Books

MIKE DEAL / FREE PRESS FILES
Katherena vermette has made the three-person short list for the inaugural Nancy Flight Writers’ Trust Prize for Nonfiction Editing.

Vermette lands on non-fiction editing short list

Ben Sigurdson 4 minute read Saturday, Oct. 10, 2026

Winnipeg-based novelist, poet and editor katherena vermette has made the three-person short list for a new $25,000 prize given awarded to the editor of a work of non-fiction.

The inaugural Nancy Flight Writers’ Trust Prize for Nonfiction Editing finalists are vermette for Louis Busch’s Carry Your Heart: Indigenous Helping Wisdom & the Science of Psychological Flexibility, George Galt for My Year in Fairyland: Grief, MAID and a Lifetime of Books, written by Sarah Ellis, and Rachel Rose for Humanitarienne: A Doctor’s Stories from the Conflict Zone, written by Kirsten Johnson.

In addition to her writerly output, vermette has served as a senior editor at Simon & Schuster Canada since 2024. The winner of the Nancy Flight Writers’ Trust Prize for Nonfiction Editing prize will be announced at the Writers’ Trust Awards on Nov. 10.

● ● ●

Advertise With Us

Weather

Oct. 13, 12 PM: 5°c Cloudy Oct. 13, 6 PM: 6°c Cloudy with wind

Winnipeg MB

5°C, Cloudy

Full Forecast

Books

In Conversation: Canisia Lubrin

Ariel Gordon 4 minute read Preview

In Conversation: Canisia Lubrin

Ariel Gordon 4 minute read Saturday, Oct. 10, 2026

Canisia Lubrin, born in St. Lucia and based in Whitby, Ont., is the author of five award-winning books, poetry and fiction.

Her honours include the OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature, the Griffin Poetry Prize, the Derek Walcott Prize and the Danuta Gleed Literary Award, in addition to the Carol Shields Prize for Fiction. She has been twice a finalist for the Governor General’s Literary Award and Ontario’s Trillium Book Prize.

Lubrin will be bringing her fourth collection of poetry, Bright Machine, to McNally Robinson’s Grant Park location on Wednesday. The event will be hosted by Winnipeg poet Chimwemwe Undi, who is currently Canada’s Parliamentary Poet Laureate.

Free Press: What are your goals for this collection?

Read

Saturday, Oct. 10, 2026

Books

Unity-based worldview key to good leadership

Reviewed by Rochelle Squires 3 minute read Preview

Unity-based worldview key to good leadership

Reviewed by Rochelle Squires 3 minute read Saturday, Oct. 10, 2026

Indigenous leader and former justice minister and attorney general of Canada Jody Wilson-Raybould knows first-hand what courageous leadership looks like. As a politician operating in an adversarial and competitive partisan system that favours winning over good public policy, she once took a stand against a leader and his style that was contrary to her values. The move cost her her job. The public fallout was immense as she was removed from cabinet and, later, the caucus.

Now, she’s co-written a book on leadership — one that should be mandatory reading for everyone who wants to advance the state of leadership within themselves and their community.

In The Inbetween Leader, Wilson-Raybould and co-author (and B.C. lawyer and educator) Roshan Danesh advocate for what they call an “inbetween” leadership style. It involves meeting people where they are at, breaking down silos that separate us and being a bridge between different views and opinions.

“A strong leader is also one who can engender respect and be seen as an authority through their ability to be unifying,” Wilson-Raybould writes. “If one divides, one is not a leader. If one promotes conflict, one is not a leader. If one tries to force people to bend to one’s own will, one is not a leader.”

Read

Saturday, Oct. 10, 2026

Books

In Partita, Barbara Kingsolver’s moving, sonata-like prose plucks emotional heartstrings

Reviewed by Jenna Boholij 4 minute read Preview

In Partita, Barbara Kingsolver’s moving, sonata-like prose plucks emotional heartstrings

Reviewed by Jenna Boholij 4 minute read Friday, Oct. 9, 2026

Barbara Kingsolver’s latest novel Partita is as inspiring and beautiful as the musical pieces its title is derived from. The acclaimed Appalachian writer expertly weaves an emotionally charged story about love, heartache, hope, class divide, nostalgia and politics.

