Fiction
Buzzkill Clamshell
Amber Dawn. Arsenal Pulp, Mar.
Lambda Literary Award winner Dawn subverts the mode of confessional poetry in her third collection, a suite of poems that focuses on themes of disability, queerness, and desire. The author of the novel Sub Rosa and the memoir How Poetry Saved My Life, Dawn employs raw and intensely personal language in verses about severed heads and domme swan maidens that, according to the publisher, read “as if a leather dyke and a demonic goat had a baby.”
Cattail Lane
Fran Kimmel. ECW, Apr.
The latest novel from Alberta’s Kimmel tells the story of Nick, a listless man in a deadening job who discovers, much to his surprise, that he has a son he knew nothing about. As he struggles to raise the belligerent 14-year-old, he falls in with an employee in the dementia ward where the boy’s grandmother has been sent. This novel of new starts later in life is being compared to Anne Tyler and A Man Called Ove.
Death of a Diplomat
Eliza Reid. Simon & Schuster Canada, Apr.
Iceland’s first lady, who was born and raised in Canada, has been many things: a public speaker, an advocate for gender equity, and the founder of the Iceland Writers Retreat. She now adds thriller novelist to the list. Reid’s debut, about the murder of a deputy Canadian ambassador at a lavish dinner party, and the ambassador’s wife who investigates, is a Scandinavian variation on the locked-room mystery.
A Different Hurricane
H. Nigel Thomas. Dundurn, Feb.
Montreal author Thomas draws on his heritage in the Caribbean country of St. Vincent for his latest novel, about a pair of closeted gay men struggling to maintain the facade of traditional heterosexuality in a country that remains steeped in biblical theological ideals. They are successful in fooling everyone in their lives, until the deception becomes untenable.
Dog and Moon
Kelly Shepherd. Univ. of Regina, Mar.
Winner of the 2019 Robert Kroetsch City of Edmonton Book Prize for his sophomore collection, Insomnia Bird, Shepherd returns with a variation on the free-verse ghazal form. Taking his material from notebooks and dream journals, Shepherd incorporates themes of darkness and night into poems that straddle nature writing, poetry workshops, and childhood.
Everything Is Fine Here
Iryn Tushabe. House of Anansi, Mar.
Set in present-day Uganda, writer and journalist Iryn Tushabe’s debut novel tells the story of 18-year-old Aine Kamara, whose reunion with her older sister is complicated by the presence of her sister’s same-sex partner, Achen. A burgeoning friendship between Aine and Achen is challenged by generational discord and Uganda’s strict anti-homosexuality laws.
Horsefly
Mireille Gagné, trans. from the French
by Pablo Strauss. Coach House, May
This cautionary tale about hubris in the Anthropocene shuttles between 1942 and 2024. In the past, a young entomologist is assigned by the Allies to work in a remote location developing biological weapons. In the present, a man bitten by a horsefly during a heat wave decides impulsively to spring his grandfather from a local nursing home. The horsefly itself is a character carrying perhaps deeper knowledge than the humans around it.
Lake Burntshore
Aaron Kreuter. ECW, Apr.
A Jewish summer camp is the setting for this novel about a 21-year-old anti-Zionist who is forced into a confrontation with her conscience when the owners of the camp employ Israeli soldiers to deal with a staff shortage. As she begins to develop feelings for one of the soldiers, she must also contend with issues of settler colonialism arising from the camp’s proximity to the Black Spruce First Nation.
Only Because It’s You
Rebecca Fisseha. Doubleday Canada, May
Toronto-based Ethiopian Canadian writer Fisseha’s debut novel, 2019’s Daughter of Silence, was widely acclaimed and selected by Margaret Atwood for the GritLit Festival’s Spotlight Series. Fisseha’s new book, her first with Doubleday Canada, is a contemporary romance about a pair of best friends who enter into a marriage of convenience.
The Riveter
Jack Wang. House of Anansi, Feb.
From the Danuta Gleed Award–winning author comes a debut novel set during the WWII. In Vancouver, Josiah Chang finds his dream of fighting with the Canadian armed forces stymied by his Chinese heritage. A romance with a lounge singer leads him to prove himself by traveling to Toronto to enlist, but events both personal and global begin to spiral out of his control.
Shipwrecked Souls
Barbara Fradkin. Dundurn, Feb.
Ottawa writer Fradkin returns with the 12th installment in her popular Inspector Green mystery series. In this new volume, the death of a Ukrainian woman discovered with a scrap of paper containing a mysterious name in three languages leads Green on a journey of betrayal and intrigue going back some eight decades.
To Place a Rabbit
Madhur Anand. Knopf Canada, May
University of Guelph professor of ecology and stability Anand won a Governor General’s Literary Award for her debut work of narrative nonfiction, 2020’s This Red Line Goes Straight to Your Heart. She is also the author of two acclaimed collections of poetry. Her debut novel is about a popular science writer translating a novelist’s work into French, an experience that brings up issues of memory and belief that complicate the process.
