The CBC Books fall reading list: 40 Canadian books to read this season
Need a good book to cozy up with this fall? Check out this list of buzzworthy Canadian titles out right now.
The Damages by Genevieve Scott
In her latest novel The Damages, Genevieve Scott uses the late-90s grunge and girl power movements as the backdrop for a story about consent, trauma and the cost of lies. Protagonist Ros is excited to go to university in Ontario and totally reinvent herself — but when she meets her roommate Megan, Ros knows she is a social liability. During an intense ice storm, Megan goes missing and Ros is shunned by her newfound friends.
Two decades later, Lukas — Ros's ex and the father of her young son — is accused of sexual assault and Ros is forced to face her mistakes from the past and reflect on the era she grew up in through a post-#MeToo lens.
Genevieve Scott is a Canadian author and teacher based in California. Her previous work was the novel Catch My Drift.
The Islands by Dionne Irving
Set across the United States, Jamaica and Europe from the 1950s to present day, The Islands details the migration stories of Jamaican women and their descendants. Each short story explores colonialism and its impact as women experience the on-going tensions between identity and the place they long to call home.
Dionne Irving is a writer and creative writing teacher from Toronto. She released her first novel, Quint, in 2021 and her work has been featured in journals and magazines like LitHub, Missouri Review and New Delta Review. The Islands is her debut short story collection. The Islands is shortlisted for the 2023 Scotiabank Giller Prize.
Learned by Heart by Emma Donoghue
Emma Donoghue's latest novel, Learned by Heart, draws on years of research and the five-million-word secret journal of British diarist Anne Lister — dubbed by many as "the first modern lesbian." Learned by Heart tells the long-buried story of the romance between Lister, a brilliant young troublemaker, and Eliza Raine, an orphan heiress banished to England from India.
The two meet at a boarding school for girls called the Manor School for Young Ladies when they are 14 and fall dangerously in love as their lives become entangled.
Donoghue is an Irish Canadian writer whose books include the novels Landing, Room, Frog Music, The Wonder, The Pull of the Stars and the children's book The Lotterys Plus One. Room was an international bestseller and was adapted into a critically acclaimed film starring Brie Larson.
The Double Life of Benson Yu by Kevin Chong
The Double Life of Benson Yu recounts the difficult adolescence of the titular character growing up in a housing project in 1980s Chinatown. The story takes a metafictional twist, when Yu's grip on memory and reality falters. The unique structure provides a layered and poignant look into how we come to terms with who we are, what happened to us as children, and that finding hope and healing lies in whether we choose to suppress or process our experiences.
Kevin Chong is a Vancouver-based writer and associate professor at the University of British Columbia Okanagan. His other books include the nonfiction book Northern Dancer and fiction titles like The Plague and Beauty Plus Pity. He was longlisted for the 2020 CBC Nonfiction Prize. The Double Life of Benson Yu is shortlisted for the 2023 Scotiabank Giller Prize.
Girlfriend on Mars by Deborah Willis
Girlfriend on Mars is a satirical story about tragic love and commercial space travel. Amber Kivinen is one of 23 reality TV contestants vying for two spots on the first commercial trip to Mars aboard MarsNow, a space shuttle commissioned by the billionaire Geoff Task.
Amber is surrounded by a cast of unlikely characters, including an Israeli soldier and social media influencers, while her long-term partner, Kevin, stays at home with the plants and starts to wonder: why does his girlfriend feel such a desire to leave the planet?
Willis is a fiction writer currently based in Calgary. She debuted in 2009 with Vanishing and Other Stories which was shortlisted for the Governor General's Literary Award for fiction. She followed it up with a collection of short fiction entitled The Dark and Other Love Stories in 2017, which was also longlisted for the Scotiabank Giller Prize.
The Circle by katherena vermette
The Circle is the third and final book set in the world of The Strangers and The Break, featuring some of the same characters. With Phoenix set for release from prison for the assault she committed in The Break, the news is sending ripples through the community. Her sister Cedar has been both dreading and longing for her return, while M, the girl Phoenix assaulted, is triggered by the news.
