Here are the CBC Books picks for the top Canadian fiction of the year!

Set in 1990s Kabul, Afghanistan against the backdrop of civil war, Nothing Good Happens in Wazirabad on Wednesday is a journey through the town of Wazirabad, which overflows with every kind of character imaginable. From a daughter selling scorpions to keep her mother from having to sell herself to the militiamen trying to solve a string of burglaries, to Bonesetter who reads his cat poetry, Aram provides a portrait of a community in its most mundane and extraordinary as the people of Wazirabad try to carve out a home and a life amidst war.

Jamaluddin Aram is a Toronto-based documentary filmmaker, producer and writer from Kabul, Afghanistan. Aram’s short story This Hard Easy Life was a finalist for RBC Bronwen Wallace Award for Emerging Writers in 2020. He was selected as a mentee by Michael Christie for the Writers’ Trust of Canada mentorship program for his book Marchoba, which became Nothing Good Happens in Wazirabad on Wednesday. 

When five-year-old Monolith arrives from the Philippines to join his mother in Canada he lashes out, attacking her and destroying his new home in the linked short story collection Reuniting with Strangers. The characters in Reuniting with Strangers are all dealing with feelings of displacement and estrangement caused as a result of migrating to Canada seeking opportunity. 

Jennilee Austria-Bonifacio is a Filipina-Canadian author, speaker and school board consultant who builds bridges between educators and Filipino families. She was the runner-up in the Jim Wong-Chu Emerging Writers Award recognizing Asian authors in the Canadian Diaspora. Austria-Bonifacio was on the 2022 CBC Short Story Prize longlist.

Rouge follows the story of Belle, a dress shop clerk obsessed with skin and skincare videos. After her estranged mother dies unexpectedly, she returns to southern California for the funeral, where she’s met with a mysterious woman in red who offers her a clue about her mother’s sudden death. Belle is lured to the same culty spa that enthralled her mother. There, she uncovers family secrets and is further plunged into the dark side of beauty. 

Awad is also the author of the novels Bunny, All’s Well and 13 Ways of Looking at a Fat Girl. Born in Montreal, she currently lives in Boston.

Study for Obedience explores themes of guilt, abuse and prejudice through the eyes of its unreliable narrator. In it, a woman leaves her hometown to move to a “remote northern country” to be a housekeeper for her brother, whose wife recently decided to leave him. Soon after her arrival the community is struck by unusual events from collective bovine hysteria to a potato blight. When the locals direct their growing suspicions of incomers at her their hostility grows more palpable.

Sarah Bernstein won the 2023 Scotiabank Giller Prize for Study for Obedience. It was also on the shortlist for the Booker Prize. Her other books include her 2021 novel The Coming Bad Days and her collection of prose poems Now Comes the Lightning. Bernstein was named one of Granta’s best young British novelists in 2023. 

Hold My Girl is a dual narrative novel about a seemingly impossible situation: two women, Katherine and Tess, find out after pregnancy that their eggs were mistakenly switched during in vitro fertilization (IVF). 

Hold My Girl, which explores the complexities of love, motherhood and racial identity, was optioned in 2023 by production company Blink Studios for a series adaptation. 

Charlene Carr is a Toronto-raised writer and author now based in Nova Scotia. Hold My Girl is her first novel.

Birnam Wood is an engaging eco-thriller set in the middle of a landslide in New Zealand. Mira, the founder of a guerilla gardening collective that plants crops amid other criminal environmental activities, sets her sights on an evacuated farm as a way out of financial ruin. The only problem is the American billionaire Robert Lemoine has already laid claim to it as his end-of-the-world lair. After the same thing for polar opposite reasons, their paths cross and Robert makes Mira an offer that would stave off her financial concerns for good. The question is: can she trust him? 

Birnam Wood was shortlisted for the 2023 Scotiabank Giller Prize.

Eleanor Catton is a London, Ont.-born New Zealand author. She won the 2013 Booker Prize for fiction and the 2013 Governor General’s Literary Award for fiction for her second novel, The Luminaries. 

