Off The Page Blog

Climate is Not an Abstraction

admin@49thshelf.com (Kerry Clare) — Thu, 13 Aug 2026 16:54:56 +0000

How does one begin to write about something as all-encompassing as our shared climate? How does one represent our climate’s myriad networks, especially if we are not actively taught how to perceive and reflect upon the biospheric web that connects us all? Moreover, how do we write about a climate in crisis when each day presents a new consequence of a civilization addicted to resource extraction and the burning of fossil fuels?

The world is on fire again this summer, and all we need to do is breath in the smoky air to experience the impacts of a warming world and feel panicked about our climate future. Being informed about climate is, I believe, a way to feel agency instead of just overwhelmed. As a writer and a reader, I seek out climate writing in a variety of modes, including fiction and poetry, science journalism, as well as ecological guidebooks, with the understanding that climate is not a discrete abstraction, but exists inexorably and ubiquitously in all our actions and experiences.

The world is on fire again this summer, and all we need to do is breath in the smoky air to experience the impacts of a warming world and feel panicked about our climate future. Being informed about climate is a way to feel agency instead of just overwhelmed.

At the centre of Prairie Edge, by Connor Kerr, is an act of anti-colonial resistance in the form of ecological restoration. The reader is quickly engrossed in this riveting page-turner, notable for its deeply realized characters, including herds of bison, whose very presence remind the reader that climate change and attendant inequities are the result of persistent colonial-capitalist systems. The novel’s descriptions of the prairie bison are powerful and surprising and prompt the reader to think deeply about how the settlement of the prairies involved the radical displacement of Indigenous communities and the extermination of millions of bison, thus clearing the land for cattle ranching, railways, and resource extraction more broadly. With wit and imagination, the novel also stiches together the past, present, and future of Métis culture, linking restorative ecology, Indigenous/settler relations, and political activist culture within a truly compelling story.

It’s quite a juxtaposition to read The Aliens Among Us: How Invasive Species Are Transforming the Planet and Ourselves, by Leslie Anthony, after reading Prairie Edge, as the reader quickly situates settler-colonialism as the ground-zero invasive species that has brought us to a place of biodiversity loss and ecological homogeneity. This is a highly readable work of environmental journalism with deeply researched chapters exploring everything from the expansion of Burmese pythons into Florida ecosystems to sea lamprey decimating native fish stocks in the Great Lakes to rat invasions in Haida Gwaii. The appeal of this book is the engrossing storytelling, capacity for humour, and characterization of the various invasion biologists and field officers with whom the author embeds. This book invites us to see our local ecosystems as places losing balance as species compete for space and resources, something that may not be possible or advisable to correct. It’s also fascinating to read a book published in 2017 to get a feel for how much has changed in the culture around the rhetoric of “alien invasions” and how much has stayed the same.

The stark beauty of the poems in Wellwater, by Karen Solie, compels the reader to consider the networks of human activities that entangle, complicate, and impose themselves upon nonhuman species, such as plants, birds, rats, caribou, all of which are explored in sublime and surprising language in Solie’s poems. The reader comes away from the poems feeling that we are the ones who are fleeting and, as such, we should stop, watch, and protect nonhuman lives around us, out of both respect and wonder. Poetry moves quickly in some ways, especially as these poems are often short and tight, but the distillation of the language forces us to slow down our reading, to linger over an image or the composition of a line. Sometimes it feels like the slowness of reading poetry in and of itself is one way to push back against the capitalist impulses that thrust us further into climate crisis. One of my favourites in this collection is “The Snowplow,” a poem that explores this quintessentially northern machine, defamiliarizing it using a range of deeply sensory images, so it takes on a new life and reminds us that what is seemly mundane is anything but.

Ducks: Two Years in the Oil Sands, by Kate Beaton: What stands out to me in this graphic novel memoir about a young woman working in the Alberta oil sands as means to pay off student loans is the way that nonhuman species and natural beauty, like birds, bison, a rainbow or the northern lights, hover in the background, never quite letting the reader forget that we fleeting humans share the planet with other species. When Katie, the protagonist, realizes that she’s been working within an industry that harms and exploits Indigenous territories, communities, and cultures for the sake of extractive profits, she states that “[she] can’t extract [her]self” from her complicity.” This is something that readers of this book also feel as we move through the panels: that we are all enmeshed within the structures of the Canadian petro-economy. Indeed, like the ducks of the title, we find ourselves stuck in the quagmire of dirty oil. Art, however, like Katie’s art, like Ducks, is a means of exploring, questioning, and resisting these same structures.

Current, Climate: The Poetry of Rita Wong, by Rita Wong, is another example of how poetry itself, as a form of expression, defies the accelerated speed of a tech-driven, extractive world, obliging the reader to slow down and explore the connections the poems posit, between water and writing, and human and nonhuman subjectivities. What I take to be the thrust of these collected poems is water, how it moves, defies imposed boundaries, such as the very pages of the book, in the way the poems are arranged, pulling the reader inside to consider our own impact on the waters that compose us, surround us, enable life, and inform the expression of the poems, on the page and in the ear. The fluidity of water, its momentum and cycles, seeps into Wong’s poems, notable for including pictorial representations, handwritten text, and multiple languages, resisting the conventions of poetic expression, and being uncontained, like water.

Love After the End: An Anthology of Two-Spirit and Indigiqueer Speculative Fiction, edited by Joshua Whitehead: Whenever I read speculative fiction, which is not nearly enough, I am reminded of how powerful the genre is at critiquing our current historical moment and offering alternative futures. While there is a range of stories collected here by contemporary Two-Spirit and Indigiqueer authors from Turtle Island, the stories that stand out to me the most are “The Ark of the Turtle’s Back” by Jaye Simpson and “History of the New World” by Adam Garnet Jones. These two stories seem to be in conversation with each other about the ethical quandary of abandoning a resource-depleted Earth in exchange for interplanetary settlement. What I learn from these stories and this collection is that Indigenous communities have already experienced an apocalypse in the form of settler-colonialism, thus challenging how mainstream culture, of which I am part, privileges our own eco-apocalyptic doom when representing climate crisis. As a reader I also learn about love. I am reminded that even in the midst of existential threat humans seek out connection, experience desire, and continue to create new life. Indigiqueer families are centered in these two stories in ways that resist received expectations of love, kinship, and honouring the biophysical world.

The World in a Grain: The Story of Sand and How it Transformed Civilization, by Vince Beiser, invites the reader into a materialist understanding of the built environments in which we exist and how the extraction of raw resources, like sand, comprise our cities, our cultures, and the ways in which twenty-first-century civilization functions on Earth. And yet, as Beiser points out, because sand is the essential component of building materials—all those roads and housing developments politicians keep promising, the glass used in windows, of course, and now, in our ubiquitous tech devices—this resource is quickly disappearing. Beiser writes in inviting and accessible language about the history of sand extraction, and about the people and communities impacted by the unsustainable extraction of sand. I learned about this book in an episode of CBC Radio’s Ideas, “How our demand for sand is destroying our world” (May 2022). In the episode, author and journalist Nehal El-Hadi incisively argues that sand is at the essence of human culture, embedded in language and rituals and beliefs, and therefore informs how we understand ourselves as humans; and yet, sand is being exploited to the point of disappearance.

Pathways to the Trees at the Central Experimental Farm, by Eric Jones, Richard Hinchcliff, and Roman Popadiouk

I recommend this guidebook to a greenspace that is local to me in order to encourage readers to seek out similar guides and texts that focus on the trees and other forms of nonhuman life that we so easily take for granted, especially in a city. This book delves into the minutiae of the trees I am privileged to walk among and drive by nearly every day, turning them into characters, embodying their own sense of time, history, and rich intersectional existence. And there is so much a writer can learn from reading such botanical descriptions, enriching one’s vocabulary with adjectives for shapes and colours, and acquiring knowledge about what makes each tree species unique. There are also philosophical gems scattered throughout this book, such as: “it must be noted that all trees are temporary, as are books (and books are made from trees), and that some of the trees on these pages will die and be removed” (13). I treasure this reminder to be humble and to see ourselves and our writing within the big picture of the universe, of which we are just transient specks.

I treasure this reminder to be humble and to see ourselves and our writing within the big picture of the universe, of which we are just transient specks.

Learn more about Fret:

Once a rising star of indie rock, Kate is now a middle-aged single mom living far out of the spotlight. Everything changes for her when an unprecedented heat wave and a stolen car set off a chain of events that threaten to upend her new, peaceful life. Fired from her job, separated from her children, and overwhelmed by public shaming, Kate must navigate the cold realities of the child welfare and family court systems while struggling to stay cool in an increasingly unbearable world.

Determined to rebuild, Kate finds herself forging new connections and fostering a sense of community—something she hasn’t felt since her music career ended in disaster more than a decade before. As Kate finds a new voice, she makes her way back to her children and her love of music, and steps closer to reconciling with her former bandmate and arch-rival: her little sister.

If building community is Kate’s way of reckoning with the mistakes of her past, can it also be a way to mitigate the deeper, more urgent issues and structural injustices that threaten our future?

