FICTION

Canadian publishers have a cornucopia of fiction readied for the early part of the year, offering both long-form and short stories that should keep readers occupied during the cold winter months and right through spring.

Genre titles continue to be popular, and a number feature elements from horror, science fiction, and the generally weird or bizarre. Kim Fu follows up the acclaimed 2022 story collection Lesser Known Monsters of the 21st Century with a debut novel, The Valley of Vengeful Ghosts (HarperCollins, Mar.). After buying a model home to appease the final wishes of her late mother, protagonist Eleanor must contend with torrential rain, untrustworthy contractors, and ghosts that begin to unravel the seams between reality and the otherworldly.

The debut graphic novel from visual artist Jon Claytor, Nowhere (Goose Lane, Mar.), tells the story of a preteen who moves to a new town where a giant hovering cube disgorges vampires, aliens, and all manner of odd manifestations—including clowns—that run rampant throughout the streets.

Perhaps one of the most surprising titles coming in early 2026 is the first horror novel from Karma Brown, bestselling author of Recipe for a Perfect Wife. In Mother Is Watching (S&S, Mar.), a pregnant art conservator begins to succumb to terrifying ghostly manifestations after she undertakes to restore a long-lost painting that has been damaged by fire.

Daniel Zomparelli, coeditor of the 2022 short fiction anthology Queer Little Nightmares, has a debut novel coming that blurs the line between real life and the supernatural. Super Castle Fun Park (Arsenal Pulp, Apr.) is about a trio of characters on the precipice of change who undergo isolation, visions, and communication with the dead.

In the perennially popular historical fiction category, Jennifer Chevalier, the senior producer behind the CBC Radio program The House, has a debut novel inspired by the real-life “filles du roi,” a group of unmarried European women recruited by Louis XIV to travel to New France as settlers’ brides. The Winter Witch (S&S, Jan.) follows two sisters who sail from Normandy to Montreal in hopes of finding someone to lift the curse they believe plagues them.

French history also plays a part in Riverwork (Coach House, May), the second novel from acclaimed experimental poet Lisa Robertson. The book focuses on an unnamed narrator who works cleaning the houses of the wealthy academic class in Paris. After inheriting notebooks from her great-aunt, she begins researching the history of the Bièvre, an underground river buried beneath the city. Her research dovetails with the work of such great French writers as Hugo, Rabelais, and Rousseau.

Ongoing history forms the backdrop for the debut novel by Palestinian Canadian poet Ashraf Zaghal. Seven Heavens Away (Anansi, Feb.) tells the coming-of-age story of Aziz and Mustafa, two Arabs whose mutual friend, Hassan, is killed by an Israeli soldier. When Aziz falls in love with a Jewish girl, he must navigate the rocky shoals of identity and guilt at what Mustafa feels is a betrayal of their murdered friend.

Several novels appearing in the first half of 2026 have music as their subject or backdrop. In Nadia Bozak’s Fret (ECW, Apr.), has-been rocker Kate finds her life upended when her car is stolen with her daughter inside. As the case goes public, Kate’s entire life is opened up for scrutiny by both anonymous online denizens and the people closest to her.

In The Lost Queen (Dundurn, Feb.), actor-turned-novelist Heidi von Palleske’s follow-up to Two White Queens and the One-Eyed Jack, an opera singer disappears and is declared dead. When a Berlin punk opera theatre receives a manuscript that suggests the singer may still be alive, a disparate group of characters bands together in an attempt to figure out what precisely happened to her.

A classical pianist is at the heart of The Instrument Must Not Matter (Buckrider, May), the new novel by author and journalist Christine Fischer Guy. Set during the period during which Czechoslovakia was a Soviet republic, the novel tells the story of a gifted piano prodigy who is given the opportunity to travel to the U.S. to study with a famous teacher. While there, she has an erotic encounter with a female pianist and discovers her grandmother’s hidden history through dissident literature uncovered by her brother.

Short fiction is also on tap for the new year. Vincentian Canadian Chanel Sutherland won the 2025 Commonwealth Short Story Prize for her story “Descend,” about a group of enslaved people trapped on a sinking slave ship. The story appears in Layaway Child (Anansi, May), a collection that focuses on migration and the lives of women from the Caribbean diaspora. The collection also features “Beneath the Softness of Snow,” which won the 2022 CBC Short Story Prize.

