At its best, a debut collection of 15 stories is deeply unsettling, anxiety-inducing, and memorably character-driven. —Zoe McKenna reviews I Will Wander On: Terrifying Tales of Life, Love, & Death, by Ron Prasad (Acheson: iUniverse, 2024) $30.95 / 9781663266477
A baker’s dozen of engrossing stories range broadly—from militaristic dystopias to the Vietnam War—and often portray the volatile dynamics of men in imbalanced relationships. —Theo Dombrowski reviews Unsettling Dreams, by Michael Whatling (Victoria: Mortal Coil Books, 2024) $16.99 / 1777569958
A “wonderfully varied, worthwhile collection” that features 16 stories by new writers and literary heavyweights, BCS25 “is about as solid as short story collections get.”—Jessica Poon reviews Best Canadian Stories 2025, selected by Steven W. Beattie (Windsor: Biblioasis, 2024) $23.95 / 9781771966344
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
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
“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
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
Debut story collection by celebrated young author reveals him as “fully in control of his voice, confident of his reach, and utterly fearless.” —Daniel Gawthrop reviews coexistence, by Billy-Ray Belcourt (Toronto: Hamish Hamilton, 2024) $27.95 / 9780735242036
Reissued story collection features a “confident gay voice, full of quips and sharply off-kilter but richly descriptive comments that stay on the literary side of arch.” —Drew Rowsome reviews Channel Surfing in the Sea of Happiness, by Guy Babineau (Toronto: Cormorant Books, 2024) $24.95 / 9781770867499
“Sentence by sentence, Lacroix is helping to keep literature weird, just the way it should be. Weird is good; this book is weird; this book is good.” —Jessica Poon reviews How It Works Out, by Myriam Lacroix (Toronto: Doubleday Canada, 2024) $32.00 / 9780385698405
A “bubbly sensibility” blends well with a sobriety in stories that address “the serious matters of our loves and our times.” —Carellin Brooks reviews Disembark, by Jen Currin (Toronto: House of Anansi, 2024) $22.99 / 9781487011895
Pervaded with sadness, a novelist’s sobering debut story collection examines the disappointments of romantic relationships. —Candace Fertile reviews Death by a Thousand Cuts: Stories, by Shashi Bhat (Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 2024) $24.95 / 9780771095115
Sophomore story collection has “a finger firmly on the pulse of contemporary life and delivers trenchant criticisms of human foibles.”
—Candace Fertile reviews Last Woman, by Carleigh Baker (Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 2024) $24.95 / 9780771004148
Praise in a minor key for this year’s ‘best of’ in short fiction.
Jessica Poon reviews Best Canadian Stories 2024 by Lisa Moore (editor)
(Windsor: Biblioasis, 2023) $23.95 / 9781771965668
Hopeful pictures of women at midlife and after… Carellin Brooks reviews Your Body Was Made For This, by Debbie Bateman (Vancouver: Ronsdale Press, 2023) $21.95 / 9781553806929