Publisher Spotlight: Owlkids Books and OWL Magazine

admin@49thshelf.com (49th Outreach) — Tue, 11 Aug 2026 02:36:22 +0000

This month, we're featuring Owlkids Books and OWL Magazine, an award-winning independent publisher of books for young readers. This year, they are a celebrating a huge milestone of 50 years in the publishing world! Join us for a conversation with publishers Karen Boersma (Owlkids Books) and Angela Keenlyside (OWL Magazine) as learn more about their history.

Tell me the story of your publisher and when you arrived on the scene.

Fifty years ago, the Young Naturalist Foundation launched OWL magazine for kids 8‒12. OWL was an acronym for “Outdoors and Wildlife,” and the magazine was designed to develop a love of the environment and scientific discovery in its readers. In the five decades since, the company became Owlkids, expanding its vision and mandate, and launching two other children’s magazines—Chickadee in 1978 and Chirp in 1997—and a book division. Since 1976, Owlkids has kept kids front and centre, creating content that engages, informs, and inspires a love of reading and learning.

***

What are the broad themes of your publishing program? Alternatively, what is your publishing philosophy?

Our goal is to make content for kids that instill a love of reading and of learning about the world around them. Creating books that reflect and include a diversity of voices, communities, and experiences is very important to us and it is key that all children can see themselves represented in the books and magazines they read.

***

What are some commercial standouts that readers might recognize? Alternatively, share a behind the scenes story of a book that was especially interesting to publish.

We recently celebrated OWL magazines 50th anniversary and published a special issue highlighting the birthday. We were able to feature to Dr. Joe MacInnis, a physician, diver, and author who has lead hundreds of research dives and was one of the first people to dive to the Titanic. This was a full circle moment for us, as we featured one of his adventures in the very first issue of OWL in 1976!

As for Owlkids Books, some books readers might recognize are WHY?, a non-fiction classic that was compiled from questions submitted to the magazines by kids, How To Party Like a Snail, a picture book by Naseem Hrab and Kelly Collier that has been nominated for numerous awards in both Canada and the US, and lots of great non-fiction for middle-grade readers, like Left-Handed by Maria Birmingham and Catherine Chan.

***

Are there any upcoming titles or projects that you are particularly excited about?

In 2027 we will be recognizing 30 years of publishing Chirp magazine. The magazine industry has weathered many challenges so we are excited to celebrate this milestone.

And on the book side, we publish about 30 books a year and we’re excited about all of them!!

***

Lastly, can you make a list of books that give us a sense of who you are as a publisher?

You Are Stardust
The Flat Rabbit
How To Make a Peanut Butter Sandwich in 17 Easy Steps
The Paper Boat
The Sour Cherry Tree
Bunny Made Tea
Moon Pops
I Sang You Down From the Stars
A Salmon Story
When Bryn’s Ear Went Quiet
Poppy and Sam series (junior graphic novels)
The Weird Sisters series (chapter books)
Paisley and Peck series (graphic novels)
Camp Average series (middle grade fiction)
Why?
The Noisy Puddle
Moto and Me
Why Do We Fight?
Do Frogs Drink Hot Chocolate
The Buzz on Wild Bees

Complex Women's Stories

admin@49thshelf.com (Kerry Clare) — Mon, 10 Aug 2026 17:16:50 +0000

The books in this list each represent complex women’s stories, often through relationships between mothers and daughters, sisters, or with themselves. I have always found myself drawn to stories that attempt to tackle the feminine experience and all the frustration, challenges, responsibility, joys, and sorrows that go along with it. In my own novel, Little Spoons, it was important for me to write about the relationships between women and how our differences can both tear us apart but keep us together.

*****

Motherthing, by Ainslie Hogarth

This book took me on a wild ride I absolutely did not see coming. Motherthing asks the question “What if your insufferable mother-in-law was so overbearing that she never left, even after death?” Abby and Ralph live with his mother, Laura, until she dies by her own hand. Ralph is plunged into a dark depression while Abby is convinced Laura’s ghost is in the home affecting them each in different ways. Abby truly believes that if she can be the best wife, the best mother, or at least a mother like thing, that she can repair her husband, her marriage, and her life. The "haunting" plunges Abby into a desperate and dark place; her eventual resolution to all her problems is that the best way to save her husband and her family is to make him the perfect "Chicken a la king."

All My Puny Sorrows, by Miriam Toews

I read this book over a decade ago, but it has stuck with me ever since. The relationship between Elf and Yoli was so heartfelt it was palpable. This novel tackles themes such as intergenerational trauma, depression, and suicide while giving the reader a sense of hope and resolution, even if the resolution is not what we’d expect. The title All My Puny Sorrows comes from a poem written to describe grief which works perfectly with the story in this novel:

I too a sister had, an only sister —
She loved me dearly, and I doted on her!
To her I pour’d forth all my puny sorrows.

Alligator, by Lisa Moore

When I was in the twelfth grade my older sister gave me this book; she said it was her absolute favourite. That was 20 years ago but for me this book is part of a special moment where myself and my sister, with whom I rarely have anything in common, finally had something. Lisa Moore’s writing is so incredibly brilliant that you can forgive the non-fluid nature of the storytelling. For myself, I enjoy when a book feels like a puzzle I have to put together piece by piece, but I understand that may not be for everyone. Alligator is novel which switches points of view between four main characters, Beverly, Colleen, Madeleine and Frank, and is set in Newfoundland and Labrador. Each chapter almost acts as its own short story. In this way, it’s a highly digestible novel that you can enjoy in pieces or all at once.

Really Good Actually, by Monica Heisey

If you’re looking for a book that will make you feel better about your own mess of a life, this is it. Monica Heisey’s debut novel tells the story of an absolute trainwreck of a woman named Maggie whose marriage falls apart less than two years after the wedding. As you can expect she absolutely spirals mentally while assuring everyone around her that she’s good, great, really good actually. This book was so much fun to read and also a bit emotional at times, with a very satisfying ending, which is just the cherry on top of this witty, heartfelt story.

Bunny, by Mona Awad

As a writer of mystery/thrillers I felt I should include a recent favorite, which I’m going to call a psychological thriller (some also call it magical realism) and that is Bunny by Mona Awad. This book is about a girl named Samantha who is studying a Master’s of Fine Arts at a New England college. She feels like an outsider at her new school especially because there is a clique of girls called ‘the bunnies.’ Samantha becomes intrigued by the bunnies which then begins a journey full of twists and turns that I will not dare spoil. This book is so unique and creative; I recommend reading this if you’re in an artistic funk and looking to explore new possibilities of where storytelling can go.

Something Fierce, by Carmen Aguierre

Unlike the other books on this list, Something Fierce: Memoirs of a Revolutionary Daughter is nonfiction. Carmen Aguierre is a writer and playwright who emigrated to Canada from Chile. Her memoir is written in such a masterpiece of storytelling that it draws you in and keeps you invested until the very last word. Something Fierce takes place during the late 70’s and 80’s. After Carmen had already come with her family to Canada to escape the violence in their own country, her mother decides to take Carmen and her sister back to South America to fight in the resistance. This story shows truly how strong and fierce women can be in the face of adversity and violence, an absolute must-read.

Learn more about Little Spoons:

Amidst the unique landscape and history of French Newfoundland, rumours of the supernatural and a sudden death unearth family secrets.

After the unexpected death of her grandmother, Mary inherits her property and returns home to western Newfoundland with her young son. When she uncovers curious items that may be clues about her grandmother’s fate, Mary begins to unravel the secrets surrounding a string of suspicious disappearances and deaths in the community—deaths that always seem to involve women.

Demons from the past catch up with Mary as she learns of her grandmother’s isolation from her peers. Discovering stories of witchcraft and rumours of the supernatural, she attempts to piece together her family’s story—a story that may have led to her grandmother’s death. When someone else goes missing, Mary must act quickly to untangle the strings of fact and fiction, or risk drowning in the same rumours that haunted those before her.

Most Anticipated: Our 2026 Fall Poetry Preview

admin@49thshelf.com (Kerry Clare) — Thu, 06 Aug 2026 14:49:40 +0000

The poems in Hollie Adams’ Beckoning (October) ask, how do you become your best self in what feels like the worst of worlds? Chronicling the devastating effects of the 2023 Kelowna wildfire, the poems in Sakiru Adebayo’s Wildfire Verses (September) capture the personal experience of climate disaster. With Grace of Centuries (October), poems of historical complexity demonstrating the value of a language that speaks to all, Hope Anderson comes back to Canadian poetry alongside such icons as Daphne Marlatt, Fred Wah, and Anderson’s friend, the late, great bpNichol, to whom this book pays tribute. And in Bureau of Useless Splendour (October), Chris Banks lets his imagination roam across the science of DNA sequencing, internet memes, space-time physics, Canadian nationalism, a lunar discussion between Canadian poet Gwendolyn MacEwen and American poet Frank Stanford, and more.

