Local fiction to read this fall

You’re reading the October 18, 2024 edition of the Peterborough Currents email newsletter. To receive our email newsletters straight to your inbox, sign up here.

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Good morning and welcome to the arts and community newsletter from Peterborough Currents. I’m Alex, and I send this email every Friday to catch you up on what’s happening in the community.

This week, I’m sharing three new works of fiction by local authors. They’re diverse books — one’s a thriller, one’s a romance, and one is a piece of historical sports fiction. So I’m hoping that there’s something for everyone! If any of these catch your eye, you can head over to Take Cover Books on Hunter Street.

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Michelle Berry turns to the thriller genre, embracing the “weird” and “unexplained”

By Will Pearson

Peterborough author Michelle Berry’s new book opens with protagonists Ginny and Matt moving away from a big city to the town of Parkville, where they hope to start fresh and raise a family.

But as they settle into their new community, they become unnerved. Something about the town feels off, and their new friends seem to be holding something back from them. Even the house they bought has secrets. Matt and Ginny can’t shake the sense that the home’s previous owners are still somehow present within its walls.

“We leave traces of ourselves behind everywhere,” Berry observed in a recent interview with Currents. “Every house I’ve gone into, I’ve been aware that somebody else was there before me.”

When the author first moved to Peterborough about twenty years ago, her new house had some “weird, unexplained things,” she said. Those memories partly inspired Matt’s and Ginny’s experience in Satellite Image, which releases this week.

The book, Berry’s eighth novel, is something of a departure for the writer. She explained she is shifting away from more traditional and literary novels and embracing the thriller genre. 

It’s not a complete reinvention — Berry’s previous books “always had something in the background going on that was unexplainable and weird,” she said. Satellite Image is also not exactly a traditional thriller, according to Berry. “It’s more about psychological misinterpretations and misunderstandings,” she said. 

Are Matt and Ginny just imagining things? The police certainly think so — they attribute Ginny’s anxieties to “hysteria” and “pregnancy hormones.” And as red herrings come and go, the reader’s own assessment of what’s really going on begins to crumble.

The conclusion to Satellite Image does offer some answers. But it also underscores the ways our own psychologies and anxieties will always, to a certain extent, distort our understanding of the world.

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Andrew Forbes brings Peterborough’s hidden baseball history to light

For local author Andrew Forbes, the baseball diamonds at Peterborough’s East City Bowl are alive. They’re brimming with a history that he hearkens back to in his new novella, McCurdle’s Arm, which was released on July 16, 2024. 

The East City Bowl is one of many local places that inspired Forbes’ new book, a historical fiction following the story of Robert James McCurdle, a semi-professional baseball player in Southern Ontario in the 1890s playing for the Ashburnham Pine Groves.

McCurdle’s Arm is a work of fiction, but the Pine Groves were a real team. They played in Peterborough and featured a figure similar to the fictional McCurdle. The whole book is based on “real towns, real teams, real ballparks,” Forbes said.

“I change a few things here and there just to make it easier for me, but this is all in deference to the real history of semi-professional and amateur baseball in Canada, which is a very deep, very rich history.”

We just published a longer review of McCurdle’s Arm — you can read it on the Peterborough Currents website.

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Aphy Ray’s debut novel is a dystopian romance

By Ev Richardson

Peterborough author Aphy Ray published their first novel, Saffron and Honey, last month. Much of the book was written at Milk and Tea, a downtown bubble tea establishment.

Saffron and Honey follows two unlikely roommates who have reconnected as adults in a city overrun by a mysterious illness. One of them is afflicted, struggling to balance life as a graduate student and a warehouse worker to make ends meet. The other, a faerie with few worldly possessions but a heart full of generosity, is determined to find a cure for the illness that even magic can’t fix. As the chemistry between them grows, the novel explores themes of identity, disability, belonging, and responsibility.

Aphy Ray will read from Saffron and Honey at Take Cover Books next month. Learn more about Aphy Ray here.

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Looking for something to do?

• A new immersive Halloween experience for folks aged 12 and up is here in Peterborough this fall. Chaos Carnival takes participants on a chilling walk through the forest at 1734 Fifth Line in Selwyn while a spooky story comes to life around them. Tickets cost $17.87 and the event runs on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday evenings from now until Halloween. Learn more here.

• Canadian alternative country singer Carolyn Mark will perform at The Black Horse Pub this Saturday, October 19 from 5 to 8 p.m. She has toured Canada, the United States, the UK, Norway, and Italy, but this is her first time singing in Peterborough.

• This fall, the Art Gallery of Peterborough is running a monthly art-making workshop for children aged 7 to 11. The next edition of the Saturday Art Club is on October 19 from 1 p.m. to 4 p.m. and will focus on eco-printing. Future Saturday Art Clubs are on November 23 and December 21. Learn more here.

• Electric City Pulse will deliver funk, rock and R&B music to get folks dancing at The Erben this Saturday, October 19 from 9 p.m. til late into the night. Tickets cost $10 at the door, with a pay-what-you-can option available.

• Peterborough’s Babe Chorus is hosting their annual Practical Magic event at Sadleir House starting at 8:30 p.m. this Saturday, October 19. This 18+ event will feature music, drag, skits, projections, and burlesque acts all inspired by the cult classic 1998 film Practical Magic. Tickets cost $20 at the door, or $15 online if purchased in advance.

• The world premiere of The Monarch Ultra documentary is Wednesday, October 23 from 7 to 9 p.m. at Market Hall. The film tells the story of a group of ultra runners and environmentalists who followed the monarch butterfly’s migratory path on foot from Peterborough to Macheros, Mexico. Tickets cost $29 and are available online.  

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