Books

Selected by editor Aislinn Hunter, the 2025 edition of Best Canadian Poetry showcases the best Canadian poetry writing published in 2023.

Featuring:

Hollie Adams • George Amabile • Erin Bedford • Billy-Ray Belcourt • Bertrand Bickersteth • Elisabeth Blair • Ronna Bloom • Alison Braid-Fernandez • Robert Bringhurst • Emily Cann • Anne Carson • Molly Cross-Blanchard • Lorna Crozier • Kayla Czaga • Evelyna Ekoko-Kay • Kate Genevieve • Susan Gillis • Sue Goyette • Catherine Graham • Henry Heavyshield • Gerald Hill • Alexander Hollenberg • Kim June Johnson • Eve Joseph • Evelyn Lau • Y. S. Lee • D. A. Lockhart • Fareh Malik • David Martin • Domenica Martinello • Cassidy McFadzean • Carmelita McGrath • Erín Moure • Tolu Oloruntoba • Catherine Owen • Molly Peacock • Miranda Pearson • Pauline Peters • Amanda Proctor • Shannon Quinn • Armand Garnet Ruffo • Anne Simpson • Carolyn Smart • Karen Solie • Catherine St. Denis • Owen Torrey • Michael Trussler • Sara Truuvert • Rob Winger • Jaeyun Yoo

Selected by editor Emily Urquhart, the 2025 edition of Best Canadian Essays showcases the best Canadian nonfiction writing published in 2023.

Featuring:

Katherine Ashenburg • James Cairns • Mitchell Consky • Michelle Cyca • Sadiqa de Meijer • Ariel Gordon • Lana Hall • Helen Humphreys • Rebecca Kempe • Jiin Kim • Christine Lai • Jessica Moore • Tom Rachman • Leanne Betasamosake Simpson • Vance Wright

A treasure trove of new poems by one of our most sought-after poets: poems that range from descriptions of the Detroit of her childhood to her current life on Cape Cod, from deep appreciations of the natural world to elegies for lost friends and relationships, from a vision of her Jewish heritage to a hard-hitting take on today’s political ironies.

Three days in a haunted mansion full of secrets. Two intrepid investigators. And one chance to solve a generations-old mystery. Beloved monster enthusiast Zed Watson returns in this charming new adventure chock-full of illusions, spirits, haunted pasts and heartwarming friendships.

Zed and Gabe are back to their treasure-hunting, literary-sleuthing ways in this spooky new adventure!

After some lacklustre cases involving lost books and a missing pet, the two friends have finally come across a mystery worth their attention: the secrets of Glyndebourne Manor, haunted home of a late, great opera designer. Every twenty-five years, the Manor hosts a challenge. You have three days and two nights to solve the puzzles in each room before the stroke of midnight. If you leave, you forfeit the game. If you solve the puzzles in time, you win a huge pile of money.

Simple enough, thinks Zed. They and Gabe are interested in all things ghoulish. And if they win, they will be able to give their friends Sam and Jo the large wedding they deserve.

There's only one problem: no one has been able to stay in the house for more than a single night.

Cue a whirlwind of scary ghosts, moving walls and cryptic letters. The two friends are going to need some help. Which means figuring out who the mysterious figure holding a crowbar is. And how to get out of a room with no doors! But thanks to Zed's fearless enthusiasm and Gabe's encyclopedic knowledge of theatre, they might be able to survive and maybe even right some past wrongs.

Stephen Leacock Memorial Medal for Humour

About the Book

Meet Helen Thorpe. She’s smart, preternaturally calm, deeply insightful and a freshly trained butler. On the day she is supposed to start her career as an unusually equanimous domestic professional serving one of the wealthiest families in the world, she is called back to a spiritual retreat where she used to work, the Yatra Institute, on one of British Columbia’s gulf islands. The owner of the lodge, Helen’s former employer Edna, has died while on a three-month silent self-retreat, leaving Helen instructions to settle her affairs.

But Edna’s will is more detailed than most, and getting things in order means Helen must run the retreat for a select group to determine which of Edna’s relatives will inherit the institute. Helen’s classmates, newly minted butlers themselves, decide they can’t let her go it alone and arrive to help Helen pull things off. After all, is there anything three butlers can’t handle? As Helen carries out the will’s instructions, she begins to think that someone had reason to want Edna dead. A reluctantly suspicious investigator, Helen and her band of butlers find themselves caught up in the mystery.