Shadow of the Living Brightness (September), by Dominique Béchard, is a book about unknowing, about uncertainty and in-between states, and at the same time, the aching beauty of things and the language that evokes them that can fire up a sense of radical attention and connection. In Lovable (September), Roxanna Bennett writes out a mad and disabled life-record of Toronto in the early 1990s that will captivate anyone interested in her poetry, the city and youth culture in that period. With Lightning in Our Roots (October), Avis Blackbird invites the reader on a journey to feel Indigenous fluidity of space and time, the impact of colonization, enduring connections to the land, lived urbanized experience, and finally the rising hope of Indigenous communities and cultures to thrive. Collected Poems (October) forms an essential document of Robert Bringhurst’s long career as one of Canada’s most adventurous artists and thinkers. And blending ecocriticism, animal studies, and decolonial and countercolonial thought, the poems in Panax (October), by Robert Budde, map a remarkable poetic and autoethnographic journey.

In Missing Mapledown Love Parkette (October), Chris Chambers returns with his warm, sharp poems, filled with his clear-eyed, but affectionate, observations of living in Canada’s largest city. With gentle fervour and precise language that speaks to the nonverbal, the gestural, the sonic, Madness Belongs to the People (September), Jody Chan’s third collection of poetry, mobilizes the intimate, the historical, the revolutionary, and the mundane to confront the instrumentalization of disability as a surplus class. In A Child's Seance (October), Weyman Chan’s far-reaching poetry offers a surreal, astral travelogue that bears the ghost brush of classical Chinese portraiture. And Conyer Clayton’s third poetry collection, the lake-shaped excuse (October), is a book about grief and so, like most grief books, it is ultimately a book about love.

The poems in Su Croll’s Batten Down (November) are poems of Dorothy and the Witch in Oz, of cinematic mythologies and fractured fairy tales, inviting us to witness acts of grim revenge and reconsider the folkloric forests lodged in our collective minds. As openbound (October) turns toward open marriage itself—its risks, its revelations, its misunderstandings, its wounds under cultural scrutiny—the work reveals itself foremost as a book of love poems, continuing Jeffrey Donaldson’s long devotion to a metaphoric both/and poetics capacious enough to hold loving and freedom in the same breath. Hélène Dorion's lauded collection My Forests (October), translated by Susanna Lang, celebrates and examines our complex relationship with the natural world. And in The Wonder Wander (June), Diane Driedger explores her identity as a Mennonite girl, and later as disabled activist woman, short rhyming poems that respond to and subvert childhood rhymes interspersed throughout the collection.

In ᒦᓂᐢ theory / mînis theory / berry theory (July), mackenzie ground studies how berries and language connect and nurture, contemplating the berry’s many forms and the teachings held within them, their flavours, and their relationships, cycles, and growth. Elegiac and lyrical, Lift the Ear of a Nautilus (September), by gillian harding-russell, marks the bond between two poets. Following their critically acclaimed debut Crushed Wild Mint, Jess Housty offers a new collection, How to Nourish a Cannibal (September), capturing connections between kinship, ancestral knowledge and spirituality. And Syl-Lo-Therapy (September), by Crystal Hurdle, combines the best of creative vision with meticulous research, a deep dive into both Sylvia Plath and Nabokov’s Lolita, two books in one.

The Point (September), by Nasser Hussain, is composed using only exclamation marks, seeking to reclaim the dignity of the bang’s and explore its expressive possibilities. Exiled from his community after serving time for his father’s murder, a young Innu man finds himself adrift on the streets of Montreal in Ninan: Tiohtiá:ke, Montreal (September), by Michel Jean, translated by Susan Ouriou. A suite of three poetic sequences that gestures towards questions of complicity and colonization, Echo Studies (July), by R. Kolewe, asks what “nature” is and whether landscapes, urban or otherwise, can be known apart from language. And in Some of Us May Live (September), by Leigh Kotsilidis, scientific explanation is not reductive but an opportunity for empathy and delight, a shift of perspective that redefines the boundary between the personal and the general.

From Governor General's Award-winning poet Tim Lilburn comes a The Volcano's High Held Snow Note (October), about the natural world and our place in it. Hallelujah Anyhow (September), by Lisa López Smith, is a debut collection of lovingly attentive poems about life in kinship with the land and cohabitants in little known corners of Mexico. In Bright Machine (October), Canisia Lubrin gives poetic scrutiny to the legacy of human intelligence put in service of ruin. And drawing on experiences with invisible illnesses like depressive disorder and anxiety, David Ly blurs the line between the real and the surreal in Ritual Interrupted (September), inviting readers into poems where the coping rituals of daily life are disrupted by mental health crises.

A feminist crow at a history of violence, Tanis MacDonald’s Tall, Grass, Girl (October) is essential reading for those who are tired of healing narratives that ring hollow, but who also believe hope is curative. Kelly Madden’s Unresponsive (August) is a raw, unflinching, and necessary poetry collection that descends into the alleys, shelters and forgotten corners where the addicted, the lonely and the discarded struggle to survive. rob mclennan’s edgeless (June) is an acrobatic cascade of poem-letters that bring you right up close to the ordinary intimacies of life. In A City as Thin as Paper (October), with his keen eye for detail and willingness to engage with both the city’s beauty and its destitution, Chris Pannell continues to show us that even the most ordinary moment can be etched with grace.

For the Record (October), by Nisha Patel, is an evolving long poem that articulates the impact of the ongoing death toll from COVID-19. Skin (October), by Tyler Pennock, is a haunting, genre-blurring collection rooted in Treaty 8 territory, where memory, place, and loss intertwine. Sourcing from the works of more than 20 Palestinian and Indigenous poets, SPACE: Lessons in Taking and Making (August), edited by Alexei Perry Cox, brings to light the relationship between reader and writer, person and space. And sliding between the coolly critical and the bracingly personal, Bad Material (July), by Julia Polyck-O'Neill, ambles through the gallery and the archive, scoping out signs of gender disruption.

Resisting the conventional narratives of care and cure, Tiana Reid’s Nightnursing (September) is a frenetic diary about sobriety and what recovery really means in a world where the innate need for “better” is both trauma and treatment. The Time of the Earth (October) is the last in Jaspreet Singh’s “Still Astonished” trilogy, investigating the emotional and existential registers of inner life in this epoch informally named the anthropocene, writing alongside air, water, language, and memory: inseparable ecologies that humanity attempts to segregate at its peril. Carolyn Smart’s Breath Taking (September) is an unflinching and tender recollection of illness, death, and grief, sensitively exploring the dynamic between the burden of care and the burden of dying. And equal parts intimate diary, scholarly engagement, and playful experimentation, Whispering Gallery (October), by Dani Spinosa, offers myth as a site of shared vulnerability, radical care, and connection.

What if I Sang Flower of Scotland? (October), by Catriona Strang, confronts the transnational histories of Scottish culture from a perspective grounded in Vancouver, asking what it means to be a settler on stolen land who has only secondary connections to a distant “homeland.” In a powerful interplay of striking descriptions with tender intimations, Empties (August), Neil Surkan’s third poetry collection, reckons with fatherhood in a depleted and collapsing environment: Is it possible to nurture new shoots while the fires close in? Celebrated spoken-word artist Rebecca Thomas's second poetry collection Blended (September), a follow up to the critically acclaimed I place you into the fire, explores the author's various blended identities—as a Mi'kmaw woman, daughter, sister, auntie, wife, student, mentor, activist, poet, friend—as well as her blended family. Here’s to Letting Go (May), by Blaine Thonton, weaves through the memories of a child seeking safety that was never found at home.

Part exploration of ecological collapse, part memoir undressing a late-life Autism diagnosis, Michael Trussler’s Whoosh (September) is an unwavering collection of “rambles / more rogue than feral.” Chris Turnbull's notes from recently considers ecological relationships amid ways of noticing loss and change. A multilingual collection by emerging Indigenous poet Kalli Van Stone, welík’t (September) combines Salish languages with English and revitalizes ancestral traditions. The Work Is Done When We Are Dead (October), Jade Wallace’s sophomore poetry collection, considers work in all its many forms, with a particular interest in types of labour that are unpaid, underappreciated, or even entirely unrecognized. Meditating on the beauty of an ordinary life, Sanna Wani’s second poetry collection, Lantern (September), explores how we fall in love and make a home. And in Farhang: Book Two (October), Patrick Woodcock continues to celebrate, honour, and mourn the world he’s witnessed during three decades as a migrant writer.

All the Feels: Celebrating Canadian Romance

admin@49thshelf.com (Kerry Clare) — Thu, 06 Aug 2026 14:16:59 +0000

Canadian authors and romance novels are two of my favourite things to shout about from the rooftops. While I am a contemporary romance author, I’ve always considered myself a romance reader first. Reading romance—whether it be traditionally published books or fanfiction of my favourite television shows is—what I’ve always felt the most inspired by. Romance makes me feel, and contrary to popular belief, I’m not always swooning. Often when I read romance I’m crying, laughing, or wanting to throw my book across the room because I’m frustrated. That’s what a good story brings out in you.

