The award-winning Canadian screenwriter and director turned thriller author (Dark August) posits a gritty underworld in her Ottawa hometown as the setting for her latest atmospheric domestic suspense. A court orders reclusive 70-year-old Lenny to be the surety of her estranged grandson, Juls, following his arrest – and he moves in, daughters in tow. Like the lite version of crime clan matriarch Helen Mirren in MobLand, the tough, hard-drinking granny must strategize and maintain her composure as she squares off against a crime boss to protect what’s left of her family and deal with buried secrets. (Aug. 1)

Throughout his career, Alfred Hitchcock spoke of many passion projects that never got made. This pacy historical novel imagines one of them is an out-of-print novel about a missing heiress – and follows how the Master of Suspense brings it to the screen. Our protagonist, Burbank pulp writer Bobby Burgoyne, is ostensibly hired by Hitch to punch up the dialogue but is dealt more than he bargained for in this noir murder mystery by Scottish writer Harris (of Sherlock Holmes novel, A Study in Crimson). With zingy dialogue and a seedy Los Angeles that nods to Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler, Crescendo exposes the grime beneath Hollywood’s glamorous veneer. Chapter titles like “The Vanishing Lady” and “Shadow of a Past,” add to the spirit of this entertaining pastiche – a classic cinephile’s delight. (Aug. 4)

The Australian writer best known for young adult fiction has dreamed up an agency where customers can revisit and explore moments from their past anew – with no consequences for the present-day timeline. The story follows several points of view, from the single parent working on accounts to the customers themselves – like a husband struggling to understand the tipping point of his failed marriage. Although high-concept (think: The Time Traveler’s Wife), this book has both heart and hilarity about relationships. Writing talent runs in lawyer-turned-novelist Moriarty’s family — her bestselling younger sibling Nicola pens psychological thrillers and older sis Liane (watch for our upcoming interview with this Moriarty) returns this month with a sequel to the 2014 juggernaut Big Little Lies. This new book, Big Little Truths, will form the basis for the hit HBO adaptation’s third season. (Aug. 4) 

We first meet 19-year-old Annie on land, where she now lives with her grandmother Ruth, the local doctor, in the aftermath of a tsunami that has devastated their remote community on the British Columbia coast. Raised on a sailboat by unconventional parents, she longs to return to the water but family and friends keep her landlocked. No less than No. 1 New York Times bestseller Jodi Picoult gushes about being entranced by this debut from Anderson, an award-winning Toronto physician specializing in HIV and emergency medicine who grew up in B.C. Not since Charlotte Gill’s Eating Dirt has there been such lyrical writing about the Pacific Northwest – plus evocative passages of the ocean’s primordial power (and beguiling psychological pull). This is an emotionally rich read, as mesmerizing as watching the waves. (Aug. 4)

Male friendship and moral failings are at the core of this rueful, character-driven crime drama about a musician who returns to his hometown to play a one-night only benefit concert for an injured old friend, by Pulitzer Prize winner Russo (Empire Falls, Nobody’s Fool). Now in his late 30s and the frontman of a famous band, Tyler’s success has come from writing songs about his economically depressed, working-class Adirondacks hometown. Events conspire to keep him there longer than expected, and the prodigal’s reunion with old friends uncovers festering resentments and recriminations. Comparisons to the life of Bruce Springsteen are inevitable but the rural community shares similarities with the author’s own; as Russo tells Publishers Weekly, the story was inspired in part by his experience of the frosty local reception to his 2012 memoir, Elsewhere. (Aug. 11)

The author of The Hero’s Walk (a 2016 Canada Reads finalist) is back with her first novel in 15 years. As she turns 70, our titular matriarch is contending with the complexities of family life and longtime friendships and, as a maple tree in her back garden needs to be cut down, reflecting on her decision to move to Canada decades earlier. The story flits between India and Montreal in 1960, 1996 and 2003 while Asha – feeling sentimental about the Bangalore house where she grew up surrounded by mango trees and rose bushes – contemplates her imminent third act and hosts a garden party. (Aug. 11)

Saskatchewan-born member of Red Pheasant Cree Nation, Good’s acclaimed 2020 debut Five Little Indians (about survivors of Canada’s residential school system) swept national literary prizes and Canada Reads on its way to selling nearly a quarter of a million copies. This year as she turns 70, the lawyer turned author has been named to the Order of Canada and publishes her much-anticipated follow-up. Drawing on the real history of her own family, mother and great-grandmother (a niece of Chief Big Bear, a Plains Cree leader who was pushed out of ancestral lands after the 1885 Frog Lake Massacre), the novel spans a century and charts the journeys of Swan, Eliza and Ella — three generations of Cree women determined to make better lives in the face of displacement and colonial violence, without sacrificing identity. (Aug. 18)

One day while at the mall, Magnolia, a successful Haitian American Miami real estate agent, is a bystander caught up in a mass shooting. She manages to escape the shopping centre by leaving possessions behind, but tells no one she was there. The traumatic event prompts a reassessment of various familial bonds, which  Danticat (author of acclaimed Oprah’s Book Club pick Breath, Eyes, Memory) uses to explore the intersection of identity, assimilation and memory as Magnolia finds her peace again. Taking the Haitian Kreyòl word for mourning as its title has double meaning: mourning not only for the country left behind but for the state of the chosen country where she has made her life. No wonder NPR calls it “a novel of now.” (Aug. 25)