“Lo’s introduction is friendly and welcoming. She’s clear that her recipes are very much a ‘fusion’ experiment, blending her own Chinese culinary heritage, the multiculturalism of her native Toronto, and her travels. They are inspired by her experiences, and at the top of each recipe she shares her inspiration for the recipe and even includes a QR code so that we can listen to the song that reminds her of the dish.” Trish Bowering reviews My Best Friend Is Gluten-Free: 100+ Asian-inspired Recipes for Bringing People Together, by Jannell Lo (Toronto: Appetite by Random House, 2025) $30 / 9780525612780
“This is on the order of Monty Python with its delicious absurdity. Nawrocki is at his best when he spins these deadpan, Buster Keatonesque scenes— moments of truthful memory specific to ‘50s Vancouver. This is what makes the book work. The historical details are unvarnished yet amped up with his telling. But as we go along in Joey’s story, the memoir suffers from editorializing of a predictable nature that gets in the way of the stories despite moments of excellent scenarios.” Grahame Ware reviews The East End Rules: An East Van Memoir, by Norman Nawrocki (Montreal: Black Rose Books, 2026) $24.99 / 9781551648347
Verse-like fiction and/or novelistic lyrics, a seminal poet’s latest book dazzles our reviewer: “It’s a dream of touching people. Everyone. And the world. Which is a person, too. Even bill’s drawings are touch. His paintings are made out of gentle finger strokes on canvas. Through touch, bill makes a world.” —Harold Rhenisch reviews th buk uv lost passwords 1, by bill bissett (Vancouver: Talonbooks, 2025) $24.95 / 9781772016932
“Conrad Kain is a longer poem, much like David, but unlike the fictional David, Conrad Kain is biography turned into succinct and compact poetry. It is Birney at his alliterative and alluring best, and Kain is held high as the model and icon of the authentic Canadian mountain man.” Ron Dart takes a look back at the poem Conrad Kain, by Earle Birney.
Across a collection of twenty autofictional stories, an author examines her history, with a particular emphasis on childhood and youth. Despite some compelling, powerful material, our reviewer finds the autofiction genre more hindrance than benefit. —Candace Fertile reviews Growing My Way Home: Stories of Resilience and Care, by Jenn Ashton (Vancouver: Talonbooks, 2026) $24.95 / 9781772017038
“I drove to Toronto in the five-year-old blue Plymouth I used at UVM, its body cancered by Vermont’s salted roads. While it was liberating to be leaving my riven country, I was plenty nervous about the unknowns that lay ahead.” Ken Klonsky contributes a chapter of his upcoming memoir Out of the Fire: A Life Seeking Justice.
Volume by “a poet in full command of her powers” examines past selves and current (middle-aged) self. And neither does it shy from irreverence: “Funny, sexy, bawdy writing like this is all too rare in Canadian poetry. Bachinsky’s work is a breath of fresh air, sure, but more importantly, her willingness to discuss such topics in no way diminishes the seriousness of her overall project.” —Carellin Brooks reviews Real Grownup, by Elizabeth Bachinsky (Gibsons: Nightwood Editions, 2026) $19.95 / 9780889714960
Set in a postwar port city, a poignant novella captures the era and one woman’s place in it. Supported by elegant prose and an eye for period detail, the thoughtful book meditates on paths chosen and not chosen. —Brett Josef Grubisic reviews Break My Heart, Liverpool, by Pamela McGarry (Gibson’s: Great Hall Press, 2025) $19.95 / 9781777513412
“As many visitors to Antarctica have remarked, time spent witnessing the stunning abundance of life beyond the polar zone of extreme cold waters and the sheer beauty of that continent is life-changing. Blight witnesses that unlike her experience of previous research sites, which include the Canadian Arctic, Antarctica forever changed her ‘understanding of the world.’ This is her account of that break from ‘The World, The Real World, The World,’ as she and most scientists working in Antarctica refer to the outside world beyond the polar seas. Antarctica is her discovery and recovery back to a saner place of nature, no matter how harsh. It is a place where life meets death and grows from it.” Loÿs Maingon reviews Where The Earth Meets The Sky: A Story of Penguins, People and Place in Antarctica, by Louise K. Blight (Toronto: Doubleday Canada / Bond Street Books, 2026) $38 / 9780385702102
An author’s complexly layered first novel “offers readers a world where ghosts (be them literal or metaphorical) are omnipresent features in the lives of the novel’s ensemble cast” Through them, he develops “perspectives on themes such as grief, personal growth, sexuality, and connection in ways that range from sardonic and humorous to more emotionally resonant, often shifting between the two in quick succession.” —Logan Macnair reviews Super Castle Fun Park, by Daniel Zomparelli (Vancouver: Arsenal Pulp Press, 2026) $24.95 / 978183405026
