Canadian Books

Frank, funny, and sympathetic, this fitness book offers realistic tips, encouragement, and dozens of activity ideas for times when exercise is the only thing that will help—and the last thing you want to do.

Exercise is the most reliable way to improve mental health. But if you're depressed, anxious, burned out, or struggling, it may feel impossible to get started, get serious, or even get up.

Written by an neurodivergent exercise professional, Work It Out busts myths about fitness while providing clear, actionable advice on how to:

• Incorporate exercise into your daily life
• Build an adjustable workout plan for both good and bad mental health days
• Shake off the messages that say you're never doing enough
• Set up a workout log that motivates you in exactly the way you need
• Celebrate all your achievements, including getting out of bed
• But also get a little exercise in bed, if that's where you are today

"A low-angst charmer."—New York Times Book Review

A bridesmaid and groomsman put their differences aside to get their best friends down the aisle in this opposites-attract steamy romantic comedy.

They say to never meet your heroes, but when Vivian Liao's roommate gets engaged to her favorite actor’s costar, she has no choice but to come face-to-face with Melvin Lee again. He's just as funny and handsome as he is on-screen...but he thinks she’s an ice queen and a corporate sellout. It's none of his business how she chooses to live her life, no matter how charismatic he is.
 
Mel is used to charming audiences as an actor and stand-up comedian, but he can't seem to thaw Vivian’s defenses. If she can ignore the simmering attraction below the surface, so can he. The only thing uniting them is their goal for their friends’ wedding to go off without a hitch.
 
As they collaborate on wedding cake and karaoke parties, Mel realizes he might have seriously misjudged this bridesmaid, while Vivian discovers the best man might just be as dazzling off-screen as he is on. With the wedding underway, maybe more than one happily ever after is in the future.

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Jackie Lau decided she wanted to be a writer when she was in grade two, sometime between penning “The Heart That Got Lost” and “The Land of Shapes.” She later studied engineering and worked as a geophysicist before turning to writing romance novels. She is now the author of over a dozen romantic comedies.

Jackie lives in Toronto with her husband, and despite living in Canada her whole life, she hates winter. When she’s not writing, she enjoys gelato, gourmet donuts, cooking, hiking, and reading on the balcony when it’s raining.

*LONGLISTED FOR CANADA READS 2023*

NATIONAL BESTSELLER

A family tries to learn from the mistakes of past generations in this whirlwind memoir from a wholly original new voice.

The Caetanos move into a doomed house in the highway village of Happyland before an inevitable divorce pulls Cody’s parents in separate directions. His mom, Mindimooye, having discovered her Anishinaabe birth family and Sixties Scoop origin story, embarks on a series of fraught relationships and fresh starts. His dad, O Touro, a Portuguese immigrant and drifter, falls back into “big do, little think” behaviour, despite his best intentions.

Left alone at the house in Happyland, Cody and his siblings must fend for themselves, even as the pipes burst and the lights go out. His protective big sister, Kris, finds inventive ways to put food on the table, and his stoic big brother, Julian, facilitates his regular escapes into the world of video games. As life yanks them from one temporary solution to the next, they steal moments of joy and resist buckling under “baddie” temptations aplenty.

Capturing the chaos and wonder of a precarious childhood, Cody Caetano delivers a fever dream coming-of-age garnished with a slang all his own. Half-Bads in White Regalia is an unforgettable debut that unspools a tangled family history with warmth, humour, and deep generosity.

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CODY CAETANO is a writer of Anishinaabe and Portuguese descent and an off-reserve member of Pinaymootang First Nation. He has an MA in Creative Writing from the University of Toronto, where he wrote this memoir under the mentorship of Lee Maracle. Excerpts of Half-Bads in White Regalia earned him a 2020 Indigenous Voices Award for Unpublished Prose.

"No-one does suburban paranoia like Shari Lapena--this slowly unfurling nightmare will have you biting your nails until the end."
--Ruth Ware, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Woman in Cabin 10

The new domestic suspense novel from the New York Times bestselling author of The Couple Next Door, A Stranger in the House, and An Unwanted Guest, Shari Lapena

Maybe you don't know your neighbors as well as you thought you did . . .

"This is a very difficult letter to write. I hope you will not hate us too much. . . My son broke into your home recently while you were out."

In a quiet, leafy suburb in upstate New York, a teenager has been sneaking into houses--and into the owners' computers as well--learning their secrets, and maybe sharing some of them, too.

Who is he, and what might he have uncovered? After two anonymous letters are received, whispers start to circulate, and suspicion mounts. And when a woman down the street is found murdered, the tension reaches the breaking point. Who killed her? Who knows more than they're telling? And how far will all these very nice people go to protect their own secrets?

