After months spent buried in books, The Globe and Mail’s editors, writers and critics present our annual guide to the best in fiction, non-fiction, thrillers, graphic novels, kid-lit and cookbooks.
CANADIAN FICTION
A Way to Be Happy, Caroline Adderson (Biblioasis) One of Canada’s finest short-story writers considers what it means to find happiness. The characters veer from thieving addicts to a Russian hitman, and offer a multifaceted investigation into the influence of gender on perception, particularly in moments of fear and loneliness.
Death by a Thousand Cuts, Shashi Bhat (McClelland & Stewart) Longlisted for the Giller Prize, this collection of short stories follows several women as they struggle to live in a world that’s constantly thwarting them.
What I Know About You, Éric Chacour (Coach House) In this epic tale of forbidden love between two men in 1960s Cairo, a star-crossed doctor goes into exile in Montreal. The book was a bona fide sensation in Quebec and France, where it won several high-profile prizes, including France’s Prix des Libraires – making it the first Quebec novel to do so since Anne Hébert’s Kamouraska in 1971.
Parade, Rachel Cusk (HarperCollins Canada) Cusk has always been fascinated by the relationship between art and life. Here, she explores the lives of half a dozen artists, all called G, most of whom are fictionalized versions of real creators.
Emily Wilde’s Map of the Otherlands, Heather Fawcett (Del Rey) The second instalment in the British Columbia author’s series is as rollicking as the first. The English dryadologist – which, in Fawcett’s alternate Europe, is a perfectly acceptable line of scholarship – finds mysterious faeries from other realms appearing at her university and must discover their secrets before it’s too late.
Curiosities, Anne Fleming (Knopf) A researcher stumbles on a series of 17th-century manuscripts with clashing accounts of events that took place in and around the lives of two girls, Joan and Thomasina, who first met as child survivors of the Plague that hit their English village. They later reunite as adult lovers, Thomasina having transformed into the cross-dressing Tom.
This Summer Will Be Different, Carley Fortune (Viking) Canada now has a Queen of Summer Romance, and in her third book, the bestselling author moves from Ontario’s cottage country to the land of Anne of Green Gables. The love story between Lucy and Felix is certainly steamier than Anne and Gilbert’s, but their journey to discover whether they’re meant for each other is equally sweet and heartbreaking.
The Pages of the Sea, Anne Hawk (Biblioasis) Hawk’s coming-of-age story follows a young girl who’s left with her sisters on an unnamed Caribbean island in the 1960s under the care of their aunts and cousins, after their mother sails to England in search of work as part of the so-called Windrush generation.
Burn Man, Mark Anthony Jarman (Biblioasis) This country has a cornucopia of brilliant short-story writers, and Jarman is one of them. This anthology features 21 tales culled from more than four decades of exquisite writing that stretches both vocabulary and language.
Prairie Edge, Conor Kerr (McClelland & Stewart) This Giller shortlisted novel imagines two slightly adrift Métis twentysomethings – Isidore (Ezzy) Desjarlais and Grey Ginther – trying to claw back some purpose by releasing a herd of Elk Island National Park bison into Edmonton’s river valley.
May Our Joy Endure, Kevin Lambert (Biblioasis) Lambert’s three books to date have won or been nominated for multiple major awards in Quebec, France and English Canada (the latter for the translation of Querelle de Roberval). His latest novel – a finalist for the Prix Goncourt – is a social satire about an architect who faces extreme blowback for her plans for a major Montreal public works project.
Camp Zero, Michelle Min Sterling (Knopf Canada) It’s 2049. Rising temperatures are driving people away from deadly conditions in the South, with the U.S. threatening Canadian sovereignty. Oil has been banned but is still traded on the black market. Is it dystopian literature if it’s so easy to imagine the same scenario playing out today?
Code Noir, Canisia Lubrin (Knopf) The 59 illustrated fragments that make up the Griffin Prize-winning poet’s genre-bending first work of fiction are based on the 1685 decrees set out by Louis XIV, collectively known as the Code Noir, that governed the treatment of slaves in French colonies for almost 200 years.
This Strange Eventful History, Claire Messud (W.W. Norton) Longlisted for both the Booker and the Giller prizes, Messud’s eighth novel is a multigenerational chronicle of an Algerian-French family (based on her own) set against the backdrop of the Second World War and Algerian Revolution.
