Summer’s a great time to catch up on your favourite beach reads — easy, breezy books that can be devoured in a day.
But diehard book nerds know fall’s the time when the most anticipated titles of the year typically drop — from the latest in literary fiction to biographies, historical tomes, memoirs and more.
Here are 20 titles — 10 fiction, 10 non-fiction — to watch for in the coming months from local, national and international authors.
NON-FICTION
Everything and Nothing at All: Essays
By Jenny Heijun Wills (Knopf, Aug. 27)
The Winnipeg-based author of the memoir Older Sister. Not Necessarily Related (winner of the 2019 Hilary Weston Writers’ Trust Prize for Nonfiction) returns with a collection of essays examining family, self, queerness, self-harm, literary criticism and more.
Wills will launch Everything and Nothing at All on Saturday, Sept. 21 at 7 p.m. at McNally Robinson Booksellers’ Grant Park location, where she’ll be joined in conversation by Lindsay Wong.
I Heard There Was a Secret Chord: Music as Medicine
By Daniel J. Levitin (Penguin, Aug. 27)
The neuroscientist and author of This is Your Brain on Music returns with an examination of music as therapy, its role in human evolution, cognition and emotion as well as how music has connected communities over centuries.
Buy on mcnallyrobinson.com
Salvage: Readings From the Wreck
By Dionne Brand (Knopf, Aug. 27)
The acclaimed Toronto novelist and poet explores the racist and colonial tropes in literature from the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries, the challenge of writing Black voices in response to these works and the remaking of self in response.
Buy on mcnallyrobinson.com
The Knowing
By Tanya Talaga (HarperCollins, Aug. 27)
Talaga, the Anishinaabe author of The Seven Fallen Feathers, retells the story of Canada through the lens of her ancestors and immediate family, weaving in the history of Indian residential schools and overall oppression.
Buy on mcnallyrobinson.com
At a Loss for Words: Conversation in the Age of Rage
By Carol Off (Random House, Sept. 3)
The former host of CBC’s As It Happens chooses six words — freedom, democracy, truth, woke, choice and taxes — and examines them in the context of both the left and the right, and how their meanings have shifted across the political spectrum.
Off will launch At a Loss for Words on Sunday, Sept. 15 at 2 p.m. at McNally Robinson Booksellers’ Grant Park location.
Lovely One: A Memoir
By Ketanji Brown Jackson (Random House, Sept. 3)
The newest member of the U.S. Supreme Court shares what she learned from her educator parents, the path she carved through high school in the American South, her time at Harvard and her move into the legal world before being appointed to the highest court in the land.
Buy on mcnallyrobinson.com
Something Lost, Something Gained: Reflections on Life, Love, and Liberty
Hillary Rodham Clinton (Simon & Schuster, Sept. 17)
The ex-First Lady and presidential candidate (as well as author) offers a host of candid slice-of-life snapshots and ruminations as well as more pointed examinations of current events and world leaders in a melding of the personal and the political.
Buy on mcnallyrobinson.com
Who We Are: Four Questions for a Life and a Nation
By Murray Sinclair (McClelland & Stewart, Sept. 24)
The former senator and judge looks at history, resistance, and resilience and their relationship to Indigenous identity, justice and human rights — and how they are the bedrock of conversations about a move towards reconciliation.
Buy on mcnallyrobinson.com
Heart on My Sleeve: Stories from a Life Well Worn
Jeanne Beker (Simon & Schuster, Oct. 8)
Beker, the longtime host of Fashion Television, shares the story of her close-knit family and friends, and gives readers an inside look into the lives and style of a number of big names.
Beker will launch Heart on My Sleeve in Winnipeg on Monday, Oct. 21 at 7 p.m. at McNally Robinson’s Grant Park location.
What I Ate in One Year (and related thoughts)
By Stanley Tucci (Gallery, Oct. 15)
Readers get a behind-the-scenes look at Tucci’s life through a year-long, diary-like chronicle of the fascinating (both good and bad) meals the foodie and actor has ingested with family, on set, while traveling and more.
