February 6, 2026
Big Book Launch News!
(This is a pinned post! Scroll down for updates)
🎉 Celebrate the launch of DEFINITELY THRIVING, with a special 25th-anniversary showing of BRIDGET JONES’S DIARY, the iconic film starring Renée Zellweger, Colin Firth, and Hugh Grant, at Paradise Theatre in Toronto on Thursday March 5. 🎉
Following the film, enjoy a conversation between Kerry Clare and Marissa Stapley, New York Times-bestselling author of LUCKY, about why Bridget Jones still resonates, and the film’s connections to DEFINITELY THRIVING, a novel about people who are perfectly imperfect, and all the love and support that’s required for one woman to make it on her own.
A night out at @paradiseonbloor, Toronto’s prime cinema venue, with books on sale from the good people at @typebooks? DING DONG. 🎥 📖 🎉
Pick up your tickets today at https://paradiseonbloor.com/movies/bridget-joness-diary-definitely-thriving-book-launch-with-kerry-clare/
February 3, 2026
Is This a Cry for Help?, by Emily Austin
Bestseller Emily Austin returns with another compelling novel about a lovable weirdo beset by mental health struggles and the burden of trying to exist as a sensitive human in an uncertain, inexplicable and at times cruel world. IS THIS A CRY FOR HELP? is the story of first person narrator Darcy, who loves her wife, and her career, and who has just gone back to work after a mental health crisis brought on by the death of her ex-boyfriend. But any chance of a smooth return to work is stymied by a campaign against the public library where Darcy works as a librarian by a group of right-wing zealots all riled up by the spectre of the public library as a den of iniquity.
In a dry, wry and understated tone, Darcy brings the reader along on her journey to make sense of this nonsense, and also to try to keep being okay in the midst of absurdity and crisis. We’re privy to her conversations with her therapist, discussions with her wife, and the day-to-day minutiae of life in a public library which serves to underscore the polycrisis of our current moment, homelessness, mental health, poverty, loneliness, polarization, misinformation and so much more converging.
There’s a light touch to all this heaviness, as well as humour, but also a powerful message underlying the story about the importance of libraries, learning, curiosity and understanding in a world that feels increasingly hostile, where so many of us are being pitted against each other. Calmly, and beautifully, through Darcy’s story, Austin suggests that connection is not only possible, but that it’s the only way through.
February 2, 2026
Northern Bull, by Michelle Swallow
If you can’t beat the winter, you might as well pick up a copy of Michelle Swallow’s funny and heartfelt debut novel Northern Bull, and escape via fiction to Yellowknife, NWT, a place that is likely colder than wherever it is you happen to be. Where the snowpants are as obligatory as pants themselves, but things still get pretty hot, especially between next door neighbours Maggie and Jacques, each of whom is secretly longing for the other, but they can’t come out and say it, and meanwhile Maggie is struggling to write an erotic short story to read aloud at the local burlesque show, and keeps being infuriated by Jacques’ proclivity to steal from her wood pile. He tries to pay her pack with a bit of whitefish, but it all goes wrong after she sees two women leaving his house after an epic night out, a night out so epic that Jacques’ insane friend Craig’s prized moose head goes missing, and Craig tells Jacques that if he doesn’t get it back he’s going to burn Jacques’ house down. Even though Jacques’ house is already falling apart, so full of holes that a weasel’s moved in, and Jacques has no idea where the moose head is anyway, but what else can he do? Can he find the moose head and get to the show in time to hear Maggie read her story? Will Maggie ever actually finish her erotic story, or will she keep dampening the spice by having her characters drink tea?
And that’s only the beginning—the story moves between Jacques’ and Maggie’s points of view, and also includes those of Craig, his roommate Randy, and their friend Vic, an aspiring exotic dancer who hopes to make his big debut at the show Maggie’s reading at. There’s also a missing van, a group of Korean journalists hoping to see the aurora borealis, the story of the moose head itself and how it came to be, a snowmobile race, and a bag full of explosives.
Taking place over 24 hours on a freezing day in the darkness of January, Northern Bull is a romp, as wickedly fun as its weather is freezing.
