Book cover of We Were the Bullfighters

Book description

“A window into Canada's role in the making of Ernest Hemingway in clear, clean prose.” — Lee Gowan, author of The Beautiful Place. Sent to cover bank robber Red Ryan’s daring prison break, a young Ernest Hemingway becomes fascinated with the convict.. In 1923, Ernest Hemingway, struggling with the responsibilities…


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Why read it?

1 author picked We Were the Bullfighters as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

We Were the Bullfighters, based on Ernest Hemingway's four-month stint as a staff reporter at the Toronto Daily Star, is a masterful blend of fact and fiction. After researching Hemingway's newspaper coverage of Norman "Red" Ryan's daring 1923 escape from Kingston Penitentiary, Toronto author Marianne Miller decided that the facts didn't capture the emotional hearts of Hemingway or Ryan. An entry that Hemingway made in a notebook saying that he was considering writing a novel about Ryan convinced her to turn her hand to fiction to depict the men behind the characters.
The result is a page-turner, and my favorite…

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Book cover of December on 5C4

December on 5C4 by Adam Strassberg,

Magical realism meets the magic of Christmas in this mix of Jewish, New Testament, and Santa stories–all reenacted in an urban psychiatric hospital!

On locked ward 5C4, Josh, a patient with many similarities to Jesus, is hospitalized concurrently with Nick, a patient with many similarities to Santa. The two argue…

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