Top 10 Canadian books of 2024
Counting down the top 10 Canadian titles of 2024, as determined by independent bookstore sales
CBC Books is counting down the top 10 bestselling Canadian titles of 2024! These are the 10 bestselling Canadian titles of the year, as determined by book sales from over 250 independent Canadian bookstores, courtesy of Bookmanager.
You can listen to the holiday countdown special hosted by Ali Hassan below — or keep scrolling to see which Canadian books made this year's list!
10. Meet Me at the Lake by Carley Fortune
Meet Me at the Lake finds 32-year-old Fern Brookbanks stuck — she can't quite stop thinking about one perfect day she spent in her 20s. By chance, she met a man named Will Baxter and the two spent a romantic 24 hours in Toronto, after which they promised to meet up one year later. But Will never showed up. Now, instead of living in the city like she thought she would, Fern manages her mother's Muskoka resort by the lake, a role she promised herself she'd never take on.
Disillusioned with her life, Fern is shocked when Will shows up at her door, suitcase in hand, asking to help. Why is he here after all this time and more importantly, can she trust him to stay? It's clear Will has a secret but Fern isn't sure if she's ready to hear it all these years later.
Fashion influencer Mirian Njoh championed Meet Me at the Lake on Canada Reads 2024.
Fortune is a Toronto-based journalist who has worked as an editor for Refinery29, The Globe and Mail, Chatelaine and Toronto Life. Meet Me at the Lake is her second novel. Her debut was Every Summer After, a romance about childhood summer friends who reunite years later and her most recent book is This Summer Will Be Different.
9. Moon of the Turning Leaves by Waubgeshig Rice
Moon of the Turning Leaves takes place 10 years after the events of the post-apocalyptic novel Moon of the Crusted Snow and depicts an epic journey to a forgotten homeland. With food supplies dwindling, Evan Whitesky and his band of survivors need to find a new home. Evan volunteers to lead a group — including his daughter Nangohns and a great archer and hunter — to their ancestral home, the "land where the birch trees grow by the big water." Along the way, they come across other survivors — not all of whom can be trusted.
Rice is an Anishinaabe author, journalist and radio host originally from Wasauksing First Nation. Rice's first short story collection Midnight Sweatlodge, which was about his life growing up in his Anishinaabe community, won an Independent Publishers Book Award in 2012. Moon of the Turning Leaves is the Sequel to Moon of the Crusted Snow, which was on the Canada Reads 2023 longlist.
8. The Future by Catherine Leroux, translated by Susan Ouriou
The Future is set in an alternate history of Detroit where the French never surrendered the city to the U.S. Its residents deal with poverty, pollution and a legacy of racism. When Gloria, a woman looking for answers about her missing granddaughters, arrives in the city, she finds a kingdom of orphaned and abandoned children who have created their own society. The Future is the translation of Leroux's French-language novel L'Avenir.
Leroux is a writer, translator and journalist from Montreal. She was shortlisted for the 2016 Scotiabank Giller Prize for The Party Wall, which is an English translation of her French-language short story collection Le mur mitoyen. Leroux won the 2019 Governor General's Literary Award for English to French translation for her translation of Do Not Say We Have Nothing by Madeleine Thien.
Ouriou is a French and Spanish to English translator, a fiction writer and a playwright. She has previously won the Governor General's Literary Award for translation for her work. She lives in Calgary.
7. Fire Weather by John Vaillant
In May 2016, Fort McMurray, the hub of Canada's oil industry and America's biggest foreign supplier, was overrun by wildfire. The multi-billion-dollar disaster melted vehicles, turned entire neighbourhoods into firebombs, and drove 88,000 people from their homes in a single afternoon.
Fire Weather explores the legacy of North American resource extraction, the impact of climate science and the symbiotic relationship between humans and combustion.
Fire Weather won the 2023 Baillie Gifford Prize for Nonfiction and the Shaughnessy Cohen Prize for Political Writing and was a finalist for the 2024 Pulitzer Prize in General Nonfiction, the 2023 National Book Award for Nonfiction and the 2023 Hilary Weston Writers' Trust Prize for Nonfiction.
