THE WARNINGS: the latest edition to my e-book publishing is now up on Kindle and Kobo!
(I want to thank my daughter Christine for doing the amazing work of organizing the text for e-publication once I had them converted - and for uploading all six of my previously published novels onto Kindle and Kobo. My other job was to rework the original covers for fun and interest.)
The next one we are working on is "The Dark Garden." Another (all new) cover for that one!
Quick summary of The Warnings: Rachel's mother has walked out for good, and Rachel's former hippie-farmer dad has dumped her with her Great-aunt Irene and Irene's elderly friends, "The Fossils", who live in a dark mansion in the oldest part of the city. They set up a bedroom for Rachel in the attic of the house; then seem to spend most of their time shadowing her everywhere. Why? Rachel is full of anger - and fear. Before arriving she was having frightening flashes of second sight warnings. Now, in Irene's old mansion, she is sure something bad is about to happen ... and it involves her and her father and the crazy old people in Irene's house.
A FEW REVIEWS FOR THE WARNINGS
Toronto Star
"The normal confronts the abnormal in an utterly absorbing way."
Kirkus Reviews
"Buffie creates a wonderful tension between her hard-bitten heroine
and the eerie scenes she confronts, while John the attic inhabiting ghost is as fully realized a character as (her aunt) Irene and the other oldsters. ....satisfying and mistily spooky.
VOYA
"Buffie has written a wonderful supernatural mystery. Highly recommended.
School Library Journal
"....this is a compelling story, complex in themes, but fast moving and
easy to read. Fans of Buffie's first novel will not be disappointed
in this one, with its surprising and satisfying climax and conclusion."
And don't forget: the books below are now all available on both Kindle and Kobo!
The Watcher
The Watcher
The Watcher
Quill and Quire
Emma is a familiar Buffie heroine, a child psychologically at risk, seeking her place in things and finding it through the aid of the fantastical. The sub-themes of alienation and belonging are underscored by Emma's entrapment in what her mother describes as the "Borderland", that sometimes dangerous space between childhood and adulthood. Buffie, winner of the Vicky Metcalf Award, depicts the game world in a vivid and almost painterly fashion. She weaves such a sophisticated fantasy that it isn't entirely clear which characters we should be rooting for. Although this might prove disquieting for some, Emma's powerful need to watch over her family is an overridingly compelling premise from beginning to end.
National Post
... Buffie confidently creates an entire world of fantasy. ... It allows Buffie to establish the importance of game playing as the metaphor that dominates her story: games with often outrageous rules, and players with roles hardly known even to themselves. In some ways, It feels like Lewis Carroll with the Queen of Hearts in full control. Like Alice, Emma is confused and distressed, but Buffie shows that Emma and even her family never really escape the rabbit hole. From a world centered on humans in the opening chapter, Buffie skillfully navigates step by step from the solid ground of a world governed by gravity and expected behavior and understanding, to an existence where Emma can't separate dreams from reality. Taking her fantasy from Norse and Anglo-Saxon mythology, Buffie adroitly conjures up this confusing world going back and forth from worldly adventure and fright to supernatural powers.
Kirkus
From ominous beginning to tense climax this is a page turner.
School Library Journal
Filled with suspense, adventure, and colorful characters, this story will appeal to readers of Franny Billingsley's The Folk Keepe (Atheneum, 1999) and will entertain fans of the genre. While a familiarity with Celtic myths is not necessary to enjoy the story, those who know the tales will delight in finding fresh interpretations of characters rarely brought to life in children's literature.
Children’s Literature 2000
A terrific story with just enough ties to reality and Faerie to make us suspend disbelief.
Napra Review
Buffie's way with words ... lend quirky insight into suprahuman existence and keep the reader engaged to the end.
VOYA
Fans of Buffie's earlier work and those readers enticed by the title ... will find this book hard to put down.
teenreads.com
Once again, Winnipeg writer and artist Margaret Buffie has taken seeming ordinary people and thrust them into a bizarre, magical world to create a frightening and intriguing story.
The Seeker
Quill and Quire
Emma Sweeney, a 16 year old Watcher who doesn't know who she really is, was not supposed to have bonded deeply with her Earth family. But as she watches her adopted mother die, Emma vows to find her missing sister and reunite her entire family, now far-flung across the worlds.... Buffie also invents beautifully imagined worlds, exquisite villains, and a cast of delightfully improbable quest companions, including Cill, a sweet pile of walking leaves. Emma wants to see the world in black and white but Buffie weaves in shades of grey, which puzzles her protagonist. Against the grey, our hero obsesses about whom to trust. Who are her real friends? And most critically, can she trust her own instincts? The answer is sometimes yes, sometimes no. The ending which is tied up without being strangled, intriguingly raises as many questions as it answers.
School Library Journal (USA)
Emma is a headstrong, appealing narrator, and Buffie uses her first person perspective to smoothly provide background for readers unfamiliar with the first volume. The characters have depth and complex motivations, keeping the protagonist and readers guessing about who her true friends may be ... this is a good choice for sophisticated fantasy readers, with strong appeal for gaming fans looking for a darker, more complex story than Diana Wynne Jones's "The Homeward Bounders".
American Library Association
Buffie's ability to keep the story moving without a lag in the action also helps this book to stand on its own. A welcome choice for fantasy buffs.
