The Water Beetles By Michael Kaan Goose Lane Editions, $22.95 At times graphic and disturbing, The Water Beetles by Michael Kaan tells the heroic and poetic story of a young boy living in Hong Kong during the Second World War. Based loosely on the diaries and stories of Kaan’s father, the narrative follows 12-year-old Chung-Man […] More »

My Decade at Old Sun, My Lifetime of Hell By Arthur Bear Chief Athabasca University Press, $19.95 My Decade at Old Sun, My Lifetime of Hell is a short read, but one that should be read slowly and deliberately. Author Arthur Bear Chief describes the first years of his life as full of love, family, […] More »

All of us word nerds know that books make excellent gifts. Aside from obvious last-minute coffee table tomes (“I remembered how much you love generic landscape photos!”), giving someone a book means you’re trying to think from their point of view, to imagine what they might like, or to share something you love with them. […] More »

Sputnik’s Children By Terri Favro ECW, $19.95 Terri Favro follows up her award-winning novella The Proxy Bride with Sputnik’s Children, a full-length debut mixing comic book science fiction with reflections of growing up during the atomic age at the height of the Cold War. Comic book creator Debbie Reynolds Biondi finally decides to tell the […] More »

Writing Menopause By Jane Cawthorne and E.D. Morin Inanna Publications, $25.95 Writing Menopause is a revolutionary collection of work passionately and bravely confronting menopause, a topic society tends to avoid. Featuring several types of writing, editors Jane Cawthorne and E.D. Morin expertly assemble a meaningful collection written from a diverse cross-section of North Americans. Though […] More »

Lake Jehovah By Jillian Fleck Conundrum Press, $25 Lake Jehovah is Calgary-based comic artist Jillian Fleck’s first graphic novel. The story revolves around Jay, a genderqueer character, and the oddities of life in a small town in northern Alberta facing a series of apocalypses. Jay goes by the pronoun “xe,” but just as xe’s character […] More »

Date with Destiny By Hélène Rioux, translated by Jonathan Kaplansky Guernica Editions, $20 Ten grisly but rich descriptive short stories, Date With Destiny by Hélène Rioux glimpses at the many ways death affects our lives at any given age. From a mother with a suicidal son, to an overzealous funeral sales telemarketer, each character experiences […] More »

Toronto’s Poor: A Rebellious History By Bryan D. Palmer and Gaétan Héroux Between the Lines, $34.95 Tracking the ebbs and flows of societal and economic events, Toronto’s Poor: A Rebellious History by Bryan D. Palmer and Gaétan Héroux studies the history of the city’s poor and resistance. Héroux, an anti-poverty activist with the Ontario Coalition […] More »

Shot-Blue By Jesse Ruddock Coach House Books, $19.95 Set against the backdrop of a remote lake, Jesse Ruddock’s debut novel Shot-Blue follows a boy who learns to survive in a land that was once his home, but is now changed by strangers. Packed with characters who are at times intertwined and disconnected—as evidenced by the […] More »

The Break By Katherena Vermette House of Anansi, $22.95 “In the end, all that matters is what is right here.” These words by Métis writer Katherena Vermette perfectly capture the heart of the stories within The Break. Vermette, who won the 2013 Governor General’s Literary Award for Poetry, offers alternative perspectives surrounding a brutal crime—each […] More »

Virgin Envy: The Cultural (In)significance of the Hymen Edited by Jonathan A. Allan, Cristina Santos, and Adriana Spahr University of Regina Press, $27.95 Losing your V-card, popping your cherry, your first time: losing one’s virginity is a sacred rite of passage in many cultures—but the contributors of Virgin Envy aren’t buying into the archaic and stereotypical […] More »