Counterculture

Anatomy of a ‘failed utopia’

Part hippie hitchhiker’s odyssey, part draft resister’s memoir, this novel “reads like the diary of… countercultural wanderers of the 1960.” —Ron Verzuh reviews Waiting for the Revolution, by Ross Klatte (Altona: Friesen Press, 2024) $22.99 / 9781039188877

Nefarious investments, cool drones

“Newland’s talent with the architecture of sentences never detracts from the exhilaration of his plot, with its strange events and estranged sense of time.” —Peter Babiak reviews The Marysburgh Vortex (Volume 1: Jack Wenland, Time Guardian), by Trevor Newland (Vancouver: Simply Read Books, 2024) $22.99 / 9781772291001

Living legends

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

You want I should feed him some lead?

Infectiously fun, rapid-fire novel recounts tales from the golden age of charismatic criminals, and ushers readers into “into a fictional world of real-life events that is grippingly good reading.” —Ron Verzuh reviews Crooked: A Crime Novel, by Dietrich Kalteis (Toronto: ECW Press, 2024) $22.95 / 9781770417076

‘Love and the chance to hold on to it’

Expansive sophomore novel showcases an author’s “talent for delving into the minds of different personalities across several decades.” —Jessica Poon reviews The Leap Year Gene, by Shelley Wood (Toronto: HarperCollins Canada, 2024) $25.99 / 9781443473163

Disorientation, reorientation

“So, my verdict: this is good art. It provoked me and changed me, in big and small ways.” —Petra Chambers reviews All Things Seen and Unseen, by RJ McDaniel (Toronto: ECW Press, 2024) $24.95 / 9781770417090

The leap to serenity

“So, he transplants himself to a new life, a new take on things. How many of us would like to do the same if we only had the courage?” Harvey De Roo reviews The Road to Appledore: or How I Went Back to the Land Without Ever Having Lived There in the First Place, by Tom Wayman (Madeira Park: Harbour Publishing, 2024) $26.95 / 9781990776632

A ‘unique slice of Canadiana’

Debut story collection balances “visually rich absurdity … and the general malaise of youth with admirable, poetic flair.” —Jessica Poon reviews Hello, Horse: Stories, by Richard Kelly Kemick (Windsor: Biblioasis, 2024) $22.95 / 9781771966078

Hallucinatory noir

The trio of cases of a sleep-deprived, hard-drinking ‘terrible detective’ also reveal a man “in a modern world that he seems not to fully understand nor relate to.” —Logan Macnair reviews Stasio: A Novel in 3 Parts, by Tamas Dobozy (Vancouver: Anvil Press, 2024) $22.00 / 9781772142266

Definitions of home

“These are fully realized observations, absolute and searing impressions of the profoundly joyful, as well as the unavoidably difficult.” —Cathy Ford reviews Islander, by Mona Fertig (Salt Spring Island: Mother Tongue Publishing, 2024) $22.00 / 9781896949895

So…what now?

“Butler’s story is riveting and very powerful as she describes being different from everyone else while trying to find her true self.” Valerie Green reviews Apocalypse Child: Surviving Doomsday and the Search for Identity at the End of the World by Carly Butler (Qualicum Beach: Caitlin Press, 2024) $24.95 / 9781773861326

Where ‘words wander about’

“It seems to me that Kevin’s book documents his research into myriad formal and semantic possibilities, engaging in a practice that endeavours to stretch poetic narratives and structures.” —Steven Ross Smith reviews A Bouquet Brought Back from Space, by Kevin Spenst (Vancouver: Anvil Press Publishers, 2024) $18.00 / 9781772142259

The horror! The horror! The horror!

A meister with horror tropes, a debut novelist turns terror-at-home into a mind-bending, spine-tingling entertainment. —Zoe McKenna reviews We Used to Live Here, by Marcus Kliewer (New York: Atria/Emily Bestler Books, 2024) $34.99 / 9781982198787

The ‘expressive, unearthly power of weird’

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

An ‘artist of radical commitment’

“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

Grim ends, fresh starts

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

From ‘little stories to universal truths’ 

“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

Therapeutic psychedelics?

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

‘A game is afoot’

An entertaining, raucous, and deeply weird novel splices together a boxing comeback story, veganism, bout fixing, and… Sherlock Holmes. —Logan Macnair reviews Pet, Pet, Slap, by Andrew Battershill (Toronto: Coach House Books, 2024) $23.95 / 9781552454763

Humane acceptance (amid absurdity)

A poetry collection’s “distinctive power” is founded on a “keen but understated awareness of the interplay between the human world and the natural environment.”—Christopher Levenson reviews Moving to Delilah, by Catherine Owen (Calgary: Freehand Books, 2024) $19.95 / 9781990601583

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