Hi, It’s Me, Fawn Parker (McClelland & Stewart) The incoming City of Fredericton poet laureate and finalist for the Atwood-Gibson Fiction Prize examines events immediately after the medically assisted death of her cancer-stricken mother.
The Cure for Drowning, Loghan Paylor (Random House Canada) Longlisted for the Giller, this captivating historical-fiction debut follows Kit (born Kathleen) in 1930s Southern Ontario as she chafes against the rules governing her life. When Rebekah comes to town, Kit and her brother, Landon, are drawn into a love triangle that will tear them and their families apart, and send each of them off on a separate path to war.
Batshit Seven, Sheung-King (Penguin Canada) A millennial living in Hong Kong confronts his apathy and anxiety as protests and brutal police crackdowns rock the city. The book, the winner for the Atwood-Gibson Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize, has QR codes woven throughout that serve as a visual metaphor for the protagonist’s disaffection.
Songs for the Brokenhearted, Ayelet Tsabari (HarperCollins Canada) In her debut novel, the Israeli-Canadian memoirist and short-story writer weaves a sweeping tale about Yemeni Jews from three perspectives: Zohara, a Yemeni woman who returns to Israel in 1995 after a death in the family; her nephew Yoni, who in his grief becomes a target for radicalization by the Israeli far right; and, in 1950, Yaqub, a Yemeni immigrant who falls in love with a married woman.
In Winter I Get Up at Night, Jane Urquhart (McClelland & Stewart) Longlisted for the Giller, Urquhart’s first novel in nearly a decade is narrated by a woman reflecting back on her unusual life, one strongly affected by the time she spent in a children’s ward after being injured in an accident at the age of 11 and by a series of powerful male figures she met during her early-morning commutes to her job as a music teacher in rural Saskatchewan.
The Leap Year Gene, Shelley Wood (HarperCollins Canada) Kit McKinley’s gestation period was unusually long, and when she’s finally born on Feb. 29, 1916, it becomes clear there’s something different about her aging process – it’s unusually slow. Journalists, doctors, pharma companies and Nazi scientists all want to study her unique DNA, forcing her family to be perpetually on the move. As an adult, Kit is forced to confront her genetic oddities and decide what is “normal.”
Hair for Men, Michelle Winters (House of Anansi) Giller Award winner Michelle Winter’s sophomore effort is a distinctly third-wave feminist piece of Canadiana. The story is of Louise, a teenage punk who finds herself working at the most unconventional barbershop in suburban Toronto. With its Maritime-centric second act and Tragically Hip subplot, Winters’s book is a solid entry into the 21st-century Canadian literary canon.
Dayspring, Anthony Oliveira (Strange Light) Oliviera’s massive debut defies description. One part experimental gay fiction, one part smut (don’t say we didn’t warn you), all gospel, Dayspring is the year’s most remarkable queer reimagining of the story of Christ – and you can quote us on that.
INTERNATIONAL FICTION
All Fours, Miranda July (Riverhead Books) In the filmmaker and performance artist’s second novel – a finalist for the National Book Award – a 45-year-old artist announces to her family that she’s embarking on a cross-country, L.A.-to-New York road trip, only to bed down in a nearby motel and immerse herself in an entirely different journey.
James, Percival Everett (Knopf Doubleday) A retelling of Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn from the perspective of the escaped slave, Jim, has been racking up nominations since it made its debut – including the National Book Award, which it won, and the Booker – and rightfully so. Everett is a master storyteller whose lush sentences reveal James’s inner life and keep readers on edge over the dangers facing a Black man on the run.
Creation Lake, Rachel Kushner (Scribner) One of Kushner’s best books to date follows an American undercover operative – alias Sadie Smith – who must penetrate a radical farming co-operative in rural France. The novel brims with emotional intelligence, even if Sadie herself is devoid of emotion and unconcerned with the isolation, violence and danger that come with the job.
The Safekeep, Yael van der Wouden (Simon & Schuster) This remarkable debut novel, set in post-Nazi-era Netherlands, was shortlisted for the Booker. The trauma of the war years is ever-present as Isabel meets her brother’s girlfriend, Eva. At first, Isabel seems cold – a closed woman obsessed with the safety of her house. What follows is a love story that opens not just Isabel, but our understanding of history and truth.
