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Alberta Books for Fiction Lovers

Give the gift of Alberta Stories to the fiction lover in your life. Our recommendations include a captivating horror graphic novel from award-winning author Richard Van Camp, a mystery novel which centres queer and Indigenous perspectives, and much more!

Juiceboxers by Benjamin Hertwig

Sixteen-year-old Plinko is attending basic training before high school starts up again in the fall. Feeling adrift from his own family, he moves in with an older soldier, where he forges an unlikely group of friends in the military. After 9/11, the military prepares to go to war. Plinko and his friends have no idea that the trajectory of their lives is about to be irrevocably altered. Drawn from the author’s experiences as a soldier in Afghanistan, Juiceboxers tenderly traces one young man’s story, braiding together questions of masculinity and militarism, friendship and white supremacy, loss and trauma and hard-won recovery.

Juiceboxers

Benjamin Hertwig

Published: Sep 17, 2024 by Freehand Books
ISBN: 9781990601712

The Game of Giants by Marion Douglas

Rose Drury and her partner, Lucy, have just learned that their son, Roger, is below average—at the third percentile rank. Although Rose herself is a developmental psychologist and knows the “right” answers and “correct” things to do, she finds herself struggling with the societal pressure and off-handed cruelty that beset the mother of a child who is different. With humour and desperation, Rose sifts through her life history, looking for the definitive moment that could explain how she and her son got to this point. In this sparkling and empathetic novel, Marion Douglas digs into a young mother’s uncertainty, fear, and hard-won wisdom as she and her son—an odd and lovable giant of unpredictability—forge a path forward together.

The Game of Giants

Marion Douglas

Published: May 01, 2024 by Freehand Books
ISBN: 9781990601644

Hiroshima Bomb Money by Terry Watada

Through the lives of three siblings living in Hiroshima, Japan, Terry Watada explores the sweep of history during the years 1930 to 1945. The youngest, Chisato Akamatsu, travels to Canada looking for a new life but is confronted by the brutalities of immigration, a troubled marriage, and the humiliation of the Japanese internment by the Canadian government. Hideki, the only brother, joins the military to fight for the Emperor and find “glory” in China, but finds only the fallacy of patriotism, the brutality of war, and the futility of existence. Chiemi, the oldest, was in the city when the atom bomb hit. The three encapsulate the hopes, fears, dreams, the inhumanity of the period and resiliency of humans caught in historic events.

Hiroshima Bomb Money

Terry Watada

Published: Oct 01, 2024 by NeWest Press
ISBN: 9781774391006

On Beauty by rob mclennan

On Beauty is a provocative collection of moments, confessions, overheard conversations, and memories, both fleeting and crystalized, revolving around the small chasms and large craters of everyday life. Situated at the crossroads of prose and poetry, these 33 vignettes explore the rhythm, textures, and micro-moments of lives in motion. Composed with a poet’s eye for detail and ear for rhythm, rob mclennan’s brief stories play with form and language. Throughout the collection, the worlds of literature and art infuse into intimate fragments of the everyday. A welcome chronicle of human connection and belonging, On Beauty will leave readers grappling with questions of how stories are produced and passed through generations.

On Beauty: stories

rob mclennan

Published: Aug 22, 2024 by University of Alberta Press
ISBN: 9781772127690

We are Already Ghosts by Kit Dobson

We are Already Ghosts joins the Briscoe-MacDougalls in the summer of 1996 and returns to them at five-year intervals. William, Clare, Helen, Michael, John, Doug, Mike, Jéanne, Françoise, Celeste, Daphne, Benjamin, and Mackenzie the dog live, grow up, and grow old as the world changes in small ways and in devastating ones. The shock of 9/11 and the war in Afghanistan tear across the globe; the Great Recession steals jobs, savings, and houses; and the politics of colonial Canada come ever more into focus. Marriages are made and marriages fall apart, babies are born, lives end, careers are made and broken, the trash gets taken to the dump, the trees bud and then they lose their leaves. The cabin remains and the family returns, year after year.