In this neighborhood, it's not just the husbands and wives who play games. Here, everyone in the family has something to hide . . .

You never really know what people are capable of.

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Shari Lapena is the internationally bestselling author of the thrillers The Couple Next Door, A Stranger in the House, An Unwanted Guest, Someone We Know, The End of Her, and Not a Happy Family, which have all been New York Times and The Sunday Times (London) bestsellers. Her books have been sold in thirty-eight territories around the world. She lives in Toronto

In ten vividly told stories, Shimmer follows characters through relationships, within social norms, and across boundaries of all kinds as they shimmer into and out of each other’s lives.

Outside a 7-Eleven, teen boys Veeper and Wendell try to decide what to do with their night, though the thought of the rest of their lives doesn’t seem to have occurred to them. In Laurel Canyon, two movie stars try to decide if the affair they’re having might mean they like each other. When Byron, trying to figure out the chords of a song he likes, posts a question on a guitar website, he ends up meeting Jessica as well, a woman with her own difficult music. And when the snide and sharp-tongued Twyla agrees to try therapy, not even she would have imagined the results.

Praise for Shimmer

“Looking at Shimmer as a whole, one is struck by Pugsley’s mastery of the short-story form, his ability to distil entire lives’ worth of meaning into a few short pages. He’s not just a writer to watch: he’s a writer to savour.”—Robert Wiersema, Toronto Star

“His greatest gift as a writer is, I believe, his ability to carry dialogue … a brave departure from the highly-praised Aubrey McKee.”—Miramichi Reader

“Pugsley brings out the confusion of life well. No one is in control. Everyone has doubts about themselves and others. His ability to show the twists and turns of our constant, anxious questioning of ourselves makes each story revelatory in a different way. A truly impressive collection!”—Ottawa Review of Books

“[Pugsley’s] story proves that the digital mode of communication, while frequently castigated as impersonal and dehumanizing, can, in the right hands, carry with it strong emotional resonance.”—Steven Beattie, That Shakespearean Rag

“Pugsley excels at putting life on the page, mainly because he uses a profusion of concrete details. He out-Dickens Dickens. And it works.”—Maple Tree Literary Supplement

“Alex Pugsley’s Shimmer (2022) offers a character for every reading mood…poignant and moving.”—Buried in Print

Praise for Alex Pugsley

“Aubrey McKee is no austere, white-walled art gallery of a novel. It’s abundant, highly decorated, and unafraid of extravagance, of stylistic excess … From ordinary incidents — a childhood acquaintance, marital strife, a wedding — as well as a few extraordinary ones, Aubrey McKee builds a dazzling and complicated world, a childhood in Halifax as a vibrant universe in itself. While Pugsley’s literary performance is an immediate delight, the portrait of the early days of a ‘wayward oddity’ lingers long after.”—Toronto Star

“Evoking comparisons in both style and substance to the work of John Irving and Robertson Davies in its assemblage of perceptive, richly detailed character studies … The life of a Canadian city is revealed with verve and insight.”—Kirkus

“Although many peoples’ stories comprise the whole of Aubrey McKee, the city of Halifax is also a feature character … the reverence Pugsley provides about Halifax will resonate with anyone thinking about their own hometown, no matter its size or location … The richly defined personalities in Aubrey McKee are void of pretense or judgment and are, at once, knowable. Like a favourite song, it’s the hook that makes the adventures of Aubrey McKee and those he cares about so memorable.”—Winnipeg Free Press

“Pugsley, equal parts poet and meticulous historian of his own private Halifax, has accomplished, with “Aubrey McKee,” a work of high literary art, remaking and claiming the city as his own once again in a sustained performance that pulses with that deep, radical love.”—John Delacourt, The Ottawa Review of Books

“The mesmerizing, kaleidoscopic Halifax depicted in Aubrey McKee is as enchanted as it is benighted, an adolescent fever-dream. This is a rollicking, strange and unforgettable coming of age novel unlike anything you’ve ever read.”—Lynn Coady, Scotiabank Giller Prize-winning author of Hellgoing

“His prose style is among the finest anywhere: humorous, economical, deft without sacrificing accessibility, capable of laying bare the complicated depths, the tenderness, and the strangeness of personal relationships.”—Roo Borson, Griffin Poetry Prize-winning author of Short Journey Upriver Toward Oishida

“Alex Pugsley’s novel, Aubrey McKee, is a whip-smart portrait of the artist at the end of the twentieth century. Funny and wildly intelligent, it captures a somewhat tragic cohort of young, ambitious Haligonians trying to become themselves, all seen through the eyes of the narrator, a young man of incomplete wisdom. In quicksilver prose, Pugsley shows us a whole generation, some of whom are lost, some found, but all viewed with a profound, comic humanity.”—Michael Redhill, Scotiabank Giller Prize-winning author of Bellevue Square

“A wonderful book, it absolutely floored me. It’s been a very long time since I’ve read anything like it … I found Aubrey McKee to be more reminiscent of Dubliners by James Joyce, not only because the sense of place is so strong, but because the narrative in this book is told through interconnected stories.”—Bookin’

Profound, perceptive, and wryly observed, Estates Large and Small is the story of one man’s reckoning and an ardent defense of the shape books make in a life.

