What happens when a well known actor with Parkinson’s Disease retires from his beloved tv show? Is there life after work? Follow his journey of self-discovery and reinvention as he became a happier, more satisfied person.

Following the death of his mother, 17-year-old Samuel leaves his home in Trinidad to join his father in Toronto. Samuel expects Canada to be a giant shopping mall and is hopeful of reconciling with his long-absent father. Samuel soon finds himself left to look after himself armed only with a quirky take on the strangeness of his new surroundings. He treats his new life as an unfolding, and unread comic book. Recommended.

This is an intriguing short story collection for music fans. When great narrative songwriters such as David Olney or Patty Larkin turn their hand to prose fiction, readers are well advised to take notice. Recommended.

A brilliant, post-apocalyptic novel. First published in 1960, the book opens 600 years after a nuclear war has destroyed the modern world. We find a society that has reverted to a Medieval state ruled by a church council. Scientific research is restricted and new ideas are forcibly suppressed. Fans of The Name of the Rose or The Da Vinci Code will love this one.

A touching coming of age story set in Croy, Oklahoma in the 1960’s. Three teenage friends sort out their personal relationships and, in process, discover the complexities of the adult world. Ceci has captured small-town life with authentic detail. This would be a good recommendation for an adult / teen crossover novel. Comfort Me will also appeal to fans of Christian / inspirational fiction.

This is an immensely likeable novel about a Japanese-Canadian girl’s difficult coming of age and her complicated family life. Traci Yamoto is street-smart and has an off-kilter view of life. Take, for example, her early career ambitions: “Once I told my Grade Two teacher … that I wanted to be a lawyer because lawyers didn’t cry. Lawyers had a sense of humour.” Enjoy.

“No wonder my late unlamented husband never talked about his happy childhood. He didn’t have one.” Claire Malloy meets her in-laws when she is called to listen to the matriarch of the clan read her latest will, on a decaying Louisiana estate. Claire’s teenage daughter might inherit millions, if she lives.

In a Bombay apartment building, Vishnu, the odd job man and impoverished alcoholic lies dying in a stairwell. The lives, dramas, and conflicts of the various families, the Pathaks, the Asranis, the Jalal's and Mr. Tanjea, are interwoven with Vishnu's memories of childhood and of fleeting joy. A multilayered story which is both comic and dramatic, showing isolated lives searching for connection and faith.

Levy offers an obsessive, picaresque novel-memoir about sex and longing. The tone is introspective and features a narrator searching for perfection in his sexual partner. Perceptive readers will see beneath the gritty and, at times hilarious, graphic surface to a search for deeper human connection. Fans of Henry Miller’s Tropic of Cancer, Michel Houllebecq’s Atomized, or Stephane Audeguy’ Theory of Clouds will appreciate this novel.

This is a retelling of the Cinderella story but from Lil, the fairy Godmother’s point of view. Turgeon does a great job of interweaving Lil’s flashbacks to when she was a fairy to current day, where she is an old woman working in a bookstore. The twist at the end, for me, was quite unexpected. I give it two thumbs up because it was a book I didn’t want to put down

Thirty thousand years ago, in the heart of the African continent, in the shadow of Mount Kilimanjaro, lived the Ibandi. T’Cori is captured and used by a roving male band of southern peoples called M’Tuk, who are much bigger and stronger than the Ibandi. She manages to flee, and Frog finds and protects her. But who will protect the Ibandi peoples, as more and more M’Tuk invade?

Marvelous story of Trista, a 15-year-old part-Innuit girl incarcerated in a juvenile detention centre in Jackfish Bay, N.W.T. Trista has just given birth to a daughter, Faith, with severe fetal alcohol syndrome. Reflecting on a life of sexual and substance abuse, Trista longs for a better future. Interestingly, her hope isn’t voiced but internalized in memories and dream-like encounters with elders of the community – her Snow Nanuks. An emotionally charged portrait of the social and cultural challenges faced by small northern communities.

Compelling first novel about widower Henry Lee as he looks back 40 years to his schoolboy days in Seattle during WW II. Treated as an outsider by his classmates, Henry forms an attachment with Keiko Okabe, a Japanese school friend whose family is soon transported to an internment camp. The story also features an intriguing introduction to the origins of West Coast jazz. This book would appeal to fans of the Wayson Choy’s Jade Peony or David Guterson’s Snow Falling On Cedars.

From an unpromising childhood characterized by poor vision, weight gain, and low self-esteem, the young Mary O’Brien blossomed into the Queen of White Soul. She is better known to the world as Dusty Springfield. Lynes does a fine job detailing Dusty’s compulsion to sing and the difficult later years when shifting musical tastes temporarily sidetracked her career. Recommended.

A harrowing story told from the point of view of two teen narrators. When ethnic violence breaks out in a Congolese city, 16-year-old Laohole flees the approaching militia with his younger brother and disabled mother. Alternately, we are given the boastful view of Johnny Mad Dog, the 15-year-old member of the Death Dealers militia. Despite the desperate circumstances, Dongala allows Laohole to hope for her future life. The book was made into a film by Jean-Stephane Sauvaire.

Originally published in 1958, this is the concluding volume of Davies’ Salterton Trilogy. The book is a very enjoyable read and one of the best novels about the training and development of an artist – in this case, a young woman from “the provinces” plucked from obscurity due to the malign provisions in a will. This would provide an interesting contrast to Bi Feiyu’s The Moon Opera.

Rabagliati’s series of “Paul” stories are among my favourite Canadian graphic novels. Throughout the series, we follow his life from the time he drops out of high school to young adulthood. In Paul Goes Fishing, a family vacation offers a frame for the characters’ real drama – their failed attempts to have a child. These sweet-tempered stories are filled with references to great francophone music and you’ll definitely want to check out Georges Brassens after reading these graphic novels. If you’d like to read the series in order, start with Paul Has a Summer Job and then Paul Leaves Home. Enjoy!

Absolutely riveting storytelling from Lisa See. In 1937, two beautiful sisters who work as calendar girls in Shanghai are sold as wives to overseas Chinese men when their father loses the family fortune. Full of historical detail, this story is as much about the bonds of sisterhood as it is about the Asian-American immigrant experience.

Parts of this mystery will sound very familiar: the rock slide on the highway,  the "major event", the map of "Arcanada and British Calendonia".  Two children vanish, and Joe the lawyer is on the trail, despite rain, rivers, too much scotch, and women who have agendas.

The Tang dynasty (618-907) comes to vibrant life under Kay’s deft command. His many years of research allow him to create a comparable fantasy universe, inserting interesting details about the smallest, most insignificant characters. The reader, drawn into this fascinating era, is intrigued by these details. When the military commander proudly serves the new drink, tea, to the traveller -  “new drink” thinks the reader? This is a love story populated by Kanlin female warriors, courtesans and politicians from the opulent court of the Emperor, and a family of strong brothers and sisters ruled by feudal laws and bound by honour to the dead.

Fetherling’s novel about the final years in the life of Walt Whitman is fiction that reads like biography, or, as the author puts it, “fiction that exploits some conventions of non-fiction.” Basing the story, in large part, on the writings of Horace Traubel, we are presented with a fascinating account of the relationship between biographer and subject. Not only was Traubel regarded as Whitman’s “spirit son”, but uncanny parallels are offered such as the sad decline in Traubel’s health which mirror the final illnesses of the Good Grey Poet. Recommended.