Kingsolver is the bestselling author of works of fiction, books of poetry, essays, creative non-fiction and children’s literature. She is an award-winning writer whose achievements include the 2023 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for her novel Demon Copperhead.

Doubling down on Partita’s musical theme, the chapters are named after musical movements, and Kingsolver offers readers a “Listening List” of compositions to pair with the readings in the way one might suggest complementary wine to cheese.

An unexpected phone call from an old lover threatens to disrupt the prosaic life and marriage of Livia Cable. The novel jumps between past and present, beginning with Livia navigating her earlier years, affected by loss and grief after her brother steps in front of a train, and indifference and coldness from her hardened mother.

Read

Friday, Oct. 9, 2026

Books

Modern retelling of ancient Greek story is a moving meditation on love and choices

Reviewed by Joel Boyce 4 minute read Preview

Modern retelling of ancient Greek story is a moving meditation on love and choices

Reviewed by Joel Boyce 4 minute read Friday, Oct. 9, 2026

Colin McAdam wrote a PhD thesis on Ancient Greek literature, but wrote four novels on other topics before dusting off his school notes for Daphnis and Chloe.

The Toronto-based writer of A Beautiful Truth won major literary prizes for three of his first four novels, including his 2004 debut Some Great Thing. Daphnis and Chloe, McAdam’s fifth and latest novel, is a modern retelling of the Greek tale of the same name from almost 2,000 years ago, and was longlisted for the 2026 Giller Prize.

Brief and quite readable despite its heavy themes and classical pedigree, McAdam’s latest has much to recommend. It’s not immediately obvious which direction the story will take, and the prose has a certain lyricism that makes it easy to keep reading. It does contain some violent scenes, which will not be every reader’s cup of tea, but the beauty of the writing does go some way to softening that.

The basic setup of Daphnis and Chloe is that two abandoned children are found and raised by a pair of poor but loving families. These foundlings grow up together and eventually fall in love, but the world can be a dark and dangerous place, and foreshadowing suggests there will be many obstacles to any kind of happy ending.

Read

Friday, Oct. 9, 2026

Books

Canadian Press files
Alberta separatists gather at the legislature in Edmonton in August. On Oct. 19, Albertans will vote on whether to begin the process for a referendum on separating from Canada.

Alberta vote on secession spurred by foreign interference, the American far right and a complicit premier

Reviewed by Matt Henderson 5 minute read Preview

Alberta vote on secession spurred by foreign interference, the American far right and a complicit premier

Reviewed by Matt Henderson 5 minute read Friday, Oct. 9, 2026

On Oct. 19th, Albertans go to the polls to vote on 10 questions. The first question asks Albertans if they wish to begin the process for a referendum on separation from Confederation. The rest are questions about whether or not Alberta should adhere to the Constitution itself — questions layered with racism and xenophobia. All Canadians and classrooms should take a close look at these questions.

Should Alberta ignore Canada, its laws and its people despite only 23 per cent of Albertans indicating that they would vote for separation (coupled with a $130-million referendum price tag)?

While local plebiscites might seem highly democratic, consider that the Oct. 19 referendum and the 10 questions did not come from the Alberta legislature — the body made of elected representatives. The United Conservative Party (UCP) did not run on a platform of separatism. Rather, the idea to separate came directly from the executive, UCP leader and Alberta Premier Danielle Smith, in collusion with a band of unelected and anti-Canadian bandits.

Judicial rulings have deemed the referendum unconstitutional. Enter the notwithstanding clause.

Read

Friday, Oct. 9, 2026

Books

Enhanced assassin at the core of fast-paced sci-fi story

Reviewed by Bill Rambo 4 minute read Preview

Enhanced assassin at the core of fast-paced sci-fi story

Reviewed by Bill Rambo 4 minute read Friday, Oct. 9, 2026

Opening his careening new novel in the middle of a fight to the death, Australian author James Islington plunges his reader into a gory introduction to its main character, Azure.

