The Q&Q team reached out to reviewers, booksellers, and people in the publishing industry across the country to find out which titles from 2024 they’re still thinking about as the year draws to a close.

Jo Treggiari, author and bookseller, co-owner of Block Shop Books in Lunenburg, N.S.

The Knowing 
Tanya Talaga
HarperCollins Publishers

A meticulously researched and very personal investigation and a retelling of Canadian history from an Indigenous perspective. Anishinaabe author Talaga travels far and wide, sharing and collecting stories, following leads including documents, family photos, and letters in her search for long-lost relations who were disappeared. As propulsive as a true crime investigation, this is an intimate memoir, a call to action, a book we should all read.

Steven W. Beattie, Stratford, Ontario–based writer, editor, critic, and publisher of That Shakespearean Rag 

Perfect Little Angels
Vincent Anioke
Arsenal Pulp Press

From the first story in Vincent Anioke’s stellar debut, about a seven-year-old Nigerian boy who undergoes a ritual of manhood involving the slaughter of a goat, the author announces himself as a potent new voice on the CanLit stage. Shuttling between Lagos and Toronto, the stories in Perfect Little Angels take up issues of masculinity, family loyalty, sexuality, and betrayal with a sense of clarity and empathy that is rare among even established writers. As bruising as they are sensitive, these stories seethe with irony and confidence.

Jean Marc Ah-Sen is a Toronto-based writer and reviewer

The Coiled Serpent
Camilla Grudova
Unnamed Press

Every generation produces luminaries in the literary world, but this project of canonization is usually a backward-looking, slowly consolidating enterprise. Reading The Coiled Serpent made it clear to me that Camilla Grudova is likely the best millennial short story writer that this country has produced. These tales of vengeful poisonings, bathhouse murders, and lost menstrual cycles will capture a reader’s heart, especially if their tastes incline to the mercurial and arcane.

Paul MacKay, manager, King’s Co-op Bookstore, Halifax

At a Loss for Words: Conversation in an Age of Rage
Carol Off
Random House of Canada

How can we hope to solve the essential issues currently facing us when we can’t even agree on the meaning of the words we use? Carol Off expertly tackles our modern communication breakdown by calling attention to the changing implications of six words – freedom, democracy, truth, woke, choice, and taxes – and attempts to lead us toward the light. An absolute must-read.

Sanna Wani, poet, editor, and reviewer in Toronto

Indian Winter
Kazim Ali
Coach House Books

An unnamed narrator wanders across India while mourning an estranged lover; Indian Winter is the story and journey of a queer interiority. Eccentric, elemental, and strangely forlorn, Ali’s prose is guided by a slow, oceanic rhythm, peppered with loveable and mundane characters, and punctuated by piercingly beautiful sentences.

Brett Josef Grubisic, Salt Spring Island, B.C.–based author, reviewer, and editor for The British Columbia Review

Dinner on Monster Island 
Tania De Rozario
Harper Perennial/HarperCollins

The Singapore Tourism Board must have frowned at Vancouver-based Tania De Rozario’s memoir-in-essays. It’s brilliant, often incendiary, and furious, as De Rozario recalls her school’s Lesbian Elimination Squad program and learning she was to undergo an exorcism at her mother’s behest. It’s also wryly funny, with its deft anatomizing of Singaporean society. Disclosures – “[t]hirty-seven years of rage, resentment, and exhaustion,” excessive drinking, witchcraft – reveal a steady if bumpy quest for joyful personal freedom. Touching, provocative, eye-opening, and exceptional from start to finish.

Whitney French, writer, editor, publisher, and arts educator based in Vancouver

El Ghourabaa: A Queer and Trans Collection of Oddities
Samia Marshy and Eli Tareq El Bechelany-Lynch, eds.
Metonymy Press

As someone who knows the intimate joy and pains of crafting an anthology, El Ghourabaa: A Queer and Trans Collection of Oddities is one of the most impressive collections of writing I’ve encountered. There’s so much edge in this collection, so much momentum. Such upheaval, faith, and faithlessness, I am at once overwhelmed in the best way possible to experience all the worlds this anthology of queer and trans Arab writing embodies.

Rohan Maitzen, academic and reviewer in Halifax

Apples on a Windowsill
Shawna Lemay
Palimpsest Press
A book from 2024 that I know will stay with me is Shawna Lemay’s Apples on a Windowsill. Meditative without being precious, reflective and yet still occasionally, refreshingly, acerbic, Lemay’s essays invite us to recognize the beauty in the everyday, to find everything – not just flowers or vistas but even our own “wrinkled selves” – worth looking at. As she says, “we exist right now at this exact moment and one day we won’t.” Surely we should make as much of that moment as we can.

Marisa Alps, artistic and executive director of Sunshine Coast Festival of the Written Arts in Sechelt, B.C.

The Wedding
Gurjinder Basran
Douglas & McIntyre

Filled with intricate family relationships, lavish wedding arrangements, intrigue, and a sly dose of humour, this novel is much more than a family drama or a South Asian love story – it’s a beautifully layered narrative of community, steeped in tradition and sacrifice. Told from multiple points of view, The Wedding’s many perspectives allow Basran to provide insights into complex issues such as the immigrant experience, class, and race, even as she shines a spotlight on love, heartbreak, and humanity.

The Pain Project: A Couple’s Story of Confronting Chronic Pain
Kara Stanley and Simon Paradis
Greystone Books

I learned so much while reading The Pain Project – not just about the insidious and mysterious nature of pain, and how it works on the body and the mind, but also about relationships and resilience. Deeply personal but wide-ranging in scope, this important book tackles the science and story of chronic pain with an intimacy and honesty that is life changing.

