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Join us for a discussion with award-winning and bestselling authors Will Ferguson and Greg Rhyno as they discuss their newest crime fiction and mystery novels: Officer Shimada and the Disappearing Girl by Will Ferguson and Who By His Own Hand by Greg Rhyno.
Books will be available for purchase, and a signing will follow the event.
Presented in partnership with Words Worth Books.
An empty elevator. A missing girl. A brother’s obsessive search for the truth.
In southern Japan, a young woman enters an elevator in a bar building late at night. But when the doors open, she has vanished. Fifteen years later, her younger brother Kaito has risen up the ranks to police inspector, still haunted by his sister’s disappearance.
On a sleepy island in Okinawa, Kaito tracks down Mr. Shimada, a senior officer who once solved an impossible elevator crime decades earlier. The unlikely pair travels back to the city where Kaito’s sister first disappeared — to the very elevator where it occurred. Together, they retrace her steps and uncover the truth of what happened that night.
The story of a lost family, lifelong regrets, and quiet desperation, Officer Shimada and the Disappearing Girl pulses with action and leaves readers yearning for resolution.
Will Ferguson is a bestselling author whose work has spanned fiction, travel writing, history, and humour. His literary thriller 419 won the Giller Prize in 2012, and his novel The Finder received the 2021 Arthur Ellis Award for Crime Fiction. A three-time winner of the Stephen Leacock Memorial Medal for Humor, he has been nominated for both the IMPAC Dublin Award and a Commonwealth Writers’ Prize.
Ferguson’s travels have taken him around the globe. He lived in Japan for five years and regularly returns to visit his extended family. He is the author of the celebrated Japanese travel memoir Hitching Rides with Buddha (originally titled Hokkaido Highway Blues) and the budget The Hitchhiker’s Guide to Japan. He walked across Northern Ireland in Beyond Belfast, travelled Canada in Beauty Tips from Moose Jaw, and journeyed through central Africa in Road Trip Rwanda. His debut novel, Happiness, was sold in 23 languages. Ferguson has written for The New York Times, Esquire UK, and Canadian Geographic. He lives in Calgary.
About Who By His Own Hand
Single mother and reluctant detective Dame Polara would like nothing more than to leave the world of amateur sleuthing behind her, but when her two-year-old daughter is abducted by a vindictive nemesis, she must draw on her unusual talents and her retired PI father’s shady connections to save her family.
About Greg Rhyno
Greg Rhyno is the author of Who by Fire, first of the Dame Polara Mysteries, which was nominated for a Crime Writers of Canada Award of Excellence. His debut novel, To Me You Seem Giant, was nominated for a ReLit Award and an Alberta Book Publishing Award. His writing has appeared in a number of journals, including Hobart, Riddle Fence, The Quarantine Review, and PRISM International. He completed an MFA at the University of Guelph and lives with his family in Guelph, Ontario.
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Located at the RIM Park Manulife Sportsplex, the Eastside Branch boasts specialized creative spaces, quiet study areas, a nature education space and lots of natural light.
