A Scottish mystery by way of Quebec’s Magdalen Islands + MORE Sep 26th

Cover of Strangers Drowning for book review MAC39. No credit.
Strangers Drowning
Larissa MacFarquhar
This is a timely moment for a book about altruism, with much of the world gripped by the plight of refugees from the Middle East and Africa. Everyone wants to help, but how? Is it enough to send money, to lobby our governments? Or is it upon us to sponsor families we’ve never met, invite strangers to live in our homes?
The people profiled in MacFarquhar’s book have all done the equivalent of the latter—and then some. There’s Dorothy Granada, a nurse who gave up a middle-class life in Chicago to open a health clinic for women in a volatile, Central American city in the 1980s. At one point, she acted as bodyguard to a high-profile activist named Nineth Garcia, who was being hunted by death squads. Granada gambled on her own status as a U.S. citizen to protect Garcia, but was also prepared to die in her place because “she thought Nineth’s work was more important than her own.”
There’s a man who has devoted his life to animal rights, donating half his salary, no matter how meagre, to the cause…

Cover of The Dog Walker for book review MAC39. No credit.
The Dog Walker
Joshua Stephens
If you’ve ever handed your house keys to a relative stranger, you’ll know there is a moment when visions of invasive snooping flicker behind your eyes. It’s irrational, you tell yourself. According to Stephens, an anarchist and now author, it’s way worse than you imagined. In a book that traces his decade-long foray into professional dog walking in Washington, D.C., Stephens coyly admits he has routinely done everything from laundry in his clients’ homes to napping, showering, hosting book clubs and, yes, having a lot of sex.
Approaching 40, Stephens has aged out of the full-time dog-walking game, but he has retained a youthfulness in his expressions of rage against capitalism, racism and inequality in all its forms. He likes to even the score, sometimes in unlikely ways, such as building a successful worker-owned dog-walking agency that catered to Washington’s one per cent that put into practice a credo that will resonate with working stiffs of any stripe: our jobs should serve us, not the other way around…

Big news right before the weekend from Aeroplan! News, Tips & TricksOf course the big news today is the upcoming changes to the Aeroplan award charts. Read our take on them here Yesterday we brought you the details of WestJet status match offer but there is also a fast track offer available to select WestJet Rewards members. Be sure to check your email for it! I received it in my email yesterday.Remember we have an exclusive offer with WestJet that saves you 20% on their Plus fares. You must book by Oct 5! Find out more here! Only 6 days left in our promotion where you can get a $250 Gift Card from Rewards Canada! Find out more here. Flying Copa Airlines out of Montreal or Toronto to any of their new destinations via Panama City? You can stand to earn up to 150,000 bonus ConnectMiles. See the link below in the bonus offers section.  Posts since our last update:Aeroplan Award Chart Changes effective December 15, 15 An email came out this morning from Aeroplan announcing more changes to their fixed mileage award charts…

Cover of Gold Eaters for book review MAC39. No credit.
The Gold Eaters
Ronald Wright and Hamish Hamilton
Like many an adventure story, The Gold Eaters opens with pirates. A teenager called Waman, having fled his village to taste life, is kidnapped at sea. Sickly, foul-smelling brigands keep him alive to train as their interpreter. Having sailed south from Mexico, the pirates are looking for country called Peru. It is apparently ruled by savages and brimming with gold. Waman has no clue. “But he has never heard of anywhere called Peru. Or even that that his country has a name. As far as he knows, it is simply the Empire. Or the World.”
So begins Wright’s latest exploration of how things fall apart, and empires rise and fall. His third novel, and tenth book, may be his most expansive indictment yet of bloody-minded human nature, in particular European predation in the “new” world. Coming from the author of Stolen Continents and A Short History of Progress, that is saying something…

Cover of Entry Island for book review MAC39. No credit.
Entry Island
Peter May
Crime stories and social commentary have been inseparable since the very beginning of the genre—Wilkie Collins’s The Moonstone (1868), the first great English-language detective novel, is rooted in an oblique, reap-what-you-sow critique of the British plunder of colonial India. But few have mastered the blend as well as Peter May. Glasgow-born May created the 1990s Gaelic-language soap opera Machair, set in the Isle of Lewis, a hit on Scottish TV, despite having to run with English subtitles.
After shifting to full-time novel writing, May eventually returned to the Outer Hebrides in his prize-winning Lewis trilogy (2011-13). Now he’s turned his focus to the outposts of the Scottish diaspora. In Entry Island, the murder investigation may be set in Quebec’s Magdalen Islands in the 21st century, but the original crime is the Highland Clearances, the forced displacement during the late 18th and early 19th centuries of hundreds of thousands of Gaelic-speaking Scots from their traditional lands to make way for sheep farming…