What decades of rent increases and declining readership couldn’t do, a pandemic finally did: Phil Cooper has reluctantly closed his secondhand bookstore and moved his business online. Smoking too much pot and listening to too much Grateful Dead, he suspects that he’s overdue when it comes to understanding the bigger picture of who he is and what we’re all doing here. So he’s made another decision: to teach himself 2,500 years of Western philosophy.

Thankfully, he meets Caroline, a fellow book lover who agrees to join him on his trek through the best of what’s been thought and said. But Caroline is on her own path, one that compels Phil to rethink what it means to be alive in the twenty-first century. In Estates Large and Small Ray Robertson renders one man’s reckoning with both wry humour and tender joy, reminding us of what it means to live, love, and, when the time comes, say goodbye.

Praise for Estates Large and Small

“This wry novel follows a struggling used bookstore owner and Grateful Dead fan as he grudgingly moves his store online, decides to teach himself two millenniums of Western philosophy, falls in love and attempts to pin down the point of life.”—New York Times

“Ray Robertson asks us to think about life as a rental, and to make the best out of it before our lease runs out.”—Literary Review of Canada

“Estates Large and Small is a thoughtful book that manages to make its serious existential themes both entertaining and, yes, hopeful.”—Ottawa Review of Books

“The issues, relationships and real-life collisions in the novel keep reminding the reader that an intellectual exercise by itself doesn’t offer much beyond intellectual satisfaction. Estates Large and Small offers so much more if you can handle the trepidation it shares.”—Winnipeg Free Press

“With the publication of Estates Large and Small, novelist Ray Robertson succeeds in reminding his readers just what it means to live, love, and (when the time comes) to say goodbye. Deftly crafted and memorable characters, a narrative storyline laced with humor and acute observation.”—Midwest Book Review

“Chatham-born author Ray Robertson likes to tell a story in his novels that makes his readers ponder their own lives. He’s hit the mark again with Estates Large and Small.”—Chatham Daily News

“Ray Robertson’s novel Estates Large and Small is both poignant and heartwarming.”—Largehearted Boy

“A warmhearted and unconventional love story that’s also an opportunity for a gentle encounter with some of life’s fundamental questions … With Phil’s droll humor and world-weary cynicism, and Caroline’s clear-eyed determination to live her final days on her own terms, the two make for an appealing couple. Like the philosophers they encounter, Estates Large and Small only hints at answers to life’s deepest mysteries, but it’s a wise reminder that the journey is really the point.”—Harvey Freedenberg, Shelf Awareness

Praise for Ray Robertson

“While How to Die is a slim book, it offers some hefty insights, leavened with frequent, self-effacing humour. There are numerous passages here which, while quick to read (the book is very accessible, despite its philosophical bona fides), nonetheless take hours to fully internalize … Brilliant.” —Toronto Star

“Robertson is a moral writer and a bitingly intelligent one, a man who writes with penetrating insight of what needs to be written about: beauty, truth and goodness.”—Globe and Mail

“Heartfelt, funny, rigorous, practical without ever being preachy … a book that feels like a friend.”—Montreal Gazette

“Sharp-tongued … as Robertson ponders family and home as well as ‘what it means to love someone and to lose someone and to have to go on living anyway,’ he presents an intriguing character whose very real troubles are offset by bright flashes of hope.”—Publishers Weekly

“One of the country’s finest literary voices.”—National Post

“Many of us sense that the world has too many moving parts and can become utterly defeated. Ray Robertson has found a road back in this splendid and intriguing book [Why Not: Fifteen Reasons to Live].”—Jim Harrison

Award-winning Indigenous author Harold R. Johnson discusses the promise and potential of storytelling.

Approached by an ecumenical society representing many faiths, from Judeo-Christians to fellow members of First Nations, Harold R. Johnson agreed to host a group who wanted to hear him speak about the power of storytelling. This book is the outcome of that gathering. In The Power of Story, Johnson explains the role of storytelling in every aspect of human life, from personal identity to history and the social contracts that structure our societies, and illustrates how we can direct its potential to re-create and reform not only our own lives, but the life we share. Companionable, clear-eyed, and, above all, optimistic, Johnson’s message is both a dire warning and a direct invitation to each of us to imagine and create, together, the world we want to live in.