Long Island, Colm Tóibín (McClelland and Stewart) This sequel to Tóibín’s most successful novel, Brooklyn, is set 20 years later, when Eilis Lacey, Brooklyn’s Irish-immigrant heroine, opts to raise a child born of her Italian-American plumber husband’s infidelity.
Intermezzo, Sally Rooney (Knopf) The Normal People phenom moves from love triangles to sibling strife, with a revamped, more clipped style, and a tale of two Irish brothers – one a chess champ losing his edge, the other a progressive lawyer – whose relationship strains after their father’s death from cancer.
Playground, Richard Powers (Random House) Powers re-engages with the themes that have infused his fiction and helped win him a Pulitzer with The Overstory – art, memory, humanity’s interconnectedness with nature, technology and ethics. This complex, ocean-spanning novel is about two men – one wealthy and white, one poor and Black – who bonded in private school over their love of the game Go, but who fall out while designing an ambitious computer game called Playground.
Headshot, Rita Bullwinkel (Viking) A stunning debut that was longlisted for the Booker features eight young female boxers at a tournament. Each tautly told chapter features a bout in Reno, Nev., with each face-off revealing what drives these girls to fight.
Enlightenment, Sarah Perry (HarperCollins) The bestselling author of The Essex Serpent is back with a work about faith, hopeless love, science and English village life. Longlisted for the Booker, the book follows two unlikely friends – secretly gay Thomas Hart and Grace Macaulay, the pastor’s daughter – over two decades.
Clear, Carys Davies (Scribner) During the traumatic Scottish Clearances of the mid-19th century, a Presbyterian minister, newly unemployed, is dropped off on a remote island in the North Sea with instructions to expel its sole resident. Instead, the pair end up forming a deep connection after a near-fatal accident.
Martyr!, Kaveh Akbar (Knopf Doubleday) The Iranian-American poet’s debut novel centres around Cyrus Shams, whose father brings him to the U.S. after his mother’s plane was shot down over the Persian Gulf. As an adult, he struggles with addiction, fixated on death and martyrdom. Akbar has created a fearless and beautifully written novel – there’s a reason it’s a finalist for the National Book Award – that tackles, well, everything.
The God of the Woods, Liz Moore (Riverhead Books) This eerie thriller follows the disappearance of two siblings 14 years apart. In August, 1975, Barbara Van Laar vanishes from the summer camp owned by her wealthy family, her brother having disappeared in uncannily similar circumstances. What follows is not only a fantastic mystery but also a fine exploration of class.
Colored Television, Danzy Senna (Riverhead Books) In this satire about a middle-aged mixed-race couple – Lenny’s a painter, Jane’s a writer – the dialogue is tight, tart and swift, with delicious comic flicks. The struggling pair land a gig house-sitting for Brett, a wealthy TV writer. Soon, Jane wants Brett’s life – which can only be achieved by selling out.
My Friends, Hisham Matar (Vintage Canada) Matar has been examining themes of exile and family for years, including in his 2016 Pulitzer-winning memoir, The Return, which chronicled his activist father’s disappearance in Libya. In this novel – a winner of the Orwell Prize for Political Fiction and a finalist for the National Book Award – he once again tackles the friendships formed between exiles, and the ways in which those bonds can be tested and frayed.
The Ministry of Time, Kaliane Bradley (Simon & Schuster) This inventive, slightly wacky debut novel – part thriller, part sci-fi, part romance – imagines a world where people about to perish from wars and other disasters are plucked from history and resettled in 21st-century London. A British civil servant is charged with working as a “bridge” to help Commander Graham Gore, an officer snatched from the Franklin expedition just before his crew dies, adjust to life.
Glorious Exploits, Ferdia Lennon (Henry Holt) “Let’s put on a show!” takes on a darkly funny meaning in this debut novel, set circa 400 BC, about two male friends – one a hard-core Euripides fan – who concoct the brilliant idea of staging Medea in a local quarry using defeated, starved Athenian prisoners as their cast. (According to Thucydides, it’s been done.) Outlandishly anachronistic Irish-inflected dialogue (the author is from Dublin) provides a deep comedic well.
