The Night Piece Brother Butter Honey Pig Bread By André Alexis By David Chariandy By Francesca Ekwuyasi FIC ALE FIC CHA FIC EKW This collection of short stories This quietly powerful lyrical This majestic debut novel spans the career of multiple novel is an elegy from one spans three continents and award winning author André brother to another in a three Nigerian women, a Alexis, best known for the Trinidadian Canadian family. mother, Kambirinachi, and winning novel Francis hopes to make a twin daughters, Kehinde . Many of the career in music. Michael and Taiye. Through a stories are set in Ottawa or focuses his attention on the smartest girl in sometimes magical realist lens, Ekwuyasi Toronto, and they incorporate sly humour even school. Police violence tears their family apart. investigates trauma, being an artist, sister while they address profound topics. relationships, queerness, cooking,

motherhood, non-human spirits, and healing.

Washington Black

Have You Met Nora? By By Nicole Blades FIC EDU Independence By Cecil Foster FIC BLA This sweeping historical epic FIC FOS Montreal writer Nicole Blades follows a young boy named 14-year-old friends tackles issues of race and . Enslaved Christopher and Stephanie belonging in this novel about a on a Barbados plantation, he are coming of age in young biracial woman passing is chosen to be a servant to Barbados just as it achieves for white. Nora is about to his master’s brother— independence. Both their marry her wealthy fiancé, but eccentric inventor and mothers have left for better he doesn’t know she’s mixed race. When a abolitionist. They subsequently travel around economic opportunities, but a rift grows betrayed ex-classmate turns up in her life, the world as Wash learns how to live a life of between them when a Canadian benefactor Nora’s lies threaten to come tumbling down. dignity. returns to lavish gifts on Stephanie.

Theory The Alchemists of Kush By Dionne Brand By Minister Faust Sister Mine FIC BRA FIC FAU By Nalo Hopkinson FIC HOP Former Poet Laureate of Deemed a “hip hop epic,” Toronto’s latest novel is about this speculative story is Hopkinson’s wonderfully an unnamed academic as they steeped in Egyptian imaginative Afro-Caribbean chronicle their life's love affairs. mythology, with one of two urban fantasy is set in These relationships both parallel stories—7000 years Toronto. It features interrupt and fuel their decade- apart—set in Edmonton. sisters—one magical, one long dissertation project. This is pure character Two young men, Hru and not—who were formally study of an amusing and unreliable narrator. Raphael, get taken under the spiritual wing of a conjoined twins, demi-gods, a human who mentor who helps them find their own strength. used to be Jimi Hendrix’s guitar, and more! The Return The Midnight Bargain By Dany Laferrière By C.L. Polk FIC LAF FIC POL Translated from the original A Regency-era fantasy about French, this Prix Médicis sorceresses and magic, The winner begins in mid 1970s Midnight Bargain follows the Montreal. The protagonist has story of Beatrice, who wishes left Port-au-Prince in the wake to practise magic but is of the murder of one of his supposed to focus on finding journalist colleagues. Decades later, he learns an advantageous marriage to pay off her family’s of his father’s death and decides to return to debt. Can she manage to achieve both ends, plus Haiti. But how does one return from exile? find love?

Dr. Edith Vane and the Hares Frying Plantain of Crawley Hall By Zalika Reid-Benta By Suzette Mayr FIC REI FIC MAY A debut collection of linked Edith Vane’s tenured short stories about the main professor job is supposed to character Kara, Frying Plantain be safe, but the new dean is hones in on the feeling of being evil, her colleague has gone caught in the middle: Canadian missing, and her building has vs Jamaican, bold vs soft, and developed sentience and is loud vs quiet. The setting is a vivid Little Jamaica trying to kill everyone. A satire on the horrors in Toronto. of academia, especially for women of colour.

Reproduction Shut Up You’re Pretty By By Téa Mutonji FIC WIL FIC MUT Williams’ Giller Prize award This collection of short winning novel is set in a multi- stories centres on a woman linguistic and cultural from the Congo, following neighbourhood in Toronto. her journey from girlhood Felicia and Edgar meet as their to adulthood, including her moms are in the hospital, and family’s immigration to form a lifelong bond, although Canada. Themes include feminism, queerness, they don’t quite understand each other. Years sex work, best friendship, depression, race, and later, their teenage son becomes fascinated with more. his absent father (and his money).