Considering an escape into nature from the daily stresses of modern life? You’ll reconsider after this wilderness suspense novel, in which a lost hiker fights for survival on the Appalachian Trail. Gaige, a Guggenheim Fellow and Yale lecturer in English, draws on the story of a retired nurse who got lost on the trail in 2013 to shape this thriller of woman on mental health leave during the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic. (Trading one crisis for another, really.) The searchers include an irascible septuagenarian who applies her skills to the case in this gripping read layered with journal entries, newspaper clippings, and various narrative points of view. (Apr. 1)

In the centenary month of quintessential Jazz Age novel The Great Gatsby, we’d be remiss not to single out a title that picks up the mantle of that exuberant hedonist time. Amid the Prohibition Era cocktails, underworld drug dealings and queer romance, reporter Ginny Dugan is on the hunt for an acclaimed Harlem singer who’s been kidnapped in order to prove she writes more than lifestyle fodder and advice columns. It’s the Canadian writer’s debut that noir maven Megan Abbott has dubbed, “a gold-threaded tale of glamour and danger.” (Apr. 1)

The hardscrabble farming life is a trendy literary setting these days (see also: Clare Leslie Hall’s recent Reese’s Book Club pick Broken Country). Here, the B.C.-based novelist draws on her own Scottish homesteading and Indigenous ancestors, as well as childhood growing up on a Saskatchewan farm, for a richly Canadian take. As a Scottish newcomer at the turn of the last century, Flora leaps from a moving train to escape her violent marriage and take her chances on the wild Alberta prairie. Together with her nearest neighbours – also women carving lives out for themselves, alone – she faces predatory land agents vying for space adjacent to the new Canadian Pacific Railway. (Apr. 1)

The London-based, Karachi-raised financial journalist takes inspiration from a real-life antiquities scandal in Pakistan for her crime debut. Her archaeologist – Dr. Gul Delani, who works at the country’s Museum of Heritage – has more than a dash of Indiana Jones, as she mistrusts local police who dropped the disappearance of her activist niece Mahnaz several years prior, when they come calling for her to investigate the significant discovery of a mummy found in a remote cave. It’s the first in a planned espionage and archeology series that mixes Gul’s personal and professional investigations. (Apr. 1)

The most timely fiction of the month explores ripped-from-the headlines themes of immigrant detention. In near-future America, when a series of violent attacks begin taking place around the country, the government enacts a new policy that sends Vietnamese-Americans to forced-labour internment camps. The Brooklyn author and journalist, a features editor at The Verge, told People that his tale chose to follow four Vietnamese half-siblings in their early 20s “to come of age in an environment that heightens their sense of identity.” (Apr. 8)

Hickey, who lives in San Francisco, is a member of the Lac du Flambeau band of Chippewa Indians from Minnesota and sets this search for belonging among the ideological tensions, rivalries and power plays (and corruption) of reservation government. An aspiring political fixer finds himself managing the casino of his nation when tragedy befalls an elder on the eve of elections, and tensions get turbo-charged when an activist steps into the fray in what’s being hailed as “the great Native American political novel.” (Apr. 8)

Among the most anticipated titles this spring is the reissue of this libertine tale by Georgia-born New York writer Nettie Jones, 82, now a retired teacher. Originally published in 1984, Jones’s debut novel was acquired by Toni Morrison while she was an editor at Random House. It’s a Black woman’s story of affluent 1970s Detroit and decadent New York, attuned to the dynamics of party girl Lewis Jones and her husband and best friend, a gay hustler. Between the provocative portrayal of desire and chronicle of a woman seeking freedom, it’s considered an almost-lost cult classic. (Apr. 15)

Secrets, superstition and tender mercies haunt the rural Irish coast in this uplifting debut about the bonds of community. Carr is one of the ten authors in The Guardian’s influential annual showcase of the year’s best debuts and after reading, you’ll understand. His charming novel charts the story of Brendan, an infant found on a Donegal beach in 1973 and the townspeople who gather to raise the baby (who bestows blessings and is perhaps a changeling), while also marking their fortunes and failures as the years pass. (Apr. 15)

Against the backdrop of the transformative period following the Second World War, this historical novel by bestselling Nova Scotia author Genevieve Graham follows the entwined stories of two very different women living in the same Toronto apartment building, circa 1967. Through their unlikely friendship and causes they support, Graham builds an evocative picture of the counterculture around peace protests and Yorkville coffee houses and shares the lesser-known aspects of Canada’s involvement in the Vietnam War as well as issues surrounding the deinstitutionalization of mental health care. (Apr. 22)

The British Coe’s talent for diverting state of the nation novels (Middle England, The Rotters’ Club) yields yet another gem. Set during Liz Truss’s brief fall 2022 premiership, the whodunnit with political commentary concerns the murder of a truth-telling investigative journalist during a right-wing conference early in Truss’s tenure. It’s rendered in an assortment of storytelling styles (personal, memoir, present and past narration) and traces the rise of American-style conservatism in the U.K. (Apr. 25)

It’s a novel that’s lyrical and experimental in form that mingles timelines of past and present, as two strangers meet on a cross-country journey. Likewise, two strangers connect while traveling on a bus in an innovative, tentative romance of love and pain that Donna Bailey Nurse praises as magnificent and Lawrence Hill likens to a literary cat burglar, because it “steals your breath.” Born and raised in Zimbabwe before moving to Canada, the Manhattan-based journalist and debut author has written for Rolling Stone and the New York Times. (Apr. 22)

This entertaining thriller from bestselling Toronto-based Canadian author (whose Watch Out for Her was recently featured on Canada Reads) reunites the actors of a teen drama for a prime time special a decade after the show ended. Hopes for a career revival (and financial solvency for her mom-ager) are dashed when one of actor Ivy’s former TV co-stars turns up dead. Past tabloid scandals are dredged up and, unless she can figure out who in the trusted crew or cast might have committed murder, her comeback is over. (Apr. 29)

Tipped as a spring must-read (the manuscript was hotly contested among publishers), this engrossing probe of race, class and social currency dips into thought-provoking socio-horror. A young woman secretly assumes her dead twin’s identity and at first, luxuriates in how her other half lives – in this case, the glamorous life and New York penthouse of a social media influencer. But as she strips the breezy façade of her sister’s profession away, Zhang, a second-generation Chinese–Canadian based in both Vancouver and Toronto (and herself a former skincare content creator) offers commentary on the darker and downright sinister aspects of internet fame. (Apr. 29)