Heather FawcettFictionLittle Brown, 2023315 pagesISBN: 9780356519142$19.00Reviewed by Zoe Chong   Heather Fawcett dazzles readers in her first installment of the Emily Wilde series, a fantastical story following professor Wendell Bambleby and Emily, a researcher, on a mission to document elusive faerie populations around the world. Emily’s research is recounted in detailed journal entries that blend history and whimsy to great effect. Emily travels to Ljosland, Norway from London in the fall of 1909, adapting to a rural environment as she gets closer to learning the secrets of the Hidden Ones. What are these elusive residents hiding? More importantly, why did her academic rival, the charmingly infuriating Wendell Bambleby, follow her…

Holly BrickleyDoubleday Canada, 2025288 pagesISBN: 9780593799086$28.00Reviewed by Jennavieve Strub             “Music was the only thing that made me feel like I was living in my own life,” says Percy Marks, a passionate music enthusiast, and Joe Morrow, an aspiring songwriter, who met at UC Berkeley in 2000. Their chance encounter sparks a creative partnership that explores talent, obsession, and the need to be heard.             Deep Cuts is a love letter to music. Structured like a mixtape, each chapter is named after a different track. The opening chapter, “Sara Smile,” refers to a song by Hall and Oates, and establishes the initial dynamic between Percy and Joe. When Joe asks…

Melissa BlairUnion Square & Co., 2021435 pagesISBN: 9781454947875$23.99Reviewed by Grace Penner Melissa Blair’s debut novel transports us into the land of Elverath where Elves, Mortals, Halflings, and Dark Fae live in reluctant harmony. Keera Kingsown is an alleged Halfling and the King’s Blade, his finest assassin, who ensures order in the kingdom. “I had long ago accepted that I would never know my true lineage. The only reason I had taken into the Order at all, the only proof I had of my Mortal lineage, was my blood. Its amber color was the sign of Halflings. The mixed breeds of Elves and men.” King Aemon, and his two sons, Prince…

Michael MirollaFictionExile Editions, 2017125 pagesISBN: 9781550966862$19.95Reviewed by Elliaz A. Luna Michael Mirolla’s collection of 10 surrealist short stories, The Photographer in Search of Death, is an absurdist journal of nightmarish proportions that begs the reader to search for truth as if rallying memory after waking from REM sleep. In Mirolla’s hands, the pen becomes a camera, becomes a mirror, where fabulist concepts meet metaphysical questions. This collection investigates how it would look and feel “if a camel were actually passing through the eye of a needle.” Despite employing various points of view, each piece blends seamlessly with the other, foreboding and melancholy. In the first story, “The Possession,” Amir and…

Greg KearneyArsenal Pulp Press, 2024336 pagesISBN: 9781551529417$24.95Reviewed by Bailey Bellosillo Greg Kearney’s An Evening with Birdy O’Day is a charming and heartbreaking meander through the queer life of Roland Keener, a 69-year-old hairdresser from Winnipeg who relates the tale of: his decades-long love for the now washed-up music icon Birdy; his partner of 25 years Tony; surviving the AIDS epidemic; and his relationship with his mother. She is queer, poor, and single and his role model despite the fact that she doesn’t hesitate to remind him he is fat and a product of rape. After being estranged for decades, Roland receives VIP tickets to Birdy’s comeback concert in Winnipeg. The…

Corrina ChongArsenal Pulp, 2024248 pagesISBN: 9781551529592$24.95Reviewed by Ali Dillon-Cardinal   “Layers of sediment covers the bones, burying them deeper and deeper over time.”   Corrina Chong tells a slow-burning story about repression, guilt, and grief, unfurling an eerie family road trip that will make you question the lengths to which one should go for a family who keeps everything from you.  Chong introduces her story with a strong but poetic voice that builds tension from cover to cover. Regina is a realistic, relatable, and disarmingly hopeful narrator who subverts expectations. She is a large woman, often invisible to the world, who lives a loner’s life of peace and quiet in…

Timothy TaylorFictionDundurn Press, 2024352 pagesISBN: 9781459753198$26.99Reviewed by Alexandra Groenwoldt “How many chefs would be driven to a violent fury on learning they’d just prepped a $30 plate for a Brittany spaniel?” Timothy Taylor presents the world of high-end restaurants and culinary excellence, one in which misogyny, cultural appropriation, and substance abuse figure prominently. Through the course of the novel, Taylor takes the reader from Paris to Vancouver to Tokyo, providing a vivid and delicious account of each setting. The first-person narrator, Matthew (Teo) Wolf, starts out as an apprentice at the Parisian high-end restaurant, Le Dauphin. Young and green, he works his way up alongside the charismatic and flamboyant sous…