6. Claudia and the Bad Joke by Ann M. Martin, illustrated by Arley Nopra
Claudia and the Bad Joke is the 15th book in the series of graphic novel adaptations of the iconic Baby-Sitters Club books. When Claudia babysits a young girl who is a practical joker, she thinks it won't be that bad. But when a joke results in Claudia breaking her leg, she wonders if babysitting is worth it after all.
Arley Nopra is a Filipino comic creator who lives in Toronto. Claudia and the Bad Joke is her first Baby-Sitters Club book.
5. Denison Avenue by Christina Wong & Daniel Innes
Set in Toronto's Chinatown and Kensington Market, Denison Avenue is a moving portrait of a city undergoing mass gentrification and a Chinese Canadian elder experiencing the existential challenges of getting old and being Asian in North America. Recently widowed, Wong Cho Sum takes long walks through the city, collecting bottles and cans and meeting people on her journeys in a bid to ease her grief.
Denison Avenue was championed by former Calgary mayor Naheed Nenshi on Canada Reads 2024.
Wong is a Toronto writer, playwright and multidisciplinary artist who also works in sound installation, audio documentaries and photography.
Innes is a multidisciplinary artist from Toronto. He works in painting, installation, graphic and textile design, illustration, sign painting and tattooing.
4. This Summer Will Be Different by Carley Fortune
Vacationing one summer on Prince Edward Island, Lucy meets Felix in an electric, chemistry-filled night. Only one problem: Felix is her best friend Bridget's younger brother. On her annual return trips to P.E.I., Lucy vows to avoid Felix and his bed, that This Summer Will Be Different — easier said than done. When Bridget rushes home to P.E.I. in crisis a week before her wedding, Lucy can only follow and remind herself to protect her heart, but finally wonders if she really wants to do that after all.
Fortune is a Toronto-based writer and journalist who has worked as an editor for Refinery29, The Globe and Mail, Chatelaine and Toronto Life. Her previous books are Every Summer After and Meet Me at the Lake, which was a contender for Canada Reads 2024, championed by Mirian Njoh.
3. Bad Cree by Jessica Johns
Bad Cree centres around a young woman named Mackenzie, who is haunted by terrifying nightmares and wracked with guilt about her sister Sabrina's untimely death. The lines between her dreams and reality start to blur when she begins seeing a murder of crows following her around the city — and starts getting threatening text messages from someone claiming to be her dead sister.
Looking to escape, Mackenzie heads back to her hometown in rural Alberta where she finds her family still entrenched in their grief. With her dreams intensifying and getting more dangerous, Mackenzie must confront a violent family legacy and reconcile with the land and her community.
Athlete and CBC Sports broadcaster Dallas Soonias championed Bad Cree on Canada Reads 2024.
Johns is a queer nehiyaw aunty with English-Irish ancestry and a member of Sucker Creek First Nation. Johns won the 2020 Writers' Trust Journey Prize for the short story Bad Cree, which evolved into the novel of the same name. Bad Cree also won the MacEwan Book of the Year prize. Johns is currently based in Edmonton.
2. The Grey Wolf by Louise Penny
In the 19th instalment of the Armand Gamache series, The Grey Wolf follows Chief Inspector Gamache and his allies as they pursue a deadly threat from Three Pines, Quebec, across the province and beyond. What starts as one murder evolves into a desperate mission to track a creature that has the potential to devastate cities and towns including Three Pines. Dealing with betrayal, suspicion and loyalty, Gamache must rely on his instincts to unravel the mystery before it's too late.
Louise Penny is a former CBC broadcaster and journalist. She is now the author of the Inspector Armand Gamache mystery series and recipient of the 2020 Agatha Award for best contemporary novel for the 16th installment in the series, All the Devils are Here. She collaborated with former U.S. secretary of state Hillary Rodham Clinton to write the political thriller State of Terror. Penny was named to the Order of Canada in 2013.
1. Moon of the Crusted Snow by Waubgeshig Rice
Moon of the Crusted Snow is a dystopian drama involving a protagonist named Evan Whitesky and a northern Anishinaabe community facing dwindling resources and rising panic after their electrical power grid shuts down during a cold winter. While the community tries to maintain order, forces from outside and within threaten to destroy the reserve.
Rice is an Anishinaabe author and journalist originally from Wasauksing First Nation. He is also the author of the short story collection Midnight Sweatlodge and the novels Moon of the Turning Leaves and Legacy. He used to be the host of CBC Radio's Up North.