In Ascension, Martin MacInnis (Grove Atlantic) This sprawling work is a slow build. Dr. Leigh Hasenboch is a marine microbiologist who’s part of an expedition exploring an undersea vent in the Earth’s crust that’s three times deeper than the Mariana Trench and is somehow connected to several other phenomena occurring across the planet and even in space. This is a rich exploration of our world and how we’re connected.
Praiseworthy, Alexis Wright (New Directions Publishing) The small town of Praiseworthy, in Australia’s Northern Territory, is threatened by a haze cloud and ecological disaster. To help, Cause Man Steel goes on a trek to replace Qantas, the national air carrier, with the power of Australia’s five million feral donkeys. Wright, a Waanyi author, has produced an epic tale that tackles climate change and the struggle of Australia’s Indigenous population to stave off assimilation and achieve sovereignty.
Entitlement, Rumaan Alam (Riverhead Books) An aging American billionaire wants to give away his fortune, and he hires Brooke Orr, a young Black former teacher, to help him do it. But when Brooke decides she wants in on the windfall, things go sideways in this compulsively readable tale of class, privilege, race and, yes, entitlement.
Orbital, Samantha Harvey (Grove Atlantic) This year’s Booker winner provides a deeply meditative look at big questions as it follows a day in the life of four astronauts from the U.S., Japan, Britain and Italy, plus two Russian cosmonauts, as the space station speeds around the Earth 16 times.
The City and Its Uncertain Walls, Haruki Murakami (Knopf Doubleday) Murakami’s first new novel in six years started life as a novella published in 1980 in a Japanese literary magazine. It’s “a love story, a quest, an ode to books and to the libraries that house them, and a parable for these strange post-pandemic times.”
CANADIAN NON-FICTION
In Exile, Sadiya Ansari (House of Anansi Press) The award-winning journalist takes us across three continents and back a century as she seeks the truth behind a family secret. Why did her grandmother, Tahira, abandon her seven children to follow a man from Karachi to a tiny village in Punjab?
Crosses in the Sky, Mark Bourrie (Biblioasis) Like the author’s Charles Taylor Prize-winning predecessor, Bush Runner, this work focuses on the clash between European and Indigenous cultures in 17th-century colonial North America. This time, it’s the events leading to the violent ruin of Huronia, traditional home of the Huron-Wendat people, as they were experienced by the French Jesuit missionary and mystic Jean de Brébeuf, co-founder of Sainte-Marie Among the Hurons near present-day Midland, Ont.
The Knowing, Tanya Talaga (HarperCollins Canada) The Seven Fallen Feathers author uses a personal lens to examine the still-raw history of colonialism’s impact on Indigenous people – namely, her search to find out how her maternal great-great-grandmother, Annie Carpenter, ended up buried in an unmarked grave on the grounds of a “lunatic asylum” by the side of Toronto’s Gardiner Expressway, thousands of kilometres from her home in Sioux Lookout, Ont.
What She Said, Elizabeth Renzetti (McClelland & Stewart) The award-winning journalist and former Globe and Mail columnist chronicled with humour and candour some of the most pressing issues facing women in Canada. Drawing from those columns and her own life, Renzetti shows that the fight for equality still has a long way to go.
The Traitor’s Daughter, Roxana Spicer (Viking) The documentary filmmaker and CBC journalist gives an account of her decades-long effort to string together her mother’s past as a Red Army combat soldier, and as a prisoner in a Nazi POW camp before marrying Spicer’s father, a Canadian soldier.
Shepherd’s Sight: A Farming Life, Barbara McLean (ECW) McLean became a sheep farmer in Ontario’s Grey County in the early 1970s. Fifty years later, she reflects on what it is to live a life tied to the rhythms of nature – a rhythm now increasingly drawing her, a woman in her 70s, into its inevitable end game.
Here After, Amy Lin (Zibby Books) On a sweltering August morning, only a few months shy of the newlyweds’ move to Vancouver, Lin’s 32-year-old husband dies. This debut memoir, a Writers’ Trust finalist, is a visceral, keen exploration of young widowhood.
