It’s 1899 and Evelyn Dolman is a struggling English writer with a high opinion of himself. Initially, his financial problems seem solved when he marries an American heiress – only to see her soon disinherited. Still, they honeymoon in La Serenissima, where a mysterious pair of siblings move into their gloomy palazzo lodgings. Throughout, Evelyn’s cliché-riddled, arrogant narration is fitting, and the decaying waterlogged city suits the Irish Booker winner’s purpose, for a period crime tinged with the gothic. Is it a ghost story? A long con? With a suggestion of the supernatural, it veers into The Turn of the Screw territory and resists solving, enigmatic to the last. (Oct. 7)

…In which a bestselling Canadian thriller writer who has been romanticizing the espionage lifestyle accidentally gets mixed up in a foreign coup and is tasked with a spy rescue mission. Experimental metafiction, this is not. Instead, The Marionette is a welcome and entertaining diversion by Fallis, a former political staffer and PR pro turned acclaimed literary funny man. The two-time winner of the Stephen Leacock Medal for Humour delivers a comic thriller with a new hapless hero who has only one thing in common with the world’s most famous fictional spy: the first name James. (Oct. 7)

What does it mean to be a Black artist who depicts Black figures? Wyeth is an emerging painter who, out of principle, resisted an easy opportunity for fame at the height of the #BlackLivesMatter movement. Taylor –  a Booker-shortlisted writer (Real Life, 2020) – examines this question while chronicling the love and lust between his protagonist and a former Jesuit priest who is white. The tender novel about queer life, desire and relationships is intimately told (readers are often inside Wyeth’s thoughts) as it uncovers what influences an artist’s perspective. (Oct. 7)

It’s not the biggest book of the month (that distinction goes to Tom’s Crossing, Mark Z. Danielewski’s 1,232-page western) but it’s arguably the Biggest. The panoramic noir is the influential postmodern novelist’s first in a dozen years. And the famously private writer, now 88, was already making news: Paul Thomas Anderson’s star-studded new political thriller One Battle After Another is loosely inspired by Pynchon’s Vineland. Espionage, paranoia, conspiracy – Shadow Ticket is a dialogue-driven, Depression-era story set in 1932 Milwaukee that has all Pynchon’s tics, including offbeat bumbling characters and the elaborate dissection of subcultures, like price-fixing in the criminal cheese underworld as a private eye tries to locate the missing heiress of a cheese empire. (Oct. 7)

The title of this striking Canadian debut novel, by a celebrated short story writer from North Saanich, B.C., comes from the Catholic penitent’s mea culpa – a fitting title for a hard read about the cycle of generational trauma and forgiveness. Crystal is a young single parent eking out a living with daughter Becky – a teen who needs additional support (she may have fetal alcohol syndrome) – and enduring home visits as they try to avoid intervention from social welfare. Both are troubled. Crystal grew up in poverty and anguish, first facing her mother’s cruelty and violence, then re-victimized in an abusive relationship and surviving on the streets of downtown Vancouver. Damaged people make poor choices, but this novel burrows under the skin with faint shards of hope. (Oct. 7)

By turns tense and funny, this imaginative literary horror recalls filmmaker Rüben Ostlund’s savage satire Triangle of Sadness. While on a luxury Antarctic cruise scouting locations for a movie project about Ernest Shackleton’s doomed expedition, Striker, a Black man, and a number of white passengers end up stranded on an island. Steeped in historical context and descriptive prose, it’s an engaging genre-bending exercise in a hostile environment, where the inhospitable cold and menacing penguins are just the tip of the iceberg. (Oct. 14)

The Indian novelist follows up her acclaimed debut A Burning with this riveting probe of social injustice. The character-driven, near-future dystopia is set in the author’s birthplace, a version of Kolkata ravaged by floods where food is scarce. Ma is caring for both her toddler and her elderly father while waiting to reunite with her husband, who has gone ahead to Michigan. All seems lost when a desperate teenage boy steals her purse (and with it, the family’s visas and passports), putting in motion a story that interrogates guilt, innocence and the morality of doing what’s necessary for survival. (Oct. 14)

The Pulitzer Prize winner (The Orphan Master’s Son, 2012) has spent a decade writing this historical epic. Like James Michener or Ken Follett before him, the Stanford academic and a member of the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe presents readers with a baroque saga, here particularly rich in the tradition of oral storytelling (at one point, a parrot is narrating). It’s set in the Polynesian islands of the South Pacific at the height of the Tu’i Tonga Empire. We follow teenage Korero, who’s on a quest to remedy the starvation of her people, caused by her small island’s dwindling resources, and are also immersed in the royal intrigue of the remote Tongan island through the lives of two boys of noble birth. The book, Johnson has said, is about “navigating not just the natural world, but realms of change, conflict and strife.” (Oct. 14)

It reads like the cold open of a TV procedural: a corpse is found in an English peat bog and the human remains turn out to be from the Iron Age. American forensic anthropologist Agnes is called in to evaluate the mummified woman. In alternating chapters, the author links the anthropologist and her subject across time and through the interconnectedness of the land. It’s an atmospheric ancient mystery with a meditation on modern environmental progress. (Oct. 14)

The author’s first novel since being awarded the 2023 Nobel Prize in Literature is a timeless tale of loneliness and thwarted love involving three interlinked characters in a remote Norwegian fishing village. After a chance meeting, middle-aged bachelor Jatgeir reckons with his unrequited love for Eline, who in turn seeks to flee her husband Frank. Like his seven-volume novel Septology, Vaim is told in a single sentence. (Happily, it’s as slim as it is spare.) (Oct. 17)

I adored Newman’s 2024 Sandwich, a word-of-mouth sleeper that made the bestseller lists again this summer. It’s a hilarious and moving story of midlife anxiety – a relatable woman’s ferocious internal monologue narrating the challenges of life’s transitions and loss amid the complicated dynamics of a family holiday. This sequel reunites readers with Rocky and her family a year later when her everyday life is a chaotic vortex of health issues,  her co-dependent adult daughter and her 92-year-old father. (Oct. 28)

Canadian crime writer Penny (whose The Grey Wolf was the top-selling Canadian adult title of 2024) is nothing if not prescient. In his 20th outing, Armand Gamache of the Quebec police is investigating domestic terrorists – a faction interested in annexing Canada as a 51st state. The stakes are high as the team uncovers a treasonous conspiracy at the heart of the government – seemingly ripped from the headlines of Canada’s conflict with the U.S. You almost couldn’t make this stuff up. Postscript: In solidarity with recent real-life developments in the Canada-U.S. relationship, Penny cancelled her American tour dates. (Oct. 28)