Canada Reads 2026 longlist is here
Canada Reads 2026 longlist
A taut, psychological thriller from Iain Reid, “one of the most talented purveyors of weird, dark narratives in contemporary fiction” (Los Angeles Review of Books).
Severe climate change has ravaged the country, leaving behind a charred wasteland.Junior and Henrietta live a comfortable if solitary life on one of the last remaining farms. Their private existence is disturbed the day a stranger comes to the door with alarming news.
Junior has been randomly selected to travel far away from the farm, but the most unusual part is that arrangements have already been made so that when he leaves, Henrietta won’t have a chance to miss him. She won’t be left alone—not even for a moment. Henrietta will have company.Familiar company.
Told in Iain Reid’s sparse, biting style, Foe is a “mind-bending and genre-defying work of genius” (Liz Nugent, author of Unraveling Oliver) that will stay with you long after you turn the final page.
My Best Friend’s Wedding meets The Silver Linings Playbook in this offbeat, heartfelt comedy about a seaside wedding reunion where no one can stay afloat.
Dee, Misa, and Matt were the “three musketeers” of the psych ward. Matt is a teddy bear musician with no discernable coping mechanisms. Wildly efficient Misa is quick totake care of others while neglecting herself. And Dee is a puddle with a heart of gold, eager to convince everyone that she’s finally turning things around. A year after discharge, Matt and Misa are tying the knot in Turks and Caicos, surrounded by guests who have no idea where they met. But the secrecy isn’t sitting well with Dee, who has been hopelessly in love with Matt since before she got kicked out of the hospital.
When Dee arrives at the swanky resort withher high-voltage sister Tilley, it’s now or never to confess how she feels about Matt. But disrupting her best friends’ nuptials would jeopardize the entire support system that holds them all together. When it comes to happily ever afters, how is a girl supposed to choose between love and recovery? Introducing a sparkling new voice in commercial fiction, Never Been Better revels in the heartache and hilarity of falling in love when you haven’t quite figured outhow to live with yourself.
Born on the lush island nation of Mahana, Fred lives under the tyrannical rule of a book-burning king. Under the king’s rule, Mahanians are controlled by a military dictatorship and threatened with forced starvation, while people with disabilities are exiled. After Fred’s father suddenly disappears, Fred joins an underground movement of dissenters and becomes an unwitting global icon in the fight for Mahanian freedom. When he is recruited and relocated by an organization that appears sympathetic to Fred’s cause, he arrives in a seemingly peaceful foreign nation, where the impact of social media and technology creates a new, stranger struggle.
A dystopian thriller, a work of speculative fiction, and a coming-of-age story, Wong’s novel thrums with biting bursts of staccato-like prose — a fitting accompaniment to a fascinating exploration of contrasting political systems. As Fred unpeels layers of truth and sees beyond the optics of altruism and the illusion of choice, Slice the Water unpacks the myriad amplifying impacts of technology, addiction, and complacency.
The Instant #1 National Bestseller—Now in Paperback
On April 6, 2018, sixteen people died and thirteen others were injured when a bus taking the Humboldt Broncos junior hockey team to a playoff game collided with a transport truck at a rural intersection in Saskatchewan. The tragedy moved millions of people to leave hockey sticks by their front doors to show sympathy and support for the Broncos.And people from more than eighty countries pledged millions of dollars to families that had been directly affected by the accident.
Crossroads is the story of Kaleb Dahlgren, a young man who survived the bus crash and faced life after the accident with positivity and grit. In this chronicle of his time with the Broncos and in the loving community of Humboldt, Saskatchewan, Dahlgren takes a hard look at his experience of unprecedentedloss yet also revels in the overwhelming response and outpouring of love from across Canada and around the world. But this book also goes much deeper, revealing the adversity Dahlgren faced long before his time in Humboldt and his inspiring journey since the accident. From a childhood spent learning to live with type 1 diabetes, to a remarkable recovery from severe brain trauma that astounded medical professionals, Dahlgren documents a life of perseverance, gratitude and hope in the wake of enormousobstacles and life-altering tragedy.
A CBC Best Book of 2025
A beguiling coming of age novel set in Uganda in which a young woman grapples with the truth about her sister in a country that punishes gay people.
Eighteen-year-old Aine Kamara has been anticipating a reunion with her older sister, Mbabazi, for months. But when Mbabazi shows up with an unexpectedguest, Aine must confront an old fear: her beloved sister is gay in a country with tight anti-homosexuality laws.