Invisible Prisons, Lisa Moore and Jack Whalen (Knopf) Moore was introduced to Whalen through a friend, who told her he had a story to tell. That story concerned the extreme physical and sexual abuse he and many other children suffered at the Whitbourne Training School for Boys in Newfoundland in the early 1970s. Whalen is now suing the government of Newfoundland and Labrador while battling cancer, and he wanted the world to bear witness.
Everything and Nothing At All, Jenny Heijun Wills (Knopf) Her 2022 memoir won the Hilary Weston Writers’ Trust Award for Nonfiction. Heijun Wills is a finalist for the same award this year, for a work that combines memoir and cultural analysis in searing essays that rethink notions of kinship, community and family.
Rogers v. Rogers, Alexandra Posadzki (McClelland & Stewart) Based on reporting originally done in The Globe and Mail, Posadzki’s book takes readers behind the scenes of the boardroom-cum-family drama that saw Rogers chair Edward Rogers pitted not just against his management team, but against his mother and two sisters over the telecom’s $20-billion acquisition of Shaw Communications.
The War We Won Apart, Nahlah Ayed (Viking) Sonia Butt, an adventurous young British woman, and Guy d’Artois, a French-Canadian soldier, met during clandestine training to become agents with Winston Churchill’s secret army, the Special Operations Executive. They married, carried out dangerous assignments, and then went on to live in Canada and become parents to six children.
Montreal Standard Time, Mavis Gallant (Véhicule) For six years, starting in 1944, before she moved to Paris to fulfill her destiny as one of the greatest short-story writers in the English language, Gallant was the most widely read columnist at the Montreal Standard newspaper. Eight decades after they first saw the light of day, her columns remain as fresh as ever.
Sing Like Fish, Amorina Kingdon (Crown) Fish, apparently, don’t just sing; they chorus like birds (though as one marine biologist informs the author, the simile should be inverted, since fish preceded birds by millions of years, evolutionarily speaking). In this account, the Victoria-based science writer shows how technology is revealing such underwater acoustical marvels and how we humans are blithely drowning it all out.
The Widow’s Guide to Dead Bastards, Jessica Waite (Simon & Schuster) This debut memoir is difficult and riveting. What happens if the person you loved turns out not to be who you thought he was? After her husband dies unexpectedly, Waite finds out that he had affairs, a pornography addiction and a drug habit, and she has to reconcile all this while being a single parent to their child.
Our Crumbling Foundation, Gregor Craigie (Random House Canada) To figure out whether this country can fix our housing crisis, the CBC journalist examined what’s happening in several other countries. This illuminating investigation is a finalist for the Balsillie Prize for Public Policy.
An Open-Ended Run, Layne Coleman (University of Regina Press) Coleman was raised in the west before leaving for Ontario to embrace the theatre as an actor and director. There, he met the love of his life, who tragically died too early from cancer. This is a beautifully written memoir about love, loss and life in Canadian theatre.
Sir John A. Macdonald and the Apocalyptic Year 1885, Patrice Dutil (Sutherland House Books) This splendid biography by one of Canada’s most respected political scientists shows how Macdonald navigated persistent threats to public order, anchored the stability of his government and ensured the future of this still fragile nation.
The Impossible Man, Patchen Barss (Basic Books) While not quite a household name like his one-time collaborator Stephen Hawking, the mathematical physicist and Nobel Prize winner Roger Penrose is arguably more deserving of the term “genius.” Now 93, Penrose’s wide-ranging intellect has left its mark on multiple fields, from cosmology to consciousness. In this deeply researched and engagingly written biography, science journalist Barss expertly unpacks both the mind and the man.
INTERNATIONAL NON-FICTION
Cue the Sun!, Emily Nussbaum (Random House) The Pulitzer-winning New Yorker writer has produced a deeply reported account of the rise of the “dirty documentary” – from its contentious roots in radio to the ascent of Donald Trump.
Knife, Salman Rushdie (Knopf) It’s unlikely Rushdie anticipated writing another memoir after his meaty Joseph Anton of 2013, but then, as the title lays out, the thinkable happened: In 2022, he was stabbed while on stage. This account of the aftermath of the assassination attempt has been nominated for the Baillie Gifford Prize and the National Book Award.