Islington’s earlier series, the Licanius trilogy, and the Hierarchy series (The Will of the Many and The Strength of the Few, with a third book to come) have been fantasy epics. Scion is science fiction, compact and frenetically paced, set in a world where the ultra-wealthy can become “lifers” using the drug Ichor. However, the world’s “DeGov” has legalized killing lifers, perhaps to add circuses to the bread of a universal basic income.

Lifers’ solitary, hunted lives raise questions about the quality of their extended years. Elaborate defenses include electromagnetic pulse areas which destroy technology as well as biosecurity cloned and cyborg creations, such as the many-eyed Argos that Azure battles as the novel opens.

Azure is an assassin for the Keres Corporation, which assigns him to kill “Proscriptions.” As Lifers come to the attention of the resentful population, crowdfunding makes them “profitable to kill.”

Read

Friday, Oct. 9, 2026

Learn more about Advertising solutions

Books

Missing grandfather’s writing spurs moving memoir, short fictions

Reviewed by Keith Cadieux 4 minute read Preview

Missing grandfather’s writing spurs moving memoir, short fictions

Reviewed by Keith Cadieux 4 minute read Friday, Oct. 9, 2026

Born in the U.K., having grown up in B.C. and now based in Kingston, Ont., prolific author Helen Humphreys is no stranger to personal memoirs. Among her numerous books, including nine novels, four books of poetry, and five works of creative non-fiction, she has written about the hidden history of the apple and how it connected agriculture and human settlements in North America in The Ghost Orchard, and the devastating loss of her brother in Nocturne — two seemingly unconnected topics which coalesce in her latest work, Summerland.

When her father was 12, Humphrey’s grandfather Dudley went missing, presumed killed on a secret military flight to Malta during the Second World War. Meant to take command of an air base, his mission was a covert operation, and so his family received only the sparest information about what happened to him.

In recent years, the British government finally released the investigative file into his death and, even more recently, Humphrey’s aunt discovered a stash of her grandfather’s writing.

With this sudden influx of information, Humphreys is able to piece together a portrait of her grandfather, a man she was never able to meet. She discovers that he had grand plans to move his family from England to Summerland, B.C., where he spent some time working as a bank clerk when he was a young man, and wanted to build an apple orchard. He also hoped to become a writer and wrote several stories about his wartime experiences in both the First and Second World Wars.

Read

Friday, Oct. 9, 2026

Books

Ann Cleeves in fine form in new Venn mystery

Reviewed by Ron Robinson 3 minute read Preview

Ann Cleeves in fine form in new Venn mystery

Reviewed by Ron Robinson 3 minute read Friday, Oct. 9, 2026

Some friendships are toxic. In Ann Cleeves’ fourth mystery in her Two Rivers series, it proves to be fatal.

Hannah and Lottie are teenage school chums with little in common. And on a summer holiday in North Devon, their differences leads to one found dead and the other missing.

Detective inspector Matthew Venn and his team, consisting of the straight-talking Jen and the ambitious Ross, have their hands full as each partial answer only leads to more questions.

Lottie, found dead in a swimming pool, was headstrong, pampered and entitled. Hannah, who can’t be found, was hesitant and looking to Lottie to lead the way in adventures and risk taking.

Read

Friday, Oct. 9, 2026

Books

Corinne Dubreuil/ TNS
In 2021, former women’s top-ranked tennis player Naomi Osaka stepped away briefly from the sport, opting to prioritize her mental health.

Veteran sportswriter uncovers the many pitfalls of professional tennis

Reviewed by Jordan Ross 4 minute read Preview

Veteran sportswriter uncovers the many pitfalls of professional tennis

Reviewed by Jordan Ross 4 minute read Friday, Oct. 9, 2026

Why does tennis drive so many of its top athletes mad, leading some to quit at the peak of their career? Matthew Futterman explores this question after several years of full-time tennis writing for the Athletic, the sports arm of the New York Times.

This is Futterman’s third book. His first, Running to the Edge, chronicled a group of Olympic runners and their visionary coach. His second, Players, explained how sports became big business.