Books that are marketed as “romance” always have one thing in common: a happily-ever-after—the promise that the two characters you’re reading about are going to be okay at the end, together. What’s beautiful about this is that there’s so much room in the middle of the book to raise the stakes and send readers to surprising, sometimes devastating places. Romance novels are beautiful that way.

Romance makes me feel, and contrary to popular belief, I’m not always swooning.

In no particular order, I’m sharing a list of romance recommendations from Canadian authors. I hope that you enjoy these novels as much as I have. If you’ve never read romance, thank you for exploring this wonderful genre. I’m excited for your journey!

*****

Leave and Come Back, by Lavanya Lakshmi

Two weeks. One Wedding. The chaos is just beginning...

Simran finally has her Bollywood romance. Leo, the man she has been hopelessly in love with since college, loves her back. But when Leo accidentally crashes her cousin's two-week long wedding, there's a problem ... no one can know they're together.

Simran hasn’t been home for seven years and Indian family functions are a no-boyfriend zone. Using her favourite Bollywood film DDLJ as inspiration, Simran hatches a plan. They must pretend to be strangers, charm the aunties, and hide their relationship at all costs.

As wedding festivities spin out of control, can Simran have the love she’s always wanted and the family reconciliation she didn’t know she needed?

Meet Me By The Lake, by Carley Fortune

A random connection sends two strangers on a daylong adventure where they make a promise one keeps and the other breaks, with life-changing effects.

Fern Brookbanks has wasted far too much of her adult life thinking about Will Baxter. She spent just 24 hours in her early twenties with the aggravatingly attractive, idealistic artist, a chance encounter that spiralled into a daylong adventure in Toronto. The timing was wrong, but their connection was undeniable: they shared every secret, every dream, and made a pact to meet one year later. Fern showed up. Will didn’t.

At 32, Fern’s life doesn’t look at all how she once imagined it would. Instead of living in the city, Fern’s back home, running her mother’s Muskoka lakeside resort—something she vowed never to do. The place is in disarray, her ex-boyfriend’s the manager, and Fern doesn’t know where to begin.

She needs a plan—a lifeline. To her surprise, it comes in the form of Will, who arrives nine years too late, with a suitcase in tow and an offer to help on his lips. Will may be the only person who understands what Fern’s going through. But how could she possibly trust this expensive-suit wearing mirage who seems nothing like the young man she met all those years ago. Will is hiding something, and Fern’s not sure she wants to know what it is.

But ten years ago, Will Baxter rescued Fern. Can she do the same for him?

The Book Tour, by Emily Ohanjanians

Despite her popular podcast and sold-out speaking events, Ana Movilian still feels like she has to prove herself. To her family, who can’t believe she quit med school to build an influencer career, and to literary snobs, who decry her buzzy self-help book. Happily, her upcoming book tour is the perfect chance to show the world just how bright her star can shine.

That is, until her beloved publicist resigns the night before their plane is set to take off, announcing that her replacement is none other than Ryan bleeping Grant.

Ryan specializes in highbrow, “important” books, and his perma-scowl in every interaction with Ana makes one thing clear: he does not get her book. Or her. He’s the last person who should be promoting her work, the last person she should be stuck with for two weeks...and the last person who should look that damn good in business casual.

As they travel from city to city, however, Ana’s assumptions about Ryan take new shape. A decidedly more appealing shape. Soon, their growing attraction starts to feel like a ticking time bomb. But crossing that line could derail each of their careers faster than you can say “conflict of interest,” and they both have bigger dreams at stake than the bestseller list.

The Summers Between Us, by Noreen Nanja

Lia Juma thought she’d buried the dreams of her heart long ago. But when she’s forced to return to her family’s summer cottage on Pike Bay, the life she’s carefully crafted begins to unravel. The perfect immigrant daughter, Lia has carved out a successful career as a corporate lawyer and has just started dating a man who fulfills all her mother’s criteria for the ideal son-in-law. But underneath her polished life lies a secret she’s never spoken of—one she fears could have destroyed her family a decade ago.

Back at the bay, Lia stumbles upon memories she thought were long forgotten and, at the centre of it all, is Wesley Forest—the boy she left behind, the boy who knew her dreams better than anyone. Their friendship and young love once burned bright, woven through long sun-drenched days and whispered promises of a future together. But when family pressures and heartbreak pulled the two lovers apart, they were forced to follow separate paths.

Now, Wes is back in her life, and with him, old wounds and feelings surface. As the two confront the choices and secrets that divided them as teenagers, Lia must decide if she can heal from the past and finally embrace the life and love she’s always craved. Could a second chance with Wes be worth risking everything for?

Never Been Better, by Leanne Toshiko Simpson

A hilariously offbeat and tender comedy about one bipolar woman’s messy search for love at a seaside wedding where no one can stay afloat.

Dee, Misa, and Matt were the “three musketeers” of the psych ward. A year after discharge, Dee is eager to convince everyone that she’s finally turning things around. But Matt and Misa are tying the knot in Turks and Caicos, surrounded by guests who have no idea where they met, and the secrecy isn’t sitting well with Dee, who has been hopelessly in love with Matt since before she got kicked out of the hospital.

So, when Dee arrives at the swanky resort with her high-voltage sister, Tilley, it’s now or never to confess how she feels. But disrupting her best friends’ nuptials would jeopardize the entire support system that holds the trio together. When it comes to happily ever afters, how is a girl supposed to choose between love and recovery?

Revolve, by Bal Khabra

Sierra Romanova was an Olympian figure skater before a life-altering accident on the ice left her with panic attacks every time she enters the rink. Now, back for her final year at Dalton University, she’s ready to reclaim the spotlight, with all eyes on her…including those of hockey player Dylan Donovan, whose audacious words goad her back into her skates to prove him wrong.

After getting kicked off his hockey team for his reckless behavior, Dylan is left with slim chances of making it to the NHL draft. But Dylan’s whole world revolves around the ice, and if hockey is forbidden, well at least there’s figure skating. Even better, it means more time at the rink with Sierra. Sure, he’s helping her rebuild her confidence, but pushing her buttons along the way? That’s just a bonus.

As the figure skating world awaits Sierra’s comeback, she finds herself in need for a new pairs partner. The only person she knows who can match her skill on the ice is none other than the cocky hockey player who refuses to cut her any slack. Dylan’s a wildcard, Sierra’s a seasoned pro, but together, they might just be the perfect match on the ice.

People Watching, by Hannah Bonam-Young

Prudence Welch has found solace in her introverted life in Baysville, a charming tourist town in Northern Ontario. Despite once dreaming of a life beyond its borders, she now finds contentment in her routines: working at her father’s gas station, writing poetry, and caring for her mother, who was diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimer’s disease shortly after Prue’s 19th birthday. But as her mother’s condition worsens and her father’s concerns about her own future intensify, Prue feels her world slipping further out of control.

Enter Milo Kablukov, an enigmatic wanderer whose beat-up van covered with ill-advised bumper stickers rolls into town just when Prue needs a change. It’s all too easy to let go with him, and Prue can’t help but strike up an unlikely friendship with Milo, which leads to a wild and sexy agreement between them.

Milo, a man of many adventures and countless stories, is not one to settle down. However, his brother’s urgent need for help has brought him to Baysville, and now the intriguing Prue has given him more reason to stay—especially once they start spending more time together, their chemistry intensifying, and casual-sex lessons begin at Prue’s request.

But as their temporary arrangement blossoms into something deeper, Prue and Milo discover that getting out of their comfort zones is one thing—taking that leap together is something else entirely.

The Bodyguard Affair, by Amy Lea

Andi Zeigler lives a double life. By day, she’s the no-nonsense, steadfast personal assistant to the Prime Minister of Canada’s wife. By night, she slips out of her heels and writes romance novels under a top-secret pen name. But when her steamiest book, The Prime Minister & Me, unexpectedly becomes a bestseller, rumors of a real-life affair between her and the PM start swirling out of control.

Enter Nolan Crosby, the PM’s new close protection officer (aka bodyguard)—and Andi’s failed one-night stand from three years ago. Nolan’s in town very temporarily to care for his mother, who’s battling early-onset Alzheimer’s. But when the scandal erupts, Andi ropes him into a fake-dating plan.

As loyal employees, they’ll pretend to date for the summer, just long enough to put the scandal to bed and save their boss’s reputation. In an unexpected plot twist, Andi and Nolan discover that keeping their romance strictly fictional might be easier said than done.

Full Throttle, by J.K. MacLaren

When Juliette Marchmont becomes the first female driver in Formula 1, she knows it’s her one shot to prove she has what it takes to win. She has skeptical managers, arrogant rivals, and rabid fans to prove wrong, all while driving the worst car on the grid—also, her teammate is the man who broke her heart, back during her academy days.

Dominic Hastings is the Prince of F1, but all his composure and accolades couldn’t stop his distant, secretive father from firing him after a disastrous performance last season. He’s desperate to show his dad and the rest of the racing world that he’s far from finished—but can he survive working with the woman that he never quite got over?