When Phoenix goes missing shortly after her release, past grievances, revenge plots and accusations begin swirling — and the community and the people who live there all search for healing in their own ways.
katherena vermette is a Métis writer from Winnipeg. Her books include the poetry collections North End Love Songs and river woman, the novel The Break and the four-book graphic novel series A Girl Called Echo. North End Love Songs won the Governor General's Literary Award for poetry. The Break was a finalist for the Rogers Writers' Trust Fiction Prize and the Governor General's Literary Award for fiction. It was defended by Candy Palmater on Canada Reads 2017.
All the Colour in the World by CS Richardson
All the Colour In the World is a story of a young boy named Henry who discovers a passion for art which carries him through the many misadventures of his life in the 20th century. From his first set of colouring pencils he is gifted at his grandmother's place to the worlds of academia, war and sweeping romance, Henry's art stays alongside his enduring story.
CS Richardson is a Toronto-based writer and award-winning book designer. His previous novels include The End of the Alphabet which won the 2008 Commonwealth Writers Prize for Best First Book and The Emperor of Paris which was longlisted for the Scotiabank Giller Prize in 2012.
Birnam Wood by Eleanor Catton
Birnam Wood is an engaging eco-thriller set in the middle of a landslide in New Zealand. Mira, the founder of a guerilla gardening collective that plants crops amid other criminal environmental activities, sets her sights on an evacuated farm as a way out of financial ruin. The only problem is the American billionaire Robert Lemoine has already laid claim to it as his end-of-the-world lair.
After the same thing for polar opposite reasons, their paths cross and Robert makes Mira an offer that would stave off her financial concerns for good. The question is: can she trust him?
Eleanor Catton is a London, Ont.-born New Zealand author. She won the 2013 Booker Prize for fiction and the 2013 Governor General's Literary Award for fiction for her second novel, The Luminaries.
Roaming by Jillian Tamaki & Mariko Tamaki
Set on a trip to New York City in 2009, Roaming is a graphic novel that follows best friends Zoe and Dani during their first year of college. As a queer romance blossoms between Zoe and Dani's classmate Fiona — who tags along — friendships get put to the test and all three girls learn more about who they are set against the backdrop of the big city.
Mariko Tamaki is a writer based in California. Her other books include the YA novels (you) Set Me On Fire and Saving Montgomery Sole. She's also the author of many superhero comics for DC Comics, Darkhorse and Marvel.
Jillian Tamaki is a Toronto-based cartoonist, illustrator and educator. With her cousin Mariko Tamaki, she co-created the YA graphic novel Skim, which won the Governor General's Literary Award for young people's literature — text. Another collaboration, This One Summer, won the Governor General's Literary Award for young people's literature — illustration.
Do You Remember Being Born? by Sean Michaels
Do You Remember Being Born? follows a famous poet named Marian Ffarmer, who after years of dedicating herself singularly to her art has started to question her life choices. After receiving an invitation to the Silicon Valley headquarters of one of the biggest tech companies in the world, Marian begins collaborating with a state-of-the-art poetry bot named Charlotte.
What follows is a journey of self-discovery for both Marian and Charlotte, as the two begin to form a friendship unlike any Marian has ever known.
Sean Michaels was born in Stirling, Scotland and moved to Montreal, where he currently lives, when he was 18 years old. His first novel, Us Conductors, won the Scotiabank Giller Prize in 2014 and was nominated for the Amazon.ca First Novel Award, the Kirkus Prize and the International Dublin Literary Award. Michaels is also the founder of the music blog Said the Gramophone.
Rouge by Mona Awad
In Rouge, Mona Awad plays with horror and surrealist elements to tell a fairy tale about a lonely dress shop clerk who is sent down a dangerous path in pursuit of youth and beauty after her mother's unexpected death.
Drawn to the culty spa her mother belonged to by a mysterious woman in red that shows up at the funeral, Belle finds herself unravelling the frightening secret behind her and her mother's obsession with the mirror and the demons that await on the other side.
Awad is a Boston-based author whose debut short story collection 13 Ways of Looking at a Fat Girl, won the Amazon Canada First Novel Award, the Colorado Book Award and was shortlisted for the 2016 Scotiabank Giller Prize. She is also the author of the novels Bunny and All's Well.