From beloved and bestselling author Terry Fallis comes a novel unlike any of his others. A thoughtful exploration of aging, loss, family, friendship, and love, all with his trademark humour and heart.
Jack McMaster seemingly has it all. A beautiful house, a loving son of many talents (including cooking, which is great news for Jack, if not for his waistline), even a special bond with his buddies in his ball hockey league. But he’s also learning to live with loss, leaving a gaping hole in his life—a life that will never be the same as before. Jack passes his days knowing he has the support of his family and his friends, but he can’t shake the feeling that his life has gone gray, and that time is slipping by so quickly.
Then, a short and shocking video from an unexpected source gives him the gumption to make a change and maybe even haul himself out of his melancholia. Inspired by his lifelong fascination with 1920s Paris, Jack finally visits the City of Light, following in the footsteps of Hemingway and Fitzgerald, and wandering the Left Bank. Slowly, the colour seeps back into his life, aided by a chance encounter in a café that leads Jack into the art world, and a Paris mystery nearly a century old.
Full of sincerity and warmth, A New Season shows us all that sometimes, making a change in your life can save your life.
Available for pre-order on Indigo and Amazon.
On bookshelves August 29, 2023.
Published by McClelland & Stewart.
terryfallis.com
At once the intimate tale of one man's quest to discover the truth of his birth and a riveting account of a real-life Newfoundland tragedy from 1914, brilliantly and sensitively imagined by one of Canada's most beloved and bestselling authors.
When a deathbed confession uncovers secrets about his birth, twenty-year-old Roan—who has always believed himself an orphan, with no last name—sets off on a quest to discover the truth of his origins. His journey takes him across the snow-covered landscape of Newfoundland from the remote Northern Peninsula to St. John's and then onto the Newfoundland, one of the rickety and poorly equipped ships heading out to the sealing grounds for the spring hunt.
Between his farewell to Dr. Grenfell, the man who raised, educated, and cared for Roan since his toddlerhood, and the final discovery that will alter his life forever, Roan is tossed both emotionally and physically into harrowing situations that he could never have imagined. The people Roan meets along his journey are vivid and unforgettable, from young Ila, isolated and desperate as her mother coughs her life away in a frigid cabin, to the hulking, volcanic, unknowable Ashur Genge, whose own heartbreaking secret may hold the key to Roan's deepest desire.
As Roan's personal story entwines with the historical tale of the Newfoundland disaster, it is “the b'ys”—the simple men who risk their lives year after year on the ice—their brotherhood, their resilience, their heart, and their humour that carry him through tragedy and beyond.
Rage the Night showcases Donna Morrissey's extraordinary empathy, her remarkable characters, and her unique literary voice; it is a masterwork from one of our finest storytellers.
Available for pre-order on Indigo and Amazon.
On bookshelves August 29, 2023.
Published by Penguin Random House Canada.
donnamorrissey.org
During a teenage adventure abroad, twins Petal and Rose find their lives diverging in ways they could not have imagined, highlighting the complexities of their relationship and shrouded family history.
Free-spirited Rose becomes enraptured with the ultra-orthodox Jewish community, while Petal delays her schooling to watch over her sister. Saddled with too much responsibility, Petal’s clinical depression manifests in self-destructive behaviour. She finds refuge on a kibbutz, as her sister grows further from her, marrying a man Petal does not deem worthy.
Years later, Petal confronts her prejudices about her sister’s life, her resentment, and the effects of generational trauma on both their lives as she is called back to Toronto from New York City to support Rose during a crisis.
Told through the eyes of two generations, Untethered provides context and insights into orthodoxy, post-war experience, mental illness, generational trauma, and grief while laying the foundations for understanding and a path towards healing.
Available September 9, 2023
Cormorant Books.
www.cormorantbooks.com/ruth-rakoff
Arctic historian Ken McGoogan approaches the legacy of nineteenth-century explorer Sir John Franklin from a contemporary perspective and offers a surprising new explanation of an enduring Northern mystery.
Two of Arctic explorer Sir John Franklin’s expeditions were monumental failures—the last one leading to more than a hundred deaths, including his own. Yet many still see the Royal Navy man as a heroic figure who sacrificed himself to discover the Northwest Passage.
This book, McGoogan’s sixth about Arctic exploration, challenges that vision. It rejects old orthodoxies, incorporates the latest discoveries, and interweaves two main narratives. The first treats the Royal Navy’s Arctic Overland Expedition of 1819, a harbinger-misadventure during which Franklin rejected the advice of Dene and Métis leaders and lost eleven of his twenty-one men to exhaustion, starvation and murder. The second discovers a startling new answer to that greatest of Arctic mysteries: what was the root cause of the catastrophe that engulfed Franklin’s last expedition?
