CBC Books' Summer 2024 reading list roundup
Need an end of summer read? Check out the CBC Books genre reading lists for your next historical fiction, sci-fi and fantasy, romance, mystery and crime, graphic novel, middle grade or picture book titles!
Sci-fi and fantasy
Our top pick: We Speak Through the Mountain by Premee Mohamed
We Speak Through the Mountain is a sequel novella to the post-apocalyptic Albertan book The Annual Migration of Clouds. Reid Graham is 19 years old and fighting against both the climate crisis-affected Rocky Mountains and her own chronic illness to make her way to Howse University, a supposed safe haven.
When she arrives she finds it more and more difficult to forge connections and leave behind the guilt she has of leaving her community. When she is sent word from home, Reid is faced with an impossible decision and a crumbling reality.
Premee Mohamed is an Indo-Caribbean scientist and speculative fiction writer based in Edmonton. Her series Beneath the Rising received nominations for the Crawford Award, British Fantasy Awards, Locus Awards and Aurora Awards.
Her book The Annual Migration of Clouds won the 2022 Aurora Award for best novella. Her other books include The Butcher of the Forest and No One Will Come Back for Us. Mohamed was named a writer to watch by CBC Books in 2024
Mystery and crime
Our top pick: Bad Cree by Jessica Johns
Bad Cree is a horror-infused mystery exploring grief, family, and land. It follows Mackenzie who is haunted by dreams of her sister who recently died as she struggles to come to terms with the loss. When Mackenzie starts receiving texts from someone claiming to be her dead sister and a murder of crows starts following her around the city, she knows she needs help.
Returning home to northern Alberta, Mackenzie is welcomed back by her family, however her dreams only get worse. In order to unravel the mystery of what really happened that weekend before her sister died and why she keeps returning to the lake in her dreams, Mackenzie must confront a violent family legacy and her connection to her community.
Jessica Johns is a Vancouver-based writer, visual artist and member of Sucker Creek First Nation in Treaty 8 Territory in northern Alberta. 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 was championed by Dallas Soonias on Canada Reads 2024.
Historical fiction
Our top pick: The Adversary by Michael Crummey
The Adversary centres on two rivals who represent the largest fishing operations on Newfoundland's northern outpost. When a wedding that would have secured Abe Strapp's hold on the shore falls apart, it sets off a series of events that lead to year after year of violence and vendettas and a seemingly endless feud.
Crummey is an award-winning poet and novelist from Newfoundland and Labrador. He is also the author of the novels The Innocents, Sweetland and Galore and the poetry collections Arguments with Gravity and Passengers. Two of Crummey's novels have been shortlisted for the Governor General's Literary Award for fiction — Sweetland in 2014 and Galore in 2009. The Innocents was shortlisted for the 2019 Scotiabank Giller Prize, the 2019 Rogers Writers' Trust Fiction Prize and the Governor General's Literary Award for fiction.
Graphic novels
Our top pick: The Wendy Award by Walter Scott
In the Wendy series, Mohawk artist Walter Scott follows the character's journey as a comic book artist who must contend with both the art world and her personal life. Scott's latest installment in the series, The Wendy Award, follows Wendy struggling with imposter syndrome after receiving a nomination for the prestigious National FoodHut Contemporary Art Prize.
The previous books in the series are Wendy, Wendy's Revenge and Wendy, Master of Art.
Walter Scott is a Mohawk artist based in Toronto. Scott has published three other Wendy books, including Wendy's Revenge, and has appeared in The New Yorker and the Best American Comics anthology.
Romance novels
Our top pick: Love, Lies and Cherry Pie by Jackie Lau
Thirty-something Toronto novelist and barista Emily Hung's four sisters are married with thriving careers, and her mother is obsessed with Emily finding a husband. Enter Mark Chan, a sweater-vest wearing engineer her mother hand picked herself.
When Emily and Mark meet, she's not interested, but to get her mother off of her back, Emily suggests they pretend they've started dating. Mark, intrigued, agrees. Once her mother questions the truth, they begin "fake" dating for real, getting to know one another. Did Emily's mother actually get it right?
Jackie Lau is a Toronto-based author of over a dozen romantic comedies, including Donut Fall in Love and the Holidays with the Wongs series. She went to school for engineering and worked as a geophysicist before writing romance novels.
Middle grade
Our top pick: The Sleeping Giant by David A. Robertson
The Sleeping Giant is the fifth book in the Indigenous middle-grade fantasy series, The Misewa Saga. Eli, Morgan and Emily must embark on their most dangerous mission to date, to rescue kidnapped animal beings from the Land of the Sleeping Giant. In order to succeed, they must rely on the help of old and new friends, as well as finding a new way to travel.
The Sleeping Giant is for ages 10 and up.
David A. Robertson is a writer and graphic novelist based in Winnipeg. Previous books in Robertson's Misewa Saga series include The Portal Keeper, The Barren Grounds, The Great Bear and The Stone Child. Other books by Robertson include the graphic novels Will I See? and Sugar Falls, the YA book Strangers, the memoir Black Water and the Governor General's Literary Award-winning picture books called When We Were Alone and On the Trapline, both illustrated by Cree-Métis artist Julie Flett.
Picture books
Our top pick: I Am A Rock by Ashley Qilavaq-Savard, illustrated by Pelin Turgut
At bedtime, Pauloosie asks his Anaana, or mother, what rocks would say to us if they could talk. In I Am A Rock, Pauloosie's pet rock, Miki Rock describes all that it can see, feel and hear as part of the land in the Arctic from the winds to the animals, the Northern lights and more.
I Am A Rock is for ages 3 to 5.
Ashley Qilavaq-Savard is an Inuk writer and artist from Iqaluit. She is the author of Where the Sea Kuniks the Land and I Am A Rock is her first picture book. Qilavaq-Savard also makes sealskin and beaded jewellery and studies Inuktitut.
Pelin Turgut is a children's book illustrator from Turkey.
