“Keeping the Books is a family history par excellence, the best of its genre that I have read, which traces the life of Alene Peck, a homesteader’s daughter in the Peace River district of British Columbia. It was a colourful life that Alene has chronicled and saved through a trove of letters, notes, and photographs that upon her death were bequeathed to her son, Ross Peck, who lives today in Skookumchuck, in BC’s Kootenays.” Kenneth Favrholdt reviews Keeping the Books: The life and times of a Peace River Homesteader’s Daughter, by Ross Peck (Cranbrook: Wild Horse Creek Press, 2025) $21.95 / 9781069794703
BC-set debut novel portrays environmental politics and a volatile family of five in 1989, 2001, and 2022. Against a forested backdrop, the novel “explores how a thriving family is a unique ecosystem with its own fragility and resilience.” —Trish Bowering reviews The Fall-Down Effect, by Liz Johnston (Toronto: Book*hug, 2026) $24.95 / 9781771669627
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
“[E]xcellent” debut YA novel reflects an author who “put his heart and soul into this book.” Plus: “Coming to this book in middle age, and as a fairly non-sentimental reader, the novel surprised me when I actually almost cried at one point, so invested was I in this wonderfully well-developed character of Ramin Abbas.” —Trish Bowering reviews Ramin Abbas Has MAJOR Questions, by Ahmad Saber (Toronto: Atheneum/Caitlyn Dlouhy Books, 2026) $29.99 /9781665960694
An immersive and satisfying sequel to a 2015 debut novel finds a youthful protagonist—”a force unto himself,” who’s “always compelling on the page”—in literal wilderness as he sorts himself. —Trish Bowering reviews When the World Was Twice as Big, by Aaron Cully Drake (Gibsons: Nightwood Editions, 2026) $23.95 / 9780889715042
“Food is never merely sustenance; it is narrative layered with memory and meaning. In October 2025, I travelled to Rome and Oxford as part of Simon Fraser University’s Graduate Liberal Studies Program, culminating in a project that combined two themes: Italy in the ancient and modern imagination (with a focus on food history) and life writing (an exploration of how lives are represented across time, genre, and media). I deepened my understanding of the links between food writing, memory, and culture by studying the works of three contemporary authors. Ada Boni (1881-1973), codified Italian home cooking and idealized domesticity during Mussolini’s era; Elizabeth David (1913-1992), a wry aristocrat who sought to liberate postwar Britain from culinary blandness by introducing Mediterranean sensuality; and Patience Gray (1917-2005), an eccentric British artist who followed a vein of marble through Italy with her sculptor partner, documenting rural foodways for posterity. Melanie Monk presents her essay Minestrone and Women’s Lives: A Culinary Palimpsest of Lives Written, Tasted, Remembered.
A quarter-century career retrospective commands attention. Our reviewer concludes that the book “is a remarkable oeuvre that includes poems of great beauty that intertwine light and dark, fire and water and earth and dust or ashes, and all these poems so magnificently held together by love.” —gillian harding-russell reviews Two Songs: Selected Poems 2000-2025, by Russell Thornton (Madeira Park: Harbour Publishing, 2026) $26.96 / 9781998526574
Featuring writing like “lethal and blunt arrows,” a sophomore novel tells a tale of a complex mother-child relationship, a highly troubled real estate purchase, and a vulnerable protagonist who must “accept every jab and cut life’s sharpest knife has to offer.” —Sergio Espinosa reviews The Valley of Vengeful Ghosts, by Kim Fu (Toronto: HarperCollins Canada, 2026) $24.99 / 9781443465878
An accomplished historical novel tells two stories (set circa 1909 and 1946) to portray southern Saskatchewan culture as experienced by a Métis girl and, later, career woman. “[T]ake your time with it,” our reviewer writes, “It’s an absorbing book.” —W.H. New reviews Wild People Quiet, by Tara Gereaux (Toronto: Scribner Canada, 2026) $25.99 / 9781668060568
