Accomplished Canadian mystery author Louise Penny and her new literary partner Hillary Rodham Clinton (Photo: Deborah Feingold).

Here are the lists of the top 10 fiction and non-fiction titles sold by independent booksellers in Alberta during the week ended Sunday, Oct. 17, 2021.

The lists are compiled by the Book Publishers Association of Alberta, and include sales at Audreys Books and Glass Bookshop in Edmonton.

I notice a couple of celebrity murder mysteries are sitting atop the fiction bestseller list this week, one of the celebs assisted by a journeyman mystery writer. Usually such efforts are pretty pedestrian, but now and then a good one comes along. Your blogger will try both Chris Hadfield’s orbital mystery and Ms. Clinton’s political one – which one hopes will be more successful than her last political effort – but will prudently await their arrival at the public library. I will say this for the former U.S. presidential candidate, she chose her literary partner for her novelistic premiere more wisely than did her husband, the former president, for his. 

ALBERTA FICTION BESTSELLERS

1. State of Terror – Louise Penny and Hillary Rodham Clinton (Simon & Schuster)
2. The Apollo Murders – Chris Hadfield (Random House Canada)
3. The Vinyl Cafe Celebrates – Stuart McLean (Viking)
4. The Marrow Thieves – Cherie Dimaline (Cormorant Books)
5. Silverview – John Le Carré (Viking)
6. The Lincoln Highway – Amor Towles (Viking)
7. Five Little Indians – Michelle Good (Harper Perennial)
8. Cloud Cuckoo Land – Anthony Doerr (Scribner)
9. Crossroads – Jonathan Franzen (Bond Street Books)
10. Bewilderment – Richard Powers (Random House Canada) 

ALBERA NON-FICTION BESTSELLERS

1. “Indian” in the Cabinet – Jody Wilson-Raybould (HarperCollins)
2. Nedí Nezų (Good Medicine) – Tenille K. Campbell (Arsenal Pulp Press)
3. 21 Things You May Not Know About the Indian Act – Bob Joseph (Page Two Books)
4. Praying to the West – Omar Mouallem (Simon & Schuster) *
5. Unreconciled – Jesse Wente (Allen Lane)
6. Indigenous Relations – Bob Joseph (Page Two Books)
7. Off the Record – Peter Mansbridge (Simon & Schuster)
8. Braiding Sweetgrass – Robin Wall Kimmerer (Milkweed Editions)
9. Permanent Astonishment – Tomson Highway (Doubleday Canada)
10. Finding the Mother Tree – Suzanne Simard (Knopf)

* Alberta Author   + Alberta Publisher

The independent bookstores contributing to this weekly list are:

Audreys Books, Edmonton
Cafe Books, Canmore
Drawn to Books, Edmonton
Glass Bookshop, Edmonton
Monkeyshines Books, Calgary
Owl’s Nest Books, Calgary
Pages on Kensington, Calgary
Shelf Life Books, Calgary
The Next Page, Calgary
Three Hills Books, Three Hills

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3 Comments

  1. The execrable Hillary does a book with Louise Penny (former Montreal CBC Morning personality BTW) and Bill does one with James Patterson (who spits them out almost weekly).
    Wonder, what’s the deal?
    NEXT: Chelsea and J. K. Rowling.

    I will bet my boots that ‘State of Terror’ will be adjacent to propaganda….. unless it’s a biography.
    Full disclosure I have been rereading “Manufacturing Consent”

  2. It’s been said that art can imitate life, but what is it called when life imitates art?

    Hillary Clinton’s tome is an interesting piece; in the sense that because it’s a work of fiction, she can say whatever she wants under the guise of it’s a work of fiction, and it can never happen in real life. Right?

    Since Clinton actually lived and experienced the world she describes, she can weave an amazing piece of speculative fiction that’s so interesting, it’s considered prophetic.

    In 1965, Fletcher Knebel wrote, “Night of Camp David,” the account of an unhinged president becoming so enthralled by his own gaslighting, he begins to believe in the conspiracies he weaves and the existence of secret armies enemies he believes are after him. Knebel’s work was so unsettling, it was hoped to be impossible. And then it happened, not once but twice, in the Nixon and Trump presidencies.

    Looking to Alberta’s own Premier Crying & Screaming Midget, he began his career denouncing and attacking imagined enemies of everything Albertan. Once elected, he had to make good on his nonsense and find these phantoms, throwing billions in public money in one effort after another to prove his claims correct. And when these enemies are not found, what then? Declare that the conspiracy against Alberta is even larger, involving foreign governments, international financiers and their intelligence networks, equity markets, global elites, the UN, a cabal led by PMJT, the Ford Foundation, the Illuminati, the Bilderbergers … at some point maybe even Kenney loses hope in all these claims.

    I was watching Rebel News and there was this fascinating interview with Drew Barnes. Barnes seems to have latched onto the notion that bigger conspiracies are the sure path to power, because they seem to work so well for so many. So, Barnes, in a jumble of word salad, declares that Kenney is part of the conspiracy against Alberta. How else could things have gone so badly, unless there was an evil genius controlling Kenney? Weirder still, on the website of the former Manning Institute, I found an interview with wing-nut Rob Anders, who declared that, while “speaking in code”, that it’s a possibility that a “very religious and pious premier” could have been manipulated by special interests because they are holding something over his head, like his preference for “strange sexual habits and activities” enjoyed while in “Bangkok, Thailand”.

    I guess we all know what Kenney meant by the “Greatest Summer Ever” now.

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