“Putting the story back into history is certainly a good thing. But that is not all. There is also an overriding interpretation here that we should not miss, and it is rather different from the history by consensus that is now all the rage.” Robin Fisher reviews Untold Tales of Old British Columbia by Daniel Marshall (Vancouver: Ronsdale Press, 2024) $24.95 / 9781553807049
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
“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
“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
Sophomore novel is “a portrait of power and belief gone awry, of wishful thinking of men-as-gods, of the abuse of the idea of so-called religion, and the big and generous hearts of women who get sucked into the mire.”
—Caitlin Hicks reviews The Celestial Wife, by Leslie Howard (Toronto: Simon & Schuster, 2024) $24.99 / 9781982182403
“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 complex long poem “interrogates the nature of the self (‘your brief signature’), and questions where the ‘you’ resides when the mind fades from the soul (‘you are home; you are not home’).” —Joe Enns reviews Dream House, by Cathy Stonehouse (Gibsons: Nightwood Editions, 2023) $19.95 / 9780889714625
“Although Roche has had to constantly encounter resistance to his own appearance by those who consider him initially repellant, it is this very impasse that enables him to teach and learn and develop more immense layers of empathy.” Catherine Owen reviews Standing at the Back Door of Happiness: And How I Unlocked It by David Roche (Madeira Park: Harbour Publishing, 2024) $22.95 / 9781990776762
“Burn, baby, burn, they must have said and this is the fire in Bowering who…is on a feminist re-investigation of the legacy of a lost lady poet.” Linda Rogers reviews More Richly in Earth: A Poet’s Search for Mary MacLeod by Marilyn Bowering (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2024) $34.95 / 9780228021124
“Author Richard Butler, in his two recent titles, has decided, quite admirably, to describe his own path in addressing reconciliation. He begins Taking Reconciliation Personally upfront about his own settler privilege.” Trevor Marc Hughes reviews Taking Reconciliation Personally (Victoria: A&R Publishing, 2023) $15 / 9798849376998 & I Dare Say…Conversations with Indigeneity by Richard Butler (Victoria: A&R Publishing, 2023) $11 / 9798871999066
“Nay knows not only how to create suspense, but also how to maintain it. You have to keep reading to find out whose bloodied arm is detached, and you’ll want to.” —Jessica Poon reviews The Offing, by Roz Nay (Toronto: Viking, 2024) $24.95 / 9780735248250
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
“This type of book is Pinterest before Pinterest, a way of gathering inspiration when it was primarily an arduous task. The physicality is something that can never be discounted, and I imagine the authors of the future will continue to always refer to books like this, as nothing quite replaces the ah-ha experience of leafing through it and coming to know to things in an unexplainable way, like a dream guiding you in the middle of the night.” Thomas Girard reviews Pretty Pictures by Marian Bantjes (New York: Metropolis Books, 2013) $99.00 / 9781938922220
Poet foregrounds nature imagery in her thoughtful inquires about family, cultural heritage, grief, and identity. —Daniela Elza reviews We Follow the River, by Onjana Yawnghwe (Qualicum Beach: Caitlin Press, 2024) $20.00 / 9781773861388
“No wait a moment …. a rabbit and mysterious arms holding it and obscuring the ears? On the back cover, the Princess’s eye has been covered. Before dismissing pretty princesses and bunnies, I needed to look further and so should you.” Christina Johnson-Dean reviews Classification Crisis and Rabbit-Hole, by Sonja Ahlers (Wolfville, NS: Conundrum Press, co-published with Richmond Art Gallery, 2023) $50.00 / 9781926594347
“Brauer visited Ireland, accompanied by his former wife Paula, some years ago, and more recently returned on his own in an attempt to ‘find himself.'” Ian Kennedy reviews Lost Between the Stones and the Sea: A Journey of Discovery in Ireland by Chris Brauer (New Denver: Maa Press, 2023) $25.00 / 9781777349745
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
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 retired criminal lawyer revisits his past and “the most significant trial of his career.” The results are engrossing. —Bill Paul reviews The Long-Shot Trial: An Arthur Beauchamp Thriller, by William Deverell (Toronto: ECW Press, 2024) $26.95 / 9781770417540
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