The Wide Wide Sea, Hampton Sides (Doubleday) Captain James Cook has been dubbed “the Columbus of the Pacific,” despite the fact that he was not, like the latter, a conqueror or colonizer. Sides, an American historian, lays out the map maker’s complex legacy through the prism of his wildest, and final, journey, which began in 1776 and took him to Tasmania, Tahiti, Alaska and points in between.
The Light Eaters, Zoë Schlanger (HarperCollins) The Montreal- and Brooklyn-based staff writer at The Atlantic offers uncanny examples of plant intelligence, while exploring the possible ramifications for humans – and plants themselves.
Patriot, Alexei Navalny (Knopf Doubleday) Navalny began writing Patriot shortly after his near-fatal poisoning in 2020. Witty, wry and bittersweet (we now know that he was close to possibly being released), the memoir includes never-before-seen correspondence from prison recounting his political career, his marriage and the many attempts to kill him.
Traveling: On the Path of Joni Mitchell, Ann Powers (Dey Street Books) The NPR music critic interviewed Mitchell’s peers and takes readers to rural Canada as she charts the course of the celebrated songwriter’s evolution.
The Garden Against Time, Olivia Laing (W.W. Norton) The author of The Lonely City uses the beguilingly unkempt garden of a house she bought in Suffolk, England, during the pandemic as the starting point for a rumination on, among other topics, how utopian ideals and class inequality have intersected historically with the seemingly innocuous practice of gardening.
Undue Burden, Shefali Luthra (Knopf Doubleday) This examination into post-Roe America is rigorously researched, deeply compelling and heart-wrenching. Through months talking to experts, patients, doctors and others, Luthra shines a light on the consequences of restricting reproductive rights.
On Freedom, Timothy Snyder (Crown) In a bookend to his 2017 On Tyranny, the Yale historian (who wrote much of it while in Ukraine, where freedom is far from an abstract concept) attempts to define the term, and in doing so suggests that Americans reframe freedom from a negative (freedom from) to a positive (freedom to).
Fi, Alexandra Fuller (Grove) Fuller’s four previous memoirs, which detailed her African upbringing, contained a fair share of personal tragedy, but nothing like this fifth one, about the sudden death, in his sleep, of her 21-year-old son, Fi.
Raising Hare, Chloe Dalton (Canongate) After she discovers a tiny, barely alive leveret (the very satisfying word for a baby hare) and decides to raise it to release into the wild, Dalton reassess her priorities, including her addiction to her travel-filled, adrenalin-fuelled job as a foreign-policy expert.
The Notebook, Roland Allen (Biblioasis) The British publisher’s ode to notebooks is a delight for all those who love paper. For those who don’t, it’s still a worthy and enlightening read, since, as Allen explains, the notebook is a technology that has had “tangible effects on the world around us.”
Still as Bright, Christopher Cokinos (Pegasus) Ever present but never ordinary, the moon is both “an archive of human feeling and material truths,” observes Cokinos, a poet and writer of natural history whose interests tend skyward. Here, the author explores our long regard for Earth’s alluring companion, ranging from prehistoric evidence of the moon being used as a calendar, to the contemporary pursuit of elusive “transient lunar phenomena.”
The Showman, Simon Shuster (HarperCollins Canada) Shuster, a Time Magazine correspondent, first met Volodymyr Zelensky in 2019, during the former actor’s run for president of Ukraine, and followed his administration through its early years. He was ideally placed to chronicle Zelensky’s astonishing against-all-odds defiance of Russia’s brutal invasion. This intimate inside-the-bunker portrayal of the first year of the war adds important context and shows how Zelensky bought critical time for his nation in the face of an uncertain future.
What the Wild Sea Can Be, Helen Scales (Grove Atlantic) The British marine biologist and author of The Brilliant Abyss looks at what can be done to restore the fragile ocean (she uses the singular form of the word) back to health.
Every Living Thing: The Great and Deadly Race to Know All Life, Jason Roberts (Random House) A century before Darwin, the quest to document the scope and diversity of nature was conducted by two rivals whose contrasting views echo through to the present day. While the Swedish physician and biologist Carl Linnaeus is better known for his system of classifying species – and the hierarchical viewpoint that came with it – Roberts suggests that his French counterpart, Georges-Louis de Buffon, came nearer to understanding life’s inherent dynamism and capacity for change.