Forced to train in close quarters, Dominic and Juliette butt heads on and off the racetrack. As the competition grows ever more heated, and their connection becomes undeniable, they start to wonder if the bruised love between them might be repaired after all. But they can’t afford distractions. Teammates or no, only one driver can emerge victorious, and Juliette and Dominic are willing to do whatever it takes to cross the finish line first.

Learn more about Let's Kiss and Tell:

A sex columnist and a news reporter realize a fake relationship can help them both professionally and personally—but they aren’t prepared for the real feelings that start to develop beyond the headlines—from the bestselling author of It’s Different This Time.

Lucy Reid is a sex columnist whose views on relationships aren’t exactly optimistic. Instead, she empowers her readers to embrace their sexuality and challenge the belief that you need a partner to be happy. That is, until her editor tells her that their readers are all in relationships—and the team thinks it’s time for something (or someone) new. To buy herself time, Lucy impulsively claims she’s just started a new relationship that she can write about. Enter Marshall Oakley.

Marshall Oakley is the new Senior News Writer at Lucy’s company. When the two meet at a work event, Marsh reveals that Julia, his ex of nine years, is getting married, and he needs a plus one to keep his family off his back. They agree to pretend to be in a relationship until the wedding—Lucy will be able to write about finding "the one" only to break up and prove to her readers (and her bosses) that relationships don’t solve everything, and Marshall gets a no-strings date to show off to his friends, family, and his ex.

But as they spend more time together, the lines blur and each begins to reevaluate their previously held views on love. As fear gives way to misunderstandings, can they find the courage to rewrite their story with a happily ever after?

Our August Summer Fiction List Has Landed!

admin@49thshelf.com (Kerry Clare) — Mon, 03 Aug 2026 18:16:01 +0000

Our August Summer Fiction List is up for giveaway until the end of August—head to our giveaways page for your chance to win.

*****

Welcome to Sunny Town, by Théodora Armstrong

About the book: In this striking debut novel, a young artist rashly moves overseas to teach ESL and to find herself, and gets more—and less—than she bargained for.

It's the turn of the 21st century and Maggie is looking for reinvention. Fresh out of art school with — as her undergraduate advisor put it—a lack of vision for her future, Maggie follows a talented classmate to Japan, leaving behind a fractured family and a toxic relationship with her professor. Little does she know, not only her own life, but the entire world around her is about to change.

Upon arrival in Japan, Maggie meets a group of maladjusted foreigners and immediately becomes enmeshed in their volatile friendships and personal dramas. Despite having no real qualifications whatsoever, she gets a job teaching English at Language Love Academy where she meets Keiko, an overzealous, middle-aged student and self-proclaimed language lover. When Keiko offers to teach Maggie Japanese, an unlikely friendship develops between them, and before long Keiko has become a ballast amid the disruptive forces in Maggie's life overseas. Have Maggie and her friends come to Japan to disappear or find themselves? Are their friendships and hook-ups real or just another illusion? Maggie struggles to discern whether she is sinking deeper into her hapless life abroad or gaining a foothold on a real future for herself.

Welcome to Sunny Town is a striking, at times darkly satirical novel that cracks open a popular rite of passage, critically examining teaching overseas and the worldwide ESL industry. Bringing to mind the work of Elif Batumen, or Ottessa Moshfegh, Armstrong's debut novel paints a deft portrait of twenty-somethings yearning for identity, connection, and freedom abroad during the turbulent years of the early aughts.

Midnight at the Savoy: A Priscilla Tempest Mystery, Book 5, by Ron Base

About the book: It’s midnight at the Savoy Hotel, and the doorman notices a Rolls-Royce parked in a spot where it shouldn’t be. In the back seat is a man who is, most regrettably, dead—clutching a love note addressed to a woman named… Priscilla. Could this be Miss Tempest, the feisty, trouble-prone Canadian who heads the Savoy’s press office?

Once again, Priscilla finds herself of great interest to the police. At the same time, she must juggle a cascade of crises. The infamously difficult Rex Harrison is living up to his reputation. Marlene Dietrich, the seductive Hollywood legend, is being—well—seductive, especially when Priscilla is around. To top it off, Priscilla’s hypochondriac younger sister, Phoebe, arrives unexpectedly from Toronto. Conservative Phoebe, the “good” Tempest sister, has come to bring Priscilla home. Good luck with that.

It’s a good thing Agatha Christie herself is hanging around—Priscilla is going to need the help of the world’s best-selling mystery writer to solve the murder and clear her name. That is, if she doesn’t end up dead or, worse, unemployed.

The fifth Priscilla Tempest mystery may just be her wildest, most unexpected, and most dangerous adventure yet!

The Queen of Florida: A Crime Novel, by Jeff Bercuson

About the book: A wickedly entertaining romp featuring retired widow June who delves into the deep underbelly of paradise—Boca—to get everything she knows she deserves

June has spent a lifetime tending to the infinite needs of her four children, especially the youngest, Jimmy, who was the black sheep from the very beginning and who has dragged her down to hellish places she never expected or wanted to go: court, rehab, prison. After Jimmy’s latest relapse, June makes a break for it. She heads south to a place where so many like her have found their happiness: Boca. For the first time in her life, she does what she wants—until Jimmy knocks on her door unannounced with that strange hollow look in his eyes.

But the prodigal son is not made for paradise, and he disappears not long after he arrives. June’s search for him draws her into the shadiest corners of this sunlit Shangri-La, where there are dirty cops, ambitious gangsters, and vicious henchmen waiting for her. Opportunities wait in the darkness, too. And after a lifetime of sacrifice and self-denial, why shouldn’t June partake of them? After all, Florida is expensive—she needs a new roof, a new car, a new face—and June is on a fixed income. Plus, you can’t become the queen without breaking a few rules.

Fret, by Nadia Bozak

About the book: Once a rising star of indie rock, Kate is now a middle-aged single mom living far out of the spotlight. Everything changes for her when an unprecedented heat wave and a stolen car set off a chain of events that threaten to upend her new, peaceful life. Fired from her job, separated from her children, and overwhelmed by public shaming, Kate must navigate the cold realities of the child welfare and family court systems while struggling to stay cool in an increasingly unbearable world.

If building community is Kate’s way of reckoning with the mistakes of her past, can it also be a way to mitigate the deeper, more urgent issues and structural injustices that threaten our future?

Little Spoons, by Diedre J. Halbot

About the book: Amidst the unique landscape and history of French Newfoundland, rumours of the supernatural and a sudden death unearth family secrets.

The Unnameable, by Stephens Gerard Malone

About the book: Audie Malloy knows he's not like other boys. At 15, growing up on an air force base outside of Ottawa, Ontario, he'd rather spend his time reading library books and spying on his neighbours than playing hockey like his father wishes he would. He doesn't make friends easily—and something happened with the last neighbour boy, whose family up and left, but Audie isn't talking about it. Then the Weston brothers move in.

Gib Weston is everything Audie isn't. On the outside, he's a carbon copy of his older brothers: brash, macho, athletic. He glides through a world that Audie finds excruciating. A world of raunchy locker rooms and casual ribbing and easy masculinity. And yet, as he observes Gib from his bedroom, Audie uncovers a softer side. A boy who secretly devours books, who cares for his sick mother, and who has maybe noticed Audie too.

As the two boys are drawn together, the country is divided, with separatism, the flagrant nationalism of Expo '67, and the military's "Fruit Machine" creating a manic backdrop of suspicion, disruption, and intolerance. An enthralling, devastating, and uniquely Canadian coming-of-age story, The Unnameable is a heady exploration of masculinity and sexuality, shame and secrets, and an era when being openly queer meant risking everything.

Leila and Khaled, by Nyla Matuk

About the book: A decolonial vacation romance between two Palestinians—one raised in exile, the other rooted on the land—searching for home in each other.

Leila, a Palestinian Canadian film scholar, joins a delegation of academics on her first journey to Occupied Palestine. What begins as an intellectual pilgrimage becomes an intimate, destabilizing return to an ancestral land her family was exiled from. There, she meets Khaled—a younger Palestinian man who pulls her into a mesmeric trance of desire, curiosity, and confrontation. Their brief charged affair unfolds in a landscape shaped by rupture and resistance, each of them bearing different inheritances of the same loss.

One night in Khaled’s hotel room, Leila listens as he recounts a harrowing confrontation with a former paramilitary who participated in the Nakba of 1948. The conversation cracks open buried grief and fury, bringing history violently into the present.

Leila and Khaled is a love story and a reckoning—a lyrical, unflinching meditation on belonging, memory, and the enduring wounds of colonialism.

What We Found Instead, by Heidi Reimer

About the book: A moving and compulsively readable novel about two very different women and the unlikely bond they forge in the wreckage of one man’s betrayal.

Maggie feels behind for 35—still unsure about her career path, still living with roommates and struggling through a never-ending PhD—but at least she’s certain about her relationship with her boyfriend, Karl. That is until she hears the voicemail on Karl's phone from some woman named Eve, who’s using words Maggie can’t process—like “baby,” “love,” and “tonight.” In an instant, Maggie’s trust in Karl unravels, but she doesn’t know the whole truth—and only one person can help her find it: Eve.

