“Karen Bakker was a visionary scientist and scholar as well as something of a poet in the way she presents her research.” Carol Matthews reviews The Sounds of Life: How Digital Technology is Bringing Us Closer to the Worlds of Animals and Plants by Karen Bakker (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2022) $33 (USD) / 9780691206288
“He met high-level influencers like former Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff, British travel writer Jan Morris, novelist Mordecai Richler, and up-and-coming political analyst Andrew Cohen among others. He recounts a lunch with future Booker Prize winner Margaret Atwood wherein she tells a series of dirty lawyer jokes. His path had taken him to the high-water mark of Canada’s literati.” Ron Verzuh reviews Line Breaks: A Writing Life by George Galt (Montreal: Linda Leith Publishing, 2024) $24.95 / 9781773901565
“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
The fifth book in an “inspired by” series “succeeds in being true to form: this Anne Shirley is imbued with the characteristics that have made the original Anne Shirley endure nationally and internationally for over a century.” —Ginny Ratsoy reviews Anne Dares, by Kallie George (illustrated by Abigail Halpin) (Toronto: Tundra, 2023) $16.99 / 9780735272101
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
“I have, for many years, been taken by mountaineers who are also exquisite photographers.” Accomplished climber Ron Dart reviews Aloft: Canadian Rockies Aerial Photography by Paul Zizka (Victoria: Rocky Mountain Books, 2021) $35 / 9781771606929 & Mountains of the Coast: Photographs of Remote Corners of the Coast Mountains by John Baldwin (Madeira Park: Harbour Publishing, 1999) $36.95 / 9781550172133
Deeply whimsical story of a plucky orphan “reads like a forgotten classic,” and—when it works— “is almost endlessly charming.” —Greg Brown reviews Library Girl, by Polly Horvath (Toronto: Puffin Canada, 2024) $22.99 / 9781774883341
“Aside from the copious illustrations and comparisons of passages from Kane’s primary journals, the scribes account, and the final publication, there are the 14 sections of the preface, detailed maps, “Discussion” and “Notes” for each of the 25 chapters, which bring to life the “times, which is academically thorough and comprehensive.” Christina Johnson-Dean reviews Paul Kane’s Travels in Indigenous North America: Writings and Art, Life and Times, by I.S. MacLaren (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2024) $450 (cloth, boxed four-volume set) / 9780228017479
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 Press, 2024) $26.95 / 9781989689752
“Voicing Identity is about avoiding cultural appropriation in the re-telling of Indigenous Peoples’ stories—purporting to take something of cultural worth, tangible or often intangible, without permission, and make it in some way one’s own.” Richard Butler reviews Voicing Identity: Cultural Appropriation and Indigenous Issues by John Borrows and Kent McNeil (eds.)(Toronto: University of Toronto, 2022) $36.95 / 9781487544690
“Climate change impacts human life on all levels; we feel its effects as individuals, families, communities, and nations. As Wiebe notes, these effects unfold within staggered and discordant timeframes: unfolding both quickly and slowly.” Petra Chambers reviews Hot Mess: Mothering Through a Code Red Climate Emergency by Sarah Marie Wiebe (Halifax: Fernwood Publishing, 2024) $25 / 9781773635668
“Brode has produced a remarkable account of Inouye’s controversial life using a vast range of documents and news accounts. The thirteen chapters head towards a climatic end. ‘What was Inouye’s allegiance?’ Brode states.” Kenneth Favrholdt reviews Traitor by Default: The Trials of Kanao Inouye, the Kamloops Kid by Patrick Brode (Toronto: Dundurn Press, 2024) $26.99 / 9781459753693
“Nurses don’t get to make mistakes. This book is written as carefully as Crook navigated intransigent bureaucracy, patients, and children.” Linda Rogers reviews Always on Call: Adventures in Nursing, Ranching, and Rural Living by Marion McKinnon Crook (Victoria: Heritage House, 2024) $26.95 / 9781772034691
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
Set in the late ’70s, a hearty story for young readers portrays the triumphs and setbacks of a 12-year-old child named Truly. —Alison Acheson reviews Elvis, Me, and the Postcard Winter, by Leslie Gentile (Toronto: DCB Books, 2024) $14.95 / 9781770867666
“On July 4, 2021, Greg hiked to the summit of Frosty Mountain, the highest peak in the park. From this high perch he could look out on the panorama below, the terrain in which he had spent five months searching for Jordan.” Paul Geddes reviews Called by Mother Earth: A Father’s Search for His Son
by Greg F. Naterer (St. John’s: Breakwater Books, 2024) $24.95 / 9781778530142
“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
“Trained in visual art … FitzGerald arrived in Victoria in March 2020 having made her decision to sketch and write about the city before the COVID-19 pandemic hit Canada and beyond. The focus of the book is ‘on the life pulse of the city of Victoria that kept on going in spite of it.'” Mary Ann Moore reviews Hand Drawn Victoria: An Illustrated Tour in and around BC’s Capital City, by Emma FitzGerald (Toronto: Appetite [Penguin Random House], 2024) $19.95 / 9780525611042
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