MYSTERY
Blood Rubies, Mailan Doquang (W.W. Norton) One of the best thrillers of this or any year has Rune Sarasin, a Thai jewel thief, spinning out of control when she loses a batch of stolen rubies from what was supposed to be a routine heist. She then engages an even nastier thief in a chase through Bangkok.
The Hunter, Tana French (Penguin Books) The Independent called her the First Lady of Irish Crime Fiction, and this sequel to The Searcher is one of the best of the decade. It takes us back to the hamlet of Ardnakelty, Ireland, where retired Chicago cop Cal Hooper lives in what he hopes will be peace and quiet – until his foster daughter’s feckless father enters the picture with an English millionaire in tow.
The Sequel, Jean Hanff Korelitz (Celadon Books) Sequels are always hard to pull off, but in this case, Korelitz succeeds with, well, a perfect sequel to The Plot. And she does it by focusing on the wife, Anna, who takes over her late husband’s career and success, until the past returns to derail her new life.
Death at the Sign of the Rook, Kate Atkinson (Bond Street Books) Jackson Brodie needs no introduction to crime fans. If Atkinson’s ex-detective is new to you, get ready for a superb crime novel by one of the best authors in the business. Brodie is called to a sleepy Yorkshire town over the tedious matter of a stolen painting. But soon, a string of unsolved art thefts leads him to Burton Makepeace, a formerly magnificent estate now partially converted to a hotel that hosts murder-mystery weekends.
House of Glass, Sarah Pekkanen (St. Martin’s Publishing Group) An intriguing tale of psychological suspense with a pair of terrific central characters and a really unique premise: Can a child commit murder?
Only One Survives, Hannah Mary McKinnon (Mira Books) Drummer Vienna Taylor, along with her best friend, guitarist Madison Pierce, and their female pop-rock band are off to a gig when they get stranded and have to take shelter in an abandoned cabin. McKinnon has created a great riff on the locked-room mystery, with reflections on fame and the price we pay for ambition.
Guide Me Home, Attica Locke (Little, Brown and Co.) The finale to the superb Highway 59 series, one of crime fiction’s best ever. Texas Ranger Darren Mathews is retired but comes back for the case of a dead sorority girl, the only Black member of the group. This one has everything: great characters, great plot and a wonderful setting.
The Grey Wolf, Louise Penny (St. Martin’s Publishing Group) Considering this is the 19th book in the Inspector Gamache series, you’d think Penny would be losing steam. Instead, she gives us her most ambitious novel yet, built around a complex, world-threatening plot and thrilling chases right down to a cliffhanger ending.
One Perfect Couple, Ruth Ware (Simon & Schuster) The British mistress of malice domestique takes on the reality TV industry and then swerves into survival on an isolated island. As bodies drop, the suspense grows. Will our protagonist outwit a killer or starve waiting for help?
The Return of Ellie Black, Emiko Jean (Simon & Schuster) The suspense starts with a child running through the woods: Ellie Black, who has missing for two years, and is unable or unwilling to say where she’s been or who snatched her. Buckle up for terrific psychological suspense and one heckuva plot twist.
KIDS
Wildful, Kengo Kurimoto (Groundwood Books) Gran’s death has overwhelmed Poppy’s mother so Poppy spends her time exploring her neighbourhood with her dog, Pepper. When Pepper leads her through a hole in a fence, she discovers a forgotten forest and a new friend, who teaches Poppy how to look at this hidden paradise. As she becomes engrossed by everything she’s seeing, she knows sharing this wild space with her mother might help her cope with Gran’s death. A breathtaking meditation on the healing power of nature and wild spaces.
The Runaway, Nancy Vo (Groundwood Books) The final book in Vo’s stunning Crow Stories trilogy is a haunting tale of a young boy’s resilience in the face of incredible loss and grief. After Jack’s mother dies of cholera, he strikes out on his own. He’s resourceful and confident, and he has faith that things will be all right. Vo’s watercolour-and-ink illustrations and acetone transfers of 19th-century posters and newspaper clippings brilliantly evoke the Old West. And Vo has plenty of tricks up her sleeve as she brings this amazing series to a close.
