Current events mean that most of us will confine our travel and leisure plans to the other side of the couch for the time being. (But hey, new year, new bump in the buttocks!). There’s no better escape than diving into a good book, even if it’s just a one-way ticket to your imagination.
To inspire your #TBR squat list, we’ve rounded up some of the best new books of 2022, from Canadian and international authors, including a satire, spy thriller and mind-bending mystery, all guaranteed to hold their weight in the franchise. luggage (metaphorically).
Our American friend by Anna Pitoniak
It all starts with an invitation: Sofie, a mediocre White House reporter, would she like to meet the First Lady in private? It’s a strange request – they’ve never spoken before, and Sofie is about to quit her job anyway, exhausted after four years of covering a democracy-destroying and cynically dysfunctional presidency. She can’t resist. After all, the First Lady, an expensively dressed, implacably-faced former model married to a politician impresario, is an enigma. She offers Sofie unfettered access to an interview in order to write her biography, revealing secrets starting with her father’s high-ranking role in the KGB in 1970s Paris. It’s the scoop of the century, but soon Sofie feels she’s being pulled into something much bigger and much more dangerous than she had anticipated.
If you like your political thrillers with a hint of “hmm, that sounds kinda familiar, like a redemptive, upbeat alternate universe for ours” and lots of Cold War espionage, you’ll love this page tour read by Whistler, BC – born author Anna Pitoniak. (Released February 15.)
Wahala by Nikki May
Every once in a while you come across a book filled with characters so alive that you can hear their dialogue in your head as clearly as if you were listening. Wahala is one of those books, enveloping you in the well-worn, fiercely loving friendship, solid enough for brutal honesty of Bo, Simi and Ronke, three thirty-something Londoners who met at university, partly bonded by the fact that they all had an English parent and a Nigerian parent. They’ve seen each other through so much – childbirth, marriage, heartbreak – that it seems their friendship is unbreakable…until Isobel, a childhood friend of Simi’s, arrives. Along with a driver-bodyguard (her dad is a billionaire and she’s on the run from an abusive relationship), Iso brings an uncanny ability to extort secrets from women they haven’t even told each other, like a crush on a boss or staying on the pill when your husband thinks you’re trying to have a baby. There’s just something about her that Ronke, the lone resister, thinks is, well, a problem. (Which is also the translation of the title.)
The world May created is filled with fine details (someone’s nail color tells you everything!) and those cleverly focused observations that are part fact, part barbs, the result of when you love your friends. but that you have known them for so long that you know all their irritating weaknesses and inconsistencies. It’s a delicious treat, literally: the food the women enjoy together, brought to life in mouth-watering detail, is its own main character.
When we lost our minds by Heather O’Neill
We usually “add to cart” immediately when we see Heather O’Neill’s name on the cover of a book. Because whoever is nominated for the Giller Prize of Hotel of the Lonely Hearts written, well, it’s going to be amazing.
Here, O’Neill has written a chilling and fascinating story set in 1873 on Montreal’s Golden Mile, home to the city’s wealthiest families. It centers on two young girls – the daughter of a sunny sugar baron and a charismatic newcomer – whose intense friendship takes a rather dark turn, setting off a series of events that will haunt them into adulthood. , long after their families have separated them.
Twisty, spinning, and monstrously clever, this is one of those books you start reading on a beach at 10 a.m., then suddenly look up and it’s sunset, y’all went home and you should have reapplied your SPF five hours ago. (Released February 1.)
No land to illuminate by Yara Zgheib
It was supposed to be the happy ending. After years of struggle and heartache, including escaping a civil war, Hadi and Sama finally build an approximation of the American dream: their own home in Boston, their first child on the way, their love for each other. other the foundation of this new life. And then comes the death of Hadi’s father, his trip back to Syria, and the travel ban that tears their world apart overnight.
This delicate and absorbing read is the story of the exhausting limbo that ensues for the couple, of an absurd nightmare where a father cannot return to the country where his son has just been born a citizen, and of a bureaucratic paperwork that becomes an almost insurmountable ordeal. obstacle – and a symbol for so much of what is terrifying in the world today.
thousand steps by T.Jefferson Parker
A coming of age in the Age of Aquarius – but make it Agatha Christie, except with a little more LSD than Miss Marple might usually present.
This is the story of Matt, a 16-year-old growing up in Laguna Beach in the 1960s, a nexus for the hippie caravans that flock to the beach town in search of, like, good vibes, the man . Matt, however, is only interested in one thing: finding out what happened to his missing sister, whom the local police dismiss as another lost teenager drawn to the search for peace and love farther afield. Matt doesn’t believe it and his doubts escalate when the body of another teenage girl washes up on the beach nearby…
Jameela Green ruins everything by Zarqa Nawaz
They say no good deed goes unpunished. In Jameela’s case, no good deed was done to manipulate God into making her memoir a New York Times bestseller goes without turning into a series of wacky events. He sees a naïve (possibly) young imam kidnapped by the CIA when the man he and Jameela are trying to help is recruited by a terrorist group, forcing her to come up with a deeply lopsided plan to fix this mess. Oh, and she takes her lovable but somewhat dumb husband and very smart daughter with her, even if it lands them right in the clutches of a terrorist leader.
If that sounds chaotic, it is – and that’s the joy of this biting yet warm satire from the Regina-based creator of the groundbreaking CBC sitcom Small Mosque In The Meadow. Somehow it manages to interrogate everything from prejudice to foreign policy to what it means to be a ‘good person’, all wrapped up in the thread of Jameela’s journey through grief, to both about his brother’s death and about his own unfulfilled ambition. (Released March 8.)
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