Blessed with an ear for music and a fine voice, Baldur finds his ­fortune but not his love. ­Smitten at an early age, Baldur is ­haunted by Lara—a girl of fey spirit destined to be both his muse and ­tormenter. The ­daughter of an ­intimidating and well-connected ­businessman, Lara leads Baldur from the small Manitoba ­community of New ­Iceland to the bustling streets of ­early twentieth-century Winnipeg. Available now from Turnstone Press.

“My father has married me to a mad old man.” These words, written on a slip of paper inside a fading brocade collar, are a clue to the unlikely marriage of a Jewish remittance man and a 14-year-old orphan in a remote Newfoundland fishing station. More curious still are the connections that entangle a retired schoolteacher and an Israeli scholar almost two centuries later. Available now from Creative Book Publishing.

Daniel Pambianchi, winery owner and author of the best-selling Techniques in Home Winemaking, uses short anecdotes with a dash of humour to present intriguing facts about wine—debunking myths along the way. Authoritative and entertaining, he covers winemaking, wine service, styles, faults, frauds, the health benefits of drinking wine, and other topics. Available now from Vehicule Press.

Ghost Pine: All Stories True offers thirteen years worth of sparkling true stories from the life of author Jeff Miller, compiling the best of his long-running zine. From his youth in suburban Ottawa in the late 1990s, to travels across Canada and North America and his current home in Montreal, Miller’s stories are equal measures funny and sad, nostalgic and unsentimental, punk rock and grandparents. Available now from Invisible Publishing.

Neilsen Glenn's collection confronts the deaths of dear friends and family members, returns to her prairie childhood and youth, and engages hard, hard questions of mortality, and of existence in a world fraught with suffering and violence (both global and domestic). Here is poetry reaching out to embrace a manner of being in the world that at once moves beyond the world and engages it fully. Lost Gospels confirms Neilsen Glenn as a poet of maturity, depth and power. Available now from Brick Books.

In the Cote-des-Neiges area of Montreal live people of more than 100 nationalities. Marcelo, the sensitive son of Chilean refugees, and Cleo, a shy boy from Haiti, find friendship on the track, winning a major relay race together. Years later, in the same streets, two violent gangs confront each other, and their leaders must decide whether they will be united by their childhood friendship or divided by race... Available now from Biblioasis. 

In Got No Secrets, Danila Botha takes us into the private lives of twelve different women, with only one question in mind: What if these women were you? From addiction to abuse, from childhood to suicide, from Hillbrow, Johannesburg, to downtown Toronto, Botha’s prose is compassionate, provocative, often funny, and always fearless. Available now from Tightrope Books.

Monty Haaviko, Winnipeg’s favourite househusband, babysitter, and ex-con, is back in the third instalment in the 'Criminal' series, and this time he's running for chief of Winnipeg’s new police commission. It’s almost honest work, except that he’s been bribed to throw the election to his opponent. Monty is happy to oblige but once on the campaign trail, he realizes the good he can do for the citizens of Winnipeg if he wins. Available now from Turnstone Press.

When Torontonian Edward Hampstead steps off the plane in Barbados, in the winter of 1969, he crosses more than the tarmac at Seawell Airport. As he navigates the island’s racial and cultural boundaries, he leaves behind an empty life of comfort and discovers a vibrant world of simple beauty, an undiscovered family, and reconciliation with the memory of a long dead father. Available now from DC Books.

George Fertig was a Jungian, a socialist, a symbolist and an outsider. For 40 years he struggled to survive as as artist in Vancouver, British Columbia. Part biography and part memoir, as told by his eldest daughter, this book includes fourteen years of research, interviews, letters and over one hundred and fifty rare photographs. Available now from Mother Tongue Publishing.

Roadtripping documents a decade of road trips through the fiefdom of Alberta. The men and women who make up the Buffalo Gals first set out in July 1999 to experience the unusual and charming roadside attractions of south-central Alberta. Never dreaming that this one-off adventure would turn into an annual event, it’s ten years later and they continue their escapades. Available now from Brindle & Glass.

Stroll celebrates Toronto's details at the speed of walking and, in so doing, helps us to better get to know its many neighbourhoods, taking us from well-known spots like the CN Tower and Pearson Airport to the overlooked corners of Scarborough. Stroll features thirty-two walks, a flâneur manifesto, a foreword by architecture critic John Bentley Mays, dozens of hand-drawn maps by Marlena Zuber and a full-colour fold-out orientation map of Toronto. Available now from Coach House Books.

There are signs that something bad is coming, signs that even Nieve can’t ignore: there’s the dark fry which have taken over her back pond, the spiders which cover everything, the black weeds which strangle all colour out of the garden. When two strangers come to town trailing perpetual gloom behind them and people start to go missing, it falls to Nieve and a couple of unusual companions to try and save them. Their adventures take them to the Black City and back again where Nieve discovers that even she is not exactly as she seems. Available now from Biblioasis.

Population Me: Essays on David McGimpsey gathers together, for the first time, a collection of essays that serve to highlight and explicate the scope and complexity of McGimpsey’s poetic practice. The collected essays (by lauded poets and scholars such as Nick Mount, Jason Camlot and Elizabeth Bachinsky) examine McGimpsey’s various positions on literary history, class, nationalism, humor, love, and aesthetics, all of which are often mutually imbricated in McGimpsey’s work. Available now from Palimpsest Press.