The Double Life of Benson Yu recounts the difficult adolescence of the titular character growing up in a housing project in 1980s Chinatown. The story takes a metafictional twist, when Yu’s grip on memory and reality falters. The unique structure provides a layered and poignant look into how we come to terms with who we are, what happened to us as children and that finding hope and healing lies in whether we choose to suppress or process our experiences.

The Double Life of Benson Yu was shortlisted for the 2023 Scotiabank Giller Prize.

Kevin Chong is a Vancouver-based writer and associate professor at the University of British Columbia Okanagan. His other books include the nonfiction book Northern Dancer and fiction titles like The Plague and Beauty Plus Pity. Chong was announced as one of the jurors for the 2024 CBC Short Story Prize. He was longlisted for the CBC Nonfiction Prize twice, in 2015 for Empty Houses and in 2020 for White Space. 

The Adversary features two rivals who represent the largest fishing operations on Newfoundland’s northern outpost. When a wedding that would have secured Abe Strapp’s hold on the shore falls apart it sets off a series of events that lead to year after year of violence and vendettas and a seemingly endless feud. 

Michael Crummey is a poet and novelist from Newfoundland and Labrador. He is also the author of the novels The Innocents, Sweetland and Galore and the poetry collections Arguments with Gravity and Passengers. Two of Crummey’s novels have been shortlisted for the Governor General’s Literary Award for fiction — Sweetland in 2014 and Galore in 2009. The Innocents was shortlisted for the 2019 Scotiabank Giller Prize, the 2019 Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize and the Governor General’s Literary Award for fiction.

In The Librarianist, retired librarian Bob Comet is content spending the rest of his days reading in his Portland home, until a chance encounter with an older woman in the supermarket brings him to the senior centre, where he begins volunteering. There, through conversations, reflection and a few funny characters, Bob’s life story is slowly revealed. 

Patrick deWitt is a novelist from Portland, Ore., by way of Vancouver Island. He has written several novels, including The Sisters Brothers, which won the Governor General’s Literary Award for fiction, the Leacock Medal for Humour, the Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize and was a finalist for the Booker Prize and the Scotiabank Giller Prize. His other books include Undermajordomo Minor and French Exit. French Exit was on the shortlist for the 2018 Scotiabank Giller Prize.

VenCo is a subversive and imaginative adult novel about a coven of modern-day witches. The book’s protagonist, Lucky St. James, finds herself down on her luck when she and her grandmother Stella are set to be evicted from their apartment. One night, doing laundry in the building’s basement, Lucky finds a tarnished silver spoon that features an illustration of a witch over letters that spell out S-A-L-E-M. 

This alerts Lucky to Meena, someone who is part of VenCo, an international headhunting firm that seeks out exceptional women. An adventure unfolds involving secret witches, witch hunters, magic spoons and an epic road trip from Toronto to Salem, through Appalachia and into New Orleans.

Cherie Dimaline is a Métis author and editor. Her other books include Red Rooms, The Girl Who Grew a Galaxy, A Gentle Habit and Empire of Wild. Her YA novel The Marrow Thieves was named one of Time magazine’s top 100 YA books of all time. The Marrow Thieves was defended by Jully Black on Canada Reads 2018. The Marrow Thieves also won the Governor General’s Literary Award for Young people’s literature — text and the Kirkus Prize for young readers’ literature.

Learned by Heart is a riveting account of the boarding school romance between Anne Lister, a brilliant and headstrong troublemaker, and Eliza Raine, an orphaned heiress banished from India to England. The novel draws on Lister’s secret journal and extensive research to craft the two womens’ long-buried stories. 

Learned by Heart was shortlisted for the 2023 Writers’ Trust Atwood Gibson Prize.

Donoghue is an Irish Canadian writer known for her novels Landing, Room, Frog Music, The Wonder, The Pull of the Stars and the children’s book The Lotterys Plus One. Room was adapted into a critically acclaimed film starring Brie Larson. 

Siblings Peter and Stasi are struggling to find their place in the world in the novel The Clarion. Peter is a trumpet player who also works in a kitchen and Stasi is trying to climb the corporate ladder. The Clarion looks at themes of intimacy and performance — and how far one must go to find or lose their sense of self.

The Clarion was longlisted for the 2023 Scotiabank Giller Prize. 