Over a weekend at Aine’s all girls’ boarding school, sisterly bonds strengthen, and a new friendship emerges between Aine and her sister’s partner, Achen. Later, a sudden death in the family brings Achen to Mbabazi’s and Aine’s village, resulting in tensions that put Mrs. Kamara’s Christian beliefs to the test. Aine runs away to Mbabazi’s and Achen’shome in Kampala, where she reconnects with her crush, Elia, a sophomore at Makerere University.
In acclaimed writer Iryn Tushabe’s dazzling debut novel, Aine must make hard choices, with inevitable and harrowing results.
In this second-chance romance by a debut Canadian author, a twist of fate forces two former roommates to move back into their beloved New York City brownstone where they must confront the events that led to their estrangement—and the unresolved feelings lingering between them.
Reeling from the cancellation of her hit TV show, June Wood has nothing left to losewhen a mysterious email lures her back to the New York City brownstone she once called home before she moved to Los Angeles. Thanks to a clause in the former owner’s will, she and her old roommate, Adam Harper, now own the multi-million dollar property—or at least they will in a month, once all the paperwork is signed.
Four weeks, then June can return to her life in LA and forget about New York City and everything she left behind.Sure, the fact that June and Adam are estranged and haven’t even spoken in five years, and that their friendship didn’t exactly end on good terms might complicate matters, but this is an opportunity of a lifetime.
As the autumn leaves fall around them, through shared meals and late-night conversations, old wounds and long-buried sparks resurface, and it becomes strikingly clear: June and Adam have unfinished business. Confrontedwith the consequences of their choices years before, they must now navigate the minefield of their past the best way they know how: together. Second chances are always a risk, but maybe, if they get it right and are finally honest with each other and with themselves, it could be different this time.
A CANADIAN BESTSELLER!
A warm and poignant narrative about finding one’s self amidst the grind of restaurant life, the cross-generational immigrant experience, and a daughter’s attempts to connect with parents who have always been just out of reach.
When she was three years old, Rachel Phan met her replacement. Insteadof a new sibling, her mother and father’s time and attention were suddenly devoted entirely to their new family restaurant. For her parents—whose own families fled China during Japanese occupation and then survived bombs and starvation during the war in Vietnam—it was a dream come true. For Phan, it was something quite different. Overnight, she became a restaurant kid, living on the periphery of her own family and trying her best to stay out of the way.
As Phangrew up, the restaurant was the most stalwart and suffocating member of her family. For decades, it’s been both their crowning achievement and the origin of so much of their pain and suffering: screaming matches complete with smashed dishes; bodies worn down by long hours and repetitive strain; and tenuous relationships where the family loved one another deeply without ever really knowing each other.
In Restaurant Kid, Phan seeksto examine the way her life has been shaped by the rigid boxes placed around her. She had to be a “good daughter,” never asking questions, always being grateful. She had to be a “real Canadian,” watching hockey and speaking English so flawlessly that her tongue has since forgotten how to contort around Cantonese tones. As the only Chinese girl at school, she had to alternate between being the sidekick, geek, or Asian fetish, depending on whose gaze was on her.
Now,three decades after their restaurant first opened, Phan’s parents are cautiously talking about retirement. As an adult, Phan’s “good daughter” role demands something new of her—and a chance to get to know her parents away from the restaurant.
In Restaurant Kid, Phan deftly combines candour, wit and insight to craft a vibrant and important narrative on the strength and foibles of family, and how we come to understand ourselves.
From the bestselling author of Superfan comes a haunting novel about the demons passed down through five generations of women in a Chinese Canadian family, and what it might take for them to finally break free of the past. Will you break your mother's curse before it consumes you?
Singlemother Alice Chow is drowning. With a booming online business, a resentful teenage daughter, a screen-obsessed son, and a secret boyfriend, she can never get everything done in a day. So it’s a relief when Alice wakes up one morning to find the counters are clear, the kids’ rooms are tidy, and orders are neatly packed and labelled. But she doesn’t remember staying up late to take care of things. As the strange pattern continues, she realizes someone—or something—hasbeen doing her chores for her.
Alice knows she should feel uneasy, but the extra time lets her connect with her children and with her hard-edged mother, who has started to share shocking stories from their family history—beginning with the horrors that befell her great-grandmother, who was imprisoned as a comfort woman in Hong Kong during the Second World War. But the family’s demons—both real and subconscious, old and new—are about to become impossible toignore.