Critical Praise

“No one but Susan Juby would come up with the concept of a Buddhist butler detective, then execute it so beautifully. This novel has all the whimsical characters and charm we’ve come to know and love from Juby, but this time wrapped in a murder/mystery. I want to say it's reminiscent of #1 Ladies’ Detective Agency or The Thursday Murder Club, yet it is so entirely unique; a perfect novel to curl up with in front of a fire with a cozy blanket and a mug of tea. I hope this is the first in a long series."
— Susin Nielsen, Bestselling author and creator of Family Law on Global TV

”Take one newly graduated domestic professional, a holistic retreat on an isolated island, a murdered mentor and a group of fractious suspects and you have the makings of this comedic mystery from the lauded author of the hilarious Republic of Dirt.”  — Canadian Living

“A cast of wonderfully quirky characters and plenty of humour round out this truly original mystery.” — The Belleville Intelligencer

“Readers will find her new book to be an intriguing mystery that makes you think, makes you laugh, and may even make you want to go to Hollyhock to soak up the ambience and study mindful meditation.”  — The BC Review

Everyone is welcome in the circle.

In this warmhearted book, we join Molly at the Intertribal Community Center, where she introduces us to people she knows and loves: her grandmother and her grandmother’s wife, her uncles and their baby, her cousins, and her treasured friends.

They dance, sing, garden, learn, pray, and eat together. And tonight, they come together for a feast! Molly shares with the reader how each person makes her feel—and reminds us that love is love.

Through tender prose and radiant artwork, author Monique Gray Smith (Cree/Lakota) and illustrator Nicole Neidhardt (Diné) show how there is always room for others in our lives. Circle of Love is a story celebrating family, friends, community, and, most of all, love.

Includes an author’s note, contextual notes, and glossary. 

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Monique Gray Smith is the award-winning and bestselling author of nine books for readers of all ages. She is Cree, Lakota, and Scottish and the mother of teenage twins. An inspirational, sought-after speaker and consultant, she lives in Victoria, British Columbia.

Galdorwide is a sprawling, magical kingdom, home to a host of mythical creatures. It is also a kingdom in grave danger. The king has been murdered, and his daughter, Bella, stands to inherit the throne. But the king has other ideas. His ghost is haunting Galdorwide with a secret purpose, one which threatens to destroy the fragile peace of the land.

The Galdorians, meanwhile, are racing to uncover the dead king's evil plot. Along the way, they battle trolls and vampires while investigating mysterious events which point to a conspiracy to unleash a deadly force. The children of Galdorwide struggle to harness newly discovered magical powers in a bid to help save Galdorwide, but their parents have bigger problems. Who can they trust? Who is on their side, and who is secretly allied with the king? Their journey is a perilous one - will they win the race against time to save Galdorwide?

Deborah Dundas is a journalist who grew up poor and almost didn’t make it to university. In On Class, she talks to writers, activists, those who work with the poor and those who are poor about what happens when we don’t talk about poverty or class—and what will happen when we do.

Growing up poor, Deborah Dundas knew what it meant to want, to be hungry, and to long for social and economic dignity; she understood the crushing weight of having nothing much expected of you. But even after overcoming many of the usual barriers faced by lower- and working-class people, she still felt anxious about her place, and even in relatively safe spaces reluctant to broach the subject of class. While new social movements have generated open conversation about gender and racism, discussions of class rarely include the voices of those most deeply affected: the working class and poor.

On Class is an exploration of the ways in which we talk about class: of who tells the stories, and who doesn’t, which ones tend to be repeated most often, and why this has to change. It asks the question: What don’t we talk about when we don’t talk about class? And what might happen if, finally, we did?

Praise for On Class

“The author uses her own experience of growing up poor to thread interviews with writers and activists about the barriers to success in Canada’s widening class divide.”
—Globe and Mail

“I really enjoyed Deborah Dundas’s small and brave book On Class. She addresses the need to speak about the different classes in Canada, and the ways it is almost impossible to cross their divides.”
—Heather O’Neill, author of When We Lost Our Heads

“On Class is urgent and wise, written with Dundas’ trademark wit and crisp prose. Raw and smart, it urges readers not to look away from the complexity of issues affecting the poor and working class, especially in a time of constant political, economic, and social turmoil.”
—Open Book

“A nifty, provocative little book.”
—Winnipeg Free Press

“On Class is a great read, perfect for readers less familiar with the notion of class and what it really means, but also interesting and thoughtful enough for those who have already begun to engage with the topic. Dundas pulls a lot of threads together in this volume, but it works really well and serves as an excellent, broad starting point.”
—The Miramichi Reader

“On Class might be a quick read, but it is definitely an important one.”
—The Quarantine Review

“[Dundas] shares her own experience of growing up poor and facing class-driven barriers to success.”
—Zoomer

“Why does our society put so much emphasis on individual achievements and pay so little attention to collective ones? On Class doesn’t offer answers to these critical issues and questions—a task beyond any one volume—but it does offer a pleasing invitation to reflect upon them.”
—Monitor