The Finder
Childrens' Literature 2004
As the third book in the acclaimed trilogy,"The Watcher's Quest", this book rejoins Emma for the most dangerous quest of the series. We watch Emma flawlessly follow Joseph Campbell's stages in hero quest as she answers the call to adventure, undergoes trials, discovers her father, (actually that was in the Seeker! MB) has a death like experience, and ...(I've left this bit out as it gives away too much of the plot!MB). All this is with the help of her friend and sometimes love, Watcher Tom ... The Finder is an intriguing and well-written conclusion to "The Watcher's Quest Trilogy". Fantasy lovers will enjoy this book, but they would be well advised to begin at the beginning of the trilogy.
wandsandworlds.com
This is definitely the best of The Watcher's Quest books. The action is breathtaking, and moves quickly from one situation to another. But more than that, we feel for Emma - her anger, her pain, her love - as she struggles to find herself and to deal with her emotions. As with all the Watcher's Quest books, the worlds are vividly imagined and the characters interesting. Mom's rating - 5 wands! -
Canadian Materials 2004
In this complicated, cunning finale, Emma Sweeney is sent to spend a week with her human family on Argadnel, another world.... Video game players will revel in this book's fast paced action, leaps into the unknown, character morphing and setting meltdowns. Heroes with "magickal" powers, characters described in infinite detail, and the excitement of competitive gaming will attract both boys and girls who long to be the honourable hero who succeeds in the face of almost insurmountable odds through gritty determination and dogged persistence, not to mention a little luck ... There are many (countless) other characters each more weird and wonderful than the last....The intricate connections between these players of the Game are extremely complex ... Strong themes of the necessity of discovering one's own identity and persisting in the face of danger and defeat dominate this novel. The powerful pull of family love, though, is ultimately the basis of Emma's success, as she completes her tasks to save her family and to discover who she really is.... a satisfying and compelling story.
Gov't of Saskatchewen Learning Resources
This third book in The Watcher's Quest trilogy can stand alone...The adventure brings into play all of Emma's experience and her wits, as well as assistance from others. The fast-paced action includes character morphing and setting meltdowns. The powerful themes of discovering one's own identity and persisting in the face of danger are dominant. The enduring strength of family love that gives Emma the power to fulfill her quest is refreshing.
School Library Journal
This is a well-written and exciting adventure ... a rollicking story with plenty of aliens, danger and conflict for fans of the series.
Books in Canada
(Angels Turn Their Backs) is a gripping, intelligent novel and Buffie’s readers will likely be willing to follow her in this new direction for the sheer enjoyment of reading her excellent prose and getting to know her original, thoroughly modern characters.
Quill and Quire
Margaret Buffie plunges us deep into her heroine’s first full-fledged crippling panic attack. ...You’re on the edge for this kid from the word go.
NAPRA
...The author masterfully weaves diverse elements into a flowing and believable first person narrative, leaving the reader feeling that one has discovered a special friend.
The Globe and Mail
Buffie’s preoccupation with things heard but not seen, seen but not heard, is not absent in this very readable, psychologically acute novel.
Simcoe Times Reformer
Buffie has written a wonderful book about a girl caught up in agoraphobia. This novel is a must read!
To go along with my own published e-books above, there is
Kids Can Press's e-publication of my first novel ...
Children’s Book News
Who is Frances Rain? is a thoroughly absorbing young adult novel filled with characters who are bound to intrigue teenagers. It’s full of the resonance of Canadian summer, the mystique of forest and water, and is sure to linger in the reader’s mind long after the last page is turned.
Quill and Quire
Who is Frances Rain? is as distinctly Canadian as the intoxicating lure of silent woods and wind-whipped lakes. The textures of the narrative and the well-rounded characters are just as haunting as the ghosts Lizzie finds on Rain Island. It’s a ghost story with much to reveal to the thoughtful reader about the turbulent emotions at work within families. It’s a novel that makes us grateful for a strong new voice in Canadian literature for young people, a voice we’ll want to hear again soon.
Toronto Star
Who is Frances Rain? will probably be devoured by its young adult readers in one sitting. It deserves to be; this is an excellent book.
Publishers Weekly
Buffie’s story is moody and atmospheric – the lake and the island are pungently, perfectly evoked. Lizzie’s encounters with ghosts are beautifully handled, with just the right balance of eerie and emotional moments.
Horn Book
Superb tension, suspense, and mystery.
And Tundra's publication my latest novel Winter Shadows:
American Library Assoc Booklist Review
The alternating narratives are gripping, and the characters are drawn with rich complexity; even the stepmothers are finally humanized. Readers will be pulled in by the searing history of bigotry as well as the universals of family conflict, love, and friendship
Quill and Quire Review
Vicky Metcalf Award-Winner Margaret Buffie returns with a breathtaking novel
that is part realism, part time-travel fantasy and part coming of age tale.
Canadian Materials
The past setting of this novel is simply stunning. Buffie immerses the reader in the cold, the food (and the effort it took to find and prepare it), the influence of the church, and above all, the intermingling of the Scottish and native and English cultures in the settlement near Selkirk, MB. She is clearly sympathetic to the native/Metis wisdom and connection with the land, using many Cree words (that are both easily understood in context and explained in a glossary).....Buffie is a master of the ghost story...
For more information on these books and the awards they received, please click on "About me" and also on each individual book title on my home page.
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