Unravel
Tolu Oloruntoba. McClelland & Stewart, Mar.
Nigerian-born poet Oloruntoba won the Griffin Poetry Prize and a Governor General’s Literary Award for his 2022 collection The Junta of Happenstance. His new collection deals with deconstruction in all its forms—physical, emotional, and psychological—and the poems within are billed as being both emotional and surreal.
We Could Be Rats
Emily Austin. Simon & Schuster, Jan.
A story of sibling connection and the enduring bonds of childhood, Ottawa writer Austin’s third novel focuses on staid and traditional Margit, who spends her adulthood trying to understand what drives her wayward younger sister, Sigrid, in her nonconformist ways. The author of the bestsellers Everyone in This Room Will Someday Be Dead and Interesting Facts About Space brings her quirky sensibility to bear on a family relationship that transcends differences and celebrates the power of the imagination.
Wellwater
Karen Solie. House of Anansi, Apr.
Locating the poems in her sixth collection at the intersection of economic and ecological crisis, Griffin Poetry Prize winner Solie addresses the theme of value in the context of unaffordable housing, the climate emergency, and the ravages of getting older. Straddling urban and rural locales and examining everything from the sharing economy to the blight of urban vermin, the poems in Wellwater aim to provide hope in a time of uncertainty.
Nonfiction
52 Ways to Reconcile: How to Walk with Indigenous People on the Path to Healing
David A. Robertson. McClelland & Stewart, May
Acclaimed author and two-time Governor General’s Literary Award winner Robertson, a member of the Norway House Cree Nation, turns his attention to the relationship between Canada’s First Nations and its settler communities in his latest volume of nonfiction. His book details the ways in which small acts of community and reconciliation can effect huge change in our society.
Big Girls Don’t Cry: A Memoir About Taking Up Space
Susan Swan. HarperCollins, Mar.
Six-foot-two by the time she was 12, novelist Swan knows something about taking up space. Her new memoir examines her iconoclastic approach to life—as a single mother operating in the underground art scene of the 1970s, a genre-bending writer, a teacher, and an advocate for women’s rights. Her book is a call to reevaluate how we consider the place of women in society. Margaret Atwood provides the foreword.
Birds Life Sized: Up Close and Personal with 50 Bird Species
Chris Earley. Firefly, Apr.
Veteran bird book author Earley returns with a guide to some of North America’s most popular avian species. Facts and figures about diet, habitat, and nesting habits are placed alongside eye-popping, life-size photographs of bald eagles, brown-headed cowbirds, and loggerhead shrikes (gruesomely nicknamed “butcherbirds”), among many others.
La Cucina di Terroni: Rustic Italian Fare from Our Kitchen to Your Table
Cosimo Mammoliti. Simon & Schuster, Apr.
Since its debut in 1992, Terroni has become a staple of downtown Toronto cuisine, expanding to 10 locations in the city and three in Los Angeles. Proprietor Mammoliti offers readers a unique look at Terroni’s
history through photography and words, along with more than 100 of the chain’s most popular recipes.
Dust: More Lives of the Poets (with Guitars)
Ray Robertson. Biblioasis, Apr.
Novelist Robertson follows up his 2023 tribute to the Grateful Dead, All the Years Combine, with a second volume of essays about noted singer-songwriters who have influenced his development as a writer and a philosopher of the human condition. The new book follows trails both well-worn and relatively untrodden, with names both famous and forgotten.
Encampment: Resistance, Grace, and an Unhoused Community
Maggie Helwig. Coach House, May
The housing crisis is brought into stark relief in this memoir by novelist, priest, and activist Helwig. When an encampment of unhoused people sprung up in the yard beside Helwig’s Anglican church, the cleric brought all of her history of activism to bear in the fight to allow them to remain. Encampment also features empathetic portraits of three of the unhoused tent city members that allow their vulnerability and humanity to show through.
From the Rez to the Runway: Forging My Path in Fashion
Christian Allaire. Collins, Mar.
As a child on the Nippising First Nation reserve, Allaire was introduced to traditional Ojibwe regalia, which led to an abiding fascination with fashion. As a magazine writer in New York City covering the fashion beat, Allaire realized his dream job, but also came to recognize that the industry he so adored had a much less glamorous side to it.
Homegrown Radicals: A Story of State Violence, Islamophobia, and State Violence in the Post-9/11 World
Youcef Soufi. Univ. of Regina, Feb.
An expert in Islamophobia at the University of Manitoba’s Centre for Human Rights Research, Youcef Soufi explores the way post-9/11 prejudice against Muslims in Canada has resulted in a tension between radicalized Muslims and more moderate members of the religion. The book identifies the ways in which violent rhetoric about Muslims has resulted in state-sanctioned surveillance and increased levels of Islamophobic hate crimes.
