VOTING:  MAY 01 - 31

The Edmonton Public Library's Alberta Readers' Choice Award is one of Alberta's richest literary awards with the winning author receiving $10,000!  The award recognizes the exceptional writing talent in our province while encouraging readers to support Alberta authors.

Works of fiction and narrative non-fiction (ie. first edition full-length novels, short story collections or books of poetry) are accepted by any author who has been a resident of Alberta for a minium of 12 consecutive months immediately prior to the publication of the submitted work, and who currently resides in Alberta, no matter where the book was published.

The EPL Alberta Readers' Choice Award jury selected the final five titles for 2012.

     Wayne Arthurson - Fall From Grace
           Marking the debut of Leo Desroches, one of the most unusual amateur detectives ever to appear in Canada or points south, this fast-paced, enthralling mystery is the story of a man who had everything, lost it all, and is trying to get it back. Leo Desroches doesn't look like a native, but his mother was Cree, and he understands the problems of indigenous Canadians of the First Nations. Which is probably why the Edmonton newspaper he writes for decides he should be their Aboriginal Issues reporter.

He has his own issues to deal with: his compulsive gambling that he couldn't stop even after it cost him his wife and children; his alcoholism; the risk-taking that threatens to derail him every time he starts to get his life back together.

When he's assigned to cover the murder of a young native prostitute, it's just one more story...until the cop in charge lets him view the corpse, something the Edmonton police never do. When Leo writes his article, it starts a chain of events that leads him to discover a much, much bigger story, one that could bring down the entire police department...if it doesn't get him killed.

     Tim Bowling - In the Suicide's Library
           When the hustle and bustle of modern life, the responsibilities of marriage and parenting, and the weight of middle-age get Tim Bowling down, he heads for a bookshelf in search of the solace books and reading can provide. But can the cure become the poison? One day, alone in the Modern Literature stacks of a university library, Bowling opens a tattered copy of Wallace Stevens's poetry collection Ideas of Order and, on the front flyleaf, finds the elegant ownership signature of Weldon Kees, an obscure American poet, painter, photographer, filmmaker and musician who vanished mysteriously in 1955, an apparent suicide off the Golden Gate Bridge. So begins Bowling's strange eight-month quest into American literature of the 1940s and '50s and the world of book collecting, a journey branching into a wealth of subjects ranging from the relationship between fathers and daughters, suicide, masculinity, the Internet, the history of printing, bibliomania and the strange effects of midlife and obsession on an otherwise rational mind. Through it all, Bowling faces two central questions: the one that Weldon Kees put to his friend, Pauline Kael, on the day before he vanished?  "What keeps you going?"? and, perhaps even more important, is it ever acceptable to steal a book for your own collection?

     Lynn Coady - The Antagonist
           Against his will and his nature, the hulking Gordon Rankin ("Rank") is cast as an enforcer, a goon by his classmates, his hockey coaches, and especially his own "tiny, angry" father, Gordon Senior.  Rank gamely lives up to his role until tragedy strikes, using Rank as its blunt instrument.  Escaping the only way he can, Rank disappears.  But almost twenty years later he discovers that an old, trusted friend the only person to whom he has ever confessed his sins ?== has published a novel mirroring Rank's life. The betrayal cuts to the deepest heart of him, and Rank will finally have to confront the tragic true story from which he's spent his whole life running away. With the deep compassion, deft touch, and irreverent humour that have made her one of Canada's best-loved novelists, Lynn Coady delves deeply into the ways we sanction and stoke male violence, giving us a large-hearted, often hilarious portrait of a man tearing himself apart in order to put himself back together.

     Dawn Dumont - Nobody Cries at Bingo
           In Nobody Cries At Bingo, the narrator, Dawn, invites the reader to witness first hand Dumont family life on the Okanese First Nation. Beyond the sterotypes and clichés of Rez dogs, drinking, and bingos, the story of a girl who loved to read begins to unfold. It is her hopes, dreams, and indomitable humour that lay bear the beauty and love within her family. It is her unerring eye that reveals the great bond of family expressed in the actions and affections of her sisters, aunties, uncles, brothers, cousins, nieces, nephews, and ultimately her ancestors.

It’s all here — life on the Rez in rich technicolour — as Dawn emerges from home life, through school life, and into the promise of a great future. Nobody Cries At Bingo embraces cultural differences and does it with the great traditional medicine of laughter.

     Judy Schultz - Freddy's War
         In 1941, a young man imagines thrilling battles and heroic acts when he lies about his age and joins the army. Assigned to the Winnipeg Grenadiers, part of the Canadian army in Hong Kong, Freddy McKee becomes a prisoner of war six weeks after arriving in Hong Kong.

Five years pass and Freddy finally returns home from the war, but three women - Joanna Keegan, her daughter Hope, and the beautiful and mysterious Su Li - feel echoes of Freddy's ordeal in each of their lives.  For Freddy, the memory of war is a heavier burden than the weapon he once carried.  Freddy must fight to survive in a world that has left him behind.