Set against the gleaming backdrop of contemporary Vancouver, The Hunger We Pass Down is a devastating, horror-tinged novel about how unspoken legacies of violence can shape a family. It follows the relentless spectre of intergenerational trauma as it is handed down from mother to daughter, and asks what it might take to break the cycle—heroism, depravity, or both.
RAKUTEN KOBO EMERGING WRITER PRIZE FINALIST • CBC BOOKS CANADIAN FICTION BOOKS TO READ IN FALL 2024
The secrets of the house are the secrets of the heart.
It begins with an act of betrayal that destroys the tenuous bonds of Celestina Errantes’s family. For years afterwards, Celestina longs for an escape from her unhappy home. Then an unexpected gift from her wealthy Lolo offersthat chance: a long-forsaken property in Manila’s bohemian district, close to where ladies of the evening ply their trade. It is no place for a proper young woman, but this house, even with its ghosts, makes Celestina feel at home.
Celestina tears into life, losing herself in the pleasures of the night, but soon finds that the emptiness within her is not easily filled. When finally a true chance at happiness promises to save her, a sinister voice from the pastreturns, threatening to destroy it all.
LONGLISTED FOR THE 2022 SCOTIABANK GILLER PRIZE • NATIONAL BESTSELLER • NAMED A BEST BOOK OF 2022 BY THE GLOBE AND MAIL, CBC, ELLE CANADA, LITERARY HUB, NATIONAL POST, AND DAILY HIVE
“An achingly gorgeous debut novel of Indigenous survival.... This is a breathtakingand hypnotic achievement.” —Publishers Weekly (starred review)
An urgent first novel about breaching the prisons we live inside from one of Canada’s most daring literary talents.
An unnamed narrator abandons his unfinished thesis and returns to northern Alberta in search of what eludes him: the shape of the novel he yearns to write, an autobiography of his rural hometown, theanswers to existential questions about family, love, and happiness.
What ensues is a series of conversations, connections, and disconnections that reveals the texture of life in a town literature has left unexplored, where the friction between possibility and constraint provides an insistent background score.
Whether he’s meeting with an auntie distraught over the imprisonment of her grandson, engaging in rez gossip with his cousinat a pow wow, or lingering in bed with a married man after a hotel room hookup, the narrator makes space for those in his orbit to divulge their private joys and miseries, testing the theory that storytelling can make us feel less lonely.
Populated by characters as alive and vast as the boreal forest, and culminating in a breathtaking crescendo, A Minor Chorus is a novel about how deeply entangled the sayable and unsayable canbecome—and about how ordinary life, when pressed, can produce hauntingly beautiful music.
A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • NOW A #1 STREAMING SHOW
The epic enemies-to-lovers hockey romance from Rachel Reid, streaming on Crave in Canada and on HBO Max in the U.S.
"The book that got me into hockey romance." —NPR's Weekend Edition
Nothing interferes with pro hockey star Shane Hollander’s game.
Now that he’s captain of the Montreal Voyageurs, he won’t let anything jeopardize that—definitely not the sexy rival he loves to hate.
Boston Bears captain Ilya Rozanov is everything Shane’s not. The self-proclaimed king of the ice, he’s as cocky as he is talented. No one can beat him—except Shane. Publicly, they’re enemies. Privately,they can’t stop touching each other.
The smart thing to do? Walk away, once a few secret hookups turn into a struggle to keep their relationship out of the press. The truth could ruin them both. But for Shane and Ilya, secrecy is soon no longer an option…
A SHELF AWARENESS BEST BOOK OF 2025 • A CBC BOOKS BEST CANADIAN FICTION BOOK OF 2025 • A CRIMEREADS BEST BOOK OF 2025
The natural enemy of a Korean is another Korean.
When North Korean spymaster Doha Kim is mysteriously killed in Oxford, his protégé, Yohan Kim, chases the only breadcrumb given to him in Doha’s last breath: “Soju Club, Dr. Ryu.” In the meantime, a Korean American CIAagent , Yunah Choi, races to salvage her investigation of the North Korean spy cell in the aftermath of the assassination. At the centre of it all is the Soju Club, the only Korean restaurant in Oxford, owned by Jihoon Lim, an immigrant from Seoul in search of a new life after suffering a tragedy. As different factions move in with their own agendas, their fates become entangled, resulting in a bitter struggle that will determine whose truth will triumph.