Praise for The Power of Story

“Johnson’s idea is a powerful one: that a person is not only the ‘author’ but also the ‘editor’ of his or her life, that reframing a narrative is enough to change it.”
—Literary Review of Canada

“By examining Indigenous stories, ways of living, dying, and—yes—laughing, Johnson … offer[s] powerful alternatives to hierarchical structures of society that insist on consuming the Earth’s natural resources at an unsustainable pace.”
—Steven Beattie, That Shakespearean Rag

“Recently in conversation with a friend I remarked that the whole world is a story. Harold Johnson fills that phrase with profound meaning in The Power of Story as he takes ancient figures and modernizes their storied wit and role in creating the worlds we perceive and the boundaries we need. Harold blessed us one last time with a profound conversation on the role of story in every aspect of our lives.”
—Michelle Good, author of Five Little Indians

“The Power of Story begins where all great stories begin: around a fire. Harold Johnson gives us a seat at the fire to listen and take into ourselves some spellbinding, bracing, and provocative stories told with a view to healing and transforming. As Harold writes ‘It’s starting to get darker now, and a bright fire will help.’ The Power of Story is that bright fire. And it will help. His final book is a balm for our times.”
—Shelagh Rogers

Praise for Harold R. Johnson

“An extraordinary memoir by a Cree writer who understands the damage alcohol does when used to kill the pain caused by white Canadians stealing and torturing Indigenous children throughout this nation’s history. I know many white alcoholics but it’s always ‘the drunk Indian.’ Why? Firewater is a great book; it burns in the hand.”
—Toronto Star

“A natural storyteller, Johnson seeks imagined pasts and futurity with equal parts longing and care. This work allows readers and writers the possibility of new and ancient modes of storytelling.”
—Tracey Lindberg, author of Birdie

“A luminous, genre-bending memoir. Heartache and hardship are no match for the disarming whimsy, the layered storytelling shot through with love. The power of land, the pull of family, the turbulence of poverty are threads woven together with explorations of reality, tackling truth with a trickster slant.”
—Eden Robinson, author of Son of a Trickster

“Written in the style of a kitchen-table conversation, Johnson’s personal anecdotes and perceptive analysis are a call to return to a traditional culture of sobriety … [a] well-argued case.”
—Publishers Weekly

A defense of the dying art of losing an afternoon—and gaining new appreciation—amidst the bins and shelves of bricks-and-mortar shops.

Written during the pandemic, when the world was marooned at home and consigned to scrolling screens, On Browsing’s essays chronicle what we’ve lost through online shopping, streaming, and the relentless digitization of culture. The latest in the Field Notes series, On Browsing is an elegy for physical media, a polemic in defense of perusing the world in person, and a love letter to the dying practice of scanning bookshelves, combing CD bins, and losing yourself in the stacks.

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BILLY-RAY BELCOURT (he/him) is a writer from the Driftpile Cree Nation. He won the 2018 Griffin Poetry Prize for his debut collection, This Wound Is a World, which was also a finalist for the Governor General's Literary Award. His bestselling memoir, A History of My Brief Body, won the Hubert Evans Non-Fiction Prize and was a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award and the Governor General's Literary Award. A recipient of the prestigious Rhodes Scholarship and an Indspire Award, Belcourt is Assistant Professor of Indigenous Creative Writing at UBC.

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COLIN McADAM’s last novel, A Beautiful Truth, won the Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize. It was also a finalist for the Governor General’s Literary Award and named a Globe and Mail Best Book of the Year. His first novel, Some Great Thing, won the Amazon/Books in Canada First Novel Award and was nominated for the Governor General’s Literary Award, the Rogers Writers’ Trust Award, the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize, and for the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize in the U.K. His second novel, Fall, was shortlisted for the Scotiabank Giller Prize and awarded the Paragraphe Hugh MacLennon Prize. He lives in Chelsea, Quebec.

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RAWI HAGE was born in Beirut, Lebanon, and lived through nine years of the Lebanese civil war during the 1970s and 1980s. He immigrated to Canada in 1992 and now lives in Montreal. His first novel, De Niro's Game, won the IMPAC Dublin Literary Award for the best English-language book published anywhere in the world in a given year, and has either won or been shortlisted for seven other major awards and prizes, including the Scotiabank Giller Prize and the Governor General's Literary Award. Cockroach was the winner of the Paragraphe Hugh MacLennan Prize for Fiction and a finalist for the Governor General's Award. It was also shortlisted for the Rogers Writers' Trust Fiction Award and the Giller Prize. His third novel, Carnival, told from the perspective of a taxi driver, was a finalist for the Writers' Trust Award and won the Paragraphe Hugh MacLennan Prize for Fiction. His work has been translated into 30 languages.