Nina Dunic is a freelance writer and journalist living in Scarborough, Ont. She has been longlisted for the CBC Short Story Prize four times: in 2023 for The Artist, in 2022 for Youth, in 2020 for Bodies and in 2019 for an earlier version of Bodies. In 2023, she was named to the CBC Books Writers to Watch list.

And Then She Fell follows a young woman named Alice who is struggling to navigate the early days of motherhood and live up to the unrealistic expectations of those around her. 

Alicia Elliott is a Mohawk writer living in Brantford, Ont. Her writing has been published most recently in Room, Grain and The New Quarterly. She is the author of the nonfiction book A Mind Spread Out on the Ground, a columnist for CBC Arts and CBC Books named her a writer to watch in 2019. She was chosen by Tanya Talaga as the 2018 recipient of the RBC Taylor Emerging Writer Award.

The Syrian Ladies Benevolent Society is a collection of connected stories traces the immigrant experience of an Arab family through multiple generations. From brave Syrian refugees to trailblazing Lebanese freedom fighters, Azuree knows she comes from a long line of daring Arab women. These stories follow her as she explores ideas of love, faith, despair and the effects of war — and what those family histories mean for her as an Arab woman in the 21st century. 

Christine Estima is a writer, playwright and journalist living in Toronto. She was longlisted for the 2015 CBC Short Story Prize. The Syrian Ladies Benevolant Society is her first book. 

Meet Me at the Lake finds 32-year-old Fern Brookbanks stuck: she can’t quite stop thinking about one perfect day she spent in her 20s. By chance, she met a man named Will Baxter and the two spent a romantic 24 hours in Toronto, after which they promised to meet up one year later. But Will never showed up. 

Now, instead of living in the city like she thought she would, Fern manages her mother’s Muskoka resort by the lake, a role she promised herself she’d never take on. Disillusioned with her life, Fern is shocked when Will shows up at her door, suitcase in hand, asking to help. Why is he here after all this time and more importantly, can she trust him to stay? It’s clear Will has a secret but Fern isn’t sure if she’s ready to hear it all these years later. 

Carley Fortune is a Toronto-based journalist who has worked as an editor for Refinery29, The Globe and Mail, Chatelaine and Toronto Life. Meet Me at the Lake is her second novel following her debut, Every Summer After. 

In Tales for Late Night Bonfires, G.A. Grisenthwaite blends the Indigenous tradition of oral storytelling with his own unique literary style. From tales about an impossible moose hunt to tales about the “Real Santa,” Grisenthwaite crafts witty stories — each more uncanny than the last.

G.A. Grisenthwaite is Nłeʔkepmx, a member of the Lytton First Nation who currently lives in Kingsville, Ont. His 2020 debut novel, Home Waltz, was shortlisted for the Governor General’s Literary Award for fiction. Grisenthwaite made the 2021 CBC Short Story Prize longlist for Splatter Pattern.

We Meant Well is a novel that poses a difficult moral dilemma for its protagonist, Maya, an aid worker who must decide who to believe when her coworker at the orphanage, Marc, is accused of assaulting her former protégé, Lele. Caught between worlds with protests raging outside the orphanage, Maya must also balance the fate of the organization against the accusations. Navigating around these variables provides both challenge and insight as the complexity of the situation reveals the character of everyone involved. 

 We Meant Well was longlisted for the 2023 Scotiabank Giller Prize. 

Erum Shazia Hasan is a Toronto-based writer and a sustainable development consultant for various UN agencies. We Meant Well is her first novel.

Instructions for the Drowning is a short story collection explores themes of love and fear, delusion and idealism and the ironic ways we come up short despite trying our very best. In one, a man remembers his father’s instructions for how to save someone who is drowning but then finds himself conflicted when the moment arrives to act. In another, a man fixated by stories of freak accidents ends up bearing the brunt of one himself. 

Steven Heighton was an Ontario novelist, short story writer and poet. He received the 2016 Governor General’s Literary Award for poetry for The Waking Comes Late. His recent books include Reaching Mithymna: Among the Volunteers and Refugees on Lesvos, a finalist for the Hilary Weston Writers’ Trust Prize for Nonfiction, and Selected Poems 1983-2020. In 2021, Heighton released his first album, The Devil’s Share. Heighton died in April 2022. 