It Must Be Beautiful to Be Finished: A Memoir of My Body Kate Gies.
Simon & Schuster, Feb.
Kate Gies, a Toronto writer and educator, was born with only one ear. Throughout her childhood and early adolescence, she was subjected to repeated surgeries, skin grafts, and other procedures meant to render her “whole.” Her new book is a lyrical examination of what it means to be normal and the medical establishment’s need to “fix” a woman’s body in line with societal expectations.
One Foot on the Platform: A Rock ’n’ Roll Journey
Peter Goddard, edited by J.A. Wainwright. House of Anansi, Mar.
When renowned music critic Peter Goddard died in 2022, he was in the middle of a manuscript about his more than five decades of immersion in the global music scene. Editor J.A. Wainwright has rescued key essays about figures such as Davie Bowie, Bob Dylan, and John Lennon and augmented them with some of Goddard’s classic essays from his long career as a music journalist.
Story of Your Mother
Chantal Braganza. Strange Light, Apr.
Journalist Braganza, who is of mixed Mexican and Indian heritage, has long struggled with questions of personal identity. How difficult is it, then, to explain related subjects to her mixed-heritage offspring? Braganza tackles these and other thorny questions in an essay collection that is being positioned to appeal to fans of Dionne Brand, Leslie Jamison, and Maggie Nelson.
This Book Is a Knife: Radical Working-Class Strategies in the Age of Climate Change
L.E. Fox. Arsenal Pulp, May
As a queer, nonbinary, working-class author, Fox has been concerned with the ways in which society is structured to suppress poor and blue-collar people while enriching a small group of ultrarich capitalists. In this new work, Fox brings a radical critique of capitalism to bear on what is arguably the greatest social issue of our time: the climate emergency.
Two Chefs in the Garden: Over 150 Garden-Inspired Vegetarian Recipes
Lynn Crawford and Lora Kirk. Penguin Canada, Feb.
Celebrity chef Crawford, known to Food Network viewers for her appearances on Top Chef Canada, Iron Chef Canada, and Chopped Canada, teams up with restaurateur and food activist Kirk for a book of easy-to-prepare vegetarian recipes guaranteed to please every palate.
Vegetable Garden Tools: A Grower’s Guide
Jean-Martin Fortier, illus. by Flore Avram. New Society, May
Owner of the family farm Les Jardins de la Grelinette in Quebec’s Eastern Townships, Jean-Martin Fortier has spent more than two decades working and advocating for the importance of organic farming and locally sourced food. He is now launching a series of guidebooks for horticulturists and gardeners, including this book, about the importance of using the right tools for growing gardens, and Tomatoes: A Growing Guide.
Women Who Woke Up the Law: Inside the Cases That Changed Women’s Rights in Canada
Karin Wells. Second Story, Mar.
Chantal Daigle. Eliza Campbell. Jeannette Corbiere Lavell. These and other groundbreaking women in Canadian history fought for the right to bodily autonomy, to justify the killing of an abusive partner as self-defense, and for other issues important to feminist causes. Lawyer Wells, author of an acclaimed book on the Abortion Caravan, digs into the cases that helped move the cause of women in Canada forward.
Chidori: A Story of One Thousand Birds
Jennifer Maruno, illus. by Miki Sato. Pajama, Mar.
Retired schoolteacher Maruno tells the story of Hana, a Japanese girl who is separated from her family by a catastrophic tsunami. The wave causes untold damage; Hana learns to assuage her grief by painting plovers, symbolic of courage. The three-dimensional mixed-media art is by Japanese Canadian illustrator Sato. Ages 5–8.
The Fabulous Edweena
Edwin Dumont, illus. by Melissa Cho. Second Story, Mar.
Young Edwin enjoys dressing in his sister’s clothes, shoes, and jewelry. Edwin enters a skating contest as his alter ego, Edweena, introducing her to the school in grand fashion. Inspired by the author’s own childhood, this story provides a positive portrait of a boy who likes to dress in drag. The publisher is also producing a dual-language version in English and Ojibwe. Ages 6–8.
Fantastic Lou: Little Comics from Real Life
Qin Leng. Tundra, Jan.
A boy named Lou is at the centre of these comics by acclaimed Toronto illustrator Leng. These short illustrated stories about self-expression and self-discovery are touted as appealing to fans of Peanuts and Calvin and Hobbes. Ages 5–9.
Finding Harmony
Eric Walters. Orca, Feb.
