Novelist sets out to “destroy it all … and start over with a handful of survivors, to see if they could build something better,” and then imagines the fraught next steps. —Dana McFarland reviews Post Civ, by Julianne Harvey (Surrey: Ruby Finch Books, 2024) $25.00 / 9780987797841
“That’s what Adderson does best: placing her characters in unsettling situations and then introducing them to a variety of possibilities.” —Bill Paul reviews A Way to be Happy: Stories, by Caroline Adderson (Windsor: Biblioasis, 2024) $22.95 / 9781771966221
A fun and easy beach read, this Mexican resort-set murder mystery brings together secrets, ulterior motives, and extravagant wealth. —Candace Fertile reviews The Plus One, by S.C. Lalli (Toronto: HarperCollins Canada, 2024) $25.99 / 9781443467049
A debut collection of occasional verse reveals a “happy fool” who takes “the wind out of Death’s sails.” —Harold Rhenisch reviews Blowing Up Growing Up, by John Givins (Cambridge: Askance Publishing, 2024) $25.00 / 9781778225062
Terrific essay collection covers agri-business, beans on toast, a century-old family recipe for trifle, gender politics, potatoes, and a whole lot more.
—Brett Josef Grubisic reviews Hearty: On Cooking, Eating, and Growing Food for Pleasure and Subsistence, by Andrea Bennett (Toronto: ECW Press, 2024) $24.95 / 9781770411
In this touching poetic novel, a pair of exes are accompanied by simmering grief and guilt as they journey from southern Ontario to Tofino. —Jessica Poon reviews Moon Road, by Sarah Leipciger (Toronto: Viking, 2024) $26.00 / 9780735249691
Novel about American socialite struggles to unearth the woman behind the “constant posturing.” —Candace Fertile reviews Peggy, by Rebecca Godfrey with Leslie Jamison (Toronto: Knopf Canada, 2024) $36.00 / 97803458082
Poetry volumes highlight a poet’s “impeccable way of seeing the grieving, dreaming world” as well as another’s “no readily-digested messages.” —Catherine Owen reviews Distractions, by Eve Joseph (London: Baseline Press, 2023) $15.00 / 9781928066873 and Signal Infinities, by Melanie Siebert (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 2024) $22.95 / 9780771013980
“At this point, I texted a friend, who wisely said, ‘I think people are reading for sex, not cooking accuracy.’ Remember: this is a romance. The restaurant is just a vehicle for the romance.” —Jessica Poon reviews Knives, Seasoning, and a Dash of Love, by Katrina Kwan (Toronto: Random House Canada, 2024) $24.95 / 9781039012417
Poetry volume presents “a diverse offering of entrances into the common and yet infrequently written about life of one woman inhabiting her own time, planting flowers while ‘knowing full well the battle [she] will wage and lose.'” —Catherine Owen reviews Whiny Baby, by Julie Paul (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2024) $19.95 / 9780228020745
“A whole tradition of poetry met postmodernism in him, as he has achieved what he set out to do—carry it forward, weave it in, pass it on to us, and then let us swim on upstream, as his hands lift away.” —Harold Rhenisch reviews Poems Selected and New, by D.C. Reid (Victoria: Ekstasis Editions, 2023) $25.95 /8781771714129
“So, my verdict: this is good art. It provoked me and changed me, in big and small ways.” —Petra Chambers reviews All Things Seen and Unseen, by RJ McDaniel (Toronto: ECW Press, 2024) $24.95 / 9781770417090
Debut story collection balances “visually rich absurdity … and the general malaise of youth with admirable, poetic flair.” —Jessica Poon reviews Hello, Horse: Stories, by Richard Kelly Kemick (Windsor: Biblioasis, 2024) $22.95 / 9781771966078
“What do schools of dead fish, a cure for Alzheimer’s, and nuclear fusion have in common?” A debut psychological thriller answers this question and more. —Jessica Poon reviews The Outlier, by Elisabeth Eaves (Toronto: Random House Canada, 2024) $24.95 / 9781039008045
“If this all sounds like a soap opera, rest assured, However Far Away is an understated, nuanced portrait of complicated relationships.” —Jessica Poon reviews However Far Away, by Rajinderpal S. Pal (Toronto: House of Anansi, 2024) $24.99 / 9781487012540
Warland is convinced that as writers, “we must learn to live with profound vulnerability.” In doing this, we are filling in the lack of stories that others have been too afraid to tell. We become more resilient in ourselves as we learn from ourselves—our fears and identities—and we can start to tell authentic narratives that our world, culturally and socially, so desperately needs.” —Natalie Virginia Lang reviews Breathing the Page: Reading the Act of Writing, by Betsy Warland (Toronto: Cormorant Books, 2023) $24.95 / 9781770867031
“Though the novel is neither a traditional detective story nor a thriller, the ongoing discoveries and displacements are reminiscent of those genres, but with a rarefied literary focus that makes for a worthwhile page turner.”
—Jessica Poon reviews The Mythmakers, by Keziah Weir (Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 2024) $24.00 / 978077100029
A thriller compels with “epic marriage baggage, a classically bratty stepdaughter, and theatrically terrible weather even by Pacific Northwest standards.” —Jessica Poon reviews The Off Season, by Amber Cowie (Toronto: Simon & Schuster Canada, 2024) $24.99 / 9781668023518
The trio of cases of a sleep-deprived, hard-drinking ‘terrible detective’ also reveal a man “in a modern world that he seems not to fully understand nor relate to.” —Logan Macnair reviews Stasio: A Novel in 3 Parts, by Tamas Dobozy (Vancouver: Anvil Press, 2024) $22.00 / 9781772142266
The closing novel of the McBride Chronicles tetralogy mulls over past and future as it introduces a host of contemporary social issues. —Vanessa Winn reviews Tomorrow, by Valerie Green (Surrey: Hancock House, 2024) $24.95 / 9780888397843