SOS Water, Yayo (Tradewind Books, distributed by Orca Books) When a sailor disembarks from his ship and meets a talking goldfish whose bowl has been left on a teetering pile of trash, he’s determined to find her a new home in nice, clean water. Imagine his surprise when all he can find are plastic bottles clogging up the rivers, lakes and even the ocean. SOS Water is an imaginative, inventive and provocative picture book that not only tells an engaging story with simple but thoughtfully poetic text and playfully humorous illustrations, but also addresses the climate crisis in a way that’s accessible to children of all ages.
Let’s Go, Julie Flett (Greystone Books) This Cree-Métis author, illustrator and artist beautifully captures the excitement of learning to skateboard and, even more powerfully, the way skateboarding has become an important part of Flett’s family and community. Every day, a Cree boy is transfixed as he watches older skateboarders near his house and in a local park. When his mother offers him her old board, he can hardly contain his delight – but it’s harder than it looks. Through Flett’s lyrical text and brilliant collage illustrations, young readers will discover that perseverance pays off.
Noodles on a Bicycle, Kyo Maclear, illustrated by Gracey Zhang (Tundra Books/Penguin Random House) This vibrant picture book follows bicycle food deliverers, or demae, in mid-20th-century Tokyo, with lyrically evocative rhythmic text and delightfully busy and buoyant illustrations by Zhang. A group of neighbourhood children watch how acrobatic artists masterfully balance towering trays of steaming hot noodles on their shoulders through Tokyo’s crowded streets. Inspired by what they see, the children try their hand at being demae, trying to balance wobbly bowls of water on trays.
YOUNG ADULT
Age 16, Rosena Fung (Annick Press) This brilliant exploration of intergenerational trauma, body image and the struggle to find out who you are is based on Fung’s own family history, focusing on three generations of women and what their lives looked like at the age of 16. Moving seamlessly from Guangdong in 1954 to Hong Kong in 1972 to Toronto in 2000, readers follow the interconnected stories of Roz, her mother and grandmother, each facing enormous, though very different, challenges.
Little Moons, Jen Storm, illustrated by Ryan Howe and Alice RL (Highwater Press) It’s been a year since 13-year-old Reanna’s older sister Chelsea went missing on her way home from school, and her family is consumed with grief. Her mother has left the reserve, unable to cope with Chelsea’s disappearance, leaving Reanna and her little brother behind. This powerful and sensitive graphic novel movingly explores the way that culture, heritage and traditions can help to heal the pain of loss.
Who We Are in Real Life, Victoria Koops (Groundwood Books) Moving to a small prairie town with her two moms has thrown Darcy completely off balance. It’s not just leaving her old life (including her emotionally manipulative boyfriend) behind, but the unexpected homophobic challenges her family faces. Then she meets Art, a Dungeons and Dragons aficiando who helps her find a community that challenges Unity Creek’s ultraconservative values.
COOKBOOKS
Matty Matheson: Soups, Salads, Sandwiches, Matty Matheson (Ten Speed/Penguin Random House) The celebrity chef, restaurateur and executive producer and actor on The Bear brings everyone’s favourite soups, salads and sandwiches to the table, in maximum Matty style.
Chuck’s Home Cooking, Chuck Hughes (Penguin Canada) The Montreal restaurateur and celebrity chef shares the go-to dishes he cooks for his own family, from simple weeknight dinners to more elaborate dishes for special occasions.
Babette’s Bread, Babette Frances Kourelos (Touchwood) Master bread baker Kourelos has trained around the world, and she shares her stories and techniques in her first cookbook – a beautiful, accessible and comprehensive guide to mastering the art of bread.
I Love You, Pamela Anderson (Harper Collins) What started as a housewarming gift for Anderson’s sons has turned into the pop-culture icon’s first cookbook, full of comforting plant-based recipes and images from Anderson’s home in Ladysmith, on the east coast of Vancouver Island.
Good Food, Healthy Planet, Puneeta Chhitwal-Varma (Touchwood) The writer, food advocate and climate activist focuses on feeding yourself and your family well, while considering the environmental impact of what you eat and how you prepare it. It’s modern-day comfort when you want to nourish yourself – and the planet.
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