A memoir-in-essays, an “unabashedly queer view of life, loves, and the bringing up of the generation to come,” ranges widely and speaks candidly. —Carellin Brooks reviews Staying Power: On Queerness, Inheritances, and the Families We Choose, by Zena Sharman (Vancouver: Arsenal Pulp Press, 2026) $24.95 / 9781834050164
Part pop music meditation, part memoir, a poetry-and-prose hybrid offers “an authentic glimpse into Michael Turner’s roots and perspective through a lens that only Turner can provide.” With that said, some of the author’s techniques and choices raise questions for our reviewer. —Joe Enns reviews Playlist: A Profligacy of Your Least-Expected Poems, by Michael Turner (Vancouver: Anvil Press, 2024) $20.00 / 9781772142280
“Little Brown Birds” and “Someone,” excerpts from Seventy-Two Seasons: A Memoir About Noticing, by M.A.C. Farrant (Vancouver: Ronsdale Press, 2026) $22.95 / 9781553807438
Rich with appealingly illustrated pages, a pair of smart picture books introduce young readers to changes—both the kind that the world can spring at us all and internal change. —Brett Josef Grubisic reviews Sometimes I Feel That Way Too, by Hannah Beach (illustrated by Rebecca Bender) (Toronto: Plumleaf Press, 2026) $24.95 / 9781069093561 and Hello, Baby, It’s Me, Alfie, by Maggie Hutchings (illustrated by Dawn Lo) (Toronto: Tundra Books, 2026) $24.95 9781774886366
Maternal angst, filial contempt: a Freudian field day. (And recommended for the comforts of home: “I made the mistake of reading it on an empty stomach on an unpleasant bus ride while I was already in an overly pensive mood. What Boys Learn is best read with a heating blanket, on a full stomach, ideally with the reassurance of a warm dog curled up near you.) —Jessica Poon reviews What Boys Learn, by Andromeda Romano-Lax (New York: Soho Crime, 2026) $39.95 / 9781641296915
Reissued 2014 novel recounts a father and son’s journey to a backcountry destination: “In Wagamese’s prose, the descriptions of these places are so skilfully rendered that the ugliness becomes beautiful. In the rhythmic, pulsing language, you can smell the empty bottles, the smoke and ashes, the unwashed bodies, the frying bologna.” —Ryan Frawley reviews Medicine Walk, by Richard Wagamese (Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 2025) $22.00 / 9780771023521
In collection of poetry where nature takes pride of place, a writer “shows a strong understanding of poetic craft,” relating lyrical tales that are “personal, observant, moving, and expansive” and “made potent through a distinctive working of language and image.” —Steven Ross Smith reviews All of Us Hidden, by Joanna Streetly (Qualicum Beach: Caitlin Press: 2025) $20.00 / 9781773861722
Family, friendship, prejudice, and loss are thoughtfully explored in a pair of chapter books for young readers. “There’s such valuing of connection in these pages, and an honesty to the whole,” writes our reviewer. —Alison Acheson reviews A Promise to Protect, by Nikki Bergstresser (Victoria: Heritage House, 2025) $14.95 / 9781772035438 and I Won’t Feel This Way Forever, by Kim Spencer (Victoria: Orca Book Publishers, 2025) $14.95 / 9781459838208
“[R]eading this novel made me livid in the best possible way. The supernatural aspects of the novel are, arguably, the least frightening; normalized human cruelty and deep-seated male entitlement are infinitely more terrifying. Prepare to flinch.” —Jessica Poon reviews The Hunger We Pass Down, by Jen Sookfong Lee (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 2025) $26.00 / 9780771012853
An intriguing, alchemical novel “that blends the real and the unreal into something more myth than fable, more real than magic, for all its occasionally fantastical elements,” has a “dreamy quality that is enhanced by the understated prose.” —Ryan Frawley reviews The Unfinished World, by Marilyn Bowering (Montreal: Linda Leith Publishing, 2025) $26.95 / 9781773901800
“That’s not to presume that the novel is necessarily autobiographical, only to suggest that [the author] clearly holds a great fondness for the people and places of Vancouver Island, a fondness that is capably demonstrated through this curious and entertaining story of Tibetan Buddhism, talking fish, and the weight of familial legacy.” —Logan Macnair reviews The Atoner of Alberni, by Edward Cepka (Vancouver: Granville Island Publishing, 2025 ) $23.95 / 9781989467770
