Here Comes the Dreamer

As a form, the novella is not simply a shorter version of a novel or a long short story, something American-born author Carole Giangrande, a committed proponent of the novella, knows well. In a 2014 ... Read More »

December 22, 2015 | Filed under: Fiction: Novels

Carry Me

By Peter Behrens

Peter Behrens is a Montreal-bred writer of Irish descent who has taught in California and currently divides his time between Maine and Texas. In his fiction, this roving biography finds expression in acute attention to ... Read More »

December 16, 2015 | Filed under: Fiction: Novels

★ The Shadows We Mistake for Love

By Tom Wayman

Near the end of “Green Hell,” the second of 14 stories in Tom Wayman’s wonderful new collection (all set in the West Kootenay region of B.C.’s Slocan Valley), Billy, the lone occupant of a table ... Read More »

November 23, 2015 | Filed under: Fiction: Novels

Heyday

By Marnie Woodrow

With Heyday, novelist and playwright Marnie Woodrow has deftly threaded two parallel narratives from very different time periods. The contemporary half of her story ambitiously relies on the inner thoughts of Joss, a recovering alcoholic ... Read More »

November 16, 2015 | Filed under: Fiction: Novels

Between the Cracks She Fell

By Lisa de Nikolits

Lisa de Nikolits announces her ambition on the first page of her fifth novel, name-checking Gibreel Farishta, one of the main characters in Salman Rushdie’s The Satanic Verses. Following the loss of her “house to ... Read More »

November 11, 2015 | Filed under: Fiction: Novels

The Place of Shining Light

By Nazneen Sheikh

Corruption and greed in modern Pakistan take centre stage in the new novel from Kashmiri-born Sheikh, author of the memoir Moon Over Marrakech. A wealthy (and politically ambitous) art collector purchases a 5,000-year-old Buddhist sculpture ... Read More »

November 10, 2015 | Filed under: Fiction: Novels

Hope Makes Love

By Trevor Cole

Hope Riopelle is a post-doc fellow in Toronto doing research on the brain. Zep Baker is a former pro baseball player trying to reunite with his ex-wife, Emily. Zep wants Hope to help him achieve ... Read More »

October 26, 2015 | Filed under: Fiction: Novels

Two-Gun & Sun

By June Hutton

Corpses, feral pigs, swarming moths, the reek of urine, and the “arsenic gloom of midday” represent only a handful of the distressing things Lila Sinclair encounters in 1922 Black Mountain, B.C., an imaginary company town ... Read More »

October 22, 2015 | Filed under: Fiction: Novels

★ The River

By Helen Humphreys

Comparing The River to Helen Humphreys’s critically acclaimed bestseller The Frozen Thames, her 2007 collection of vignettes about the eponymous river, it’s obvious that the author is not content to repeat past successes. The new ... Read More »

October 15, 2015 | Filed under: Fiction: Novels

A Superior Man

By Paul Yee

Paul Yee has built a respected career as a children’s and young-adult author, from the Governor General’s Literary Award–winning picture book Ghost Train to the contemporary LGBT YA novel Money Boy. The author, who holds ... Read More »