Eve didn’t flee New York and the stress of running her hand-crafted furniture business just to be dragged into someone else’s drama. She likes the quiet rhythm of her Northern Ontario lake life: her dog, her cozy home, her dependable routines—and Karl, at least on the weekends when he’s not working in Toronto. So when a stranger presses for a meeting, Eve is wary. She doesn’t like her earnestness, her probing questions, her expectation of solidarity. And she certainly doesn’t like the news Maggie delivers: Karl is her boyfriend, too.

Maggie and Eve’s tense encounter upends both of their lives. They expect to never see each other again, but instead they’re thrown back together—forced to face their resentments and insecurities head-on, pushed into vulnerability with the one person whose very existence caused their heartbreak.

What We Found Instead is a captivating and insightful look at complex relationships and a love letter to female friendship, asking us to consider questions about love, loyalty, and what we owe to ourselves and to others.

Let's Kiss and Tell, by Joss Richard

About the book: A sex columnist and a news reporter realize a fake relationship can help them both professionally and personally—but they aren’t prepared for the real feelings that start to develop beyond the headlines—from the bestselling author of It’s Different This Time.

Lucy Reid is a sex columnist whose views on relationships aren’t exactly optimistic. Instead, she empowers her readers to embrace their sexuality and challenge the belief that you need a partner to be happy. That is, until her editor tells her that their readers are all in relationships . . . and the team thinks it’s time for something (or someone) new. To buy herself time, Lucy impulsively claims she’s just started a new relationship that she can write about. Enter Marshall Oakley.

Saudade, by Thomas Trofimuk

About the book: Bruce Flynn has long been overwhelmed by his unruly and alarming fear of death. His wife, Pilar, distracts him by telling him drawn-out and convoluted stories, hiding him behind so many twists and turns that even Death itself will not be able to find him. During one such story, while the couple is on holiday in Macon, France, Bruce becomes entirely engrossed in the tabletop as he listens to Pilar. When he looks up, she’s gone. Bruce looks for her, waits for her, interrogates the waiter, but she’s nowhere to be found. Her bags, her clothes, and her toiletries are all gone. Bruce asks himself if this could be an elaborate prank—it’s the kind of trick Pilar loves—and he begins to see clues in the story she told. The next morning Bruce sets out on a journey to follow these clues and to find Pilar.

Saudade is the sixth novel from award-winning writer Thomas Trofimuk. It is a sweeping literary thriller, moving across Europe and North America, from France to Italy, to Palm Springs, and Lake Louise, showing a world on the cusp of a global pandemic. It is a love story, a story of stories, of loss, and of discovery.

What We Carry: Summer 2026

admin@49thshelf.com (Justine Yu) — Mon, 03 Aug 2026 17:00:49 +0000

Unearthing: A Story of Tangled Love and Family Secrets by Kyo Maclear (Knopf Canada)

A dam broke inside of me while reading Kyo Maclear's Unearthing: A Story of Tangled Love and Family Secrets. This stunning memoir uncovers the many twists and turns of a long-held family secret that unravels when a DNA test reveals that the man who raised Kyo was not her biological father. Over the course of a year or so, Kyo attempts to piece together her own identity in the face of this rupture, the stories of the many branches of her family, and the makings of her mysterious mother, who is slowly losing her memory.

Unearthing grapples with profoundly difficult and significant questions about what we inherit beyond heredity, about the fine and not-so-fine lines between truth and memory, and all the complexity of what makes a family. Kyo does all of this while weaving in lessons from the earth through her own personal botanical relationships. Each chapter is brief, lyrical, and meandering in the best way possible, leaving readers softened and tender by her meditative prose. It is a fiercely loving story that embodies equanimity, holding multiple truths with so much care, curiosity, and compassion. Unearthing is a precious lesson on what it means to be beautifully human amidst fracture.

____________________________

Seven Fallen Feathers: Racism, Death, and Hard Truths in a Northern City by Tanya Talaga (House of Anansi Press)

If you think colonization is a thing of so-called "Canada's" past, then you need to pick up Tanya Talaga’s Seven Fallen Feathers to understand just how the Indian Residential School System continues to impact not just survivors, but their families and whole communities. You need to understand how the Government of Canada continues to underfund schools on Indigenous reserves despite claiming to move towards “reconciliation”. You need to understand how Indigenous children, youth, women, girls, people continue to die at the hands of this colonial government.

Seven Fallen Feathers: Racism, Death, and Hard Truths in a Northern City investigates the deaths of seven Indigenous high school students who died between 2000 and 2011 while attending school far from their home communities in Thunder Bay, Ontario. Through investigative journalism and conversations with families, Tanya Talaga reveals not only a history lesson, but this country's destructive current affairs.

____________________________

We Have Always Been Here A Queer Muslim Memoir by Samra Habib (Penguin Group Canada)

A really honest and vulnerable exploration of the intersection of sexuality, religion, and race. We Have Always Been Here tells Samra Habib’s complex story of fleeing persecution as an Ahmadi Muslim in Pakistan and coming of age as a queer Muslim in Canada. What struck me the most about this book was the grace, compassion, and kindness with which they write about their parents. Habib speaks uncompromisingly of their parents' faults and flaws while also holding a deep understanding of and kindness towards their limitations…while also holding them accountable for their actions. It’s a rare and admirable thing to be able to do, and it is powerful to bear witness to their story.

____________________________

The Quiet is Loud by Samantha Garner (Invisible Publishing)

The Quiet is Loud follows Freya Tanangco, a Canadian woman of Filipino and Norwegian descent, who has prophetic abilities that deeply complicate her life. Working as an online tarot card reader, Freya has spent years hiding from a society that fears and vilifies "vekers" – that is, people like her who have enhanced mental abilities. But when her visions become more acute and dangerous, Freya connects with an underground support group of people with different "skills" who challenge her to confront her past, her family's secrets, and her own identity.

The Quiet is Loud is a delicious and delightful tale that weaves speculative fiction with Filipino and Norse mythology, as well as tarot symbolism and storytelling – all while exploring themes of belonging, mixed-race identity, and the power of forging your own path and speaking your own truth.

____________________________

Committed to Irony

admin@49thshelf.com (Kerry Clare) — Thu, 30 Jul 2026 17:26:41 +0000

Written with great humour and self-awareness, Koh-i-Noor is a satirical coming-of-age tale about a well-intentioned young man determined to change the world.

*****

Irony's Edge: The Theory and Politics of Irony, by Linda Hutcheon

Irony is evil and also necessary, I declared at my Montreal book launch. In the moment, I was trying to answer a question about the role of irony in speaking of oneself and one’s community. I am committed to irony, I recall saying. The basis for such a statement was in part inspired by Linda Hutcheon’s important book. From her I learned that irony’s readability depends on the discursive communities in which it happens. It is necessary in the way it allows artists and writers space for different velocities of meaning in a single text. And evil; despite first appearing in 1994, its timeliness in our age of troll presidents only continues to be more astounding.

Authenticity is a feeling: My Life in PME-ART, by Jacob Wren

Wren's book is a sort of biography of his performance art group PME-ART. His account of their work, whose aim is stripping away theatricality and “being yourself in a performance situation,” is therefore an exercise in nonfiction. But putting something in a performative frame or committing it to the printed word involve a sophisticated understanding of authenticity where irony, fluidity and hallucination are part of the deal (I tend to project confidence into the awkwardness of PME-ART performers, which can make them alienating as opposed to vulnerable). I think Wren agrees with me: “I am rewriting history from the perspective of now, because nonfiction is always also a kind of fiction.”

Maintenance and The Damagers, by Rob Benvie

Unfamiliar with his work, I unwittingly got lucky when Rob Benvie agreed to provide a blurb for my book, as his writing (and Oisín Curran’s, discussed below) is genuinely a revelation. In Maintenance, the multi-pronged family drama and the malaise-spiked sense of humour resonated, felt lived-in but also remote. I wondered how the grain of such a world could be so ambivalently and intimately drawn, given Benvie’s youth, like mine, had taken place in Nova Scotia, which means his experiences must be exactly the same as mine.

In The Damagers I learned how a writing practise can evolve over time. Because of its somewhat subtler style, I was wondering if this effort still had the fangs of his earlier book, when a hundred pages in, something convinced me—Benvie’s willingness to bring out the grey area within all of his characters.

Psychoanalysis and Synchronized Swimming, by Jeanne Randolph

Randoph's long career of writing on culture and art has been so inspiring and path breaking, it is hard to choose a particular book. In the late 1970s she coined “ficto-criticism,” a perspective on art writing in which the figure of the critic shifts away from the dependence on an appearance of objectivity and on their value-adding role. Ficto-criticism points to ideas of autonomy, community, and a spirit of self-implication. But Randolph—a performance artist and working psychiatrist to boot—has also published multiple collections of essays on media, psychology and consumerism. I would point to her elaboration of “amenable objects” within this collection for a recasting of the experience of art, a reading where play rather than psychological judgment enables fuller input: “A collegial interaction, in which the viewer contributes equally to meaning and interpretation, is made possible, rather than a relationship in which the artwork is an authority and the audience is a voyeur.”