British Canadian writer Pauline Holdstock returns with a new story collection, What Endures (Biblioasis, Aug.). The stories, which range from speculative to comic, feature characters in moments of profound crisis, from a woman undergoing emergency brain surgery at Christmastime to a man who flies across the country in the middle of the night, leaving his sleeping family behind.

Nadja Lubiw-Hazard’s short fiction debut, The Life of a Creature (Arsenal Pulp, Apr.), offers a suite of stories about relationships between animals and humans. Among the collection’s characters are feral dogs in the area of Chernobyl, a man who imagines returning as a vulture after death, and a grieving mother’s connection to almost-extinct sea turtles.

NONFICTION

Biography and memoir dominate the nonfiction category moving into the first half of the new year. Benjamin Lefebvre, an academic who has written a number of volumes about the beloved Prince Edward Island author Lucy Maude Montgomery, has another on tap for 2026. The Glory and the Dream: L.M. Montgomery’s Writing Life (Dundurn, Mar.), focuses specifically on the Anne of Green Gables author’s literary career, and includes new insights based on extensive and rarely consulted sources.

In her new book Brassy Bit of Aging Crumpet (HarperCollins, Mar.), Mary Walsh, the comedian famous for her portrayal of the outrageous Marg Delahunty on the satirical news show This Hour Has 22 Minutes, offers up a typically raucous series of personal essays about her life and career. Subjects range from her complicated relationship with her mother to her battles with alcoholism to Newfoundland’s place in the Confederation. Uniting them all is Walsh’s off-center east coast sensibility, marked by humor and salty charm.

Winnipeg-born tour manager Marty Kramer has encountered a vast panoply of 20th century music’s A-listers, from Frank Sinatra and Roy Orbison to Tina Turner and Led Zeppelin. In the upcoming book Road Boss: Untold Stories from Entertainment’s Ultimate Tour Manager (Mosaic, Mar.), cowritten with David Wolinsky, Kramer looks back on his years on the road.

Taking up a decade in the author’s life, the new book from Richard Kelly Kemick addresses subjects as diverse as volleyball, landfills, and high-school drama productions. Decadence: Essays (Biblioasis, June) begins with the blossoming of Kemick’s relationship with his longtime partner, Litia, and concludes with that relationship’s surprising, epiphanic end.

In his latest collection, Walking Well: Essays on Paths and Pilgrimages (Wolsak & Wynn, June), Ken Wilson considers the practice of perambulation in all its forms, from the ceremonial trek along the Camino de Santiago to parkside strolls and brief jaunts. His journeys take him from his Saskatchewan home to Scotland and across Europe.

Electronic music may seem to some like a relatively recent phenomenon, but Toronto-based composer and journalist Michael Rancic would like it known that Canada’s history with the subgenre goes back as far as the 1940s. His new book, A Nation of Tinkerers: A History of Canadian Electronic Music from 1945–1985 (Invisible, Apr.), traces the evolution of the form in Canada from its origins in DIY experimentation to its gradual acceptance in the musical mainstream.

Monique Gray Smith, a writer with mixed Cree, Lakota, and Scottish heritage, leans on the traditions of Indigenous self-help and healing in a volume on inner life and issues around mental health: Sharing the Light: Stories and Reflections (Anansi, Jan.). In The Astonishing Lives of Older Women: How to Create Pleasure over Peril in Peak Longevity (ECW, Mar.), investigative journalist Moira Welsh navigates the perils of aging for women and offers tips on ways they can ensure fulfillment in both relationships and finance.

It’s no secret that the special relationship between the U.S. and its northern neighbor has been strained of late. American-born author Bill Gaston, who nevertheless considers himself a Canadian “through and through,” embarks on a road trip from his home in Victoria, B.C., to Tabor, Iowa, a town that was founded by one of his ancestors as a stop on the Underground Railroad. In Spying on America (Goose Lane, Apr.), Gaston becomes a surreptitious observer trying to uncover the gound-level motivations and concerns of Americans in the heart of the Republican Midwest.

Victoria-based novelist Yasuko Thanh returns in spring as editor of a book by a Palestinian citizen who has observed firsthand the devastation and grief resulting from Israel’s ongoing bombardment of Gaza. Thanh also provides the foreword for Hassan Kanafani’s Pizza Before We Die: An Eyewitness Account in Gaza (Arsenal Pulp, May), a documentary-style retelling of six months of destruction, forced displacement, and death throughout Israel’s ongoing military campaign in Gaza.

