Five local books for under your tree this Christmas

PENTICTON – If you’re looking for some local books this Christmas – for yourself or as gifts – you might be surprised to find the wealth of talent and subject variety coming from a number of Penticton and area authors.

Judy Zubriski of "Hooked on Books" in Penticton pointed out five local authors with recently published works – all available at "Hooked on Books," located at 225 Main Street in Penticton.

Zubriski offered up these local authors and titles:

— Mike Pond’s “Couch of Willingness, the story of successful therapist Mike Pond, who succumbed to addiction after 20 years of helping his own clients battle addiction. He loses everything and ends up destitute in a rundown recovery home, populated by a cast of characters right out of a Dickens novel.

— Barbara Lambert’s “The Whirling Girl” is set against an Italian landscape where hills still shelter secrets from Etruscan times.The novel explores the layered nature of desire and asks what really are the conditions that foster art, or love—or the unearthing of civilization’s buried stories?

— Frances Greenslade’s Shelter has been described as a “brilliant coming of age story of two strong, brave sisters searching for their mother. Heartwarming and lushly imagined, Shelter celebrates the love between two sisters and the complicated bonds of family.” The novel is a tribute to sisters, mothers, daughters and to a woman’s responsibility to herself and those she loves.

— Curve Balls: Rolling with the Punches is a memoir written by Penticton author Cabrini Babakaiff.  It is the true story of Cabrini Garvie, a young woman growing up in rural Nova Scotia, chronicling her graduation as a medical lab technologist and her subsequent relocation to Vancouver, where she soon meets Frank Babakaiff. Cabrini relates the romantic blossoming of this relationship and gives us personal insight to what made their partnership so special. After Frank experiences a tragic accident, the memoir transitions into a much deeper and more complex story of tragedy and adversity, and ultimately a message of hope and inspiration.  

— David Korinetz worked in the aerospace industry for 19 years, moving to Penticton in 2000, where he decided to try writing in his spare time.
Since then, Korinetz  has found traction writing fantasy novels, starting with FireDrakes in 2007. In 2009 he published his second book, Sorceress, and began Red Tuque Books, a book distribution company for Canadian self-published authors and small presses. Korinetz published his third novel, Halfling, in 2011.

Have we missed something? If you have a favourite local author or want to make a suggestion, tell us—and our readers—in the comments below.

To contact the reporter for this story, email Steve Arstad at sarstad@infonews.ca or call 250-488-3065. To contact the editor, email mjones@infonews.ca or call 250-718-2724.