The well-preserved wrecks of Erebus and Terror—located in 2014 and 2016—promise to yield more clues about what cost the lives of the expedition members, some of whom were reduced to cannibalism. Contemporary researchers, rejecting theories of lead poisoning and botulism, continue to seek conclusive evidence both underwater and on land.
Drawing on his own research and Inuit oral accounts, McGoogan teases out many intriguing aspects of Franklin’s expeditions, including the explorer’s lethal hubris in ignoring the expert advice of the Dene leader Akaitcho. Franklin disappeared into the Arctic in 1845, yet people remain fascinated with his final doomed voyage: what happened? McGoogan will captivate readers with his first-hand account of travelling to relevant locations, visiting the graves of dead sailors and experiencing the Arctic—one of the most dramatic and challenging landscapes on the planet.
On bookshelves October 7, 2023.
Published by Douglas & McIntyre.
kenmcgoogan.com
From the author of the riveting The Midwife of Venice, a fresh and sweeping historical novel following a Jewish woman attempting to bring justice to her family on the eve of World War II.
New York City, 1938: At the height of the Great Depression, a time when President Roosevelt is trying to keep America out of World War II, Giddy Brodsky is lucky to have a job as a cigarette girl at a Manhattan jazz club. Nevertheless, she dreams of establishing a cosmetics business and leaving the poverty-stricken Lower East Side tenements behind. She has lived there with her family ever since they fled Russia, forced to emigrate after a group of Cossacks burned down their village, and her memories continue to haunt her.
Giddy tries to focus on the future until, during an evening streetcar ride, she thinks she recognizes one of the Cossacks who changed her life forever. Determined to get answers, she enlists the help of Carter van der Zalm, the Chief Commissioner of Immigration at Ellis Island, who is hunting the same man. He suspects the Russian is involved in an assassination plot that will destroy American and Soviet relations, and he enlists Giddy to moonlight as a spy for him. But when she finally tracks down the man they’re both seeking, she finds herself in the middle of a shocking political conspiracy that changes everything she once held true.
In the tradition of Lara Prescott’s The Secrets We Kept and Kate Quinn’s The Rose Code, The Jazz Club Spy is a glittering and gritty look at pre-WWII America, and the personal battle one woman wages between justice and forgiveness.
Available November 21, 2023.
simonandschuster.com
Michael Decter’s compelling novel is a portrait of a man, shaken by injustice and searching for his family history
Matthew Rice is a successful sixty-year-old Toronto politician, who finds himself suddenly unmoored after serving jury duty on a devastating child murder case.
Matthew retreats to Quarry Island in Georgian Bay, where he loses his wallet in a boating mishap. Among the pieces of identification he needs to replace, he is shocked to learn his birth certificate is a forgery and a lie. Not only have the foundations of his life given way, his very identity is shattered.
As Matthew’s desire to uncover the identity of his real birth mother sparks an investigation that will take him from Sydney to Boston to Dublin and back to the rocky shores of Quarry Island, readers are drawn into Shadow Life’s atmospheric and delicate web where memory and myth will ultimately collide to reveal self-discovery and new love.
Now available on bookshelves everywhere.
A startling exploration of the past and present of Antisemitism
What is Antisemitism, and why does it happen?
From one of Canada’s most bold and adventurous thinkers, Philip Slayton looks at the very different experiences of Jews in Europe, the Middle East, North Africa, and America, and the longstanding tensions between Jews and Muslims, and Jews and Christians. He examines the Holocaust, which brought the fight against antisemitism to new heights, and Zionism, which has set the fight back immeasurably. The role of media and particularly social media in spreading antisemitism is scrutinized. Identity Politics is found to have sidelined Jews in favor of other historically oppressed populations.
Antisemitism is published by Sutherland House, sutherlandhousebooks.com.
See other books by the author and subscribe to his newsletter, Endgame, at philipslayton.com.
An irresistible tale of reluctant dog ownership full of heart, humor, and wisdom
From award-winning Chatelaine columnist and author, Rona Maynard recounts her personal and heartwarming story of dog adoption in, Starter Dog.
Advance praise for Starter Dog:
“When you buy yourself a copy of this funny, honest adventure of a book (and you must), you’re going to want to clear a few hours and read every word. God, Rona Maynard is a good writer.” — Abigail Thomas, New York Times bestselling author of A Three Dog Life and Still Life at Eighty
“Starter Dog is an enchanting love story between a pet and his human. Rona Maynard shows us with marvelous wit and sensitivity how the world is expanded and enhanced by the companionship of a dog.” — Hilma Wolitzer, author of Today a Woman Went Mad in the Supermarket: Stories
On bookselves April 18.
More to come
New announcements to come from Rabbi Michael Zedek (Sutherland House, 2023) and Shelly Sanders (HarperCollins Canada and USA, 2024).