“Apart from inveterate crossword puzzlers or Scrabblers, most of us get by with a tiny fraction of the words that could be available. In conversation people often say ‘you know what I mean?’ and for the most part we do, more or less, but for people such as teachers, lawyers, journalists, and writers, who use language professionally, ‘more or less’ isn’t good enough.” In the essay The world’s favourite second language, regular contributor Christopher Levenson asks the question: What is the language?
“His wonderful contemporary wordsmithing took me right through to the back cover. I now have layers upon layers of his days, the burden of those days, and the saving graces of those days.” Rosa Reid reviews Always Breathe, by Victor Enns (Kelowna: self-published, 2025) $20
“In this, the third (Giblin says last) of his books on the fishing-guide life and the odd, quirky characters of this profession and region, The Trophy Hunter: The Final Chronicles of a West Coast Fishing Guide, we renew acquaintance with the Lodge’s residents and their favourite fishing holes.” Marianne Scott reviews The Trophy Hunter: The Final Chronicles of a West Coast Fishing Guide, by David Giblin (Victoria: Heritage House, 2025) $24.95 / 9781772035551
“The wry humour and the cheerful self-deprecation that frame the self-inflicted misadventure are absolutely fundamental to the DNA of this entire, wickedly unconventional memoir.” Theo Dombrowski reviews Unorganized Territory: A Boy’s Own Memoir, by David Gurr (Victoria: Stonehewer Books, 2025) $25.95 / 9781738993383
“What will also appeal to British Columbians is the passionate defense of his Vancouver home from all those who criticize it from ‘Back East.’ He credits the ‘Terminal City’ with inventing the California Roll, calls Canadian Tire ‘Crappy Tire’ (‘Canadian Tire has more actual real money than God’) and celebrates Tim Horton’s ‘Double-double’ (‘the salt-of-the-earth-and-the-winter-driveway coffee’). Ron Verzuh reviews The Eh Team: A Celebration of Canadianisms from Elbows Up to Poutine, by Charles Demers (Vancouver: Greystone Books, 2025) $26.95 / 9781778403743
“If you’re looking for dour, deeply depressing escapism, go fish. But if you’re in the mood for humour and meta-humour…”: in this novel, self-involved TV personalities and mystery writers congregate for a festival where—gasp!—there’s a murder. Dialogue is snippy, the mood is light, and the shenanigans are frequent. —Jessica Poon reviews Killer on the First Page, by Ian Ferguson and Will Ferguson (Toronto: Harper Collins Canada, 2025) $24.99 / 9781443475099
“The book challenges locals to take a look at themselves through funhouse mirrors that the author holds up to their image. I should know, as he mentions my Friday morning writers’ group that meets at the same coffee shop that Reece haunts in the book, but I take no offence.” Cathalynn Labonté-Smith reviews Coast Confidential: Trouble in Paradise, Vol. 1 by PJ Reece (Gibsons: Rolling West Productions, 2024) $19.95 / 9780995323544
In which a university student from the burbs changes jobs in the heart of Montreal during the year of the Olympic Games.— “A Sound Education,” by E.R. Brown
“Myth is the only truth, says Eros, echoing Jung, and perhaps we would be better served by a novel that focused more on myth and less on boring humans.” —Sheldon Goldfarb reviews A Bouquet of Darts: A European Travel Mystery, by Reed Stirling (Drayton Valley: BWL Publishing, 2024) $18.99 / 9780228631309
This memoir, a “whimsical look at the fall of the British Empire,” features anecdotes about the author’s assorted encounters with celebrities over the decades. —Valerie Green reviews Celebrities Who Have Met Me: A Child of the Lost Empire, by John D’Eathe (Vancouver: Adagio Media, 2024) $21.99 9781999433925
A “wonderfully varied, worthwhile collection” that features 16 stories by new writers and literary heavyweights, BCS25 “is about as solid as short story collections get.”—Jessica Poon reviews Best Canadian Stories 2025, selected by Steven W. Beattie (Windsor: Biblioasis, 2024) $23.95 / 9781771966344
“Most readers are likely to experience the whole narrative sequence, not as a life arc, but, rather, a scrapbook of incidents, many wonderfully ‘insane’.”—Theo Dombrowski reviews Have Bassoon, Will Travel: Memoir of an Adventurous Life in Music, by George Zukerman (Vancouver: Ronsdale Press, 2024) 24.95 / 9781553807131
The selection of 50 poems highlights “sites of feeling,” which is to say “sites of inquiry, resistance, resilience, regret, provocation, play, grief, desire, glee.” —Mary Ann Moore reviews Best Canadian Poetry 2025, selected by Aislinn Hunter (Windsor: Biblioasis, 2024) $23.95 / 9781771966320
The fifth book in an “inspired by” series “succeeds in being true to form: this Anne Shirley is imbued with the characteristics that have made the original Anne Shirley endure nationally and internationally for over a century.” —Ginny Ratsoy reviews Anne Dares, by Kallie George (illustrated by Abigail Halpin) (Toronto: Tundra, 2023) $16.99 / 9780735272101
Deeply whimsical story of a plucky orphan “reads like a forgotten classic,” and—when it works— “is almost endlessly charming.” —Greg Brown reviews Library Girl, by Polly Horvath (Toronto: Puffin Canada, 2024) $22.99 / 9781774883341
Full of “humorous observation and stylistic verve,” this collection of flash fictions and short stores is “contemporary, exuberant, and zany.” —Jessica Poon reviews The Long Swim, by Terese Svoboda (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2024) $24.95 / 9781625348074
Sisters who happen to be creatures of myth offer wit and wisdom, cynicism and love in a breezily written and beguiling novel. —Jessica Poon reviews Roxy and Coco, by Terese Svoboda (Morgantown: U West Virginia Press, 2024) $29.99 / 9781959000068
A debut novel, a moderately appealing political satire, explores the notion of radical democracy. —Valerie Green reviews Owls, Doughnuts, and Democracy, by Jason A.N. Taylor (Victoria: independently published) $7.99 (e-book) / 9798333346148