Blood Fable, by Oisín Curran

I read Curran's book voraciously after finding it among famous Halifax bookseller JW Doull’s holdings. In some ways with a feeling of panic. Its themes—the story of a child’s coming to terms with the community in which they are growing up—overlap some of those in my book, and the writing is potent, visceral, lean and yet sprawling in its imagination. What about preemption, IP? Gladly, we aren’t in that business, and I can feel rewarded and recognized by having read Blood Fable, as you will be, and lucky that Curran agreed to provide the second blurb for my book.

Ghost Islands of Nova Scotia, Buried in the Woods: Sawmill Ghost Towns of Nova Scotia, Gold Rush Ghost towns of Nova Scotia, by Mike Parker

On my research into Nova Scotian history and geography, the books of Mike Parker jumped out for their extensive photographic illustrations and concise storytelling. The province’s settler history is famed for tales of disaster, vague shrouds and brutal displacements, but in Parker’s version the haunting I felt was that of human experience. Fun fact: the character Reagan Macdonald’s sloop in my book was named “Baldonia” after The Principality of Outer Baldonia, a defunct 4-acre micronation declared sovereign in 1949 by gassy American businessmen/pleasure-boaters on the southernmost tip of the Tusket Islands of Nova Scotia. This anecdote was delivered to me directly by Mike Parker.

The Second Substance, by Anne Lardeux, translated by Pablo Strauss

Lardeaux's sexy debut novel depicts an accidental heterotopia in an abandoned gas station somewhere on an exurban fringe, in a time of breakdown (because isn’t that the time we’re in?). Her writing jumps narrators and styles in her and and her characters’ search for freedom. Fragility is everywhere but also a resoluteness that accepts damaged bodies, rejected ages and discarded classes. The Second Substance teaches us how to go outside of oneself. Even the cop is inspired to take off her uniform and get frisky.

George the Parasite, by SF Ho

Ho's beautiful little novella is another one that challenged my self-understanding of writing a novel as an artist. The theme of virtuality emerged as key for me to take in the dizzying transformations that occur across the narrative. Ho tears open George the protagonist, and subjects him to a restless chase for identity. George is the form that the world fills in; his parasitism is his lack of power to change the outcome. The parasite can’t be blamed for the social, economic, planetary catastrophe and the devastation of colonialism, but must nevertheless bear witness to it. Unflinching, warped, inventive.

Bunny and Shark, by Alisha Piercy

I saw Piercy's art installation at Centre Clark in Montreal before reading her novel. Her show consisted of sculptures, drawings and dyed fabric backdrops as well as a small chapbook for a story she was working on. It implied that the viewer should read the text on site, a provocative demand. The effect was neither correlation nor didacticism, but rather an overall environmental arrangement of narrative possibility in the space. This kind of movement between figure and ground pervades Bunny and Shark, in which the boundaries between the heroine and the ocean, the jungle are trespassed and transcended. An agile and loopy revenge tale written in the second person, this is a book I kept in mind when I first started to consider how my work as an artist interfaced with my writing. In a chance street encounter Alisha asked how the book was going; I said sometimes I felt too conventional; she replied that’s partly what makes us want to read a novel: the play between the conventional and the experimental.

These Memories Do Not Belong to Us, by Yiming Ma

My friend gave this book to me as a Christmas gift and—at that moment I was obsessed with the idea of reading the latest Chris Kraus novel as soon as possible—I asked if we could exchange it. The store didn’t budge. But I am glad that I ended up reading this intentionally fragmentary dystopian book set in a future of Mindbanks where memories can be accessed and censored by authorities. What could have amounted to a high-tech, Big-Brother othering of the People’s Republic of China instead felt deeper and more anchored in temporal and cultural reference, and more philosophical in its treatment of the role of technological advances in governance, subjectivity and humanity. In one particular chapter akin to an inner monologue, I suddenly realized Yiming’s grammar was like a mutation of first-, second- and third-person: a superego disciplining the thoughts and motions of the character we were inside of. It felt like an innovation.

Learn more about Koh-i-Noor:

It’s 2011 on Nova Scotia’s South Shore, and Sean Lohan is at a crossroads. The son of Colorado Buddhists, Sean wonders if he should accept his parents’ offer to join their natural cosmetics company or venture out on his own. When an art history professor opens Sean’s eyes to the contradictions of capitalism, he realizes he can’t avoid or transcend his own personal dilemmas and instead chooses to face them head-on.

Sean’s ultimate decision to found a social enterprise leads him to China. At the same time, his close friend Jerry becomes entangled in a Google-like tech enterprise in California, and his girlfriend Samantha pursues her own high-minded interventions in Cuba—each path leading to increasingly risky and complex outcomes.

In the roving literary style of Thomas Pynchon and Mathias Énard, this enthralling debut offers readers a fast-paced adventure through the diverging nuances of economics, spirituality, and extraction. In a period of increasing uncertainty, Koh-i-Noor is a timely doomscroll through four decades of globalization, generational change, and the search for one’s own values.

Honouring Inheritance: The Chat with Jane Park

admin@49thshelf.com (Trevor Corkum) — Mon, 27 Jul 2026 19:03:03 +0000

Jane Park is a second-generation Korean Canadian writer. She is a MacDowell Fellow, and was a participant in the Banff Centre’s Writing Studio, and Diaspora Dialogues. She was born in Edmonton, Alberta, lived in New York City for over a decade, and now lives in Calgary, Alberta. Currently, she is pursuing an MFA at the University of British Columbia. Inheritance is her debut novel.
_____

Inheritance follows Anne Kim, a successful New York lawyer who travels back to Edmonton for her father’s funeral and is forced to confront family secrets and buried truths. When did Anne’s story first come alive for you?

From the start, this novel was all about following Anne’s voice. Twenty years ago, I was disgruntled with my job. I was sitting at my desk when I heard the voice of an unhappy tax lawyer, so I started writing what would become the beginning of my novel. Her father just passed. She had a brother in rehab, a mother who didn’t seem reliable and I didn’t know if Anne was entirely reliable either.

For the first few months I wrote in a fevered state, her voice came so effortlessly to me. In hindsight, I should have just quit my job, moved back to Canada, and holed up at my parents’ place to write until the end, but I didn’t. I got distracted, stopped writing for months, then years, each time, after some time passed, I would pick up my manuscript, re-read it and think, “I have to finish this book.”

For the first few months I wrote in a fevered state, her voice came so effortlessly to me. In hindsight, I should have just quit my job, moved back to Canada, and holed up at my parents’ place to write until the end, but I didn’t.

In its earliest form, the story lacked a plot, so it was all stream of consciousness, writing-on-vibes. I was being too precious with my words. As I’ve aged, I’ve craved plot in my stories, so one benefit from all this passing time is that eventually, I was able to build a structure for my sentences—so, it would be like buying a beautiful sofa with decorative pillows and a matching rug, then returning with plywood to build a house to contain it.

As the narrative moves back in time, we meet Anne as a child, facing racism, boredom, and family dysfunction in a small and remote prairie town. What was the most difficult part about writing Anne’s childhood?

I wanted the racist elements to be rooted in truth, so I mined these passages from my own experiences. I didn’t want these scenes to be heavy-handed, but also not strip it of how they impacted Anne and her family. So I tried hard to hit that right note. Specifically, passages that I wanted to get just right were when the town stopped shopping at the parents’ store once they took over, the store getting robbed during Christmas, and the beauty contest Anne participated in—I remember many bitter recesses, where the popular boys would rank us girls according to our beauty, and I was always last or penultimate.

I wanted the racist elements to be rooted in truth, so I mined these passages from my own experiences. I didn’t want these scenes to be heavy-handed, but also not strip it of how they impacted Anne and her family.

Also, the father is a composite of many Korean patriarchs I’ve known. I didn’t want my reader to immediately write him off as abusive, but see him as a product of the Confucian family structure. I find how women are treated in Confucianism very problematic, but it’s part of my DNA, and I wanted to explore gender roles in a way that enables a reader to feel compassion for both the females and males in my novel.

Inheritance traces the profound social and material challenges of migrating to Canada for Anne’s family, in particular to a rural part of the country, where her family eventually moves. Why was it important to explore migration through the lens of a small town?

Back then and even now, the prairies are scattered with Korean entrepreneurs who run stores or gas stations in rural communities, exiled from friends and family. It shows the extreme measures Koreans will go to get ahead—sure, you’re isolated, but businesses are cheaper, you have less competition, you make more money. My parents ran several businesses in such places, and I wanted to highlight this part of the Korean immigrant experience—so often, our stories are placed in big cities, but the diaspora plays an important role running small-town businesses.