FICTION
In Winter I Get Up at Night
By Jane Urquhart (McClelland & Stewart, Aug. 27)
Urquhart’s first novel in nearly a decade chronicles the life Emer McConnell, a music teacher in rural Saskatchewan injured in a Prairie storm as a child, the impact of being placed in a children’s ward to recover and the relationships she formed in her youth and beyond.
Real ones
By Katherena Vermette (Hamish Hamilton, Sept. 3)
The award-winning author of The Break, The Strangers and The Circle offers the story of two Michif sisters whose estranged, very white mother comes under fire, called out for being a “pretendian.”
Vermette launches real ones on Tuesday, Sept. 10 at 7 p.m. at McNally Robinson’s Grant Park location.
May Our Joy Endure
By Kevin Lambert, translated by Donald Winkler (Biblioasis, Sept. 3)
A major prize winner in its original French publication in 2023, Lambert follows an internationally renowned architect who returns to her home town of Montreal to spearhead a major project and is lambasted by local critics.
The Capital of Dreams
By Heather O’Neill (HarperCollins, Sept. 10)
In a small and magical European hamlet, 14-year-old Sofia is tasked with smuggling her mother’s latest manuscript out of the country when it is invaded and the children are evacuated. When she loses it, she sets off a journey to retrieve the precious document.
O’Neill will launch The Capital of Dreams on Thursday, Oct. 3 at 7 p.m. at McNally Robinson’s Grant Park location, where she’ll be joined in conversation by David A. Robertson.
Hi, It’s Me: A Novel
By Fawn Parker (McClelland & Stewart, Sept. 17)
Parker’s latest follows a woman named Fawn who moves into her late mother’s house, where four other women live; instead of dealing with her mother’s belongings, she instead becomes transfixed with archiving her mother’s writing.
Buy on mcnallyrobinson.com
Playground: A Novel
By Richard Powers (Random House, Sept. 24)
A trio who become fast friends at a Chicago private school go their separate ways, with one becoming a tech billionaire; when he becomes deeply ill he begins to think back on what could have been and what he should never have let go.
Buy on mcnallyrobinson.com
The Coming Bad Days
By Sarah Bernstein (Knopf, Oct. 1)
The 2021 debut by the 2023 Giller winner for Study for Obedience gets a North American release; in it, a woman in a university town begins to research on a poet before befriending Clara, a decidedly assured woman, before an act of violence threatens to tear them apart.
Buy on mcnallyrobinson.com
All You Can Kill
By Pasha Malla (Coach House, Oct. 8)
Described as “White Lotus meets Shaun of the Dead,” Malla’s latest sees a duo attending an island wellness retreat, impersonating a likely dead couple, before the guests find a haunted chapel — and someone is murdered.
Buy on mcnallyrobinson.com
The Forgetter series, vols. 4-6
By Dave Eggers (McSweeney’s Publishing, Oct. 22)
Eggers follows up the last year’s release of two novellas/extended short stories in the Forgetters series with four new installments: The Keeper of the Ornaments, The Comebacker, Where the Candles are Kept and The Lighted Boat Parade.
The City and its Uncertain Walls
By Haruki Murakami, translated by Philip Gabriel (Bond Street, Nov. 19)
The acclaimed Japanese author returns with a novel spawned from a short story of the same name, in the town from Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World; in it a teenaged boy falls in love with a girl, eventually working at a library reading dreams from an orb.
Buy on mcnallyrobinson.com
Ben Sigurdson
Literary editor, drinks writer
Ben Sigurdson is the Free Press‘s literary editor and drinks writer. He graduated with a master of arts degree in English from the University of Manitoba in 2005, the same year he began writing Uncorked, the weekly Free Press drinks column. He joined the Free Press full time in 2013 as a copy editor before being appointed literary editor in 2014. Read more about Ben.
In addition to providing opinions and analysis on wine and drinks, Ben oversees a team of freelance book reviewers and produces content for the arts and life section, all of which is reviewed by the Free Press’s editing team before being posted online or published in print. It’s part of the Free Press‘s tradition, since 1872, of producing reliable independent journalism. Read more about Free Press’s history and mandate, and learn how our newsroom operates.
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