Summer Challenge 2025: Books Recommended by CBCUnpublished

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Winner of Canada Reads 2025 From her early, often harrowing memories of life and abuse in a remote Ojibwa community, Ma-Nee Chacaby's extraordinary story is one of enduring and ultimately overcoming the social and economic legacies of colonialism. As a child, Chacaby learned...

Winner of Canada Reads 2024 * Longlisted for the 2025 Dublin Literary Award * Longlisted for the 2024 Carol Shields Prize for Fiction * One of Tor.com's Can't Miss Speculative Fiction for Fall 2023 * Listed in CBC Books Fiction to Read in Fall 2023 * One of Kirkus...

A New York Times Notable book! One of Barack Obama's favorite books of 2022! Winner of Canada Reads 2023! "An exceptionally beautiful book about loneliness, labor, and survival."--Carmen Maria Machado Before there was Kate Beaton, New York Times...

Growing up on the Nipissing First Nation reserve in Northern Ontario, Christian Allaire wanted to work in the fashion industry, a future that seemed like a remote, and unlikely, dream He was first introduced to style and design through his culture's traditional Ojibwe powwow regalia-...

In April 2020, cartoonist Sarah Leavitt's partner of twenty-two years, Donimo, died with medical assistance after years of severe chronic pain and a rapid decline at the end of her life. About a month after Donimo's death, Sarah began making comics again as a way to deal with her profound sense of...

INSTANT #1 BESTSELLER A witty, warm and brilliantly told debut that is at once a love story, a story of female friendship and motherhood, and an irresistible mystery surrounding an extraordinary British family. Arriving at the University of Edinburgh for her first...

PI Dave Wakeland returns to the streets of Vancouver for his most dangerous case yet. Maggie Zito is being held for murder. The volatile single mother is accused of killing the retired leader of the notorious Exiles motorcycle gang and his wife aboard their million-dollar houseboat. With a...

From Tanya Talaga, the critically acclaimed and award-winning author of Seven Fallen Feathers, comes a riveting exploration of her family's story and a retelling of the history of the country we now call Canada For generations, Indigenous People have known that their family members...

'This is an examination of the parts that construct my Black character; from how public schooling shapes our ideas about ourselves to how hip-hop and sports are simultaneously the conduit for both Black abundance and Black boundaries. This book is a meditation on the influences that have shaped...

Governor General Literary Awards Winner * A NYPL Best Book of 2024 This YA debut is a searing ode to queer identity, growing up in an immigrant community, and carving a place for yourself in the world with the help of your friends. Jay Wong is spending the last languid days of...

This funny, feel-good middle-grade graphic novel about change and acceptance will be a hit with fans of Guts by Raina Telgemeier, Pizza Face by Rex Ogle and Dave Valeza, and Parachute Kids by Betty C. Tang. Goodbye, old life... Lia and her family are...

The first book in a gripping duology from acclaimed author S.K. Ali introduces a fractured world on the brink of either enlightenment or war. Would you trade love for peace? Raisa of Upper Earth has only lived a life of privilege and acquiescence. Ever dutiful...

The magical island of Chynchin is facing conquerors from abroad and something sinister from within in this entrancing fantasy from the Grand Master Award-winning author Nalo Hopkinson. Veycosi, in training as a griot (an historian and musician), hopes to sail off to examine the...

You're invited to The Wedding, an electrifying novel about the joining of two South Asian families, and the secrets, resentments, and unspoken truths boiling just beneath the surface. Interweaving themes of identity, culture clashes, and the immigrant experience as found in The Namesake by...

LONGLISTED FOR CANADA READS 2025 CBC BOOKS CANADIAN FICTION BOOKS TO READ IN FALL 2024  SHORTLISTED FOR THE 2024 GILLER PRIZE FINALIST FOR THE 2024 DAYNE OGILVIE PRIZE FOR LGBTQ2S+ EMERGING WRITERS FINALIST FOR THE ATWOOD GIBSON...

INSTANT NATIONAL BESTSELLER * WINNER OF THE 2024 GILLER PRIZE * Shortlisted for the 2024 Booker Prize * A Heather's Pick * One of the Globe and Mail's Best Books of 2023 * Named a Best Book of 2024 by Kirkus Reviews * One of CBC's Best Books of 2024 A breathtaking...

June and her sister, lyn, are NDNs - real ones. Lyn has her pottery artwork, her precocious kid, Willow, and the uncertain terrain of her midlife to keep her mind, heart and hands busy. June, a Metis Studies professor, yearns to uproot from Vancouver and move. With her loving partner, Sigh, June...