While we remain committed to keeping our elbows up this season, looking to buy Canadian and, even better, local gifts for everyone, why not put our feet up as well, and relax with a book by a local author?

Indigo Books & Music, Canada’s largest bookseller, reports sales of Canadian-authored books are up 25 per cent this year. “Our uptick is especially strong in stores. We started stickering all books written by Canadian authors in February and the corresponding lift in sales was immediate,” a spokesperson told the CBC in November. 

The County is prodigiously populated with people of the pen. David Sweet of Books & Co., the County’s largest bookseller, has twenty-six local authors on the shelves. So let’s do some A-B-Cs—Authors and Books of the County—and see who’s got something recent for our fireside fallow time.

The Gazette reviewed a number of new local productions over the last year or so, including Paul Elter’s Silver Tongued, a collection of County portraits and stories; Shani Mooto’s latest novel, Starry Starry Night; and Yvonne Buys’s Look What Flew Through the County, a handsome documentation of avian visitors to our island. Tom Harrison’s Searching for Richard Nixon, about the then-vice-president’s visit to the County, was featured this summer; Ian Carr Harris’s Tracings, a collection of writings on art; JC Sulzenko’s “found” poetry, Life After Life; Treasure at Long Point, Lynne Grist’s children’s time traveling series; and Terry Sprague’s The Two of Us, a memoir of life with his beloved dog, Christie.

But that’s just scratching the surface. A couple of weeks ago, Andrea Harrison organized a Book Fest at the Picton Branch Library, featuring a dozen or so local authors. Writers brought not only their books, but treats. Being writers, many wandered from their own table to visit at others, comparing treats, of course, but also acquiring some rival reads. One author said, “It’s nice meeting all the other authors, but you end up buying more books than you sell.” Let’s give our locals a lift this Christmas.

Peter Blendell’s latest is Deep County, a fiction about the legacy of a pirated piece of the Avro Arrow. Janet Kellough’s latest novel is Lorraine and Winnie’s Life of Crime. Phil Norton was promoting Prince Edward: A Four Season County, a collection of County photos. The prolific Linda Shantz had a full table, including All The Right Things, the ninth volume in her teen-targeted series about horse-racing. Gail Hamilton showcased a historical novel, The Accidental Bootlegger, about a girl’s move from England to Canada in the nineteenth century. And Sharon Stefan offered a County whodunnit, Silence is Deadly.

And there are other books. Vicki Delany is an international bestselling crime and mystery writer who lives in the County. She recently re-published More than Sorrow, an intriguing historical mystery set in Cherry Valley and Waupoos in the Loyalist past and in the present. Brent Timm, a longtime financial advisor at Kingfisher Financial, has written Money is Time, a guide to navigating your financial future. The book begins with the optimistic premise that if your time is your money — what will you do with it?

And let us not forget the heroic outliers of our local book trade, The Wandering Albatross bookstore in Bloomfield, which features an eclectic selection of books from around the world, and our very own Assembly Press, which specializes in finding and publishing internationally competitive literary fiction.

Picton’s Books & Company stocks many of these titles, as does The Local Store — or find the authors on Facebook and drop them a line.