Praise for the Field Notes series

“A clear-eyed assessment of the links between property, policing, and the subjugation of Black people … Walcott’s analysis of the ways in which white supremacy is baked into the legal systems of Canada and the U.S. is stimulating. Progressives will embrace this well-conceived call for change.”—Publishers Weekly

“Running a brief but far-reaching and punchy 96 pages, On Property has an absolute certainty of purpose: calling for the abolition of private property ownership … [If] statements such as ‘the problem of property is resolved through its removal’ or calls to ‘abolish everything’ can make some people quake, when Walcott’s pamphlet argues for the human ability to reconsider and rebuild societal structures, the stances come across as sensible and, better yet, doable.”—Toronto Star

“Rinaldo Walcott locates his contribution to the Field Notes series on current issues, On Property, in the present political moment, while using historical references and events to argue for the abolition of police and property … Walcott concludes his case by asking for a new ethics of care and economy that does not keep feeding into the incarceration system, a system rigged to continue Black suffering … It is a question we must ask ourselves after reflecting on the ways in which we, too, are complicit.”—Quill & Quire

“Kingwell offers a slender, thoughtful, sometimes meandering disquisition on risk that “is inflected (or infected) by the virus, but not precisely about the virus—except as it grants new urgency to old questions of risk and politics. A host of cultural allusions—from Shakespeare to the Simpsons, Isaiah Berlin to Irving Berlin, Voltaire, Pascal, and Derrida—along with salient academic studies inspire Kingwell to examine the many contradictory ways that humans handle risk … An entertaining gloss on an enduring conundrum.”—Kirkus Reviews

“Urgent, far-reaching and with a profound generosity of care, the wisdom in On Property is absolute. We cannot afford to ignore or defer its teachings. Now is the time for us-collectively-to take up the challenge in this undeniable gift of a book.”—Canisia Lubrin, author of The Dyzgraphxst and Voodoo Hypothesis

"A full throttle, adrenaline-laced espionage page-turner . . . Get ready to blast off and enjoy the ride!"—Jack Carr, former Navy SEAL Sniper and #1 New York Times bestselling author of the James Reece Terminal List series

"Continuous action, Mach-speed mayhem, sharp intrigue, and well-rounded characters—what more could you want from a thriller?"—Steve Berry, New York Times bestselling author of The 9th Man and the Cotton Malone series

From the author of the #1 bestselling thriller The Apollo Murders comes the supersonic hunt for a shadowy Soviet defector.

Israel, October 1973. As the Yom Kippur War flares into life, a state-of-the-art Soviet MiG fighter is racing at breakneck speed over the arid scrublands below . . . and promptly disappears.

NASA Flight Controller and former top US test pilot Kaz Zemeckis watches the scene from the ground—and is quickly pulled into a dizzying, high-stakes game of spies, lies and a possible high-level defection that plays out across three continents.

The prize is beyond value: the secrets of the Soviets’ mythical “Foxbat” MiG-25, the fastest, highest-flying fighter plane in the world and the key to Cold War air supremacy. But every defection is double-edged with risk, and Kaz needs to tread a careful line between trust and suspicion. Ultimately, he must invite the fox into the henhouse—bringing the defector into the heart of the United States’ most secret test site—and hope that, with skill and cunning, the game plays out his way.

For Chris Hadfield’s second heart-stopping thriller, we move from Space to another rich and exciting part of Chris’s CV: his time as a top test pilot in both the US Air Force and the US Navy, and as an RCAF fighter pilot intercepting armed Soviet bombers in North American airspace. Full of insider detail, excitement and political intrigue drawn from real events, The Defector brings us the nerve-shredding rush of aerial combat, as told by one of the world's top fighter pilots.

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CHRIS HADFIELD is one of the most seasoned and accomplished astronauts in the world. The top graduate of the U.S. Air Force test pilot school in 1988 and U.S. Navy test pilot of the year in 1991, Colonel Hadfield was CAPCOM for twenty-five Shuttle missions and NASA’s Director of Operations in Russia. Hadfield served as Commander of the International Space Station where, while conducting a record-setting number of scientific experiments and overseeing an emergency spacewalk, he gained worldwide acclaim for his breathtaking photographs and educational videos about life in space. His music video, a zero-gravity version of David Bowie's “Space Oddity,” has nearly 50 million views, and his TED Talk on fear has been viewed over 10 million times. He helped create and host the National Geographic miniseries One Strange Rock, with Will Smith, and has a MasterClass on exploration. Chris Hadfield's books, An Astronaut's Guide to Life on Earth, You Are Here and The Darkest Dark, have been bestsellers all around the world, topping the charts for months in his Canadian homeland.