CHILDREN’S AND YOUNG ADULT

Finally, the children’s and young adult categories feature a plethora of promising titles, ranging from picture books to chapter books and novels for young adults.

In the picture book category, Tundra’s Swift Water Books imprint, helmed by David A. Robertson, features a recasting of a poem by the late Ojibwe author Richard Wagamese. Canada: We Are the Story (Swift Water, Mar., ages 3–7) focuses on a young Indigenous boy who is conflicted in his response to a school assignment asking, “What makes you proud to be Canadian?” To form an answer, the boy calls on the wisdom of his ancestors, which leads him to knowledge about the interconnectedness of all people. Anishinaabe artist Mangeshig Pawis-Steckley provides the illustrations.

Also from Tundra is a new picture book by frequent collaborators Kyo Maclear and Julie Morstad. A Door Is to Open (Tundra, May, ages 3–7) is an imaginative and whimsical consideration of doors in all shapes and sizes: a screen door to let in the summer breeze, a revolving door to enter and leave buildings, a closet door for clothes and to hide behind. Doors are shown to lead to adventures and new experiences; writer Maclear and illustrator Morstad invite readers to discover the secrets behind them all.

A new book from Roy Henry Vickers and Lucky Budd uses rhyming text and colorful illustrations to introduce kids to the plentiful foods of the Canadian West Coast. Summer Brings Berries (Harbour, June, ages up to 3) teaches children foundational skills and vocabulary while also describing some of the region’s traditional delicacies.

Growing up can be a scary proposition, with all sorts of unfamiliar experiences waiting. In Ellis on Guard (Second Story, Feb., ages 6–8), written by Sal Sawler and illustrated by Nandita Ratan, the title character finds that even the anxiety that plagues them can be well channeled when a dog from the neighborhood goes missing.

John Martz illustrates writer Naseem Hrab’s latest picture book, Every Space Between (Groundwood, Mar., ages 3–7), which searches for importance not in beginnings or ends, but in the spaces between those terminal points. The breath between lighting and blowing out candles on a birthday cake, the moments between feeling an itch and scratching it—these empty spaces are shown to contain all kinds of untapped potential.

All the Water on Earth (Kids Can, June, ages 5–8) is a companion piece to Rochelle Strauss’s bestseller One Well. Illustrated by Madelyn Goodnight, the book introduces children to the finite nature of the Earth’s most precious natural resource, teaching them to be stewards of the planet’s water.

On the chapter-book front, Danny Neville has written the first in a new series focused on social justice. In Little Bee: The Buzz about the Party (Annick, Apr., ages 6–9), Bee and her best friends find themselves in a predicament when their teacher announces a Mother’s Day–themed party. Bee has two dads and is worried they will be excluded from the festivities. Bee’s friends and classmates come together and discover that Bee is not the only one with a nontraditional family. The book is illustrated by Colleen McKeown.

Nostalgia is on tap in the graphic novel Ready, Cassette, Go! (Annick, Apr., ages 7–11), a debut series title from writer and illustrator Jarett Sitter. In retro Cassette City, a group of misfits—a raccoon, a sentient mushroom, and a robot with emotions—recruits a young girl to help them win the Battle of the Bands.

The Mighty Muskrats return in the sixth book in Michael Hutchinson’s middle grade mystery series, The Case of the Movie Mayhem (Second Story, Mar., ages 9–12). This time around, the Cree cousins are on school break when they discover a movie is being filmed on their traditional land. Soon, they must jump into action to discover the whereabouts of a missing piece of film equipment.

Robin Stevenson’s Pride Puppy was at the center of a challenge that rose all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court. In her latest work for older children, a 13-year-old must come to grips with the fact that she has grown up in a cult. The Book of Jupiter (Kids Can, June, ages 10–14) continues the author’s interest in stories about empathy and marginalized communities.

In Here for a Good Time (Tundra, May, ages 10 and up), an Indigenous girl named Morgan, who has been abandoned by her mother, spends her time attending school and caring for her father, a commercial fisher off the coast of Prince Rupert in northern B.C. Written by Kim Spencer of the Gitxaala Nation, this new young adult novel focuses on the theme of intergenerational trauma, as Morgan must confront tragedy and come to an understanding of her mother’s past experience.

Steven W. Beattie lives in Ontario and publishes the literary website That Shakespearean Rag.

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