Linghun is a debut novella which centres the lives of migrants through a gothic horror lens. Following the perspectives of three characters in the uncanny town of HOME, Wenqi is confused by her family, Liam becomes an unlikely ally and Mrs. seems to have been there forever. Linghun is a ghostly tale of those who are still holding onto the land of the living and burdened in death by their grief. 

Ai Jiang is a Chinese-Canadian author and poet. She was a finalist for the 2022 Nebula Award for Best Short Story. Linghun is her debut novella. 

Bad Cree is a horror-infused novel that centres around a young woman named Mackenzie, who is haunted by terrifying nightmares and wracked with guilt about her sister Sabrina’s untimely death. The lines between her dreams and reality start to blur when she begins seeing a murder of crows following her around the city — and starts getting threatening text messages from someone claiming to be her dead sister. Looking to escape, Mackenzie heads back to her hometown in rural Alberta where she finds her family still entrenched in their grief. With her dreams intensifying and getting more dangerous, Mackenzie must confront a violent family legacy and reconcile with the land and her community.

Jessica Johns is a Vancouver-based writer, visual artist and member of Sucker Creek First Nation in Treaty 8 Territory in northern Alberta. Johns won the 2020 Writers’ Trust Journey Prize for the short story Bad Cree, which evolved into the novel of the same name.

Landscapes is a novel set in our world in the near future amidst ecological disaster. Told through the narrative of Penelope as well as diary entries, Landscapes blends the country house novel with geopolitics. 

Christine Lai is a Vancouver-based writer with a PhD in English literature from University College London. Landscapes is her first novel.

Vincent Lam’s On the Ravine is a follow-up of sorts to his 2006 Scotiabank Giller Prize-winning short story collection Bloodletting & Miraculous Cures. In Bloodletting & Miraculous Cures, readers met four medical students and were immersed in the challenges and transformations that unfolded as these students became young doctors. On the Ravine revisits two of the characters from the earlier book — Chen and Fitzgerald — several years later in their career. On the Ravine reveals that Chen and Fitzgerald have remained close friends and have devoted themselves to the treatment of opioid addiction, each in a very different way. But when Claire, a talented violinist, comes under Chen’s care, his desire to help her is intertwined with his own past — and the demands of her medical care challenge Chen and Fitzgerald’s delicately balanced friendship.

Vincent Lam is a Toronto-based short story writer, novelist and medical doctor. His books include Bloodletting & Miraculous Cures and The Headmaster’s Wager, a 2012 novel that was shortlisted for the 2012 Governor General’s Literary Award for fiction and the 2013 Commonwealth Book Prize.

The Future set in an alternate history Detroit where the French never surrendered the city to the U.S. It’s residents deal with poverty, pollution and a legacy of racism. When a woman Gloria, a woman looking for answers about her missing granddaughters arrives in the city she finds a kingdom of orphaned and abandoned children who have created their own society.

Catherine Leroux is a writer, translator and journalist from Montreal. She was shortlisted for the 2016 Scotiabank Giller Prize for her novel The Party Wall, which is an English translation of her French-language short story collection Le mur mitoyen.

Susan Ouriou is a French and Spanish to English translator, a fiction writer and a playwright. She has previously won the Governor General’s Literary Award for translation for her work.

Do You Remember Being Born? follows a famous poet named Marian Ffarmer, who after years of dedicating herself singularly to her art has started to question her life choices. After receiving an invitation to the Silicon Valley headquarters of one of the biggest tech companies in the world, Marian begins collaborating with a state-of-the-art poetry bot named Charlotte. What follows is a journey of self-discovery for both Marian and Charlotte, as the two begin to form a friendship unlike any Marian has ever known.

Sean Michaels was born in Stirling, Scotland and moved to Montreal, where he currently lives, when he was 18 years old. His first novel, Us Conductors, won the Scotiabank Giller Prize in 2014 and was nominated for the Amazon.ca First Novel Award, the Kirkus Prize and the International Dublin Literary Award. Michaels is also the founder of the music blog Said the Gramophone.

