CanLit: The dog days of fiction

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Along with a total solar eclipse, August brings fresh Canadian content to get us through the dog days of summer.

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The Atlas Keeper

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Gail Anderson-Dargatz

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HarperCollins

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Unhappily single Elsie Campbell has been stuck in a rut since her mother died five years ago. Living in her sister’s basement and working at her dad’s mapping company, her life is going nowhere. Luckily, there’s a magical solution.

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On the day after a solar eclipse, Elsie finds an atlas that lets her travel back in time to 12 significant points in her history. But the atlas presents a dilemma. Should she return to an ex-boyfriend from the past, or should she move forward and follow a new path? Seems like a no-brainer, but expect author Anderson-Dargatz (The Almost Widow, The Cure for Death by Lightning) to conjure up a few winsome complications.

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You’ll Love it Here

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Natalie Sue

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HarperCollins

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Natalie Sue’s debut novel, snappy office rom-com I Hope This Finds You Well, won the Stephen Leacock Medal for Humour, and she isn’t straying far from her winning ways. After ambitious, snarky 31-year-old Mona is forced to take time off from her marketing job, she extends an after-work happy hour into the wee hours with near-disastrous results. Her antics spark a fire alarm at her aging Calgary apartment building and her live-in landlady Irene is injured during the evacuation. Long story short, guilt-ridden Mona takes on Irene’s job and takes in her aging dachshund Ernest, with help from hunky tenant Sami, who works at his family’s diner next door.

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Mona only knows her neighbours by sight and sometimes sound — Fighting Couple, Weird Girl, Divorced Dad — but she gets much better acquainted with them as their new super. Hilarity ensues, along with drama when Irene’s niece moves to sell the apartment block, and there’s some tasty rom-com action when Mona uses her marketing skills for a good cause.

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Not a Word

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Linwood Barclay

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William Morrow

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Serial thriller Linwood Barclay (A Noise Downstairs, Elevator Pitch) delivers another twisty mystery with his 26th novel. This time out, laid-off TV journalist Reece drops by his parents’ house and makes a shocking discovery. He finds them dead in their bed, and it looks like his father shot his mom before killing himself. Except that’s not what happened — as he discovers when his phone lights up with a call from “Mom.”

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Some backstory: Reece’s father once worked for a Purdue Pharma-type company and has felt guilty for decades, especially since his eldest son Holden has spent much of his adult life in rehab. Reece’s teenage son was extremely close to his grandfather, and has a loving relationship with Holden, whose new girlfriend has a complex and secret connection to his family — as does the dead woman. What did I tell you? Twisty. Stephen King gave Not a Word his stamp of approval on X (Twitter), writing, “This book is in the can’t-put-it-down category. You’re going to love it.” Love is an awfully strong word, but Barclay’s fans won’t be disappointed.

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The Wild Beneath

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Kelly Anderson

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HarperCollins

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Former ER doctor Kelly Anderson co-founded a creative-writing non-profit called Understory to give women physicians an outlet to address distressing experiences. Her own experiences, in health care and in the natural world, colour her debut novel, a fairy tale set on B.C.’s coast — and in the waters off its coast.

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Born to a physician father and a mysterious mother who washed up onshore with an apparent case of amnesia, Annie McLeod was raised on a sailboat. But when a tsunami sweeps her parents out to sea, Annie is left drifting onshore, where she has a choice between life on land with her childhood sweetheart, or a seafaring journey to unlock the secret of her existence.

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The Story of Your Life: How Social Media Shapes the Way We Experience Everything

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Kathryn Jezer-Morton

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Random House Canada

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Since joining Friendster more than 20 years ago, Kathryn Jezer-Morton has thought of social media as a hobby. But as a journalist with a PhD in sociology, she also takes a professional interest in the information users share on Facebook, Instagram and other platforms. She has observed that what we share, and how we share it, has changed dramatically over time.

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Remember when pre-X Twitter users filled your feed with photos of their lunch? That’s still acceptable — if they made the ramen from scratch, using a recipe perfected by a Buddhist monk. From humble-bragging to glam shots of exotic vacations and magazine-worthy selfies, we’ve learned to curate our online identities, and it’s just possible that social media is shaping the way we see ourselves off-line.

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