A Sense of Things Beyond by Renée Belliveau
A Sense of Things Beyond by Renée Belliveau is a compelling and well-researched historical fiction novel set in the wake of World War I.
War
This category includes both fiction and non-fiction titles dealing with war.
Razing Palestine edited by Leila Marshy
As the world nervously watches the fragile ceasefire between Israel and Hamas (one where the killing of Palestinians is still happening, albeit at a much slower rate), we have to begin examining how “never again” became hollowed out and meaningless.
When Genocide Wasn’t News, edited by Martin Lukacs, Dania Majid and Jason Toney
In the almost 40 years since Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky published Manufacturing Consent, the media landscape has undergone some severe changes, mostly due to the internet and our reliance on it as a source of news.
The Director by Daniel Kehlmann, translated by Ross Benjamin
The Austrian film director that made Greta Garbo a star.
White World by Saad T. Farooqi
Farooqi takes us to a post-apocalyptic Pakistan, where a war is waging, democracy has fallen away and a brutal military dictatorship pushes an ethno-nationalist agenda.
War among the Clouds: New Brunswick Airmen in the Great War by J. Brent Wilson
Aviation was still in its infancy at the outbreak of the First World War. The Wright brothers had made their first successful flight only a decade earlier in 1903, and few people had ever seen, let alone flown in, an airplane. But that did not stop hundreds of New Brunswick men from enlisting with the British air services during the war.
When We Were Ashes by Andrew Boden
Andrew Boden’s debut novel When We Were Ashes [is] a poignant and devastating look what it means to be human when it seems all humanity is lost. It is a lesson in compassion and empathy, even to those on the other side of enemy lines.
Dry Your Tears to Perfect Your Aim by Jacob Wren
With a title like Dry Your Tears to Perfect Your Aim, I’m not even sure I need to review this one. Isn’t it marvellous?
Girl Takes Drastic Step!: How Molly Lamb Bobak Became Canada’s First Official Woman War Artist, written by Jillian Dobson and illustrated by Genevieve Simms
When Molly Lamb Bobak enlisted in the Canadian Women’s Army Corps (CWAC), in November of 1942, she had become part of the nascent women’s divisions in the Canadian military. In WWI and at the beginning of WWII, women serving in the military were limited to positions as nurses, but in the summer of 1941 that all changed; the three branches of the Canadian military each created a women’s division in which women were trained for non-combatant roles, including clerical and administrative services, food services, and trades work. Molly joined more than 50,000 Canadian women, serving at home and abroad in order to help turn the tide of war.
The Hazelbourne Ladies Motorcycle and Flying Club by Helen Simonson
The Great War is over, and the summer of 1919 should be one of celebration, but Constance Haverhill has lost her mother to the Spanish influenza. Constance also lost the job managing Lord Mercer’s country estate, which she held all through the war, to a man.
The Roosting Box: Rebuilding the Body After the First World War by Kristen den Hartog
A trickle that began in 1915
turned to a flood of soldiers returning to Canada needing care for their often-devastating injuries:
missing limbs, ravaged lungs, faces and minds destroyed. Many of them ended up at Toronto’s
newly opened Christie Street hospital, also known as the Dominion Orthopedic Hospital (DOH).
The Secret Keeper by Genevieve Graham
Airplanes, Morse code, spy school, family tragedy, sisterhood, and true love — this book really does have it all.
Atrocity On The Atlantic by Nate Hendley
It was the greatest Canadian naval disaster of the First World War.
In Perpetuity by James Rowinski
In Perpetuity brings together the biographies of 110 soldiers from the Fredericton area who died from service during the First World War.
Excerpt: Ukrainian Portraits: Diaries from the Border by Marina Sonkina
At the outbreak of the war in Ukraine in February 2022, Canadian author Marina Sonkina flew to the Ukrainian-Polish border to be one of the first respondents at the border for Ukrainians fleeing the war.
