S. Montana KatzGuernica Editions, 2020236 pagesISBN: 1771835508$20.00 Side Effects: A Footloose Journey to the Apocalypse is a rollercoaster read through the Baby Boomer years, 60-80s, exploring the devil-may-care attitudes of a peculiarly quirky family. The narrator is the first-born daughter of that family, who offers a retrospective of past events. The book captures a post-war optimism as a newly married couple from New York set out to travel the country by motorcycle for their honeymoon. When they reach California, they are seduced by the warm climate and intellectual counter-culture and vow to live there one day as political activists. A year later they have their first child and Side Effects is told…

Alex PasseyAt Bay PressSeptember 29, 2020347 pagesISBN: 9781988168234$29.95 Mirror’s Edge is a cunning and thought-provoking debut science fiction/fantasy novel that showcases two beautifully juxtaposed worlds. It follows Rath in a technologically advanced future in which everyone and everything is connected through a MOSES chip nestled against the brainstem. Except, Rath hates his MOSES chip. He could have it removed, but doing so would make it impossible for him to function as a part of his society. Sarah’s world is beautiful and pristine, nature nearly untouched by the humans that live in a simpler world. Sarah lives in a small cabin in the woods with a large garden, a tool shed,…

Kristyn DunnionBiblioasis, 2020299 pagesISBN 9781771963862$18.95 (ebook)Reviewed by Danielle Minnis Stoop City collects 13 wistful vignettes about the lives of some of the most unfortunate, vulnerable, and abused people in modern-day Toronto. There, people of every age, ethnicity, sexual identity, and socioeconomic status, struggle to cope. In the introductory story, “Now Is the Time to Light Fires” an unnamed narrator mourns the death of her girlfriend, Marzana, only to be informed of her infidelity when her ghost starts haunting their condo. “Fits Ritual” follows a homeless youth struggling with addiction, as he grows increasingly more concerned when his friend and partner, Roam, does not return from their latest scam. “Tracker &…

John Elizabeth StintziArsenal Pulp Press, 2020320 pagesISBN: 9781551528014$19.95Reviewed by Miles Hayes In Vanishing Monuments, the debut novel by John Elizabeth Stintzi, time and memory intersect in poignant and devastating ways. Alani Baumb, a non-binary photographer living in Minneapolis, gets a call from a care home saying that their mother, who had been living with dementia in a nursing home in Winnipeg for years, has completely lost the ability to speak. Alani travels back to Canada to see their mother, staying in their unoccupied childhood home for the first time since running away as a teenager. Their mother’s declining health and aphasia adds urgency to their need for closure: “If it’s…

Saleema NawazMclelland & Stewart, 2020428 pagesISBN: 978-0-7710-7257-4$24.95Reviewed by Giovani Ralaisa Saleema Nawaz’s bestseller Songs for the End of the World presents a world that mirrors our own, complete with a pandemic, self-isolation, reliance on the Web, and the power of human connection. Nawaz wrote this book from 2013 to 2019 after researching SARS and the Spanish Flu. She created ARAMIS, Acute Respiratory and Muscular Inflammatory Syndrome reminiscent of our own COVID-19, and let it flood her fictional world like “a maelstrom: intense, unseemly.” ARAMIS takes hold late July and spreads between August and December. Elliot is a first responder in New York who realizes he contracted it at a restaurant…

Joseph A. DandurandGuernica Editions, 2020127 pagesISBN: 978-1-77183-506-0$20.00Reviewed by Kashmir Lesnick-Petrovicz “Over time you begin to understand/who you are and why you are here” (111) I Will Be Corrupted is a fictional tale of a Kwantlen man living on Vancouver’s downtown east side who is both healer and heroin addict. Dandurand’s collection explores the painful battle of a life defined by addiction and mental health struggles, love and loss, trauma and Indigenous tradition, and forgiveness and eventual redemption. I Will Be Corrupted includes 57 relatable, raw, and heart-wrenchingly honest poems that play with fragments, unusual structure, and illusions so that each page is a new day unknown until we live it.…

Madeline SonikAnvil Press Publishers Inc, 2020194 pagesISBN: 978-1-77214-148-1$20.00 Reviewed by Isaac Maschek Madeline Sonik sets her misanthropic and heartbreaking short story collection in the fictional Ontario city of Fontainebleau, along the Detroit river. Each story follows a citizen of the city through traumas relived and repressed, from idealistic cops to heartbroken vandals. Sonik makes it easy to sympathize with even the most troubled individuals, and weep for the good-hearted souls trapped by Fontainebleau’s pull. Fontainebleau presents an immoral world where every human is a monster and every monster is humanized. The world Sonik describes is dark and grim,and plays with perspective, unreliable narrators, and characters that cross over between stories,…

Catherine BushGoose Lane Editions, 2020365 pagesISBN: 9781773101064$24.95Reviewed by Benjamin Weick Blaze Island captures the essence of 2020: global warming, mass forest fires in Australia and California, and the Covid-19 pandemic. These are lessons we’ve failed to learn as a community or have been unable to acknowledge in the face of peril. Blaze Island is a remote, rural location based on Fogo Island off the northeast coast of Newfoundland (not to be confused with Blaze Island in Nunavut). North of Blaze Island icebergs are increasingly breaking off sheets and drifting southward. Miranda is the protagonist whose father has become fearful and overprotective after his fall from grace in the scientific community…

Claire Cameron’s The Last Neanderthal presents readers with the dual narrative of two women separated by 40,000 years. While these two characters are different in almost every conceivable aspect, they both serve to illustrate themes: the indomitable human spirit; female empowerment; and the nature of humanity.

If you could replace the ghost in your lesbian supernatural romance with a living character and nothing substantial changed, you might not be writing a ghost story. Lambda Literary Award-winner Amber Dawn's second novel is many things – a compelling family drama, a fascinating piece of historical fiction, a thoughtful examination of the scars left by abuse, and a surprisingly sweet romance – but it is not a ghost story.