Silver Nitrate is the latest Gothic horror novel from Silvia Moreno-Garcia. It’s set in the film scene of the 1990s in Mexico City, Montserrat, a sound editor, has forever been in love with and ignored by her childhood best friend, Tristán. Abel Urueta is a legendary horror director who believes he is cursed after failing to finish his last film. Enlisting the help of Tristán and Montserrat, the three become entangled in a mysterious challenge to finish the film and find the occultist who cursed Urueta. Silver Nitrate explores a haunting and magical story behind the film industry.

Silvia Moreno-Garcia is a Canadian author, who was born and raised in Mexico. She has written several speculative fiction novels, including Gods of Jade and Shadow, Velvet Was the Night and The Daughter of Doctor Moreau. Her novel Mexican Gothic was championed by Tiktok creator Tasnim Geedi on Canada Reads 2023.

A humorous and heartfelt novel, Sunshine Nails is about a Vietnamese Canadian family who are trying to keep their family business, a nail salon called Sunshine Nails, open. In addition to increasing rent, a new chain salon store named Take Ten opens in the same neighbourhood, and the family’s business struggles to remain running. Family relationships are put to the test as they work together to save their nail salon.

Mai Nguyen was raised in Halifax and currently lives in Toronto. She has written for publications such as Wired, The Washington Post, The Toronto Star as a journalist and copywriter. Sunshine Nails is her debut novel.

A History of Burning is an epic novel about how one act of rebellion can influence a family for generations. It’s 1898 and a 13-year-old boy in India named Pirbhai needs to make money to support his family and ends up inadvertently being sent across the ocean to be a labourer for the British. He has a choice to make, and what he does will change the course of his life, and his family’s fate, for years to come. The story takes readers to Uganda, India, England and Canada in the wake of Pirbhai’s choice as the novel explores the impacts of colonialism, resistance, exile and the power of family.

A History of Burning was shortlisted for the 2023 Governor General’s Literary Award for fiction.

Janika Oza is a writer, educator and graduate student based in Toronto. She won the 2019 Malahat Review Open Season Award in fiction for her short story Exile, the 2020 Kenyon Review Short Fiction Award and the 2022 O. Henry Award. Oza made the 2019 CBC Short Story Prize longlist for her story The Gift of Choice, which is a chapter in A History of Burning. 

In The Berry Pickers, a four-year-old girl from a Mi’kmaq family goes missing in Maine’s blueberry fields in the 1960s. Nearly 50 years later, Norma, a young girl from an affluent family is determined to find out what her parents aren’t telling her. Little by little, the two families’ interconnected secrets unravel. 

The Berry Pickers was shortlisted for the 2023 Writers’ Trust Atwood Gibson Prize.

Amanda Peters is a writer of Mi’kmaq and settler ancestry living in Annapolis Valley, N.S. She was the winner of the 2021 Indigenous Voices Award for Unpublished Prose and a participant in the 2021 Writers’ Trust Rising Stars program. 

A Grandmother Begins the Story tells the story of five generations of Métis women as they raise children, reclaim lost heritage, heal past traumas, tell stories that will carry healing forward and make peace in the afterlife. Introducing the women at different life stages, including after death, the book showcases a diversity of voices and personalities. 

A Grandmother Begins the Story was shortlisted for the 2023 Writers’ Trust Atwood Gibson Prize.

Michelle Porter also wrote the memoir Scratching River, the nonfiction book Approaching Fire, which was shortlisted for the Indigenous Voices Award in 2021 and a book of poetry, Inquiries, which was shortlisted for the Pat Lowther Memorial Award. She lives in Newfoundland and Labrador. Porter made the 2019 CBC Nonfiction Prize longlist for her story Fireweed. Before that, she’d also made the 2017 CBC Poetry Prize longlist for Slicing Lemons in April and the 2016 CBC Poetry Prize longlist for Between you and home. 

The Rooftop Garden follows Nabila and her childhood friend Matthew, who played on Nabila’s rooftop garden in an imaginary world that has flooded from climate change. Nabila comes from an educated, middle-class family, while Matthew had been abandoned by his father and was often left to deal with things on his own. Their childhood experiences reveal how their lives are on different trajectories, even at an early stage.

