Canadian Fiction

Attorney Kenneth King can't wait to get away on vacation and leave the courtroom behind. He only has one last errand to do for his boss: drop off a flash drive to fellow attorney Emma James. But as soon as the drive is in his hands, his boss is murdered and Kenneth becomes the next target. With nowhere left to turn, he reaches out to Emma for help, but that only puts them both in danger.

In Lisbon in 1904, a young man named Tomás discovers an old journal. It hints at the existence of an extraordinary artifact that - if he can find it - would redefine history. Traveling in one of Europe's earliest automobiles, he sets out in search of this strange treasure. Thirty-five years later, a Portuguese pathologist devoted to the murder mysteries of Agatha Christie finds himself at the center of a mystery of his own and drawn into the consequences of Tomás' quest.

Niall Black: Loyal right-hand to Finn O’Reilly. Cousin and trusted friend. He lives for the life he’s created. Filled with business, both day-to-day and dangerous. Not interested in a relationship of any kind outside of his comfort zone. Until fate brings her to him. Annabelle Lewis. She awakens something inside him. A need. A desire. A new set of feelings he wasn’t prepared for.

It is the height of summer, and Armand and Reine-Marie Gamache are celebrating their wedding anniversary at Manoir Bellechasse, an isolated, luxurious inn not far from the village of Three Pines. But they're not alone. The Finney family - rich, cultured, and respectable - has also arrived for a celebration of their own. The beautiful Manoir Bellechasse might be surrounded by nature, but there is something unnatural looming.

Chief Inspector Armand Gamache is on break from duty in Three Pines to attend the famed Winter Carnival up north. He has arrived in this beautiful, freezing city not to join the revels but to recover from an investigation gone hauntingly wrong. Still, violent death is inescapable—even here, in the apparent sanctuary of the Literary and Historical Society, where one obsessive academic’s quest for answers will lead Gamache down a dark path.

It’s spring and Three Pines is reemerging after the harsh winter. But not everything buried should come alive again. Not everything lying dormant should reemerge. But something has. As the villagers prepare for a special celebration, Armand Gamache and Jean-Guy Beauvoir find themselves increasingly worried. A young man and woman have reappeared in the Sûreté du Québec investigators’ lives after many years. The two were young children when their troubled mother was murdered, leaving them damaged, shattered. Now they’ve arrived in the village of Three Pines. But to what end?

Ruth McClintock is obsessed with Annie Oakley. For nearly a decade, she has been studying the legendary sharpshooter, convinced that a scarring childhood event was the impetus for her crusade to arm every woman in America. This search has cost Ruth her doctorate, a book deal, and her fiance - but finally it has borne fruit. She has managed to hunt down what may be a journal of Oakley's midlife struggles, including secret visits to a psychoanalyst and the desire for vengeance against the "Wolves", or those who have wronged her.

Otter Lake is a sleepy Anishnawbe community where little happens. Until the day a handsome stranger pulls up astride a 1953 Indian Chief motorcycle - and turns Otter Lake completely upside down. Maggie, the Reserve’s chief, is swept off her feet, but Virgil, her teenage son, is less than enchanted. Suspicious of the stranger’s intentions, he teams up with his uncle, Wayne - a master of aboriginal martial arts - to drive the stranger from the Reserve. And it turns out that the raccoons are willing to lend a hand.

Welcome to Three Pines, where the cruelest month is about to deliver on its threat. It's spring in the tiny, forgotten village; buds are on the trees, and the first flowers are struggling through the newly thawed earth. But not everything is meant to return to life.... When some villagers decide to celebrate Easter with a séance at the Old Hadley House, they are hoping to rid the town of its evil - until one of their party dies of fright. Was this a natural death, or was the victim somehow helped along?

Tracing the legacy of Margaret Atwood—a writer who has fundamentally shaped the contemporary literary landscapes—Paper Boat: New and Selected Poems, 1961-2023 assembles Atwood’s most vital poems in one essential volume. In pieces that are at once brilliant, beautiful, and hyper-imagined, Atwood gives voice to remarkably drawn characters—mythological figures, animals, and everyday people—all of whom have something to say about what it means to live in a world as strange as our own.