Veteran kids’ author Walters returns with a prequel to his Governor General’s Literary Award–winning The King of Jam Sandwiches. Harmony has managed to convince a judge to let her move out of foster care and back in with her mother; now all she has to do is keep her mother in line, or at least fake it for her case worker, Gloria. She is aided by the convenience store owner across the street, who offers her a food-for-work exchange. Ages 9–12.
I Would Give You My Tail
Tanya Tagaq, illus. by Qavavau Manumie. Tundra, Apr.
Celebrated avant-garde composer and throat singer Tagaq adds a second picture book with this story about a young Inuk child who makes a trek to his grandmother’s home, stopping along the way to quiz a variety of animals about what makes them happy. This tale of gratitude and thanksgiving is illustrated by master stonecut printer Manumie. Ages 3–7.
Like a Bird
Becky Citra. Second Story, Mar.
In this follow-up to 2022’s Rachel Bird, the eponymous heroine has landed a best friend and a boyfriend and managed to find some measure of contentment in the small town of Aspen Lake. That is, until dangerous wildfires threaten to eradicate her blissful summer, along with her home and all the rest of the town she has worked so hard to settle in. Citra provides a tense story of family and small-town life that is imperilled by the ravages of climate change and extreme weather. Ages 12 and up.
The Most Magnificent Team
Ashley Spires. Kids Can, May
Two girls with markedly different styles and approaches to work sit down to make something together. One is highly organized, while the other likes to dive in head first. This new installment of the bestselling Most Magnificent series from beloved author-illustrator Spires is sure to delight her many fans. Ages 4–8.
Ours to Tell: Reclaiming Indigenous Stories
Eldon Yellowhorn and Kathy Lowinger. Annick, Apr.
Tommy Orange, Rita Joe, and E. Pauline Johnson are three of the Indigenous creators profiled in this anthology focusing on figures from communities that have too frequently been written out or written over by the dominant settler-colonial culture, compiled by veteran author Lowinger and Simon Fraser University professor Yellowhorn, a member of the Piikani Nation, the team behind Turtle Island: The Story of North America’s First People. Ages 11–14.
The Rehearsal Club
Kate Fodor and Laurie Petrou. Groundwood, Feb.
Niagara, Ont., resident Petrou teams up with Fodor, a screenwriter for The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel and Julia, for this mystery set in and around the eponymous club, a New York City boardinghouse for aspiring female actors. The story centres on Pal Gallagher, a newcomer to N.Y.C. who begins investigating why a young woman suddenly departed the Rehearsal Club in the 1950s. The answer involves a Broadway play, a necklace, and a secret the young woman’s rival has been keeping. Ages 9–12.
Rock
Laurel Croza, illus. by Matt James. Groundwood, Mar.
The writing and illustrating team behind the picture book I Know Here returns with a story about a seagull who belittles and bullies a rock on the beach, calling it a pebble and other diminutive names, until a girl stumbles across the rock and renews its self-esteem. Ages 3–6.
Soul Machine
Jordana Globerman. Annick, June
This debut graphic novel for young people focuses on two sisters who make souls out of raw material called breth. When their supply runs out, they are hounded by a giant corporation that wants to co-opt them into making artificial souls. Billed as A Wrinkle in Time meets Brave New World, this speculative work is also a piquant critique of rapacious capitalism. Ages 10–14.
The Vanished Kingdom: The War of the Maps
Jonathan Auxier. Puffin Canada, Apr.
Winner of the TD Canadian Children’s Literature Award for The Night Gardener and a Governor General’s Literary Award for Sweep, Auxier has turned into a rarity: a writer of epic middle grade novels. In this latest installment of the bestselling Peter Nimble series, Peter and Sophie Quire must battle to save a world of magic from the shadowy cabal known as the League of the Maps. Ages 10–14.
Way Off Track
Carl Bruntland, illus. by Claudia Dávila. Kids Can, May
In this middle grade graphic novel, Bruntland draws on his Jamaican background, and most especially the stories of Anansi the trickster spider, for a story about a determined track-and-field runner. Dávila, creator of the graphic novel series The Future According to Luz, provides the illustrations for this manic, heartfelt narrative. Ages 8–12.
When the Air Sang
Laura Bontje, illus. by Sarah Whang. Annick, Apr.
In this collaboration by London, Ont., author Bontje and debut illustrator Whang, a Korean Canadian comics artist from Toronto, aspiring entomologist Annie is impatient for the annual appearance of the cicadas with their big eyes and unique song. As she waits, she is joined by several generations of her family who regale her with stories of their own encounters with the insects. Ages 4–7.
You Started It
Jackie Khalilieh. Tundra, May
From the Palestinian Canadian author of Something More comes a new YA romance about 17-year-old Jamie, who is determined to get back at her boyfriend for dumping her at the start of senior year and taking up with another girl. As retribution, Jamie launches into a fake relationship with Axel, a younger TikTok performer whose bicycle she accidentally ran over. Ages 12 and up.
