In the spirit of John Updike's Rabbit Angstrom novels, SHINNY'S GIRLS, THE TRILOGY reveals a social history of our times by presenting what critics have called "an uncommon common woman" and her family of three daughters. Each of the linked novels – Shinny's Girls, Flashing Yellow and You Again – covers a single year in the Trilogy's twenty-five year span. Through the threat of an obscene caller in the first novel, to the unravelling of a long kept secret in the third, the girls gradually leave home in Vancouver for Milan, New York and a goat farm in the redwoods of Northern California, and Shinny's world opens to experiences she would never have foreseen, including a white water rafting adventure that sparks a mid-life love affair, an email correspondence with a soldier stationed in Afghanistan, and her unintentional complicity with an identity thief who happens to be her grandson.
The late CBC radio icon Peter Gzowski confessed that Shinny had hooked him. "I stayed up until the wee hours to finish it (the original novella). You get a real sense of the reality of the lives of these people." Other readers have described the Shinny novels as "fast paced and funny and a pleasure to read."
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Shinny's Girls, the Trilogy [Kindle Edition]
From Barnes & Noble
Shinny's Girls, the Trilogy [NOOK Book]
From iTunes Books
Shinny's Girls, the Trilogy [iBook]
Books in Canada: "A superb novella, Shinny's Girls demonstrates a large, robust talent, nicely matured."
Calgary Herald: "compelling and memorable."
Toronto Star: "...a strong collection by a considerable talent."
The alternating voices of Shinny, the three grown-up "girls," and Mattie create a narrative that spans about a year, primarily in Vancouver, but also in New York City, where Elfie lives with her composer-husband, and in northern California, where middle-daughter Annette raises goats.
While readers can follow the family from the start, in Shinny's Girls, The Trilogy, YOU AGAIN makes a compelling stand-alone read.
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You Again [Kindle Edition]
From Barnes & Noble:
You Again [NOOK Book]
From iTunes Books
You Again [iBook]
Mary Burns was born in Joliet, Illinois, near Chicago, the fourth of eleven children. A former journalist and documentary filmmaker, she has published widely in literary magazines and is the author of six books, including four novels, two story collections and a non-fiction book, The Private Eye: Observing Snow Geese, which was shortlisted for the Science in Society Book award. Her radio plays were broadcast on CBC and BBC Radio 3, and some were collected in the anthology Take Five, The Morningside Dramas, edited by Dave Carley. She has also written several stage plays. As a young woman she left the Midwest for New York City, then Los Angeles and later Santa Rosa, California. She and her older daughter emigrated to Canada in 1970, starting in British Columbia before moving on to the Yukon Territory where she worked for five years as editor of the Yukon News. She now spends part of the year just north of Vancouver, in Grantham's Landing, B.C., and several months in Quebec City. For more details of her life and samples of her work, visit her website, maryburns.ca
Author's note:
The original Shinny's Girls and Other Stories
was published by Talonbooks in 1989. The strong critical and reader response, and the affection I had developed for my invented characters compelled me to continue their story ten years later in the novel Flashing Yellow
published by Turnstone Press in 2001. I completed the trilogy with You Again, in 2012. All three novels are available in the single volume ebook, Shinny's Girls, the Trilogy. The three novels are also available separately in paper, from on-line booksellers, including Abe Books, or directly from the publishers, http://talonbooks.com/books/shinny-s-girls-and-other-stories
http://www.turnstonepress.com/fiction/flashing-yellow.html.
http://www.lulu.com/shop/search.ep?keyWords=You+Again&type=