1. Irma Voth by Miriam Toews
This novel entangles love, longing and dark family secrets. The stifling, reclusive Mennonite life of nineteen-year-old Irma Voth is irrevocably changed when a film crew moves in to make a movie about the community.
2. Alone in the Classroom by Elizabeth Hay
Ripe with tension and beautifully written it tells the story of how a single act of violence has repercussions through generations and provinces, as the story shifts between the Ottawa Valley and Saskatchewan.
3. The Lake by Banana Yoshimoto
A major literary sensation is back with a quietly stunning tour de force about a young woman who falls for a cult escapee.
4. Tiny Sunbirds, Far Away by Christie Watson
The witty and beautifully written story of one family’s attempt to survive a new life they could never have imagined, struggling to find a deeper sense of identity along the way.
5. The Beauty of the Humanity Movement by Camilla Gibb
Set in Vietnam a keenly observed and skillfully wrought novel about the reverberation of conflict through generations, the enduring legacy of art, and the redemption and renewal of long-lost love.
6. Twenties Girl by Sophie Kinsella
Though Twenties Girl kicks off with a funeral, it ends on a satisfying note of joie de vivre, allowing Kinsella’s skill as a ghost-story spinner to become utterly transparent.
7. The Weed That Strings the Hangman’s Baby by Alan Bradley
Alan Bradley’s precocious heroine, Flavia de Luce, returns in a new mystery that starts with a puppet show.
8. The Killing Circle by Andrew Pyper
A suspenseful page-turner that explores the repercussions of that most dishonest of thefts: stealing another’s story and calling it your own.
9. The Swimming Pool by Holly LeCraw
An illicit affair, an unsolved murder and an intense summer romance in Cape Cod, what’s not to love?
10. Various Positions by Martha Schabas
This extraordinary debut novel takes us inside the beauty and brutality of professional ballet, and the young women striving to make it in that world.