Two-time Booker Prize-winning Irish author Roddy Doyle won’t say if this is the end for Paula Spencer, the trusty protagonist from his 1996 novel The Woman Who Walked into Doors and 2006’s Paula Spencer. In The Women Behind the Door, the 66-year-old survivor of domestic violence and addiction has found stability and normalcy – that is, until her eldest daughter, Nicola, leaves her husband and children and shows up at her house. It is, in Doyle’s words, “a day of reckoning” for Paula, who now faces a different challenge: caring for the daughter who so often cared for her. 

The beloved Kingston, Ont., poet and author of Rabbit Foot Bill ponders the mindset of 19th-century American naturalist Henry David Thoreau in her new novel, Followed by the Lark. What was the 27-year-old poet-philosopher really looking for, when he went off to Walden Pond on his own? This tender, affectionate novel is told in short vignettes, imagining Thoreau’s musings on grief and friendship, informed by his diaries and letters.

The New York Times-bestselling author of Sapiens has made a career studying the past in the hope of influencing a better future. In Nexus: A Brief History of Information Networks from the Stone Age to AI, Hariri’s first major book in six years, the Israeli historian applies his intellectual heft to consider the flow of information through time. “At the heart of this book lies one key question,” the author explains in a Facebook video. “We have named our species homo sapiens [wise human], but if humans are so wise, why are we doing so many self-destructive things?” It’s a serious read, but Hariri’s belief in our ability to make the right choices for humanity shines through.

The latest thriller from superstar Australian novelist Liane Moriarty puts a new spin on an age-old question: How would you live if you knew when you would die? When a mysterious, nondescript woman starts dishing out death predictions on a flight that later begin to come true, all bets are off. The Big Little Lies author keeps us on the edge of our seats with this exploration of autonomy, love and loss. Be sure to check out the Zoomer Q&A with the author about psychics, determinism and ways to die.

What’s better than digging into other people’s business? In Caledonian Road, O’Hagan serves a heaping spoonful of scandal as a prominent man’s missteps change the fortunes of those around him, for better and worse. The award-winning Scottish-born author’s piercing look into British class, politics and inequity harkens back to Victorian social novels, but never lets go of the hope and optimism O’Hagan holds dear.

The snowy prairies of Saskatchewan are the latest canvas for Ontario author and landscape-lover Jane Urquhart, who won the Governor General’s Award in 1997 for The Underpainter and was nominated for three major awards in 2001 for The Stone Carvers. Her first novel in nine years, which has already made the longlist for the $100,000 Giller Prize, follows a music teacher on a daydream that winds through a life touched by societal and scientific change, hardship and love, told in Urquhart’s signature crystalline prose. It’s a book to be savoured.

“Which is the cat and which is the mouse?” Super uptight Alfred Smettle, who always wears turtlenecks (what’s wrong with his neck?) invites campus film club “friends” to his New England hotel for a weekend reunion. It is perfectly decorated with pricey Hitchcock memorabilia, and the guests wonder where the “Hitch” fanatic got the money. This homage to the master of suspense, from the bestselling London-based author of Darling Rose Gold, is full of delicious references to his thrillers.  

Move over, HAL, there’s new sentient artificial intelligence on the scene in the first book in a proposed series from Mason Coile – or, as you might know him, veteran Canadian author Andrew Pyper. This short and not sweet foray into sci-fi horror was heavily influenced by the COVID-19 pandemic, and reflects Pyper’s concerns about human arrogance around AI. There’s nothing better than a sarcastic half-formed robot with a sense of revenge in a “smart home” gone wrong. Creepy? Oh, just wait for it.

Best known for his novels, the English Patient author started out as a poet, and this collection – his first poetry release in 18 years – weaves through fragments of his life, from his childhood in Sri Lanka to life in Canada, and everything in between. The journey through Ondaatje’s memory forms an intricate history in verse, and shows that time hasn’t cost the Booker Prize winner an ounce of his towering lyrical talent.