“By the time I got to Simon Fraser University in the early 1970s, Jim Harding had already left campus but his legacy lingered as SFU continued to fester with student unrest after the historic strike in 1967. That event labelled SFU a ‘radical’ campus and Harding was part of the cohort of students and faculty that openly challenged and defied the actions of the university administration. It was a bold, exciting, and educational moment. Harding was among the leaders.” Ron Verzuh reviews The Long Sixties: Stories from the New Left, by Jim Harding [ed.] (Halifax: Fernwood Publishing, 2026) $29 / 9781773638034
“Seto, mourning the past and given time to resurrect her creativity, recreated the buildings of memory and left them empty so that memory and desire could replace the ghosts inhabiting them with real lives configured with real information, the sensory details, smells and sounds that gave them life.” Linda Rogers reviews Chinatown Vancouver: An Illustrated History, by Donna Seto (Toronto: House of Anansi Press, 2025) $29.99 / 9781487011970
Set in war-torn Ukraine, Poland, and Germany during 1945, a wide-ranging and fast-paced novel recounts the urgent movements of Frida and Jakob, “two survivors who hope to start a new life for themselves in a postwar world.” —Bill Paul reviews Rust and Bone, by Dietrich Kalteis (Toronto: ECW Press, 2026) $24.95 / 9781770418509
“There are more than 240 life histories of all the fishes calling the strait home for all or part of the year. Dick Beamish and Jeff Marliave are well-known scientists who have put this book together for you.” DC Reid reviews Fishes of the Strait of Georgia: More than 240 Life Stories, by Dick Beamish & Jeff Marliave (Madeira Park: Harbour Publishing, 2025) $80 / 9781990776830
“Victoria’s urban landscape is littered with these remnants or references, in this case, to the golden age of Victoria’s great garden estates. They are a part of a legacy of similar markers, such as iron curbs that once protected sidewalks from steel-rimmed carriage wheels, hitching posts for horses stabled in the Rockland and Fernwood neighbourhoods, or small pockets of Garry Oaks that survived from a pre-settlement habitat that nurtured the Lekwungen people. These touchstones of community memory lend richness and meaning to the built heritage that tells Victoria’s story.” Martin Segger contributes the article Silent Sentinels, adapted from his upcoming book Tending Eden: A garden history of Victoria.
A graphic novel for younger readers tells the tale of twin sisters who cannot wait to start a summer school programme for junior illustrators. Be careful what you wish for, they soon learn. —Brett Josef Grubisic reviews Inbetweens, by Faith Erin Hicks (New York: First Second, 2026) $20.99 / 9781250838742
“The book is primarily a record of the concept, strategies, and outcomes from an innovative government policy-development approach proposed by then-Premier Glen Clark. At the time Clark’s financially-strapped government was facing ‘an imminent economic crisis.’ The authors explain that Premier Clark was faced with almost 240,000 public employee contracts expiring on the same day, as well as two prior years of restraint.” Richard Fyfe reviews 35 Accords: Re-imagining British Columbia’s Public Sector Labour Relations
by Tony Penikett and John Calvert (Cambridge, UK: Ethics International Press, 2025) $57 / 9781837112791
A quantum “world pushes in on an isolated self” in a batch of playful, meditative, performative, and surreal poetry. “This is hard stuff, looked at with a cold eye. It’s beautiful, fierce, profoundly defensive, smart as heck, and intrusive,” our reviewer remarks. Harold Rhenisch reviews Who Else in the Dark Headed There, by Garth Martens (Windsor: Biblioasis, 2026) $21.95 / 9781771967082
“If they are a choir, Genni Gunn, an Italo-Canadian poet and musician, translator of this volume, lifts it out of sea narrative to angel choir. Her sensibilities, like Maraini’s, bring harmony to the deliverance of a poetically nuanced story to universality.” Linda Rogers reviews The Ship for Kobe, by Dacia Maraini, translated by Genni Gunn (Hamilton: Guernica Editions, 2025) $22.95 / 9781778490019
“An autobiography is often just about an individual. However, when the narrative focuses on the principles that have guided the path of an individual’s development and where they originated, it becomes more than about the individual. It confirms the adage that it takes a village to raise a child. That makes for interesting thoughtful reading as Grant identifies the elements of her life that pre-disposed her to success.” Loÿs Maingon reviews One Step Sideways, Three Steps Forward: One Woman’s Path to Becoming a Biologist, by B. Rosemary Grant (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2025) $27.95 / 9780691260600
