Ending of sophisticated restaurant-set novel, “in conversation with the ongoing cultural and legal reckoning happening with men who’ve abused their offices and privileges,” may disappoint some, enrage others. —Greg Brown reviews The Rise and Fall of Magic Wolf, by Timothy Taylor (Toronto: Dundurn Press, 2024) $26.99 / 9781459753198
“Here, Haye’s drug of choice is speed, and not the illicit kind, for his clear-eyed aim is to track the fastest trains in history and to look to those that are coming in the future.” —Ron Verzuh reviews Quest for Speed: A History of Trains from Rocket to Bullet and Beyond, by Derek Hayes (Madeira Park, BC: Douglas & McIntyre, 2024) $44.95 / 978177162379
“If you’ve grown weary of heterosexual couples… [and] like the idea of a Sapphic romance involving literate characters,” then this dark fantasy will keep you enthralled. —Jessica Poon reviews Serpentine Valentine, by Giana Darling (BC: Giana Darling Publishing, 2024) $24.95 / 9781774440469
A brooding hero gives a centuries-spanning novel gravity, but too many characters “create a pacing that is reminiscent of old ‘monster of the week’ television, à la Scooby Doo, or Doctor Who, without the levity that makes these shows so digestible.” —Zoe McKenna reviews The Mona Lisa Sacrifice, by Peter Darbyshire (Hamilton: Wolsak & Wynn, 2024) $24.00 / 9781998408054
“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
Debut novelist’s tale brings together two women and two centuries in a satisfying book that “sparkles with excitement, history, and the agency of women.” —Valerie Green reviews The Champagne Letters, by Kate MacIntosh (Toronto: Gallery Books, 2024) $36.99 / 9781668061886
Attractive and handcrafted, a trio of chapbooks also showcase poets with unique gifts for observation and reflection. —Heidi Greco reviews Warp and Weft, by Carla Stein (Chilliwack: Tigerpetal Press, 2024) $15.00 / 9780995863972), Future Tense, by Lauren Peat (London: Baseline Press, 2024) $15.00 / 9781998521005), a tangle of words, by Yvonne Adalian, Mavis Beggs, Elektra Harris, Natalie Hryciuk, barb snyder, and B. Violet [self-published, 2024]
“[A]ctually, strictly speaking, the weather says nothing, even as its increasing excesses implicitly critique the ruinous choices we make as a country and across the globe.” —Carellin Brooks reviews The Weather Says, by Catherine Owen (Spokane: Carbonation Press, 2024) $20.00 / 9781304231015
“Once again, as with his previous graphic novels, he offers readers a lesson in ‘history from below’ about how ordinary people can rally against tyranny.”—Ron Verzuh reviews Revolution by Fire: New York’s Afro-Irish Uprising of 1741, A Graphic Novel, by David Lester and Marcus Rediker with Paul Buhle (Boston: Beacon Press, 2024) $18.95 / 9780807012550
Nigeria-set sophomore novel “has enough tangly relationships for a soap opera, ample tension for a psychological thriller, and meaningful, if slightly under-explored sociopolitical commentary on race, religion, and gender.” —Jessica Poon reviews Every Drop of Blood Is Red, by Umar Turaki (New York: Little A (an Amazon Imprint), 2024) $24.99 / 781662508110
Masterful debut story collection captures innocence and its loss as well as gradual recoveries from precipitous falls. —Linda Rogers reviews Transactions With the Fallen, by Michael Elcock (Oakville: Rock’s Mills Press, 2024) $25.00 / 9781772443233
“As much as this is a document of a slice of the war, it is a novel about a distinctive character and personality.” —Theo Dombrowski reviews The Forgotten: A Novel of the Korean War, by Robert Mackay (Surrey: Now or Never Publishing, 2024) $26.95 / 9781989689752
Ambitious poetry volume “illustrates the evils of human nature, the predatory elites, and social engineers,” but is marred by soapbox rhetoric and ‘poetsplaining.’ —Joe Enns reviews Pole Shift & Other Poems, by Sean Arthur Joyce (Victoria: Ekstasis Editions, 2024) 9781771715560 / $23.95
“Rhenisch jam-packs his songs with ideas, zooming and spanning, yet with the grace of a skilled composer; a song might jar and rattle while at the same time carry a croon that compels. A reader cannot help but be swept and stilled simultaneously in the lyric experience.” —Steven Ross Smith reviews The Salmon Shanties: A Cascadian Cycle, by Harold Rhenisch (Regina: U Regina Press, 2024) $19.95 / 978177940154
Debut novel, based on family memories, probes the “pitch-black reality of the Holodomor, the Soviet-engineered famine that is estimated to have killed up to five million Ukrainians in the early 1930s.” —Ryan Frawley reviews Black Sunflowers, by Cynthia LeBrun (Toronto: Fitzhenry & Whiteside, 2024) $21.95 / 9781554556434
Essay collection relates the “great pleasure of strolling in great cities” and offers an appealing and illuminating “window into a wider world.” —Bill Paul reviews The Coincidence Problem: Selected Dispatches 1999-2022, by Stephen Osborne (Vancouver: Arsenal Pulp Press, 2024) $24.95 / 9781551529653
“Remembering, as British writer George Orwell showed in his Homage to Catalonia, brings bloody thoughts to the surface and can unearth opposing memories. Spaner does not shy from including such moments and these add a tough realism to the novel.” —Ron Verzuh reviews Keefer Street, by David Spaner (Vancouver: Ronsdale Press, 2024) $24.95 / 9781553807209
Thoughtful volume, a long poem and “book of praise,” presents an argument about myth, spirituality, and evolutionary progress via luscious imagery and rolling metrical rhythms. —Harold Rhenisch reviews The Making: A Poem, by Brian Day (Eugene: Resource Publications, 2024) $30.00 / 9781666779479
“McGoogan’s histories have often focused on Arctic explorations. Favourites of mine are about the ill-fated Franklin Expedition and Mrs. Franklin’s earnest efforts to find her lost husband. This time, however, he highlights the rise of Spain’s Franco, Italy’s Mussolini, Russia’s Stalin and, of course, Nazi Germany’s Hitler.” Ron Verzuh reviews Shadows of Tyranny: Defending Democracy in an Age of Dictatorship by Ken McGoogan (Madeira Park, BC: Douglas & McIntyre, 2024) $36.95 / 9781771624244
“At times, the novel feels—and this is praise—like a couple of opinionated art students kvetching while wearing designer clothes—or latex—in Geneva.” —Jessica Poon reviews Bold Strokes, by Jane Boon (Toronto: Regan Arts, 2024) $22.00 / 9781682452288