Flights of fancy and a motley crew of creatures: they’re only part of the many charms of two new picture books. —Ginny Ratsoy reviews What Inspires, by Alison Hughes (illustrated by Ellen Rooney) (Victoria: Orca Book Publishers, 2024) $21.95 / 978145983768 and My Bunny Lies Over the Ocean, by Bill Richardson (illustrated by Bill Pechet) (Halifax: Running the Goat, 2024) $21.99 / 9781998802098
With “each new offering, Van Camp reminds us of his remarkable gift for storytelling. ‘Beast’ is no exception.” —Zoe McKenna reviews Beast, by Richard Van Camp (Madeira Park: Douglas & McIntyre, 2024) $24.95 / 9781771624145
Writing “evocatively with gutsy language and pacing that moves along,” this debut YA novelist also “handles the humanity of her characters with a sense of honour; they feel to be so fully-developed that they’re letting her know where they should be on the page.” —Alison Acheson reviews Devil by the Tail, by Caroline Lavoie (Winnipeg: Deep Hearts YA, 2024) $21.99 / 9781998055616
A veteran writer’s new novel is defined by meticulous, expansive, and breathtaking world-building. Sometimes, though, too much is too much. —Zoe McKenna reviews Blackheart Man, by Nalo Hopkinson (Toronto: Simon & Schuster / Saga Press, 2024) $34.99 / 9781668005101
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
Marked by “verve and whimsy,” this collection portrays a “virtuous smart mouth poet” who is “gentle with humour” and “searing with insight.”
—Cathy Ford reviews Refabulations: Selected Longer Poems, by Sharon Thesen (Vancouver: Talonbooks, 2023) $24.94 / 9781772015102
“On a recent summer hike along Vancouver Island’s Cowichan River, we enjoyed referring to Collin Varner’s flora pocket guide to keystone species, “keystone” being organisms that define and support an entire ecosystem thus filling a vital ecological niche.” Isabel Nanton reviews 50 Keystone Flora Species of Coastal British Columbia and the Pacific Northwest: A Pocket Guide & 50 Keystone Fauna Species of Coastal British Columbia and the Pacific Northwest: A Pocket Guide by Collin Varner (Victoria: Heritage House, 2024) $19.95 / 9781772034776 / 9781772034943
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
A debut story collection set in rural Nova Scotia offers a careful examination of the messiness of family dynamics. —Candace Fertile reviews In the Shadow of Crows, by M.V. Feehan (Montreal: Baraka Books, 2024) $19.95 / 9781771863476
Veteran mystery writer returns with an intriguing case, a “captivating, enigmatic” style, and a chase for clues across England. —Valerie Green reviews Bad Boy (A Jason Davey Mystery), by Winona Kent (New Westminster: Blue Devil Books, 2024) $19.99 / 97817390418
“…by the end of Mohawk elder Taiaiake Alfred’s book of talks, speeches, interviews, and podcasts, as a non-native person I understood the meaning of decolonization and what he calls the transformative potential of the ‘Resurgence of Indigenous power’ to revitalize cultures, traditions, laws, and value systems.” Kenneth Favrholdt reviews It’s All About the Land: Collected Talks and Interviews on Indigenous Resurgence by Taiaiake Alfred (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2023) $29.95 / 9781487552831
Former government lawyer and author Richard Butler writes that there must be a better way than trying to implement the principles of the UN Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) through law reform. He sees it an exercise in futility and potentially risky for reconciliation. Richard Butler presents his essay The Futility of Aboriginal Law Reform.
Vancouver Island author’s sophomore novel is “a tightly plotted, ambitious work of historical fiction that has fast-paced thriller elements and, at other times, the makings of a slow burn romance.” —Jessica Poon reviews The Last Secret, by Maia Caron (Toronto: Doubleday Canada, 2024) $25.00 / 9780385688826
“Arnett integrates cultural and technical aspects of rock art and rock art sites from start to finish. He insists the paintings in many settings are an interaction between the rock formation, the setting, the paint, and the artist, including the artist’s songs and stories about the site.” Wendy Burton reviews Signs of the Time: Nłeʔkepmx Resistance through Rock Art by Chris Arnett (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2024) $39.95 / 9780774867962
“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
“…understanding how everything in a way has life. Inanimate objects, human made things, people of course, and everything else as well. This is how Marks extends her ideas. It’s an incremental change of many philosophical ideas.” Thomas Girard reviews The Fold: From Your Body to the Cosmos, by Laura U. Marks (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2024) $29.95 USD / 9781478030119
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
Reissued edition of the acclaimed, award-winning volume also reflects on the pandemic and MAID.—Jodi Lundgren reviews In the Slender Margin: The Intimate Strangeness of Death and Dying, by Eve Joseph (Vancouver: Anvil Press, 2023) $22.00 / 9781772142150
A striking pair of “exquisite” chapbooks highlight reflections about enduring relationships and life’s ineffable moments. —Mary Ann Moore reviews Berberitzen, by Susan Alexander (Salt Spring Island: Raven Chapbooks, 2024) $20.00 / 9781778160363 and If I Have Known Beauty: Elegies for Phyllis Webb, by Lorraine Gane (Salt Spring Island: Raven Chapbooks, 2024) $20.00 / 9781778160370
An “accessible, elucidating book that makes a persuasive plea for us to connect data literacy and human rights.” Plus, “a genuine pleasure to read.” —Jessica Poon reviews We, the Data: Human Rights in the Digital Age, by Wendy H. Wong (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2023) $35/95 / 9780262048576