A young woman moves from the place of her birth to the remote northern country of her forebears to be housekeeper to her brother, whose wife has recently left him. Soon after her arrival, a series of inexplicable events occurs - collective bovine hysteria; the demise of a ewe and her nearly born lamb; a local dog's phantom pregnancy; a potato blight. She notices that the local suspicion about incomers in general seems to be directed with some intensity at her and she senses a mounting threat that lies 'just beyond the garden gate.'

Stubborn, querulous, self-reliant—and, at ninety, with her life nearly behind her—Hagar Shipley makes a bold last step towards freedom and independence. As her story unfolds, we are drawn into her past. We meet Hagar as a young girl growing up in a black prairie town; as the wife of a virile but unsuccessful farmer with whom her marriage was stormy; as a mother who dominates her younger son; and, finally, as an old woman isolated by an uncompromising pride and by the stern virtues she has inherited from her pioneer ancestors.

Fate takes a slap shot at Emma's heart when she finds a driver's license outside a grocery store belonging to none other than Tyler Bowen: the center for her brother's hockey team with looks that scream "plenty of scoring off the ice". Her overprotective brother warns her to stay away, but after a particularly patronizing comment, Emma decides to break free from the defense. Sean has always tried to control her relationships, and at 29, she's had enough.

Francesca Ekwuyasi’s debut novel tells the interwoven stories of twin sisters, Kehinde and Taiye, and their mother, Kambirinachi. Kambirinachi feels she was born an Ogbanje, a spirit that plagues families with misfortune by dying in childhood to cause its mother misery. She believes that she has made the unnatural choice of staying alive to love her human family and now lives in fear of the consequences of that decision.

Ready for some stories from the vast wilderness of Canada? It's home to the sasquatch: a creature that's revered and feared by the natives there since before time was recorded. Settle back with a cup of hot chocolate, lock the doors, and be ready to call your best friend in case you start seeing big hairy faces in the window (but be aware that your friend may also be listening to these stories, so have a backup plan).

Two sisters, small-town Ontario, 1934. Canadian author Richard Wright tells their story, from the ordinary to the extraoridinary with an eye for the commonplace and poignant sense of the larger undercurrents that change people's lives.

Norris is clever, cynical, and quite possibly too smart for his own good. A Black French Canadian, he knows from watching American sitcoms that those three things don’t bode well when you are moving to Texas. Plunked into a new high school, Norris finds himself cataloging everyone he meets: the Cheerleaders, the Jocks, the Loners, and even the Manic Pixie Dream Girl. Making a ton of friends has never been a priority for him, and this way he can at least amuse himself until it’s time to go back to Canada, where he belongs. Yet those labels soon become actual people to Norris....

Return to Sarah's Valley is a follow-up story to Sarah's Valley, which was published in 2012 by the same author, Sharon Mierke. In Sarah's Valley, Patrick Smithson meets Frank Lawdry. Frank, who prefers his Abenaki name, Winnipesaukee, spends the night recalling his life story. He and his sister, Sarah, were left orphans when everyone on a wagon train died in a horrific tragedy. It was their story of survival. Return to Sarah's Valley continues where Sarah's Valley leaves off. Now an old man in his nineties, Patrick meets Michael Lawdry, one of Winnipesaukee's descendants, and tells him how...

This epic tale sweeps across continents and time, hovers over a key era in American history, and deftly realizes the humanity of a whole cast of characters. Told through flashbacks and alternating points of view, The Last Crossing is about redemption, about seeking and finding, about human feelings and strengths, about personal honor, and about that moment in life when we must decide to cross over and surrender to love.

Actor Ryan Kwok is back in Toronto after the promotional tour for his latest film, a rom-com that is getting less-than-stellar reviews. After years of constant work and the sudden death of his mother, Ryan is taking some much-needed time off. But as he tries to be supportive to his family, he struggles with his loss and doesn't know how to talk to his dad — who now trolls him on Twitter instead of meeting him for dim sum.