Canada Historical Fiction

Canadian Jim Armstrong married in haste during the Second World War after a one-night stand. When his wife and their small son join him in Canada, it's four years since they've seen each other. War bride Joan discovers Jim has no intention of the family returning to England. She struggles to adapt to life on a remote farm in Ontario, far from her family and cold-shouldered by Jim's mother. Jim, haunted by his wartime experiences in Italy, Iingering feelings for a former lover, and the demands of the farm, begins to doubt his love for Joan.

“Screw a fresh lightbulb into your bedside lamp, lucky reader, and snuggle in for a nonstop, cover-to-cover ride.” -The Vancouver Sun “A wonderful, dense and detailed story ­ with murder, mayhem and a serial killer. … [In Acts of Murder,] everyone has a past.” -The Calgary Herald...

The winner of the Governor General’s Literary Award for Fiction, Marian Engel’s most famous – and most controversial – novel tells the unforgettable story of a woman transformed by a primal, erotic relationship. Lou is a lonely librarian who spends her days in the dusty archives of the...

Three people – Indigenous, immigrant, and settler – journey over dangerous terrain in a race against time, and each other, to gain control of a vast parcel of land. YOU decide how events unfold, ultimately determining how the land is stewarded, and by whom. An urban couple are on a...

From the acclaimed author of The Winter Family, a swash-buckling adventure from piracy's Golden Age and a deft political allegory for our troubled times. Treasure Island meets Lord of the Flies. In 1721, when the most notorious pirates are either dead or on the run, Jimmy Kavanagh, who sailed...

A beautifully unconventional debut novel about a girl, a boy, and a satellite—and a bittersweet meditation on loneliness, alienation, and what it means to be human. Longlisted for Canada Reads, shortlisted for the Kobo Emerging Writer Prize for Literary Fiction and for Speculative Fiction...

"Superbly written, with that sensitivity to sunset and afterglow that has always been Miss Cather's." —The New York Times Willa Cather wrote Shadows on the Rock immediately after her historical masterpiece, Death Comes for the Archbishop. Like its predecessor, this novel of seventeenth-century...

A bold and captivating new novel of ancient Greece, from the celebrated, award-winning author of The Golden Mean. Pythias is her father's daughter, with eyes his exact shade of unlovely, intelligent grey. A slave to his own curiosity and intellect, Aristotle has never been able to resist wit in...

An atmospheric, transporting tale of adventure, love, and survival from the bestselling author of The Snow Child, finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. In the winter of 1885, decorated war hero Colonel Allen Forrester leads a small band of men on an expedition that has been deemed impossible: to...

A beautiful and brilliant portrait of two generations of women. Set in India’s railway colonies, this is the story of Kamini and her mother Saroja, nicknamed Tamarind Mem due to her sour tongue. While in Canada beginning her graduate studies, Kamini receives a postcard from her mother saying...

An electrifying debut novel from the Giller Prize-shortlisted author of Better Living Through Plastic Explosives that takes readers for a wild ride with urban-gothic flair and delectably wicked humour. Lucy is a lapsed-Catholic whose adolescent pretensions to sainthood are unexpectedly revived...

Montreal, 1978. Newly promoted Sergeant-Detective Émile Cinq-Mars attends the scene of 17 break-ins at an apartment complex. Nothing more than stolen toasters. Cinq-Mars suspects that the burglaries are a trial run for a bigger heist...until he discovers a body pinned to a wall with a machete in one apartment. When the former captain of Night Patrol, Armand Touton, receives a tip from an undercover informant in the Mafia, Cinq-Mars is ordered to intervene with a prisoner's release: the man must stay behind bars. He fails with the task and the immediate consequences are devastating.

*LONGLISTED FOR THE 2023 CAROL SHIELDS PRIZE FOR FICTION* An epic, boundary-pushing tale of five young women rebelling against an era that relies on their submission, from the acclaimed author of Etta and Otto and Russell and James. During the golden age of the Roman Empire, five girls enjoy a...

On the orders of his boyhood friend, now King Philip of Macedon, Aristotle postpones his dreams of succeeding Plato as leader of the Academy in Athens and reluctantly arrives in the Macedonian capital of Pella to tutor the king’s adolescent sons. An early illness has left one son with the...

Tessa McWatt's breathtaking new novel explores love and endurance in the face of change and violence, and how people find wholeness and belonging when their own identities feel shattered. Northern India, 2009. Four travellers disembark from the Dhauladhar Express at the Pathankot train station...

Following on the Giller Prize-nominated and Governor General's Literary Award-winning success of Ru, Kim Thúy's latest novel is a triumph of poetic beauty and a moving meditation on how love and food are inextricably entwined. Mãn has three mothers: the one who gives birth...

From bestselling author Michael Morpurgo comes a classic story for ages 9 to 12 about a lighthouse keeper, a daring rescue and puffins, for fans of War Horse and The One and Only Ivan. As a child, Allen is saved from a nautical disaster by Benjamin Postlethwaite, a solitary lighthouse keeper...

"A fascinating glimpse into the intersection of art, class, and the complexity of adult friendship. . . . I couldn’t put this book down.” —Waubgeshig Rice, author of Moon of the Turning Leaves An intimate, explosive story of creativity and friendship between two young Japanese women in...

The perfect complement to the exquisitely wrought novels Ru and Mãn, Canada Reads winner Kim Thúy returns with Vi, exploring the lives, loves and struggles of Vietnamese refugees as they reinvent themselves in new lands. The daughter of an enterprising mother and a wealthy, spoiled father who...

England 1922. It’s been four years since Rudy’s brother Edgar went missing in war-torn France. Still deep in mourning and grappling with unanswered questions, Rudy and his mother struggle to move on. When the enigmatic Mariette arrives unexpectedly at the family’s manor claiming to be Edgar’s widow, and the mother of his child, Rudy urges her to stay, hoping she’ll shed light on the missing pieces.