The Wildcraft Drones by T.K. Rex
(Stelliform Press)
About the book: In this debut collection, T. K. Rex charts the shifting boundaries between humans, machines, and the natural world in fourteen interconnected stories that traverse climate crisis, artificial intelligence, and unexpected alliances.
What people are saying: “Creating together a good Anthropocene is going to take persistence, resilience, wit, tolerance, love, and technology. These exciting stories combine all these values, and give us a much-needed vision of how things could turn out well, despite the many dangers we are facing. They gave me hope and made me laugh— what a great mix!” —Kim Stanley Robinson, author of The Ministry for the Future
Find The Wildcraft Drones on All Lit Up or at your favourite indie bookstore.
The Library Cosmic by Ben Berman Ghan
(Wolsak and Wynn)
About the book: In this luminous collection of stories, Ben Berman Ghan navigates the mysteries of life, consciousness, and connection through stories of ghosts, golems, and far-future AIs, where libraries, found families, and the written word guide the way.
Praise for the author: “Cinematic, poetic and overflowing with invention, The Years Shall Run Like Rabbits is a marvel – a heartfelt exploration of what it means to be alive, and a love story eons and galaxies in scale. I am in awe of Ben Ghan’s imagination.” —Kim Fu, author of Lesser Known Monsters of the 21st Century
Find The Library Cosmic on All Lit Up or at your favourite indie bookstore.
Sailors Can’t Swim by Dominique Scali, translated by Jessica Moore (Talonbooks)
About the book: A speculative fiction novel set on the island of Ys tracing a young woman’s passage between shore, city, and open sea as she navigates the rigid boundaries of class, gender, and citizenship in an alternate eighteenth century. Blending maritime adventure, fairy tale, and coming-of-age story, the novel reflects on the fragile foundations of belonging.
Praise for the author: “It’s easy to see why Dominique Scali’s first novel, In Search of New Babylon, was a finalist for the 2015 Governor General’s Literary Award, the Grand Prix du livre de Montréal, the Prix des libraires du Québec, and winner of the 2015 First Novel Award at the Festival du Premier Roman de Chambéry in France. The story is tightly woven and executed with masterful shifts in chronology and narrative focus.” —Montreal Review of Books
Find Sailors Can’t Swim on All Lit Up or at your favourite indie bookstore.
Super Castle Fun Park by Daniel Zomparelli
(Arsenal Pulp Press)
About the book: A wild, beguiling novel about isolation, technology, and raising the dead by the co-editor of Queer Little Nightmares. This genre-defying ghost-lit story moves between online worlds and earthly grief, with a blend of wry humour and the uncanny.
Praise for the author: “It’s exciting, dry, and bright in its humour and unlike any literary voice I’ve ever read.” -Jenny Slate, author of Lifeform and Little Weirds—Montreal Review of Books
Find Super Castle Fun Park on All Lit Up or at your favourite indie bookstore.
Sinner’s Banquet by Randy Nikkel Schroeder
(NeWest Press)
About the book: Miriam Toews meets the Coen Brothers in this raucous “Mennonoir,” a spontaneous outburst of violence and wit from Randy Nikkel Schroeder. In a Mennonite town where piety masks a criminal underworld, Luke Falk navigates shunning, outcasts, and escalating crime upon returning home—where anything can happen.
Praise for the author: “Schroeder writes with urgency and grace.”—Mike Thorn, author of Darkest Hours
Find Sinner’s Banquet on All Lit Up or at your favourite indie bookstore.
Event Horizon by Balsam Karam, translated by Saskia Vogel
(Book*hug Press)
About the book: This daring and existential novel centres on seventeen-year-old Milde from the Outskirts as she rebels against a brutal government, facing imprisonment and torture. Milde is eventually presented with a final choice: to be executed publicly or, as part of an experiment, to be launched into space, into a black hole called the Mass.
Praise for the author: “Balsam Karam has the uncanny ability to take today’s daunting concerns—our eco-anxiety, our growing economic inequalities, our powerlessness against the politics that continue to derail our lives—and feed them back to us as mythic dystopias, netherworlds of hypnotic speculation electrified by thrilling poetic tension.” —Dimitri Nasrallah, author of Hotline
Find Event Horizon on All Lit Up or at your favourite indie bookstore.
Weird Babies by Jaclyn Desforges
(The Porcupine’s Quill)
About the book: A tender and uncanny short story collection about weird babies: a miraculous set of reincarnated quadruplets, babies born from the bellies of trout, babies who are destined to molt like tarantulas, babies who hatch from piles of warm clothes. Each story explores the weird baby living in all of us—the fragile part of ourselves that longs to be loved.
Praise for the author: “The stories in Weird Babies are a rare delight – modern fairytales that pulse with poetic, surreal, otherworldly energy. Reading this collection is to lose yourself in language that is at once fluid and precise and to feel, at the end of each story, that you have woken from some strange and lovely dream. Desforges is nothing short of a sorceress; this book a potent spell. —Anuja Varghese, Governor General’s Award-winning author of Chrysalis
Find Weird Babies on All Lit Up or at your favourite indie bookstore.
Mom Camp by Véronique Darwin
(Assembly Press)
About the book: A debut collection of interconnected stories that follow women navigating the roles, pasts, and selves that shape them. These stories are as playful as they are philosophical, exploring identity, consciousness, and what it means to be the narrator of your own life.
Praise for the author: “Step inside the world of Mom Camp, a place both startlingly familiar and uncannily strange. Véronique Darwin’s debut is confident and perceptive about the lives women lead, or perhaps imagine they do. This is a charming, inventive, and funny collection that explores the infinite complexities of motherhood, sisterhood, and female identity.”—Alix Ohlin, author of We Want What We Want
Find Mom Camp on All Lit Up or at your favourite indie bookstore.
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What Off/Kilter pick are you most excited to read this spring? Let us know on social media by tagging us @alllitupcanada.
