Shelf Life: New local fiction and poetry for your summer list

Death of a Lesser Man. Love crime fiction? Go local and check out the exploits of Inspector Eric Stride. Death of a Lesser Man is the gripping third book in Thomas Rendell Curran’s Inspector Stride detective fiction series. On a rainy night in 1947, gunshots ring out in a park in St. John’s. Inspector Stride arrives to discover Harrison Rose, a businessman and Great War veteran, dead at the scene. Is the motive business-related, or does it have something to do with long-past events that occurred during Rose’s time in the trenches? In bookstores now.

Wore Down Trust. For anyone who loves the blues and the gritty poetics of daily life. Michael Blouin’s book of poetry is written in A-A-B stanzas, like the blues that Wore Down Trust so deftly explores. The first section explores the life of Johnny Cash, from the heartache of losing his older brother in a mill accident to the salvation he found in June Carter. The second section introduces Nova Scotia poet Alden Nowlan, another talented writer who lived a hard life, albeit a less celebrated one. Throughout these sorrowful, stirring pages is Blouin’s own voice as he communes with, and confides in, these late, great blues artists. In bookstores now.

Tilt. Not just for teens. This coming-of-age novel by award-winning local author Alan Cumyn  is, in his own words, “essentially about being a 16-year-old boy — in this case about basketball and sex, and after a while the basketball falls away.” But there’s much more to it than that. Tilt tackles love, responsibility, family pressures, and growing up. Scheduled for release August 13. Cumyn will likely promote Tilt at the fall edition of the Writers Festival.