Writing & Photography
Tyler Enfield
Here's an audio review from Becky Toyne, CBC national radio.
Like Rum-Drunk Angels
Goose Lane Editions
March 3, 2020
$22.95
Genre: Literature
Winner of the 2021 Spur Award and the Robert Kroetsch City of Edmonton Prize, nominated for the Stephen Leacock Medal.
Francis Blackstone is a fourteen-year-old gunslinger with a heart of gold. He’s fallen for the mayor’s daughter and resolves to make his mark, and his fortune, to win her favour.
And what better way than to rob a Manhattan Company bank?
At once a tribute to boyhood enthusiasm and the heroes of classic quests, Like Rum-Drunk Angels is an offbeat, slightly magical and entirely original re-telling of Arabian Nights as an American western.
Press Coverage:
The Globe and Mail — Winter books preview: 36 reads to get you through till spring
49th Shelf — Most Anticipated: Spring 2020 Fiction Preview
CBC Books — 47 works of Canadian Fiction to Watch for in Spring 2020
Broken Pencil Magazine — 2020 Indie Book Picks of the Year
"Turns the historically mundane into the psychedelically evocative."
— The Puritan Magazine
"A truly mesmerizing work."
— Avenue Magazine
“Brilliant. A mad-dog of a novel!”
— Thomas Trofimuk, author of This is All a Lie
"A surreal, often hilarious fracturing of traditional western tropes, imbuing classic elements with a spirited post-modern awareness, including Greek mythology, tales from the Arabian Nights, and a surprisingly effective cosmic existentialism... Like Rum-Drunk Angels is a hoot, with a tender heart at its core."
— Quill & Quire
"A fabulist's feast... Cormac McCarthy meets Gabriel Garcia Marquez."
— Winnipeg Free Press
"Tyler Enfield opens a treasure-chest of familiar Western tropes, turns them upside down and inside out, and makes them dance. Like Rum-Drunk Angels is Funny, absurd, wildly inventive, and then — just as you're least prepared for it — deeply moving. Magic."
— Ian Weir, author of the The Death and Life of Strother Purcell
“Tyler Enfield's Like Rum-Drunk Angels wrings a variation on the American Western which is entirely unique — saucy, funny, warm, tender, unbridled. It's a breakneck gallop of a book, as fine a novel as I have read in a long time.”
— Wayne Johnston, author of First Snow, Last Light
"Beautifully cinematic, with surprising story breaks that create a long-lasting controlled suspense."
— Hamilton Review of Books
"And as we ride into the sunset alongside Francis Blackstone... we are the lucky ones, charged with inventing meaning out of a novel that refuses to be contained."
— Literary Review of Canada
"There is plenty of humour and the whole year-long escapade takes on a dream-like aspect as in the anything-can-happen, even the impossible — which does."
— The Miramichi Reader
Madder Carmine
Or
A Thrilling Account Of Gun Battles, Romance, Harrowing Escapes, Unshaven Villains, A Snakebite, A Dubious Circus, A Mysterious Girl With A Palette Of Paints, And A Young Man's Epic Journey To Find Her
Great Plains Publications
Oct 01, 2015
$14.95 CAD
Genre: Literature
Winner of the 2016 High Plains Book Award, Madder Carmine is a loose retelling of Dante's Inferno as an American Western.
"Madder Carmine is a masterpiece... Enfield's fever dream of a classical quest is dizzying, poetic and original... a major work that deserves to be celebrated."
- High Plains Book Award judges
"Brilliant... mind-bending... in the same frenetic vein as Patrick DeWitt's genre-bashing novels, Tyler Enfield's Madder Carmine is a step above, and vividly beyond."
- Thomas Trofimuk, author of Waiting for Columbus
"Original and gripping right up to the final page..."
- Publishers Weekly
"Like the Sister's Brothers... only better."
- CBC's RadioActive
"Intelligent and poetic... dreamlike and tangible... [Madder Carmine] is rich with its own unique spark."
- Maple Tree Literary Supplement
Hannah and the Magic Eye
Great Plains Publications
March 01, 2017
$12.95 CAD
Genre: Childrens Lit (age 8-12)
Hannah and the Magic Eye is the story of Hannah and Samir, two unlikely friends who embark on a fast-paced treasure hunt though modern-day Jerusalem to find the lost treasure of King Solomon’s Temple— the largest unrecovered fortune in history. But racing alongside them is the Cancellarii, the dangerous secret society of treasure hunters who kidnapped Hannah’s grandfather— the famed archeologist Henri Dubuisson. Now Hannah and Samir must rescue her grandfather by reaching the treasure first, and ransoming it back to the Cancellarii for her grandfather’s freedom. But first Hannah and Samir must decipher an enchanted map and follow its clues through seven of Jerusalem’s most exotic sites. They must evade the Israeli police, ride camels through the desert, swim with hippies in the Dead Sea, drink copious black coffee, hitchhike with friendly Arabs, and somehow outfox the Cancellarii as they search for a pile of gold worth more than 56 billion dollars.
“With his fast-paced new novel, Edmonton writer and photographer Tyler Enfield introduces young readers to the harrowing world of archaeologist treasure hunts, Dan Brown-style, but with a thought-provoking and humanist twist ... The book’s message of tolerance and inclusiveness is powerful, and one delivered with a good deal of grace.”
--Quill & Quire
“With a playful nod to Indiana Jones, the intrepid duo of Hannah and Samir take readers on a rollicking adventure through the exotic locales of Israel. Packed with mind-bending riddles and a healthy dose of excitement, Hannah and the Magic Eye has a lot to say about cooperation, friendship, and acceptance, no matter the gender, religion, or disastrously fitting sunglasses.”
—Natasha Deen, author of Guardian and Gatekeeper.
Wrush: The Secret Worlds of Tabetha Bright
Greenleaf Book Group
$11.95 CAD
Juvenile Fiction
Tabetha Bright may be the cleverest girl ever scoot around in a wheelchair. Her days in the hospital are spent daydreaming and writing magical tales, but when she receives a mysterious give, a pen with magic all its own, her stories become dangerously real. Suddenly Tabetha is thrown into a perilous adventure in the strange and wondrous world of Wrush...
With the help of a Mungling, a captain, and a tattooed boy wizard, Tabetha must stop a dark sorcerer from finding the Pyramid Map and destroying the protective wall between worlds. But how much can one girl, unable to walk, help against Wrush's most powerful foe?
More than anyone ever imagined...
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Winner: 2010 Foreword Reviews Book of the Year Award
Winner: 2010 Moonbeam Award
Winner: Writers Federation of New Brunswick Literary Award
To purchase, place request via contact form.
Wrush: Tabetha's Last Task
Greenleaf Book Group
$11.95 CAD
Juvenile Fiction
The countdown has begun. In a race against Morlac the dark sorcerer, ad her own fading strength, Tabetha must return to Wrush and find the three pyramids. Now, with the help of an enchanted salamander, Tabetha and her friends must continue their journey between worlds, searching for a way to save Wrush from their foe.
But will she find the three pyramids before Morlac? Will the Hedge between worlds be destroyed? As time runs out, Tabetha is forced to reveal her greatest secret- one that nobody, not even her closest friends, would ever expect...
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"An enthralling fantasy... colorful, charming, quirky, inventive, witty, and
extremely imaginative... a series that should, by all rights, find itself nestling
among the best in the genre."
- Chris d'Lacey, bestselling author of The Fire Within
"You read it and somehow something in your world feels different ever after."
- Sylvia McNicoll, WNFB Literary Prize Judge, author of Last Chance for Paris
To purchase, place request via contact form.