OxfordSoju Club weaves a tale of how immigrants in the Korean diaspora are forced to create identities to survive, and how in the end, they must shed those masks and seek their true selves.
Evocative, magical and luminously written, The Cure for Drowning is not only a brilliant, boundary-pushing love story but a Canadian historical novel that boldly centres queer and non-binary characters in unprecedented ways.
Born Kathleen to an immigrant Irish farming family in southern Ontario, Kit McNair has been a troublesome changeling since, at ten, they fell through the river ice and drowned—only to be nursed back to life by their mother's Celtic magic. A daredevil in boy's clothes, Kit chafes at every aspect of a farmgirl's life, driving that same mother to distraction with worry about where Kit will ever fit in. When Rebekah Kromer, an elegant German-Canadian doctor's daughter, moves to town with her parents in April1939, Rebekah has no doubt as to who 19-year-old Kit is. Soon she and Kit, and Kit's older brother, Landon, are drawn tight in a love triangle that will tear them and their families apart, and send each of them off on a separate path to war.
Landon signs up for the Navy. Kit, now known as Christopher, joins the Royal Air Force, becoming a bomber navigator relied on for his luck and courage. Rebekah serves with naval intelligence in Halifax, until one more collisionwith Landon changes the course of her life and draws her back to the McNair farm—a place where she'd once known love. Fallen on even harder times, the McNairs welcome all the help she is able to give, and she believes she has found peace at last. Until, with the war over, Kit and Landon return home.
Told in the vivid, unforgettable voices of Kit and Rebekah, The Cure for Drowning is a powerfully engrossing novel that imaginesa history that is truer than true.
INSTANT INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER
One of NPR’s Books We Love for 2025
For fans of Bunny and Yellowface, this razor-sharp debut thriller blends biting satire with chilling suspense, as a young woman steps into her deceased twin’s influencer life—onlyto discover dark secrets hidden behind her social media façade.
Julie Chan has nothing. Her twin sister has everything—except a pulse.
Julie Chan, a supermarket cashier barely scraping by, finds herself thrust into the glamorous yet perilous world of her late twin sister, Chloe VanHuusen, a popular influencer. Separated at a young age, the identical twins were polar oppositesand rarely spoke, except for one viral video that Chloe initiated (Finding My Long-Lost Twin And Buying Her A House #EMOTIONAL).
When Julie discovers Chloe’s body, she doesn’t call the police. Instead, she slips into her dead sister’s meticulously curated life: luxury fashion, high-end skincare, and a devoted online following who never noticed they weren’t quite the same.
At first, the transformation is seamless. Julie relishesthe perks of influencer fame, but quickly learns that behind Chloe’s flawless feed lay secrets far darker than she imagined. Her sister’s final days were shadowed by paranoia, manipulation, and something far more sinister.
Now, trapped on a private island retreat with Chloe’s inner circle—an elite clique of influencers obsessed with status and secrecy—Julie is forced to keep up the act while being haunted by her sister’s untimely death. As events spiral out ofcontrol, Julie uncovers the sinister forces that may have led to her sister’s demise and realizes she might be the next target.
Darkly funny, fiercely paced, and full of sharp commentary on identity, fame, and the cost of visibility, Julie Chan Is Dead is a twisted thrill ride where fitting in could be fatal—and the people behind the posts are the real danger.
Shortlisted for the Amazon Canada First Novel Award
Shortlisted for the Kobo Emerging Writer Prize
Garden State meets King Leary in this slapshot debut novel.
Adam Macallister's sportswriting career is about to end before it begins, but he's got one last shot: a Sports Illustrated profile abouthockey's most notorious goon, the reclusive Terry Punchout-who also happens to be Adam's estranged father. Adam returns to Pennington, Nova Scotia, where Terry now lives in the local rink and drives the Zamboni. Going home means drinking with old friends, revisiting neglected relationships, and dealing with lingering feelings about his father and dead mother-and discovering that his friends and family are kinder and more complicated than he ever gave them credit for. Searching for TerryPunchout is a charming and funny tale of hockey, small-town Maritime life, and how, despite our best efforts, we just can't avoid turning into our parents.
An assured debut, wryly funny." - Literary Review of Canada
"A story of a father, a son and hockey that set[s] heart and mind reeling." - Chris Benjamin, Atlantic Books Today