“As our current news media make painfully clear, claims and counter claims over national boundaries often lead to devastating violence. It is a prompt to reflection, therefore, to consider the border disputes in the past, distant world of this book.” Theo Dombrowski reviews Arctic Patrol: Canada’s Fight for Arctic Sovereignty by Eric Jamieson (Qualicum Beach: Caitlin Press, 2024) $28.00 / 9781773861333
The closing novel of the McBride Chronicles tetralogy mulls over past and future as it introduces a host of contemporary social issues. —Vanessa Winn reviews Tomorrow, by Valerie Green (Surrey: Hancock House, 2024) $24.95 / 9780888397843
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
In an illustrated history of the Pacific Northwest, the venerable Columbia River recalls the ups and downs of its 20-million-year lifespan. —Ron Verzuh reviews The Heart of a River, by Eileen Delehanty Pearkes (illustrated by Nichola Lytle) (Victoria: Rocky Mountain Books, 2024) $25.00 / 9781771606998
“Reading the Diaries of Henry Trent is valuable in showing contemporary readers that life’s choices have ways of kicking back against more expected plotlines.” Jeff Oliver reviews Reading the Diaries of Henry Trent: The Everyday Life of a Canadian Englishman, 1842-1898 by J. I. Little (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2021) $37.95 / 9780228006619
“To See What He Saw is the work of many a decade and a packed tome of MacDonald’s paintings in O’Hara but the text, in this solid and sound book, reveals much about the history of O’Hara, MacDonald’s vision of depicting the weather seasons, mountains, lakes, cabins, and trees (occasionally people) but also the friendships developed when in O’Hara.” Ron Dart reviews To See What He Saw: J.E.H. MacDonald and the O’Hara Years: 1924-1932 by Stanley Munn and Patricia Cucman (Vancouver: Figure 1 Publishing, in collaboration with the Whyte Museum of the Canadian Rockies, 2024) $65.00 / 9781773272504
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
“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
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
“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
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
“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
“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 “must-read” collection of poems reveals the poet’s critical examination of both the worlds he belongs to and his place within them. —Harold Rhenisch reviews Teeth, by Dallas Hunt (Gibsons: Nightwood Editions, 2024) $19.95 / 9780889714526
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
Debut story collection by celebrated young author reveals him as “fully in control of his voice, confident of his reach, and utterly fearless.” —Daniel Gawthrop reviews coexistence, by Billy-Ray Belcourt (Toronto: Hamish Hamilton, 2024) $27.95 / 9780735242036
Picture book for elementary school-age readers teaches “vivid ways to tell us where we live and how the world works.” —Ron Verzuh reviews The Bee Mother, by Hetxw’ms Gyetxw (Brett D. Huson) (Winnipeg: Highwater Press, 2024) $24.95 / 9781774920800
“McCrory argues that the horses, known in Tsilhqot’in culture as qiyus, are ‘a resilient part of the area’s balanced prey-predator ecosystem that predates the arrival of Europeans to the region.’ ” Kenneth Favrholdt reviews The Wild Horses of the Chilcotin: Their History and Future by Wayne McCrory (Madeira Park: Harbour Publishing, 2023) $39.95 / 9781990776366