Rana Bose, Chris Knopf, Molly Peacock

Engineer, consultant and performance poet Rana Bose is the author of the acclaimed novel Recovering Rude and ten published plays, which have been performed in Canada, the USA and India. He is also an editor of the webzine Montreal Serai. He resides in Montreal and sometimes in Kolkata. Bose reads from his new novel, The Fourth Canvas, which follows Claude Chiragi, McGill scholar and son of a Pakistani free-spirit, and his girlfriend Clara. The two embark on an adventure across three continents – involving murder, kidnapping, a trek into ancestral roots, and a school for subversives in the jungle – discovering a world of political and intellectual conspiracies.

James Grainger is a books columnist for the Toronto Star and the author of The Long Slide. He is also the Editor in Chief of Torontoist's new books site, Books@Torontoist.

Chris Knopf is a house designer, cabinetmaker, musician, award-winning copywriter and principal of Mintz & Hoke, a Connecticut marketing communications agency. He is the author of four novels, which form the Sam Acquillo Series: The Last Refuge, Two Time, Head Wounds, and Hard Stop (May 2009). Knopf presents Head Wounds, featuring part-time carpenter, full-time drinker Sam Acquillo. Acquillo tries to lead a simple life, but, as always, fate intervenes, causing him to straddle the thin red line between envy and love, hate and forgiveness, goodness and greed.

Molly Peacock is the award-winning author of five volumes of poetry. Her poems have appeared in such leading publications as the New Yorker, the Paris Review, and the Times Literary Supplement. Before immigrating to Canada in 1992, she was one of the creators of Poetry in Motion on the buses and subways in New York City, and she served as an early advisor to Poetry on the Way. She is currently the poetry editor of the Literary Review of Canada. Peacock presents The Second Blush, her latest collection of poetry, which illuminates the complexities of human relationships, while always revolving around the deeper questions of how we love and how love affects the way we live.

Peel back the glitz and glory of the fabled Hamptons and you’ll find a beautiful place filled with ugly secrets. This is Sam Acquillo’s world. In Head Wounds, the latest installment in the Sam Acquillo Series, the relentless demons of Sam’s past won’t let him off easily. Worse, they’ve teamed up with some pretty nasty demons of the present, including a very determined Chief of Police, whose top detective has Sam caught in the cross-hairs. Sharing the story with local builder and blundering bully Robbie Milhouser, wry pal Jackie Swaitkowski, and rich guy Burton Lewis, Sam seems doomed to straddle the thin red line between envy and love, hate and forgiveness, goodness and greed in this thrilling mystery novel.

1970s London: a Calcutta teacher and radical is on the run from Indian authorities, and the body of a left-wing Latin American intellectual, Guillermo Sanchez, is pulled out of the Seine. Years later, Claude Chiragi, McGill scholar and son of a Pakistani free-spirit, receives a painting signed “G Sanchez” as a present. Suspecting that the painting contains a subversive message, Chiragi and his girlfriend Clara embark on an adventure across three continents, which causes them to unearth a world of political and intellectual conspiracies, all out to obscure the message of the painting. Following a journey involving murder, kidnapping, a trek into ancestral roots, and a school for subversives in the jungle, they are left to question who Guillermo Sanchez was, and wonder if he is really dead.

In this strong and sparkling new collection, internationally acclaimed poet Molly Peacock maps the uncertainties of mid-life marriage and a two-track life with the man who became her husband. These poems take as their starting point her husband’s survival from a life-threatening disease, addressing the contradiction of planning for the future while also making the present brilliantly alive. Playful, profound, and moving, the poems illuminate the complexities of human relationships, while always revolving around the deeper questions of how we love and how love affects the way we live.