The first ever non-fiction edition of CBC Canada Reads features five titles that chronicle everything from a cross-Canada musical tour, a woman’s harrowing experience in an Iranian prison, the hunt for a Siberian tiger, a coming-of-age story steeped in South American radical politics, and Canada’s national pastime, hockey.

Three of five nominees are titles published in the past five years; the most recently published title is Carmen Aguirre’s Something Fierce (Douglas & McIntyre), a Q&Q 2011 book of the year.

The finalists, with their celebrity defenders, are as follows.

• Prisoner of Tehran by Marina Nemat (Penguin Canada), defended by Arlene Dickinson
• Something Fierce by Carmen Aguirre (Douglas & McIntyre), defended by Shad
• The Tiger by John Vaillant (Vintage Canada), defended by Anne-France Goldwater
• On a Cold Road by Dave Bidini (McClelland & Stewart), defended by Stacey McKenzie
• The Game by Ken Dryden (Wiley Canada), defended by Alan Thicke