all of this fiction--more specifically, the short stories (no novel excerpts allowed) written by Americans or those who have made the United States their home. I choose 120 that I think are the best, and pass them along to the year's guest editor.

Stephen King wanted to read along with me, and so he went out and bought tons of magazines himself. We spoke quite often about what we'd read. But typically, I go off on my own for most of the year, pull the stories, and then work with the guest editor at the end of the year to help him or her choose the final twenty for the book.

Amazon.com: You're a novelist as well as an editor. How do you read all these different (or depressingly similar) voices every day and keep your own voice strong when you sit down to imagine your own work?

Pitlor: Good question! When I'm writing regularly--and I must admit that I need to get back to this--I try to write each day before I begin reading. Again, coffee plays a big role. I get up, take care of the twins for a few hours until the sitter comes, then take typically my third cup of coffee out to my office, which is above my garage. I write first, so that my mind is clear of other writers' voices. I try not to think too much when writing a first draft. For me, thinking sometimes leads to inadvertent stealing. If I'm trying to sort out some sort of puzzle in what I'm writing, it's too easy to remember another writer's approach to a similar one. If I can write a first draft quickly, I'm better off.

Amazon.com: In his introduction to this year's collection, King writes that many of this year's submissions felt like "copping-a-feel reading"--stories driven not by a need to be told, but the desire to show off for editors and other writers (rather than regular old readers). Did you have the same reaction? What was your sense of the year's reading?

Pitlor: I'll put it a different way than he did. I often felt that writers put on airs. To me, it's apparent when writers aren't being true to themselves, especially in their writing voice. I want to forget that I'm reading--unless being aware that I'm reading is exactly what the writer is after. But typically, I want to lose myself in the words, to forget that someone is behind them. I want to believe the characters more than that.

That said, I was pleasantly surprised by the amount of stories that did feel true and urgent, that did take me out of myself for a brief while.

Amazon.com: Story writing seems to ride waves of influence, driven at various times by the models, say, of Updike or Barthelme or Carver. Is there a writer now who you feel is the most influential in the stories you read?

Pitlor: Carver still seems to be a big influence--I'm not sure his influence ever waned. Hemingway too, as well as Chekhov, Faulkner, Cheever, Flannery O'Connor, Philip Roth, Alice Munro, Lorrie Moore, Tim O'Brien. No one model comes to mind more than the others at this point.

Amazon.com: What story was your most exciting discovery of the year? (And did King like it too?)

Pitlor: There were many for both of us--this is the best part of the job. He and I frequently enthused to each other about this or that new writer. But also about great stories by more familiar writers--that can feel like a discovery too. I don't know, though--naming the most exciting writer feels a bit like admitting you have a favorite child.

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In her acclaimed Women of the Otherworld series, Kelley Armstrong has created a scintillating realm where the supernatural and the human coexist on the edge of darkness, romance, and eternity. Now Armstrong tells the captivating tale of a young woman with an insatiable lust for danger. She can’t help it. It’s in her blood.

Tabloid reporter Hope Adams appears to live the life of an ordinary working girl. But in addition to possessing the beauty of a Bollywood princess, Hope has other unique traits. For she is a half demon—a human fathered by a demon. And she’s inherited not only a gift for seeing the past but a hunger for chaos—along with a talent for finding it wherever she can. Naturally, when she’s chosen by a very dangerous group for a very dangerous mission, she jumps at the chance….

The head of the powerful Cortez Cabal—a family that makes the mob look like amateurs—has a little problem in Miami: a gang of wealthy, bored offspring of supernaturals is getting out of hand, and Hope is needed to infiltrate. As spells, astral projections, and pheromones soar across South Beach, Hope weaves her way through its elite hot spots, posing as upscale eye candy and reading the auras of the clientele—and potential marks.

As it turns out, Hope is a little too good at this job. And soon she’s in a little too deep, needing to be bailed out by her jewel-thief werewolf ex-boyfriend and by the Cortez heir himself. And when a killer goes to work, Hope is among many targets at the pinnacle of Cabal rule. For a woman who didn’t know what she was getting into, there’s only one way out: it’s time for Hope to unleash her most potent primal instincts—and open herself, mind and body, to everything she most fears . . . and desires.

Sexy and suspenseful, Personal Demon is a thrill ride through a world on the wild side of our own..
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Readers around the world have fallen for Kelley Armstrong’s intoxicating, sensual and wicked tales of the paranormal, in which demons and witches, werewolves and vampires collide – often hilariously, sometimes violently – with everyday life. In Armstrong’s first six novels, Elena, Paige and Eve have had their way with us. Now get ready for Jaime Vegas, the luscious, lovelorn and haunted necromancer. . .

Jaime, who knows a thing or two about showbiz, is on a television shoot in Los Angeles when weird things start to happen. As a woman whose special talent is raising the dead, her threshold for weirdness is pretty high: she’s used to not only seeing dead people but hearing them speak to her in very emphatic terms. But for the first time in her life – as invisible hands brush her skin, unintelligible fragments of words are whispered into her ears, and beings move just at the corner of her eye–she knows what humans mean when they talk about being haunted.

She is determined to get to the bottom of these manifestations, but as she sets out to solve the mystery she has no idea how scary her investigation will get, or to what depths ordinary humans will sink in their attempts to gain supernatural powers. As she digs into the dark underside of Los Angeles, she’ll need as much Otherworld help as she can get in order to survive, calling on her personal angel, Eve, and Hope, the well-meaning chaos demon. Jeremy, the alpha werewolf, is also by her side offering protection. And, Jaime hopes, maybe a little more than that.

“As I knelt on the cobblestones to begin the ritual, I opened not some ancient leather pouch, but a Gucci make-up bag. . . .

I know little about the geography and theology of the afterlife, but I do know that the worst spirits are kept secured, and my risk of “accidentally” tapping into a hell dimension is next to nil. Even if I do bring back some depraved killer’s spirit, what can it do to me? When you deprive someone of the ability to act in the living world, he’s pretty darned helpless. In death, even the worst killer plummets from lethal to merely annoying.

Yet whatever had been trying to contact me apparently could cross that barrier, could act in the living world. . .at least on me. I added an extra helping of vervain to the censer.”
—from No Humans Involved


From the Hardcover edition..
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The “fast-paced” (Publishers Weekly)third novel in the Confederation series— now in paperback,,.

Staff Sergeant Torin Kerr jumps at the chance to go to Crucible, the Marine Corps training planet. It is supposed to be an easy assignment—after all, Crucible was set up to simulate battle situations so recruits could be trained safely. But Torin’s barely on-planet when someone starts blasting the training scenarios to smithereens....
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"You feel you are turning the pages of history, the pages of truth."—Austin Clarke, author of The Polished Hoe

Abducted from Africa as a child and enslaved in South Carolina, Aminata Diallo thinks only of freedom—and of the knowledge she needs to get home. Sold to an indigo trader who recognizes her intelligence, Aminata is torn from her husband and child and thrown into the chaos of the Revolutionary War. In Manhattan, Aminata helps pen the Book of Negroes, a list of blacks rewarded for service to the king with safe passage to Nova Scotia. There Aminata finds a life of hardship and stinging prejudice. When the British abolitionists come looking for "adventurers" to create a new colony in Sierra Leone, Aminata assists in moving 1,200 Nova Scotians to Africa and aiding the abolitionist cause by revealing the realities of slavery to the British public. This captivating story of one woman's remarkable experience spans six decades and three continents and brings to life a crucial chapter in world history..
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