The Rooftop Garden was longlisted for the 2023 Scotiabank Giller Prize. 

Menaka Raman-Wilms is a writer and journalist based in Toronto. She’s the host of The Decibel, the daily news podcast from the Globe and Mail. She’s also worked as a parliamentary reporter for the Globe and as an associate producer at CBC Radio One. Raman-Wilms was shortlisted for the 2019 CBC Short Story Prize for her story Black Coffee.

River Mumma is a magical realist story inspired by Jamaican folklore. The main character is a young Black woman having a quarter-life crisis while adventuring through the streets of Toronto. The story follows Alicia, a young woman who still lives at home with her mom and has no career prospects. One evening, River Mumma, the Jamaican water deity, appears to inform Alicia that she has 24 hours to find her missing comb in the city.

Why River Mumma chose her is a mystery. Alicia barely remembers the legends she was told about the deity as a child. Still, Alicia embarks on her quest through the city which turns into a journey through time — to find herself, but also what the river carries.

Zalika Reid-Benta is a Toronto-based author who explores race, identity and culture through the lens of second-generation Caribbean Canadians in her work. The Columbia MFA graduate’s debut novel Frying Plantain was on the 2019 Scotiabank Giller Prize longlist. CBC Books named Reid-Benta a writer to watch in 2019 and she served as jury chair for the 2021 Scotiabank Giller Prize.

All the Colour In the World is a story of a young boy named Henry who discovers a passion for art which carries him through the many misadventures of his life in the 20th century. From his first set of colouring pencils he is gifted at his grandmother’s place to the worlds of academia, war and sweeping romance, Henry’s art stays alongside his enduring story.

CS Richardson is a Toronto-based writer and award-winning book designer. All the Colour In the World was shortlisted for the 2023 Scotiabank Giller Prize. His previous novels include The End of the Alphabet, which won the 2008 Commonwealth Writers Prize for Best First Book, and The Emperor of Paris, which was longlisted for the Scotiabank Giller Prize in 2012. 

In her novel The Damages, Genevieve Scott uses the late-1990s grunge and girl power movements as the backdrop for a story about consent, trauma and the cost of lies. Protagonist Ros is excited to go to university in Ontario and totally reinvent herself — but when she meets her roommate Megan, Ros knows she is a social liability. During an intense ice storm, Megan goes missing and Ros is shunned by her newfound friends. Two decades later, Lukas — Ros’s ex and the father of her young son — is accused of sexual assault and Ros is forced to face her mistakes from the past and reflect on the era she grew up in through a post-#MeToo lens. 

Genevieve Scott is a Canadian author and teacher based in California. Her previous work was the novel Catch My Drift.

In The Upper Country is the story of young Lensinda Martin, who is summoned to interview an old woman who shot a slave hunter dead on his own land. The woman, who recently arrived in Dunmore, Alta., via the Underground Railroad, refuses to confess but instead proposes a deal: a story for a story. Through these stories, the interwoven nature of Indigenous and Black histories in North America become apparent and Lensinda’s destiny could be changed forever.

In The Upper Country won the 2023 Writers’ Trust Atwood Gibson Award for fiction and was shortlisted for the 2023 Governor General’s Literary Award for fiction.

Kai Thomas is a writer, carpenter and land steward. Born and raised in Ottawa, he is of Black and mixed heritage descended from Trinidad and the British Isles. CBC Books named Thomas a Black writer to watch in 2023. 

Wild Hope follows Isla and Jake, a couple who are slowly drifting apart. Isla’s farm-to-table restaurant is failing and visual artist Jake is haunted by his late father’s legacy in the oil and gas industry. Jake’s childhood friend-turned-enemy Reg Bevaqua is a local bottled-water baron and harbours a seething resentment toward Jake. Reg is a demanding regular at Isla’s restaurant and Jake is keeping a close eye on him. When Jake disappears after a winter camping trip all signs point to Reg and his magnificent Georgian Bay property — and Isla is determined to get to the bottom of it.

Joan Thomas is the author of four previous novels. Her first novel, Reading by Lightning, won the Commonwealth Prize for Best First Book (Canada and the Caribbean) and the Amazon First Novel Award. Her novel Five Wives won the 2019 Governor General’s Literary Award for fiction. Her novel The Opening Sky was a finalist for the Governor General’s Literary Award for fiction in 2014.