Out Loud is a collection of more than fifty essays by people affected by mental illness. There are essays by those who have experienced mental illness themselves, by family and friends, by community members, and by professionals who deal with mental illness. The voices here are ones of hope, pain, and honesty. Introduction by Ramona Dearing, author of the short story collection So Beautiful and host of CBC Radio Noon. Available now from Breakwater Books.

When Jennifer Towers is found dead in a graffiti-tagged dumpster, Detectives Lane and Harper must decipher the art to find its artist—and possibly the victim’s killer. What begins as an unconventional murder investigation leads to the disturbing discovery of two abused children, whose father becomes a prime suspect in the case. Available now from NeWest Press.

Whether navigating love and loss, facing the trauma of modern warfare or simply trying to pick up some bread at the supermarket, Norman — already an accomplished writer with a broad arsenal of poetic forms and tones — steps through the theme park’s gate and into its carnival whirlwind. Clear and plainspoken, these eclectic poems deliver pleasure, mystery and the unexpected. Available now from Mansfield Press.

When Neil, who went to the Middle East looking for antique carpets, is found stabbed to death in Dubai's spice souk, his distraught father wants revenge. He hires private investigator Russell Quant to catch the killer. In his greatest case to date, Quant goes undercover to match wits with a wily museum curator, shifty souk merchants, corrupt carpet experts, and the denizens of an underground club for "fabulous" men. Available now from Insomniac Press.

Ian Orti’s debut collection, explores, with tenderness and hilarity, the grey zones of life:  the psychological non-space people find themselves once the reference points that shaped their existence suddenly become stripped away. Available now from Snare Books.

What thirteen year old boy wants to travel on a hopeless quest to India with his grandmother? Not Ben Leeson, whose anger about his father’s recent death has led him to escape into the isolated world of computer games. But the ticket is already bought and Ben finds himself in India on a search for Gran’s long lost pen pal, Shanti. Available now from Ronsdale Press.

Kaspoit! puts speculative illustration to the most profuse series of crimes ever to take place on Canadian soil. Set in the lower mainland of Vancouver, the time is now—criminals are brazen, cops are cynical—and no one is trying to solve the disappearance of dozens of women. Available now from Anvil Press.

At The Pleasant Inn, an Ontario cottage-country hotel, there have been boating accidents, accidental poisonings, and then there was that unfortunate ski-lift incident. But this year hopes are high for an accident-free summer season. However, barely a week goes by and hopes dashed. There’s a dead body making a nuisance of itself in the wine cellar. Available now from Signature Editions.

Celebrate the launch of the new Alice in Wonderland movie with this new title from Porcupine's Quill. A is for Alice features twenty-six magical images gleaned from almost two hundred wood engravings made by George A. Walker for extremely rare editions of Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass (And What Alice Found There) published by Cheshire Cat Press in 1988 and 1998, respectively.

Albritton argues that the capitalist system, far from delivering on the promise of cheap, nutritious food for all, has created a world where 25 percent of the world population are over-fed and 25 percent are hungry. He details the economic relations and connections that have put us in a situation of simultaneous oversupply and undersupply of food. Available now from Arbeiter Ring Publishing.

Part memoir, part adventure tale, part political thriller - a compelling read that dissolves stereotypes and exposes paradoxes about Africa. Joan Baxter draws on more than two decades of living in and reporting from Africa to reveal that there is more to the continent than poverty and suffering, and far more to Western involvement than benevolent charity. Available now from Wolsak & Wynn.

In these thoughtful essays, Sheema Khan—Canadian hockey mom and Harvard PhD—gives us her pointed insights on being a modern and liberal, yet practising, Muslim, especially in Canada. Tackling a host of issues, such as terrorism and fanaticism, human rights post 9/11, Islamic law, women’s rights, sharia, and the meaning of hijab, she explains Islam to the greater public while calling for mutual understanding and tolerance. Available now from TSAR Publications.

Improvising on a variety of poetic forms and traversing disparate landscapes, John Barton documents the path of the male body in an increasingly unstable, supposedly tolerant contemporary world. Hymn stokes the fires of homoerotic romantic love with its polar extremes of intimacy and solitude. Available now from Brick Books.

By the Rivers of Brooklyn transforms into fiction the experience of the 75,000 first- and second-generation Newfoundlanders who once lived in Brooklyn, New York – and the experience of Newfoundlanders throughout history who have gone away to find work and prosperity but never stopped dreaming of home. Available now from Breakwater Books.

Saul draws on a series of his own occasional articles written over a span of forty years which, together with a linking narrative, serve to trace not only his own career as an anti-apartheid and liberation support movement activist in both Canada and southern Africa but also help recount the history of the various struggles in both venues in which he has been directly involved. Available now from Arbeiter Ring Publishing.

Women on Ice is the first book to focus upon the vibrant world of women’s hockey in western Canada during WWI and the 1920s. The book follows a number of teams that met during the annual Banff winter carnivals to compete for the championship as well as the curious decline of women's hockey in the 1930s that has left the history of these teams consigned to obscurity. Available now from Ronsdale Press.