Futterman is a veteran sportswriter who has covered many Olympic Games and World Cups, as well as the NFL and NBA. But the tennis beat hit different. “I was completely blown away, immediately, by how miserable tennis players were,” he said in an interview on The Tennis Podcast.

Tennis pros might be miserable because of the sport’s gruelling season, which spans 11 months and six continents. Or because the sport lacks a bona fide players’ union, leaving athletes to labour as independent contractors without a safety net.

Read

Friday, Oct. 9, 2026

Books

Anne Carson’s Nobel win leads to surge in book sales, library holds and streams

Alex Nino Gheciu, The Canadian Press 5 minute read Friday, Oct. 9, 2026

Canadians evidently have a serious case of Anne Carson fever.

The Toronto-born poet's Nobel Prize win has sent sales of her books soaring by more than 10,000 per cent at Indigo, while some libraries are seeing an unprecedented rush for her work and even a Canadian rock band is enjoying a streaming boost.

Indigo says sales of Carson's titles jumped a staggering 10,325 per cent on Thursday, the day she was named the winner of the Nobel Prize in literature, compared with the previous day.

Online searches for Carson's books surged even higher, climbing 20,809 per cent day over day.

Books

Pam West Photography
There are interesting ideas at play in Laurie Petrou’s new novel, particularly around the politics of authorship and how brutal a career in academia can be.

Aspiring author gets tangled in a suspicious scheme with dazzling duo

Reviewed by Keith Cadieux 5 minute read Preview

Aspiring author gets tangled in a suspicious scheme with dazzling duo

Reviewed by Keith Cadieux 5 minute read Saturday, Oct. 3, 2026

Would you rather be a famous author and a recognizable name with cultural pull, or to have written stories that capture readers that become part of the cultural moment, but that no one knows were written by you? This is the conflict at the heart of The Rayburn Affair, the latest from novelist and Toronto Metropolitan University professor Laurie Petrou (Stargazer, Sister of Mine).

The novel follows Ruth Morgan, an assistant professor in the English department at the prestigious East Toronto University. She struggles with the workload and expectations needed to thrive in academia, floundering under the pressure as her last chance to be granted tenure, and keep her job, approaches.

To try and make herself more attractive to university higher-ups, Ruth fashions herself as an expert on artificial intelligence (AI) and its potential to change storytelling. She is also struggling to be a writer, tinkering away at a collection of short stories no one seems interested in publishing.

Just when things look most dire for Ruth’s situation, she attends a faculty party where she meets the university’s power couple: a fellow professor and bad boy artist in the media department, Oscar Frost, and his literary powerhouse wife Shelby Rayburn, who happens to be Ruth’s favourite author. The pair take an instant liking to Ruth, and the three become extremely close at a speed that’s too good to be true.

Read

Saturday, Oct. 3, 2026

Books

Questions outweigh answers in UFO tome

Reviewed by Julie Carl 4 minute read Preview

Questions outweigh answers in UFO tome

Reviewed by Julie Carl 4 minute read Saturday, Oct. 3, 2026

If you love UFOs, this is the book for you.

Thoroughly, impressively researched by an expert in the field, Canada’s UFO Secrets is Chris A. Rutkowski’s 11th book on the topic. Rutkowski has been interested in sightings since the 1950s, seriously researching sightings in Canada since the ’70s. The book boasts a thorough index, a lengthy bibliography and fulsome footnotes that make it a must-have resource for aficionados of UFOs (now often referred to as unidentified anomalous phenomenon or UAPs).

If you don’t love UFOs, this is probably not the book for you.

Canada’s UFO Secrets is thoroughly, impressively researched in such excruciating detail — seemingly not a single reported sighting has been omitted — at the expense of forming a narrative about UFOs in Canada. It’s a book that provides the hows and the wheres and the whens of sightings, but not the whys of what it all means. And that’s a shame — all this research ought to add up to something more.

Read

Saturday, Oct. 3, 2026

Books

Tom Hanson / Canadian Press files
Jennifer Botterill (front) celebrates with teammates after beating the U.S. in the gold-medal women’s hockey game at the 2002 Olympics in Salt Lake City, Utah.