We are Already Ghosts

Kit Dobson

Published: May 15, 2024 by University of Calgary Press
ISBN: 9781773855271

ROTH by Richard Van Camp

Unless there is snow on the ground, never speak their name aloud. The more they eat, the hungrier they become, and they are starving. They were meant to stay undisturbed, their dismembered limbs scattered frozen under the permafrost, but as is always the way, the greed of industry has unburied them once more. Now, the Wheetago have returned. The revered hero known as the Child Finder who is fighting to cling to his humanity after a Wheetago attack, a mother and her young son, and a desperate band of convicts form an uneasy alliance to survive the Wheetago horrors now awakened. ROTH, from award-winning, bestselling Tlicho Dene author Richard Van Camp and visionary illustrator Christopher Shy, is the first graphic novel in the Wheetago War series.

Roth

Richard Van Camp

Published: Oct 18, 2024 by Renegade Arts Entertainment
ISBN: 9781989754221

From Sweetgrass Bridge by Anthony Bidulka

A nation holds its breath. On a perfect prairie summer evening, Saskatchewan Roughrider Dustin Thomson goes missing. As the Green & White’s first primary quarterback born in the province and first Indigenous quarterback, Thomson is beloved and celebrated. Mistrusting the police investigation, the family hires Merry Bell P.I. to find the football star. From the dark waters below Sweetgrass Bridge to the lands of Little Turtle Lake First Nation, Merry seeks answers while dealing with her continuing transition, swelling loneliness, a floundering career, well-meaning crossdressing assistant and having to decide whether the people in her life are friend or foe.

From Sweetgrass Bridge

Anthony Bidulka

Published: Jun 01, 2024 by Stonehouse Publishing
ISBN: 9781988754543

Hekate’s Daughter by Mirjam Dikken

Knowing what people are thinking usually feels like more of a curse than a blessing to Kathy van der Laan. After all, what should you do when you discover your employer is a pervert, your father can’t stop replaying scenes from the car accident that killed your mother, and the guy ahead of you in the department store is likely the reason for the latest Amber Alert. Unable to explain the source of her knowledge, Kathy reduces her interactions, sends anonymous tips to police and tries not to remind her father about a loss they both can’t get past. Then she receives an offer from her mother’s former employer, a shadowy organization called the Syndicate, which purports to shape policy within the EU, and knows too much about her dangerous gift.

Hekate's Daughter

Mirjam Dikken

Published: Jun 01, 2024 by Stonehouse Publishing
ISBN: 9781988754581

Bronco Buster by A.J. Devlin

After a lumberjack games competitor is found floating face down in a pool with an axe buried in the back of his head, former pro wrestler-turned-P.I. “Hammerhead” Jed Ounstead is on the case. Investigating the Colossal Cloverdale Rodeo and County Fair with his ne’er-do-well cousin Declan, Jed finds that he will need all of his skills to find out what happened to a man they’d just spent the previous night drinking with. Along the way, these two city boys will need to reckon with the raucous world of the rodeo, dodging homicidal clowns, betting on cow pie bingo, riding bucking broncos and more in their attempt to solve the case over the course of one crazy day.

Bronco Buster: A "Hammerhead" Jed Mystery

A.J. Devlin

Published: Oct 01, 2024 by NeWest Press
ISBN: 9781774391020

Aftermath by Sean O’Brien

Asteroid belt miner Collier South has hit the nadir of existence. Once a beacon of idealism in the cold, unforgiving expanse of space, he’s lost everything: the love of his life, an alien artifact that had promised great change, and his irreplaceable companion, Sancho, the sentient ship’s computer. In the aftermath of tragedy, Collier finds himself at a crossroads—haunted by the spectres of his past and the vast, uncharted territories of space that call to him once more.

Aftermath

Alberta Books for Fiction Lovers