SPRING PREVIEW FOR ADULTS

Spring is just around the corner and – surprise, surprise – we’re thinking about books. To celebrate the warmer weather on the horizon, we’ve curated a collection of new and forthcoming books to fill out your “to be read” list this spring. Use the "Shop Local" button to pick up or pre-order these titles at your nearest indie bookstore.

Click here to check out our picks for young readers.

Happy reading!

Nosy Parker
Written by Lesley Crewe
Published by Nimbus Publishing (June 28)

It’s 1967 in Montreal, the Expo is in full swing, and Audrey Parker has just moved with her dad to Notre-Dame-de-Grâce. Audrey is a lot of things: articulate, disarming, forthright. And, as her father reminds her often, indecently nosy. Audrey scribbles every observation down in her notebooks but only one mystery that really matters to her: her mother. Over the span of a year, readers walk with Audrey across the threshold from childhood to adolescence.

Lesley Crewe is the author of several novels, including Mary, Mary, Amazing Grace, and Chloe Sparrow. Previously a columnist and freelance writer, Lesley lives in Homeville, NS.

Good Mom on Paper
Edited by Stacey May Fowles and Jen Sookfong Lee
Published by Book*hug (May 3)

The experience of motherhood is monumental, yet rarely discussed in connection with creative life. How do we navigate the twin devotions of love and art? How does motherhood disrupt the creative process or enhance it? This collection of twenty essays that goes beyond the clichés to explore the fraught, beautiful, and complicated relationship between motherhood and creativity. With contributions by Heather O’Neill, Lee Maracle, Jael Richardson, Jónína Kirton, Teresa Wong, Harriet Alida Lye, and many more.

Stacey May Fowles is an award-winning journalist, essayist, and author of four books including Baseball Life Advice. Her bylines include The National Post, Reader’s Digest, Elle Canada, The Walrus, and others.

Jen Sookfong Lee was born and raised in Vancouver’s East Side. Her books include The Conjoined, The Shadow List, and Finding Home. Jen also acquires and edits for ECW Press and co-hosts the literary podcast, Can’t Lit.

Pure Colour
Written by Sheila Heti
Published by Penguin Random House Canada (February 22)

Here we are, just living in the first draft of creation, which was made by some great artist, who is ready to tear it apart. A woman named Mira leaves home for school. There, she meets Annie, whose tremendous power changes Mira’s life. When Mira is older, her beloved father dies, and she enters the strange dimension that true loss creates. Pure Colour tells the story of a life. It is a galaxy of a novel: explosive, celestially bright, and streaked with beauty.

Sheila Heti is the acclaimed author of the novel Motherhood, which was shortlisted for the Scotiabank Giller Prize and named a Best Book of the Year by several publications. Additional books include How Should a Person Be?, The Middle Stories, and Ticknor.

Have You Eaten Yet?: Stories from Chinese Restaurants Around the World
Written by Cheuk Kwan
Published by Doulas & McIntyre (January 29)

From Haifa, Israel, to Cape Town, South Africa, Chinese entrepreneurs and restaurateurs have brought delicious Chinese food across the globe. Unravelling a complex history of cultural migration and world politics, Cheuk Kwan narrates a fascinating story of culture and place, ultimately revealing how an excellent meal always tells an even better story.

Cheuk Kwan grew up in Singapore, Hong Kong and Japan. Kwan is the co-founder of The Asianadian, a magazine dedicated to promoting Asian Canadian arts, culture and politics, and a film production company, Tissa Films.

We Were Dreamers: An Immigrant Superhero Origin Story
Written by Simu Liu
Published by HarperCollins Canada (May 3)

Marvel’s newest recruit shares his own inspiring and unexpected origin story, ranging from China to the bright lights of Hollywood. An immigrant who battled everything from parental expectations to cultural stereotypes, Simu Liu struggled to forge a path for himself, rising from the ashes of a failed accounting career to become Shang-Chi.

Simu Liu is an actor and writer best known for his work on Marvel Studios’ Shang Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings and in five seasons of the beloved family sitcom Kim’s Convenience. He lives in Los Angeles, Toronto, and wherever the best tax credits for film production are.

Jameela Green Ruins Everything
Written by Zarqa Nawaz
Published by Simon & Schuster Canada (March 8)

For fans of Where’​d You Go, Bernadette and the award-winning TV show Killing Eve, this book is a hilarious satire about a disillusioned American Muslim woman who becomes embroiled in a plot to infiltrate an international terrorist organization and, in the process, reconnects with her loved ones and her faith. 

Zarqa Nawaz is a Canadian film and television producer, public speaker, and journalist. She is the author of the memoir Laughing All the Way to the Mosque, which was shortlisted for the Leacock Medal for Humour among other prizes.

Rooms: Women, Writing, Woolf
Written by Sina Queyras
Published by Coach House Books (May 31)

Thirty years ago, a professor threw a chair at Sina Queyras after they’d turned in an essay on Virginia Woolf. Queyras returns to that contentious first encounter with Virginia Woolf to recover the body and thinking of that time. Using A Room of One’s Own as a touchstone, this book is both an homage to and provocation of the idea of a room of one’s own at the centre of a literary life.

Sina Queyras is the author of My Ariel, MxT, Expressway, and Lemon Hound. They were born on land belonging to the Nisichawayasihk Cree Nation and live and teach in Tiohtià:ke (Montréal).

Where the Silver River Ends
Written by Anna Quon
Published by Invisible Publishing (March 1)

Joan, a half-Chinese English conversation teacher, flees Budapest for a fresh start. At the crossroads of youthful hope and the startling magic of coincidence, Where the Silver River Ends delves deep into mixed-race identity, systemic oppression, family reconciliation, and what happens when we gather the courage to slip out of the current and make our own way in the world.

Anna Quon spent eight months teaching English in Slovakia after the Velvet Revolution. She facilitates writing workshops for the mental health community. Her first novel, Migration Songs, was shortlisted for the Dartmouth Book Award. Her second, Low, is set in Nova Scotia’s largest psychiatric hospital.

Inside the Montreal Mafia: The Confessions of Andrew Scoppa
Written by Félix Séguin and Eric Thibault
Published by ECW Press (June 7)

For the first time in Canadian history, a high-ranking Mafioso agreed to break the code of omertà by talking to journalists. From October 2014 to October 2019, Félix Séguin and Eric Thibault held multiple secret meetings with Andrew Scoppa, getting an exclusive inside look at the inner workings of the North American Mafia. This book is the culmination of their perilous investigation.

Eric Thibault has covered police and organized crime in Quebec since 1993. He has written for the Journal de Montréal since 2011.

Félix Séguin has covered multiple major national and international news stories since the early 2000s. He specializes in police investigations and organized crime.

Buffalo Is the New Buffalo
Written by Chelsea Vowel
Published by Arsenal Pulp Press (April 26)

Inspired by classic and contemporary speculative fiction, Buffalo Is the New Buffalo explores science fiction tropes through a Metis lens: a Two-Spirit rougarou (shapeshifter) in the nineteenth century tries to solve a murder in her community and joins the nehiyaw-pwat (Iron Confederacy) to successfully stop Canadian colonial expansion into the West. Expansive and eye-opening, the stories in this collection rewrite our shared history in exciting ways.

Chelsea Vowel is Metis from manitow-sakahikan (Lac Ste. Anne), AB, and currently residing in amiskwaciwaskihikan (Edmonton). Mother to six children, she is an educator, co-host of Indigenous feminist sci-fi podcast Metis in Space, and author of Indigenous Writes: A Guide to First Nations, Metis & Inuit Issues in Canada.