In a pair of picture books, a young audience can learn about the wonders of the sea… and even a back yard. —Ginny Ratsoy reviews Have You Ever Heard a Whale Exhale?, by Caroline Woodward (illustrated by Claire Victoria Watson) (Charlottetown: Pownall Street Press, 2024) $24.95 / 9781998129072 and Bompa’s Insect Expedition, by David Suzuki with Tanya Lloyd Kyi (illustrated by Qin Leng) (Vancouver: Greystone Kids, 2023) $23.95 / 9781771648820
An assassin, an animal ghost, and a reality TV episode hosted by twin psychics are just a samplings of the goings-on in the finalé of a small town-set comic trilogy. —Ron Verzuh reviews The Vicar Vortex, by Vince R. Ditrich (Toronto: Dundurn Press, 2024) $21.99 / 9781459747319
Adept thriller is a welcome cause for “a single session of binge-reading punctuated with that rapturous state of feeling appalled at human behaviour.” —Jessica Poon reviews The Haters, by Robyn Harding (New York: Grand Central Publishing, 2024) $29.00 / 9781538766101
“History is never simple and nor is the truth. The sooner everyone steps away from the rhetoric of genocide on the one hand and benign paternalism on the other, the better in terms of healing those who feel they need it, and their reconciliation with those whom they feel were responsible.” Richard Butler reviews Grave Error: How the Media Misled Us (and the Truth about Residential Schools) by C.P. Champion and Tom Flanagan (eds.) (Ottawa: True North/Dorchester Books, 2023) $21.00 / 9798867599317
“We have waited long for this opportunity to hear this side of the conversation as poets and playwrights, fiction and non-fiction writers from Indigenous nations speak their truth…Good immortalises and memorializes ground breakers like Chief Dan George, Lee Maracle, and the gentle trickster Dan Moses, now gone to spirit, and a whole new generation of writers.” Linda Rogers reviews Truth Telling: Seven Conversations about Indigenous Life in Canada by Michelle Good (Toronto: Harper Collins, 2023) $29.99 / 9781443467810
“And in truth, art is the enduring theme that binds the many seemingly loose ends in this novel. Sometimes it’s art accomplished; more often, it’s the frustration that grows from not being able to produce it.” —Heidi Greco reviews A Reluctant Mother, by Deirdre Simon Dore (Vancouver: Ronsdale Press, 2024) $25.95 / 9781553807100
Uneven sophomore novel features sisters Rumer and Charlotte, “city girls fleeing parental bonds and disaffection with university studies.” —Trish Bowering reviews Hotel Beringia, by Mix Hart (New Westminster: Tidewater Press, 2024) $24.95 / 9781990160387
“Penetrating every corner of this cramped and desolate world, in a town with ‘the world’s shittiest beach and a lot of bitter people,’ is, unsurprisingly, alcohol. If poverty is the villain of the novel, its ruthless accomplice is alcohol.” —Theo Dombrowski reviews Bruise, by Adrian Markle (Victoria: Touchwood Editions, 2024) $24.00 / 9781990071072
“The sheer intellect and sharp-eyed creator in these works has given history and perspective on a time and place of artistically fevering production, forging its own way.” —Cathy Ford reviews Another Order: Selected Works, by Judith Copithorne (edited by Eric Schmaltz) (Vancouver: Talonbooks, 2023) $34.95 / 9781772015539
“The arch tone often verges on, or falls into camp, and it’s immediately apparent that the novel is a confection of such frothiness that any silliness can happen and often does in the loony movie world dominated by the conventions of Los Angeles where ‘perception was everything, reality just an annoying detail to get past.’” —Candace Fertile reviews Mystery in the Title, by Ian Ferguson and Will Ferguson (Toronto: HarperCollins Canada, 2024) $25.99 / 9781443470803
Book #11 in the series “scrutinizes a dark chapter in Canadian history while simultaneously charming her readers with the picturesque Kootenay locale and setting their teeth on edge as her heroine comes perilously close to an untimely end.” —Ginny Ratsoy reviews Lightning Strikes the Silence, by Iona Whishaw (Victoria: Touchwood Editions, 2024) $21.95 / 9781771514323
Fine books of “aesthetic delights” feature evocative poems that examine everything from the loss of a beloved pet to the tending of a garden. —Catherine Owen reviews Hey Trouble and Other Poems, by Sharon McCartney (London: Baseline Press, 2023) $15.00 / 9781928066910 and In the Warm Shallows of What Remains, by Andrea Scott (Salt Spring Island: Raven Chapbooks, 2024) $22.95 / 9781778160356
“Sveva, thus, grew up in a world of literary works not only European, British, and American but also works in comparative religion, studies of Western civilization, as well as of the history and traditions of the Near and Far East. Thus, she was an individual outside of the norm of Canadian society in Vernon.” Adriana A. Davies writes about the late Vernon-based artist Sveva Caetani.
“Putting the story back into history is certainly a good thing. But that is not all. There is also an overriding interpretation here that we should not miss, and it is rather different from the history by consensus that is now all the rage.” Robin Fisher reviews Untold Tales of Old British Columbia by Daniel Marshall (Vancouver: Ronsdale Press, 2024) $24.95 / 9781553807049
Probing, technical collection of poetry touches on Romantic literature, German philosophers, and the natural world as its author searches for connection. —Harold Rhensich reviews A Blueprint for Survival, by Kim Trainor (Hamilton: Guernica Editions, 2024) $21.95 / 9781771838627
“Black moves seamlessly between genres, with poetry in her prose and music in her paintings that accompany and fortify” many of her surreal, Kafkaesque stories. —Michael Greenstein reviews Little Fortified Stories, by Barbara Black (Qualicum Beach: Caitlin Press, 2024) $23.00 / 9781773861401
“Aaron Williams was raised in logging camps in BC with an old-time logger for a father and a supportive mother and logging Grandmother Joy doing the raising. He makes good use of his youthful memories to tell us in first-person present tense the workings of various operations that make up the industry.” Ron Verzuh reviews The Last Logging Show: A Forestry Family at the End of an Era by Aaron Williams (Madeira Park: Harbour Publishing, 2024) $24.95 / 9781990776618
Sophomore novel is “a portrait of power and belief gone awry, of wishful thinking of men-as-gods, of the abuse of the idea of so-called religion, and the big and generous hearts of women who get sucked into the mire.”
—Caitlin Hicks reviews The Celestial Wife, by Leslie Howard (Toronto: Simon & Schuster, 2024) $24.99 / 9781982182403
“Hunting and fishing for survival is part of life for an increasing number of North Americans. The Port Hardy memoir reminded me that I am not of that ilk and would likely die quickly if marooned on a deserted coastal island in Drouin’s backyard.” Past the End of the Road: A North Island Boyhood by Michel Drouin (Madeira Park: Harbour Publishing, 2024) $24.95 / 9781990776670
A cutting edge psychiatrist faces her own traumatic past and the mysterious deaths of her clientele in a thriller where tension mounts page after page. —Valerie Green reviews High Society, by Daniel Kalla (Toronto: Simon & Schuster, 2024) $24.99 / 9781668032510