Micheline Maylor, poet, editor, and reviewer in Canmore, Alberta

The Elephant of Silence: Essays on Poetics and Cinema
John Wall Barger
Louisiana State University Press

In the tradition of John Berger’s Ways of Seeing, John Wall Barger’s book of essays considers film, poetry, specificity, attention, wonder, hot and cold art, duende, and ontology itself. The Elephant of Silence is a unique and inspirational study in the way all artists raid the visual and written environment for detail and creative fire.

Saul Freedman-Lawson, illustrator and bookseller, Another Story Bookshop in Toronto

Bad Houses
John Elizabeth Stintzi
Arsenal Pulp Press

There’s a persistent truth and clarity to all of John Elizabeth Stintzi’s work, across genres. The magic and science fiction of Bad Houses is always rooted in the world of here and now: just outside of physical possibility, but well within emotional and political reality. These 14 short stories are a contemporary mythology.

Brian Francis, author and Q&Q’s Agony Editor columnist in Toronto

Crooked Teeth
Danny Ramadan
Viking/Penguin Random House Canada

Ramadan’s experience as a novelist shines in this memoir that chronicles his journey as a queer Syrian refugee. Familial, professional, and sexual dynamics are laid bare to explore their complexities and impact. Throughout, Ramadan’s voice remains open, honest, and direct, resulting in a remarkable story about resilience and our need to create a place we can call home.  

Marjorie Poor, editor of Prairie books NOW, in Winnipeg

The Dark King Swallows the World
Robert G. Penner
Radiant Press

In this stunning dark fantasy, Penner’s precocious 12-year-old protagonist, Nora, and her clear-eyed way of seeing her increasingly bizarre and horrific world, are mesmerizing. The reader sinks into an atmosphere of dread and wonder, curiosity and concern, bewilderment and conviction while following Nora on her journey from Cornwall during the Second World War to the land of the dead in her quest to rescue her brother.

Heather Fegan, Halifax-based journalist, writer, editor of Atlantic Books Today, and special projects coordinator for APMA 

The Nowhere Places 
Susan LeBlanc
Vagrant Press/Nimbus Publishing

Susan LeBlanc’s The Nowhere Places is a stunning debut that showcases her incredible gift for storytelling. Despite its title, the novel is steeped in a strong sense of place, rooted in the vibrant North End Halifax of 1979. It’s an intimate, deeply human story about a community that feels alive on every page. The characters are so real, with all their flaws, humour, and struggles, that you can’t help but feel connected to them. LeBlanc shines a light on the hidden stories of girlhood and womanhood, tackling themes such as shame, ambition, and yearning with sensitivity and grace. And while the topics can be heavy, she weaves in moments of joy and humour, creating a story that’s as moving as it is thought-provoking.

Sean Wilson, artistic director of Ottawa International Writers Festival

Salvage: Readings from the Wreck
Dionne Brand
Knopf Canada/Penguin Random House Canada

Any new book from Dionne Brand is cause for celebration. In her remarkable new collection of essays, the celebrated poet, author, professor, editor, and thinker explores the ways art has always been an essential element in colonial exploitation. She interrogates how visual art and literature – from the 17th century to today – uphold the violence of dehumanizing empires and have sustained the fictions at the heart of “the Western world.” It is searing, brilliant, and above all, illuminating. A must-read for all of us who love great books, and a warning to look deeper into our foundational texts and assumptions.

Shazia Hafiz Ramji, poet and reviewer from Toronto and Vancouver 

Beside the Sickle Moon: A Palestinian Story
Thaer Husien
Daraja Press

Beside the Sickle Moon: A Palestinian Story by Thaer Husien is the darkest book I’ve read in recent years. First-person narrator Laeth Awad chronicles heartbreaking nuances of the Palestinian struggle in a near-future scenario where biotech is also a part of the occupation. Eerie, chilling, and necessary fiction from the Wakefield, Quebec–based small press. 

Stephen Davidson, bookseller and co-owner of The Spaniel’s Tale Bookstore in Ottawa

Barcelona Red Metallic
Christine Cosack
Second Story Press

This slow-burn mystery offers both suspense and emotional depth as you get to know a community of complex characters. Beyond being a police procedural, this novel explores deeper truths about the human condition; it is a thought-provoking read that illustrates the complexities of families, the secrets they keep, and the lengths they will go to protect their own.

Robert J. Wiersema, author and reviewer in Victoria

We Used to Live Here
Marcus Kliewer
Emily Bestler Books/Simon & Schuster

A haunted house? A haunting family? Secret messages? Hidden realities? Ghosts? Disappearances? We Used to Live Here has it all, and more to spare. The first novel from Vancouver writer and animator Kliewer, this isn’t just the best horror novel I read this year, or the best debut; it’s one of my favourite novels of the year, full-stop.

David Leonard, executive director of Writers’ Trust of Canada in Toronto

Journey: Celebrating the Journey Prize – Selected Stories 1989–2023
Alexander MacLeod and Souvankham Thammavongsa, eds.
McClelland & Stewart/PRHC

My book of the year is Journey: Celebrating the Journey Prize, the anthology celebrating 35 years of the Journey Prize. At its face, it’s simply a tremendous collection of short fiction, but digging deeper, it serves as a testament to the evolution of style and form of Canadian fiction for the last four decades. Canada has a rich literary tradition and this anthology shows us where many of our best-known writers got their start.