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
“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
“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
“These are fully realized observations, absolute and searing impressions of the profoundly joyful, as well as the unavoidably difficult.” —Cathy Ford reviews Islander, by Mona Fertig (Salt Spring Island: Mother Tongue Publishing, 2024) $22.00 / 9781896949895
Adept thriller is a welcome cause for “a single session of binge-reading punctuated with that rapturous state of feeling appalled at human behaviour.” —Jessica Poon reviews The Haters, by Robyn Harding (New York: Grand Central Publishing, 2024) $29.00 / 9781538766101
“And in truth, art is the enduring theme that binds the many seemingly loose ends in this novel. Sometimes it’s art accomplished; more often, it’s the frustration that grows from not being able to produce it.” —Heidi Greco reviews A Reluctant Mother, by Deirdre Simon Dore (Vancouver: Ronsdale Press, 2024) $25.95 / 9781553807100
Uneven sophomore novel features sisters Rumer and Charlotte, “city girls fleeing parental bonds and disaffection with university studies.” —Trish Bowering reviews Hotel Beringia, by Mix Hart (New Westminster: Tidewater Press, 2024) $24.95 / 9781990160387
“The sheer intellect and sharp-eyed creator in these works has given history and perspective on a time and place of artistically fevering production, forging its own way.” —Cathy Ford reviews Another Order: Selected Works, by Judith Copithorne (edited by Eric Schmaltz) (Vancouver: Talonbooks, 2023) $34.95 / 9781772015539
Book #11 in the series “scrutinizes a dark chapter in Canadian history while simultaneously charming her readers with the picturesque Kootenay locale and setting their teeth on edge as her heroine comes perilously close to an untimely end.” —Ginny Ratsoy reviews Lightning Strikes the Silence, by Iona Whishaw (Victoria: Touchwood Editions, 2024) $21.95 / 9781771514323
Fine books of “aesthetic delights” feature evocative poems that examine everything from the loss of a beloved pet to the tending of a garden. —Catherine Owen reviews Hey Trouble and Other Poems, by Sharon McCartney (London: Baseline Press, 2023) $15.00 / 9781928066910 and In the Warm Shallows of What Remains, by Andrea Scott (Salt Spring Island: Raven Chapbooks, 2024) $22.95 / 9781778160356
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
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
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
Sophomore YA novel offers “a beautiful, heartwarming story about memory and grief with a speculative twist and a sprinkling of romance that’s sure to delight teen readers.”—Greg Brown reviews The Space Between Here and Now, by Sarah Suk (Toronto: HarperCollins Canada, 2023) $24.99 / 9780063255135
In intriguing, complex layers a historical novel portrays queer lives during Europe’s witchomania. It’s a keeper, especially if you’re “of the camp that believes that metacommentary is captivating.” —Jessica Poon reviews Curiosities, by Anne Fleming (Toronto: Knopf Canada, 2024) $35.00 / 9781039004979
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