Chrysalis is a short story collection examines the ways in which racialized women are undermined and exploited and the ways in which they reclaim their power. Blending realism with elements of fantasy, Varghese tells stories of a woman dying in her sleep repeatedly until she finds an unexpected refuge or a couple in a broken marriage encountering spiritual direction. Each story looks at family, sexuality, cultural norms and the ties that bind. 

 Chrysalis won the 2023 Governor General’s Literary Award for fiction and the Writers’ Trust Dayne Ogilvie Prize for LGBTQ+ emerging writers. 

Anuja Varghese is a Hamilton, Ont.-based writer and editor. Her stories have been recognized in the Prism International Short Fiction Contest and the Alice Munro Festival Short Story Competition and nominated for the Pushcart Prize.

The Circle is the third and final book set in the world of The Strangers and The Break, featuring some of the same characters. With Phoenix set for release from prison for the assault she committed in The Break, the news is sending ripples through the community. Her sister Cedar has been both dreading and longing for her return, while M, the girl Phoenix assaulted is triggered by the news. When Phoenix goes missing shortly after her release, past grievances, revenge plots and accusations begin swirling — and the community and the people who live there all search for healing in their own ways.

katherena vermette is a Métis writer from Winnipeg. Her books include the poetry collections North End Love Songs and river woman, the novel The Break and the four-book graphic novel series A Girl Called Echo. North End Love Songs won the Governor General’s Literary Award for poetry. The Break was a finalist for the Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize and the Governor General’s Literary Award for fiction. It was defended by Candy Palmater on Canada Reads 2017.

The Book of Rain is a sci-fi novel set in a world where ghost ore, a new minable energy source much more lucrative than gold, can disrupt time and space and slowly make an environment inhospitable. In one of three ghost ore hotspots in the world, the Alberta mining town of River Meadows, residents have been evacuated, except Amery Hewitt can’t seem to stay away. The former resident frequently returns to River Meadows to save the animals still living in the contaminated zone. When Amery goes on another dangerous trip and doesn’t return, her game designer brother, Alex, enlists the help of his mathematician friend Michio to help get her back — and all they need to do is break the laws of physics.

The Book of Rain was shortlisted for the 2023 Atwood Gibson Fiction Prize. 

Edmonton author and professor Thomas Wharton has written several books, including his first novel, Icefields, which won the 1996 Commonwealth Writers’ Prize for Best First Book in Canada and the Caribbean. Icefields was a finalist for Canada Reads 2008, when it was defended by Steve MacLean. His novel Salamander, was shortlisted for the 2001 Governor General’s Literary Award for fiction and was also a finalist for the Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize the same year. 

Girlfriend on Mars is a story about love in the age of commercial space travel. Amber Kivinen is one of 23 reality TV contestants vying for two spots aboard the first commercial trip to Mars aboard MarsNow, a space shuttle commissioned by the billionaire Geoff Task. Amber is surrounded by a cast of unlikely characters, including an Israeli soldier and social media influencers, while her long-term partner, Kevin, stays at home with the plants and starts to wonder: why does his girlfriend feel such a desire to leave the planet?

Deborah Willis is a writer from Calgary. She debuted in 2009 with Vanishing and Other Stories, which was shortlisted for the Governor General’s Literary Award. She followed it up with a collection of short fiction called The Dark and Other Love Stories in 2017, which was longlisted for the Scotiabank Giller Prize and won the Georges Bugnet Award for best work of fiction published in Alberta.

Set in Toronto’s Chinatown and Kensington Market, Denison Avenue is a moving portrait of a city undergoing mass gentrification and a Chinese Canadian elder experiencing the existential challenges of getting old and being Asian in North America. Recently widowed, Wong Cho Sum takes long walks through the city, collecting bottles and cans and meeting people on her journeys in a bid to ease her grief.

Daniel Innes is a multidisciplinary artist from Toronto.

Christina Wong is a Toronto writer, playwright and multidisciplinary artist who also works in sound installation, audio documentaries and photography.