CBC Canada Reads: 2025 Longlist

Canada's great book debate is back for another year! Find all 15 of the longlisted titles at GVPL to read along.

Learn more about the debate on CBC: Canada Reads on CBC

Updated February 1, 2025
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The whispers
Audrain, Ashley
Paper Book
"Expertly, subtly and powerfully rendered....[The Whispers] delivers a sucker-punch ending you'll have to read twice to believe."--The New York Times Book Review "[An] electrifying...razor-sharp page-turner." --Carley Fortune, #1 New York Times bestselling...
Watch out for her : a novel
Bailey, Samantha M.
Paper Book
Shortlisted for CANADA READS · Instant #1 National Bestseller · A Globe and Mail Best Book of the Year A tense psychological thriller about a mother who must keep watch at all times if she wants to keep her family safe--from USA TODAY and #1 national bestselling author...

Shortlisted for Canada Reads 2025 and championed by Maggie Mac Neil

What I Know about You
Chacour, Eric
Paper Book
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...
The pull of the stars : a novel
Donoghue, Emma
Paper Book
In Dublin, 1918, a maternity ward at the height of the Great Flu is a small world of work, risk, death, and unlooked-for love, in "Donoghue's best novel since Room" (Kirkus Reviews). In an Ireland doubly ravaged by war and disease, Nurse Julia Power...
Etta and Otto and Russell and James
Hooper, Emma
Paper Book
This "poetic, poignant" (US Weekly) debut features last great adventures, unlikely heroes, and a "sweet, disarming story of lasting love" (The New York Times Book Review). Eighty-three-year-old Etta has never seen the ocean. So early one morning she takes a rifle,...

Shortlisted for Canada Reads 2025 and championed by Michelle Morgan

Other valley, the
Howard, Scott Alexander.
Paper Book
A stunning literary debut novel that is a cross between Kazuo Ishiguro's speculative work, and the heart-rending search for where it all went wrong in Matt Haig's The Midnight Library.
Becoming a matriarch : a memoir
Knott, Helen
Paper Book
In stunning, lyrical prose, Helen Knott explores female power, motherhood and grief as she reflects upon how her identity as a woman of Dane Zaa - a group of First Nations Indigenous people - has shaped her.
Clyde fans
Seth
Paper Book
"A masterwork... Clyde Fans is a brilliant trip."--Brian Seznick, The Invention of Hugo Cabret Legendary cartoonist Seth's magnum opus Clyde Fans appeared on twenty best of the year lists, including The New York Times, The Guardian, and Washington Post....
Girl runner : a novel
Snyder, Carrie
Paper Book
Resonant of Elizabeth Gilbert's The Signature of All Things and Tracy Chevalier's Remarkable Creatures, Girl Runner is an unforgettable, beautifully written novel that celebrates a woman born to reach beyond the limitations of her time. As a young runner, Aganetha Smart defied everyone's...

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