![Keep moving – and breathe... Keep moving – and breathe...](https://bookanista.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/sun-seekers-feature-290x290.jpg)
Keep moving – and breathe…
Rachel McRady’s debut novel Sun Seekers is an emotionally resonant depiction of a broken family uniting in the face of a health crisis. It movingly explores the lasting effects of grief, complex family dynamics, the impact that a disease like dementia can have on everyone involved, and how the innocence of a child can bring...
![A precarious house of stories A precarious house of stories](https://bookanista.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/the-shrinking-goddess-feature-290x290.jpg)
A precarious house of stories
Over the past five decades I have researched proverbs, art, myths and other verbal genres that magnify the differences between men and women. These sources – many of which are thousands of years old – shed light on our conversations around gender today. For the most part, our myths are mainly concerned with justifying, or...
![Bookish backdrops Bookish backdrops](https://bookanista.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/how-can-i-help-you-feature-290x290.jpg)
Bookish backdrops
WHAT BETTER PLACE to set a book than in a bookstore or library? It makes sense that many authors, including myself, pay homage to these vital literary locations in our novels and non-fiction; most of us ‘grew up’ in libraries and bookstores – and chances are, many of our readers did too. I not only...
![Write what you don't know Write what you don't know](https://bookanista.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/cadenza-feature-290x290.jpg)
Write what you don’t know
By the time I wrote Cadenza, I had realised that the advice to ‘write what you know’ was lousy advice for a fiction writer. Part of my artistic agenda was to do something like the opposite. Writing what you know is a good way to stop your imagination before it even gets started. It’s also...
![Time to say goodbye Time to say goodbye](https://bookanista.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/birds-of-north-america-feature-290x290.jpg)
Time to say goodbye
Most people live in compromise. For me, this has never been an option. Not that I ever wanted some insipid “normal” existence, but people have said, and I suppose will always say, she did this or that “because of the accident” or “in spite of the accident.” These statements amount to the same thing: they’re...
![Righting the canoe Righting the canoe](https://bookanista.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/treasure-beach-canoe-feature-290x290.jpg)
Righting the canoe
I WEPT WHEN I SAW the picture of the overturned canoe at the entrance to Treasure Beach. I knew Hurricane Beryl had hit Jamaica’s south coast hard, but I had not yet seen many pictures of what had happened partly because communications were – are – still down. I knew that there is no electricity...
![Vial Vial](https://bookanista.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/ambush-at-spring-lake-feature-290x290.jpg)
Vial
I was loading the dishwasher when the clinic rang.‘I don’t know how to say this,’ she said, which seemed a strange opening sentence for a medical professional,‘… but did you use a sperm donor three years ago? Vial 2360?’ ‘Yes,’ I said. I didn’t particularly like thinking about the donor. It wasn’t something I thought...