Botterill chronicles life on and off the ice in inspiring new memoir

Reviewed by Barry Craig 6 minute read Preview

Botterill chronicles life on and off the ice in inspiring new memoir

Reviewed by Barry Craig 6 minute read Saturday, Oct. 3, 2026

She’s the Wayne Gretzky of women’s hockey.

Jennifer Botterill may also be the social blueprint for character.

In her memoir, Why Not You, Botterill’s poise and conviction shine through in her willingness to express her studious opinions to millions watching televised hockey, whether they like it or not.

Botterill, who was born in Ottawa and raised in Winnipeg, was one of the world’s best hockey players before becoming a forceful analyst of the game on TV. She often has an alternate perspective from those of her usually male panellists and she vigorously defends it. “I’m one of the few women doing what I do, and I represent a strong female voice in a space where there aren’t many of us,” she writes. “I’m doing what I set out to do: make a difference. And that’s a much stronger force than any negativity about my opinions.”

Read

Saturday, Oct. 3, 2026

Books

Manuel Valdes / Associated Press files
Students in Seattle protest gun violence a month after the Feb. 14, 2018 shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., where 17 people were killed.

Gladwell’s exploration of America’s gun crisis separates myth and misconception from fact

Reviewed by Morley Walker 4 minute read Preview

Gladwell’s exploration of America’s gun crisis separates myth and misconception from fact

Reviewed by Morley Walker 4 minute read Saturday, Oct. 3, 2026

The idea of a Canadian lecturing Americans on their insane attitudes towards gun violence might seem ill-advised at this moment of fraught relations between our two countries.

Goodness knows, shelves full of books by Americans themselves have already been written on this suicidal pathology.

But, hey, the popular non-fiction author and journalist Malcolm Gladwell — born and raised in southern Ontario, but a U.S. resident his entire career — has a long pedigree on the topic.

“I’m particularly drawn to American stories of criminals and criminality,” he notes in his introduction to his latest book of sociological non-fiction, The American Way of Killing, “because you cannot cross between the U.S. and Canada, as I have done six or seven times a year for nearly half a century, and not be struck by how peculiar America is.”

Read

Saturday, Oct. 3, 2026

Books

Exploring race, crime, virtue and more, Whitehead’s Harlem Trilogy ends on a high note

Reviewed by Zilla Jones 6 minute read Preview

Exploring race, crime, virtue and more, Whitehead’s Harlem Trilogy ends on a high note

Reviewed by Zilla Jones 6 minute read Saturday, Oct. 3, 2026

Cool Machine, the third and last book in Colson Whitehead’s Harlem Trilogy — following Harlem Shuffle and Crook Manifesto — is perhaps the most captivating of the three.

Whitehead has written 12 works of fiction and non-fiction, many of them bestsellers. Two of his previous novels, The Nickel Boys and The Underground Railroad, each won the Pulitzer Prize, with the latter also winning a National Book Award. Whitehead, who lives in New York City, has also received MacArthur and Guggenheim fellowships.

Each of the books in the Harlem Trilogy chronicles a different time period — Harlem Shuffle spans 1959-1964, Crook Manifesto 1971-76 and Cool Machine 1981-1986. The latest follows the same structure as the other two books: three self-contained novellas featuring Ray Carney, a furniture salesman from Harlem who is perpetually caught between the desire to live an upstanding life as a business and family man, and the pull of the underground world of crime, in which his father was embroiled. Many of the characters from the two previous Harlem Trilogy books reappear, such as Carney’s criminal associate, Pepper, but it’s not necessary to have read them to enjoy Cool Machine.

New York City is a central character throughout the trilogy, with its own personality and character arc. By the 1980s, the racial tension of the ’60s that led to warfare with police and the burning of buildings, depicted in earlier novels, has subsided to something less overt, simmering under the surface. The flight of white New Yorkers from Harlem is almost complete. Downtown, buildings are demolished to make way for the twin towers of the World Trade Center; businesspeople walk the streets in bold pin-striped suits.

Read

Saturday, Oct. 3, 2026

October 13, 2026

Notification Settings

Staging Breaking News

Staging Recommended Reads

Featured Local Savings