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Our Gift Their Next recommendations from our ALU booksperts make it easy to find just the right book for every kind of reader on your gift list, from the dreamers, the thinkers, the sci-fi wanderers, the thrill seekers, the poetry hearts, and those in between.

Browse our curated collection of books to find your giftee’s next favourite book. Enjoy 10% off our picks and free shipping Canada-wide with promo code GIFTNEXT10 until November 30. Or use our Shop Local feature on each book page to buy from your local independent bookseller.



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Give them dark-funny novellas of crisis and connection from four acclaimed writers


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They want fantastical, personal prose poems about migration and belonging


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They’re in the mood for a time-twisting tale of magic and rural horror


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Give them a neon-noir thriller play that they’ll blaze through in one sitting


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They like boundary-breaking short fiction with eerie vibes


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Got anything that makes book club feel like a revolution?


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Maybe a queer pop romance for fans of Sophie Gonzales?


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Got anything funny, dishy, and very slice-of-life?

Gift Their Next Literary Fiction


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Give them dark-funny novellas of crisis and connection from four acclaimed writers


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How about a revelatory work of autofiction about one girl’s coming-of-age?


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What about a gripping, intimate story of friendship with a dash of cult intrigue?


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A dead cat sparks a wildly strange quest across time and space? Sign them up!


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They want gripping art-world intrigue and a historical mystery


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How about a slow burn where one evening turns deadly in a gentrifying neighbourhood?


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They love a social satire about greed and inequality


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Give them a fever dream of a mother’s grief

Gift Their Next Speculative Fiction


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They’re in the mood for a time-twisting tale of magic and rural horror


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They’d like a fresh take on time travel


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How about a queer coming-of-age with urban legends?


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A propulsive dystopian novel with poisonous moss and a protean sea?


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A wild ride through corporate chaos with a dash of space-age absurdity? We think so!


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They’re in the mood for a novel-in-verse about two lovers in a world where memory is currency


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Or maybe a cyberpunk thriller where trillionaires play god?


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They’d love a queer, boundary-breaking climate fiction

Gift Their Next Poetry Collection


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Give them a meditation on aging, love, and climate change


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How about poems that turn literal trash into meaningful meditations on joy and resistance?


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They want fantastical, personal prose poems about migration and belonging


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Arabic lyricism in English translation? A linguaphile’s dream!


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How about an anthropomorphic sleight-of-hand where sheep recall revolutions and pumpkins write letters?


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They’d love poems from an Innu poet that move between the northern wilderness and the city at once

Gift Their Next Thriller


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Give them a fast-paced thriller with a very Canadian setting and an unlikely duo


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They’ll dig a gothic thriller with a fortune-teller detective, ancient myths, and revenge


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They like their detective novels set in a small town and full of moral complexity


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Give them a neon-noir thriller play that they’ll blaze through in one sitting


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They’d like a psychological thriller with a cult-like leader

Gift Their Next Short Story Collection


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Give them whip-smart stories that leap from 19th-century Paris to outer space


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They like boundary-breaking short fiction with eerie vibes


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What about a collection of very short stories—each one sentence long?


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They’ll love a linked collection about the lives of queer and trans people of colour in Montreal


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Give them stories of miners, teachers, and lost lovers reckoning with the weight of choices


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They’re in the mood for dark humour and moral misjudgements

Gift Their Next Non-Fiction


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They want to read testimonies and stories from those who refused to stay silent


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Got anything that makes book club feel like a revolution?


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They’re drawn to personal essays that expand their empathy


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Got a fresh take on empowering women within religion?


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They’d love the collected works of a journalistic icon


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Got anything immersive about gaming and identity?


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How about a career-spanning collection of personal essays from a beloved Canadian poet?

Gift Their Next Young Adult Novel


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Give them a humanizing portrait of a teenager battling obsessive compulsive disorder


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Maybe a queer pop romance for fans of Sophie Gonzales?


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Give them a WWI-era tale of Asian female bonds with unexpected twists


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Flesh-eating fog and mechanical monsters? They’re in!


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They’d love a fantasy series about a shapeshifting wolf hero


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Maybe a middle-grade story about a preteen navigating new family dynamics?

Gift Their Next Graphic Novel


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Got anything funny, dishy, and very slice-of-life?


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Give them an artful horror with supernatural body eaters


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Or maybe a soul-swapping comic where power comes at half your being?


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Give them a shape-shifting sci-fi rom-com with galactic supply chains


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How about a cringe comedy of modern manners and awkward encounters?


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They want a punk-rock dystopian horror about music and mental illness

We hope our recommendations helped you find the right books to gift (and maybe to keep!).

Happy holidays from the All Lit Up team!