When I travel through the country, I do encounter many Koreans running the town’s grocery/convenience store or gas station, and I have often wondered why we do this. I think, culturally, we are more willing to make extreme sacrifices—to forgo the need for community—in order to better secure our children’s future.

I wanted to highlight this part of the Korean immigrant experience—so often, our stories are placed in big cities, but the diaspora plays an important role running small-town businesses.

One of the shocks Anne receives upon returning home is learning that her father is originally from North Korea (not South Korea, as she’s assumed). How did you go about researching and uncovering this thread of her father’s backstory?

I didn’t do much secondary research for my book. The father’s backstory just came to me because I am fascinated with my parents’ generation who grew up during the Korean War. It just boggles my mind that when my parents came of age during this time, some people left their homes to attend to various matters and suddenly, the 38^th parallel closed and overnight, you never saw your siblings and/or parents again, and for the rest of your life you never knew if they were alive or dead. That’s rich terrain for the imagination.

Coupled with all of their hardship was the lack of psychological resources available for my parents’ generation. They just bucked up and pushed through and created one of the greatest economic miracles of the 20^thcentury. But what was the cost to that silence and success, and how did it affect subsequent generations? I wrote my father’s backstory early on in the book’s genesis. Years later, a friend in her 30s told me she just found out her father was from North Korea, so this sort of silence did happen.

What books have most influenced your journey as a writer?

I love Canadian books about rural life, particularly Margaret Laurence’s Manawaka series and Alistair MacLeod’s stories about Cape Breton. Also, Margaret Atwood’s Cat’s Eye really spoke to me.

Elena Ferrante’s Neopolitan novels blew me away in how propulsive her storytelling was and how a small group of southern Italian friends captured the literary world’s imagination. In My Brilliant Friend, I’ve never been so emotionally invested in a pair of shoes.

Also, when I first started writing my novel, I was into second generation Holocaust memoirs, particularly Eva Hoffman’s Lost in Translation and After Such Knowledge and Anne Karpf’s The War After. I realize the level of devastation in the Holocaust was on another level than that of the Korean War, but the inherited trauma and grief explored by the children of Holocaust survivors really resonated with me and informed my writing and this book.

___

Excerpt from Inheritance

My father passed away yesterday. It was a sudden death from a stroke that occurred, poetically, near the stroke of midnight. My father was driving home with my mother after visiting my brother at the rehabilitation centre, when he fell forward onto the steering wheel. My mother gripped the wheel and gently steered the car onto the shoulder of the highway. When she recounted this moment, she omitted all emotions that a wife of forty years would have felt and methodically outlined what happened next: how she called the ambulance, the time it took for the ambulance to come, the rush into the emergency room, how the doctor shook his head when he saw my father’s condition, and how, six hours later, he was declared dead. She ended her story using that phrase in perfect English, “He was declared dead,” with a drama and finality which made me realize even my own mother, at times, enjoys being histrionic.

I’m sure this will be the story my mother will share with her friends and acquaintances at the funeral. What happened prior to the stroke will be reserved for the few she loves and trusts. She recounted the story about the visit to my brother with exhaustion because she had not slept that night. My father finally agreed to visit Charles, who had been at the centre for a couple of months. Charles had relapsed again when he found out that his ex-girlfriend was engaged to a wealthy Texan who worked trading oil commodities in Calgary. A co-worker found Charles lying in his bare apartment with empty whisky bottles scattered around him after he had missed work for three days.

My mother brought Charles a container of kimchi rice—my brother’s favourite dish—with the rice wrapped in a layer of fried egg and accompanied by packets of ketchup. In the lobby, the container accidentally broke open inside her shopping bag, releasing a sharp, sour aroma. My mother believes the security guard was more annoyed at the pungent smell than alarmed for the security of the people. He called his boss, who called his superior, and soon a crowd of uniformed men surrounded my mother, who tightly held onto her container of kimchi rice. The men began questioning her about the curious contents of the bright red rice dish with its distinct odour. One man commented, “You eat this stuff?”

My father, not realizing that this was a comment and not a question, answered, “Yes, we eat kimchi like you eat bread.” He scooped some of the rice from the bag with his fingers and ate it in front of them. To break an embarrassing silence, the head guard asked my mother to throw away the bag with its container and informed her that all food brought for patients must first be submitted to the nutritionist, who worked only on these specific days. He then gave her the phone number of this specialist, and the men dispersed. At this point of the story, my mother giggled and said that my father had a gift for embarrassing the white man, with his knack for violating every sense of social decorum.

Finally, she spoke of the last conversation they had in the car, moments before he became unconscious. During the ride home, my parents were discussing the passage of time, and how, suddenly, they had arrived at becoming old people with children who were now adults.

What would they do differently if they could go back in time? They agreed they would still immigrate to Canada. Then, after qualifying they could not cheat and make themselves more fluent or affluent in this imagined past, they both could not think of a different life. The implicit conclusion is that my father’s last thought was how he would not want a different life. And so, my mother ends this story that my father “died happily ever after,” ending on a victorious note.

Excerpted from Inheritance by Jane Park, 2026, published by House of Anansi. Reprinted with permission from the publisher.

Notes from a Children's Librarian: Summer Fun

admin@49thshelf.com (Kerry Clare) — Mon, 27 Jul 2026 18:27:39 +0000

Our Children's Librarian columnist, Julie Booker, brings us a new view from the stacks every month.

*****

The Canadian Kids’ Guide to Outdoor Fun, by Helaine Becker, illustrated by Claudia Davila, is a the ultimate go-to summer resource. It includes everything from how to make a kids-only clubhouse complete with secret handshake and secret language, to whistling on a blade of grass and making lemonade. There are road trip games, neighbourhood yard games, water games and by-the-shore games. Older kids will love the canoe strokes, fishing tips, palm-reading, and cloud-identifying. This book offers so many ‘how-to’s’—putting on a play, DIY bubble-makers, pebble pets, raindrop magnifiers, and building a campfire while keeping a moon diary. For all ages—Kindergarten (with adult support) up to Grade 6.

The Language of Flowers, by Dena Seiferling, begins with a bee in the meadow learning how to visit flowers—how to send and receive floral messages. She longs to share the language of flowers beyond the meadow and in venturing far, lands in a swamp with scary plants. She brings back a host of bees to create a true pollinator garden. At the end of the book you’ll find a fluoriography revealing the meaning of many blooms. For example, a tulip means a declaration of love, and a marigold represents grief and vitality. For Kindergarten to Grade 3.

Time sometimes seems to slow down in summer, which is reflected in Julie Morstad’s Time is a Flower. The author/illustrator portrays some summer pursuits, such as watching seeds turn into flowers, playing on a tree that grows year over year, cutting long hair short, kneading dough/baking bread and reading a story or two or three. It touches on all the things we have time to pay attention to during the break: the pebble that used to be a mountain; caterpillars turning into butterflies; sunbeams casting plant shadows. As the text says, time can move slowly until school’s out or move quickly, like waves that swallow castles made on the beach. For Kindergarten to Grade 3.

Summer Feet, by Sheree Fitch, illustrated by Carolyn Fisher, is a grand tongue twister inviting kids to “put on” their summer (bare) feet. The deliciousness of a barefoot summer is felt in the language of this non-stop lyrical romp through activities such as climbing, swimming, beachcombing, dancing in the rain, “hammocking” on the porch with books and squishing in the dirt. There’s the finality of the story’s ending and season: “We shiver a little on a sweater time day/ And that’s when we hear our summer feet say/ It’s time to tuck in, curl up and cocoon/ Get out woolly socks, autumn comes soon.” For Kindergarten to Grade 3.

The World In our Backyard, by Jami Gigot, might be used in a lesson on point of view, with its clever way of looking at the city in summer. “Tall mountains to climb” show the protagonist watching snails inch their way up a dirt pile. “Dusty desert dunes to cross” depicts sandbox play. Musicians are birds and bustling cities workers are ants creating cities beneath the earth. Waterfalls are an open fire hydrant. Farms are community gardens and secret caves are blanket tents in the backyard, whilst art galleries are sidewalk chalk drawings. For Kindergarten to Grade 1.

Siblings inevitably spend time together during the school break. What Are You Doing, Benny? by Cary Fagan, illustrated by Kady Macdonald Denton, portrays a young fox trying to convince his older brother Benny to play with him. He offers up his skills in tree-fort building, potion-making (secret ingredient: mashed banana), petting the neighbour’s cat, and making up songs to accompany Benny’s guitar-playing. Suggestions of bike-riding, paper airplanes, and a leisurely lay on the grass are continually met with Benny’s ‘No!’ The tides turn when the younger fox sets up a puppet play and reenacts the sibling dynamic. Does Benny see himself reflected in the play? Is that responsible for his a change of heart? The dialogue and pacing, in comic-style graphic panels, is pitch perfect for the Kindergarten to Grade 2 crowd.

On her first day as teacher-librarian, Julie Booker was asked by a five-year-old if that was her real name. She's felt at home in libraries since her inaugural job as a Page in the Toronto Public Library. She is the author of Up Up Up, a book of short stories published by House of Anansi Press.