Over the course of three instalments, Q&Q presents the titles we’re most excited about this fall. This week’s instalment features novels. Short fiction and poetry titles will be featured next week, with nonfiction to be featured on Aug. 6.
Q&Q’s fall preview covers books published between July 1 and Dec. 31, 2025. All information (titles, publication dates) was supplied by publishers.
This fall brings a bumper crop of novels to bookstore shelves, with something for every reader – from Bildungsromans to a historical novel narrated by a tortoise to darkly humorous slasher- and vampire-inspired tales, and everything in-between.
Black Cherokee
Antonio Michael Downing
Scribner Canada/Simon & Schuster Canada, Aug.
This coming-of-age story set in 1990s South Carolina follows orphan Ophelia Blue Rivers, a mixed-race Black girl trying to figure out where she belongs, in an examination of race and identity.
We Love You, Bunny
Mona Awad
Scribner Canada/Simon & Schuster Canada, Sept.
Rufous and Calliope
Sarah Louise Butler
Douglas & McIntyre, Sept.
Anarchists in Love
Robert Hough
Douglas & McIntyre, Sept.
Cannon
Lee Lai
Drawn & Quarterly, Sept.
The Hunger We Pass Down
Jen Sookfong Lee
McClelland & Stewart/Penguin Random House Canada, Sept.
Alice Chow is a single mother with two kids and a booming online cloth diaper business. But when she wakes up one morning and finds all her chores completed and her home tidy, she doesn’t realize that the answer to who – or what – is responsible for doing her domestic work for her will force her to confront the intergenerational trauma that has been passed down in her family from mother to daughter.
The Cree Word for Love: Sâkihitowin
Tracey Lindberg and George Littlechild, ill.
HarperAvenue/HarperCollins, Sept.
The Seaside Café Metropolis
Antanas Sileika
Cormorant Books, Sept.
Self Care
Russell Smith
Biblioasis, Sept.
Hemo Sapiens
Emily A. Weedon
Dundurn Press, Sept.
The Marionette
Terry Fallis
McClelland & Stewart/PRHC, Oct.
Other Evolutions
Rebecca Hirsch Garcia
ECW Press, Oct.
A debut novel with a speculative twist that explores the grief and trauma of Alma Alt, the sheltered youngest daughter of an interfaith, interracial Jewish-Mexican couple, whose life is turned upside down by an impossible encounter steps from home with a person who no longer exists.
Five Seasons of Charlie Francis
Danica Roache
Vagrant Press/Nimbus Publishing, Oct.
The Tortoise’s Tale
Kendra Coulter
Simon & Schuster, Nov.
New and notable
Giller Prize–winning short story writer Souvankham Thammavongsa publishes her debut novel this fall, in a season that includes titles from several notable, award-winning Canadian authors, including Ian Williams, Shani Mootoo, and John Irving.
You’ve Changed
Ian Williams
Random House Canada, Aug.
Days of Feasting and Rejoicing
David Bergen
Goose Lane Editions, Sept.
Esther Maile is an American living in Thailand in a house rented by the wealthier and more popular Christine. When Christine drowns in Bali while on holiday, Esther leans into the confusion of the responding police who mistake her for Christine, and takes up the identity of the drowned.
Starry Starry Night
Shani Mootoo
Book*hug Press, Sept.
The Trial of Katterfelto
Michael Redhill
Knopf Canada/Penguin Random House Canada, Sept.
Pick a Colour
Souvankham Thammavongsa
Knopf Canada/PRHC, Sept.
In her first book since 2020’s How to Pronounce Knife, Souvankham Thammavongsa tells the story of a day in the life of retired boxer Ning, who runs a nail salon where she maintains an anonymous persona – and where she and the other nail technicians all go by Susan. Ning is also keenly perceptive of her own circumstances – and the unique details of her life beyond the salon.
Queen Esther
John Irving
Knopf Canada/PRHC, Nov.
Songs of Love on a December Night
David Adams Richards
Doubleday Canada/PRHC, Nov.
Talking to the modernists
A trio of books this fall puts contemporary writers in conversation with modernist literary icons Virginia Woolf and Franz Kafka. Ziyad Saadi and Kate Cayley have written their own fresh and overtly queer takes on Mrs. Dalloway, 100 years after Woolf’s classic was first published, and Christine Estima examines the experiences of Kafka translator and paramour Milena Jesenská in a historical novel.
Three Parties
Ziyad Saadi
Hamish Hamilton/Penguin Random House Canada, Aug.
Property
Kate Cayley
Coach House Books, Oct.
Letters to Kafka
Christine Estima
House of Anansi Press, Sept.
In verse
Two forthcoming titles bring poetic language and treatment to the fore in novel form.
Beaver Hills Forever: A Metis Poetic Novella
Conor Kerr
Arsenal Pulp Press, Sept.
Conor Kerr’s fifth book in four years is a slim, genre-bending volume that explores the intertwined lives of four characters – each an expression of the paths available to Métis people on the Prairies – in alternating poetic verses.
Syncopation: A Novel in Verse
Whitney French
Buckrider Books/Wolsak & Wynn, Oct.
In translation
The Hand of Iman
Ryad Assani-Razaki
Arachnide Editions/House of Anansi Press, Aug.
This debut novel about an unlikely friendship between two men, Iman and Toumani, in an unnamed West African country was shortlisted for a Governor General’s Literary Award for French-language fiction in 2012.
All Kidding Aside
Jean-Christophe Réhel and Neil Smith, trans.
QC Fiction/Baraka Books, Sept.
This sophomore novel from poet and novelist Jean-Christophe Réhel explores the life of Louis, a queer man who works at a Tim Hortons but dreams of becoming a stand-up comedian and lives in Montreal’s east end with his schizophrenic, rap-obsessed brother and terminally ill father.
Mystery, thrillers, and more
Just in time for the cozy, hibernating, hygge season comes a fresh crop of mysteries, thrillers, and horror novels to keep readers company as the nights grow longer, including new titles from Louise Penny and Iona Whishaw in their respective Chief Inspector Gamache and Lane Winslow series.
She Didn’t See It Coming
Shari Lapena
Doubleday Canada/PRHC, July
The Longest Night
Lauren Carter
Freehand Books, Sept.
6:40 to Montreal
Eva Jurczyk
Poisoned Pen Press/Sourcebooks, Sept.
The First Thousand Trees
Premee Mohamed
ECW Press, Sept.
Exiles
Andrew Pyper, writing as Mason Coile
G.P. Putnam’s Sons/Penguin Random House, Sept.
In the first of two posthumous titles from Andrew Pyper’s Mason Coile alias, a crew of astronauts sent to Mars to prepare a new colony finds the base partially destroyed and the three robots sent ahead to set it up in chaos – they’ve chosen their own names, developed disturbing beliefs, and one of them is missing.
The Hunt
Nick Wilkshire
Breakwater Books, Sept.
A diplomat scarcely has time to begrudge his move from Washington before he finds himself in the remote Yukon wilderness searching for a missing American VIP and trying to solve a murder with a local Mountie on a short timeline.
Veal
Mackenzie Nolan
ECW Press, Oct.
The Black Wolf
Louise Penny
Minotaur Books/Macmillan Publishers, Oct.
A Season for Spies: A Lane Winslow Prequel
Iona Whishaw
TouchWood Editions, Oct.
Final Orbit
Chris Hadfield
Random House Canada, Oct.
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