Fiction
Patrick deWitt follows up the success of his Governor General’s Award–winning novel Sisters Brothers with Undermajordomo Minor (Anansi), a comedic fable about a man named Lucy Minor who takes a job at a foreboding castle in the far-off town of Ox.
Lawrence Hill is back with his first novel since his bestselling The Book of Negroes. The Illegal (HarperCollins Canada) tells the story of a marathoner forced to flee his fictionalized homeland for a wealthy nation called Freedom State. It was inspired by the stories of undocumented refugees.
In Margaret Atwood’s futuristic novel The Heart Goes Last (McClelland & Stewart), a married couple escapes poverty by moving to a strange town where, each month, citizens alternate between being prisoners and being guards.
Rush drummer/lyricist Neil Peart and author Kevin J. Anderson team up again for Clockwork Lives (ECW), the follow-up to their steampunk adventure Clockwork Angels. The new novel is meant to accompany the brand-new Rush album of the same name.
Meadowlark (NeWest), the debut novel of Wendi Stewart, is about a family who are the victims of a terrible accident. After their car falls through the ice on Rainy Lake in Ontario in 1962, six-year-old Rebecca is saved by her father, but her mother and baby brother don’t survive. Rebecca is haunted by their memory but finds solace in two new friendships.
Ian Fleming’s James Bond novels have entered the public domain in Canada, and ChiZine Publications is taking advantage of the fact by publishing Licence Expired, a collection of 19 short stories featuring 007, edited by Madeline Ashby and David Nickle.
Poetry
Poet Christian Bök, whose 2001 book Eunoia won the Griffin Poetry Prize, is releasing a “living poem” 10 years in the making. The Xenotext, Book 1 (Coach House) was created by translating a poem into a DNA sequence and implanting that into the genome of a bacterium, which “reads” his text and creates another poem in response.
Comics
Irène Némirovsky’s 2004 novel Suite Française, about a village in France during the 1940 German invasion, has been adapted into a graphic novel with art by Emmanuel Moynot. The new version, published by Arsenal Pulp Press, focuses on “Storm in June,” part one of the two-volume novel.
Fans of Jane Austen will enjoy Udon Entertainment’s new manga version of Austen’s matchmaking comedy Emma, part of its Manga Classics series, which takes beloved works of fiction and faithfully adapts them in detailed manga style.
Based on his six-minuted animated film of the same name, Vincent Marcone’s The Lady ParaNorma (ChiZine) is an illustrated story about a strange, lonely woman who can hear the voices of ghosts and longs for companionship.
Nonfiction
Historian Margaret MacMillan follows up her bestselling The War That Ended Peace with History’s People (Anansi), which looks at men and women who have changed the course of history through leadership and risk taking.
As mass shootings proliferate in the U.S., gun control remains a pressing issue. Arms: The Culture and Credo of the Gun by A.J. Somerset (Biblioasis) explores the rise of homegrown terrorists and mass shootings. Somerset is a journalist, gun collector, and former soldier.
In the slender volume The Inequality Trap: Fighting Capitalism Instead of Poverty (Univ. of Toronto), economics professor William Watson takes on the issue of inequality, arguing that sometimes it’s actually good, as it rewards hard work and innovation.
Tiger researcher and documentary filmmaker Sooyong Park spent much of his life following and learning about Siberian tigers. In Great Soul of Siberia (Greystone), he tracks three generations of Siberian tigers living in remote southeastern Russia.
Cookbooks
Quebec pop star Marilou started a blog, Trois Fois Par Jour, to improve her relationship with food after struggling with anorexia. She then turned that into a French cookbook that sold more than 200,000 copies, with photographs by husband Alexandre Champagne. The English translation, Three Times a Day, is due out this fall from House of Anansi.
The bestselling Best of Bridge series, which features comforting, easy-to-make recipes, is back with Best of Bridge Home Cooking (Robert Rose). This will be the last installment from the founders of the series, and it includes contributions from the three women to whom they’ve passed the mantle.
Memoir
In October, Canadians will vote in a new prime minister, and Tom Mulcair, leader of the New Democratic Party, is one of the candidates. His memoir, Strength of Conviction (Dundurn), recalls his middle-class upbringing and his involvement in major federal issues over the past several decades.
Also from Dundurn, Austin Clarke’s ’Membering is a collection of vignettes about the Giller Prize–winning Barbadian author’s immigration to Toronto in the 1950s and his life as a writer.
In her first work of nonfiction, This Is Happy (Doubleday Canada), Camilla Gibb describes an upbringing touched by mental illness (her father’s and her own), a beloved spouse who leaves her when she is four months pregnant, and her efforts to forge a new family.
Broadcaster and musician Wab Kinew, who hosted the CBC’s literary competition Canada Reads in 2015, writes in The Reason You Walk (Viking Canada) about his attempt to reconnect with his aboriginal father, a residential school survivor who was diagnosed with terminal cancer.
Brian Brett’s Tuco (Greystone) is a biography of the author’s African grey parrot, Tuco, and an examination of the relationship between humans and birds, and of Brett’s feelings about suffering from a rare disorder that delayed puberty for him until he was in his 20s.
Sports
Former NHL enforcer—and penalty box regular—Tie Domi shares his thoughts on his hockey career and on life after his 2006 retirement in Shift Work (S&S Canada), cowritten by sports reporter Jim Lang.
Hockey Hall of Famers talk about their greatest NHL opponents and most underrated players in The Toughest I Ever Faced (Firefly), by sports writer Steve Milton.
