Author Archives: SJW

From The Week: Michael Koryta recommends 6 books for spooky season

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The Night Country by Stewart O’Nan (2003).

O’Nan dazzles by capturing the everyday and the human heart, so this tale — narrated by the ghost of a teen who died in a car wreck on Halloween night — might seem like a departure. What makes it work is how precisely he maintains that insight into the everyday and the human heart. O’Nan writes of autumn in New England: “It’s the best time of year up here, the only season you want from us, our pastoral past — witch hunts and woodsmoke, the quaintly named dead in mossy churchyards.”

The Week

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Lividian Publications Limited Edition of The Night Country!

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Lividian Publications is pleased to announce our deluxe signed and slipcased Limited Edition hardcover of The Night Country by Stewart O’Nan, which we’re offering as a “Preorder Only Limited Edition,” meaning the orders received between October 9 and October 31 will set the print run!

This deluxe special edition is being lavishly crafted with collectors and readers alike in mind. Exclusive to our slipcased Limited Edition is a “lost” introduction by the author and a new afterword by Paul Tremblay, plus eleven original black and white illustrations and a beautiful full-color wrap-around dust jacket painting by François Vaillancourt.

“Scary, sad, funny, and when it comes to young people at the end of their ropes and hopes, dead on the money. The Night Country takes you away to a strange and special place while reminding you of the places you’ve been—especially the spooky Halloween places. A gracefully written, mesmerizing read.”
— Stephen King

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The New York Times: When Baseball Comes Back, It Should Look Totally Different

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Audra Melton for The New York Times

People turn to baseball because they want to feel a connection — to the players, to the suspense. “Sports is always somewhat fresh,” Stewart O’Nan, a novelist, said. “The great thing about baseball is, most games you’re going to see something that you’ve never seen before. It’s also a way to forget about the world. It’s a release from the things that are weighing on you.”

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Henry, Reviewed from New Zealand

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Reviews don’t get much farther flung than New Zealand.

I seemed to have been lately reading novels with quirky introverted characters; The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry and The Last Voyage of Mrs Henry Parker to name just two. They are the sort of stories to be read at leisure. So what better time, in the midst of the 2020 Covid 19 Lockdown, to read something in a similar vein.

Henry Maxwell is a retired gentleman once a soldier and an engineer, always a husband, father and grandfather. The year is 1998 and we share this with Henry in his 75th year. As each chapter captures a moment in the year, we experience the smaller details of Henry’s life.

These everyday minutiae are poignantly shared; from the humour of trying to stop Rufus the dog from killing patches of grass with his peeing, to the joy of receiving a perfect Father’s Day present from his children.

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