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.

Updated January 16, 2025
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The Whispers: The Propulsive New Novel from the Author of the PUSH
Audrain, Ashley
Paper Book
*LONGLISTED FOR CANADA READS 2025* INSTANT #1 NATIONAL BESTSELLER "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]...
Watch out for her : a novel
Bailey, Samantha M.
Paper Book
LONGLISTED FOR CANADA READS 2025 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 Samantha M. Bailey. Wherever you go......
A two-spirit journey : the autobiography of a lesbian Ojibwa-Cree elder
Chacaby, Ma-Nee
Paper Book
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 spiritual and cultural traditions from her...
What I Know about You
Chacour, Eric
Paper Book
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 WRITERS' TRUST PRIZE  ...
The pull of the stars : a novel
Donoghue, Emma
Paper Book
THE NEW #1 BESTSELLER FROM THE AUTHOR OF THE WONDER AND ROOM  Dublin, 1918: three days in a maternity ward at the height of the great flu. A small world of work, risk, death and unlooked-for love, by the bestselling author of The Wonder and Room. <...
When the Pine Needles Fall: Indigenous Acts of Resistance
Gabriel, Katsi'tsakwas Ellen
Paper Book
One of CBC Books Best Canadian Nonfiction Books of 2024   There have been many things written about Canada's violent siege of Kanehsatà:ke and Kahnawà:ke in the summer of 1990, but When the Pine Needles Fall: Indigenous Acts of Resistance is the first book from the perspective...
Etta and Otto and Russell and James
Hooper, Emma
Paper Book
Winner of the 2017 Frank Hegyi Award for Emerging Authors A beautiful novel that reminds us that it's never too late to see the things you've longed to see, or to say the things you've longed to say   Eighty-two-year-old Etta has never seen the ocean. So, early one...
The Other Valley: A Novel
Howard, Scott Alexander
Paper Book
LONGLISTED FOR CANADA READS 2025 For fans of Emily St. John Mandel, David Mitchell, and Kazuo Ishiguro, an exquisite literary speculative novel set in an unnamed valley, where bereaved residents can petition to cross a forbidden border to see their lost loved ones again...
Jennie's boy : a Newfoundland childhood
Johnston, Wayne
Paper Book
NATIONAL BESTSELLER NAMED A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR BY THE CBC WINNER OF THE 2023 LEACOCK MEDAL FOR HUMOUR LONGLISTED FOR CANADA READS 2025 Consummate storyteller and bestselling novelist Wayne Johnston reaches back into his past to bring us a sad, tender and at times...
Becoming a matriarch
Knott, Helen
Paper Book
#1 NATIONAL BESTSELLER Co-winner of the 2024 George Ryga Award for Social Awareness in Literature Winner of the Jim Deva Prize for Writing That Provokes (part of the BC and Yukon Book Prizes) Shortlisted for the 2024 Hubert Evans Non-Fiction Prize Finalist for the...
Dandelion
Liew, Jamie Chai Yun
Paper Book
Longlisted for Canada Reads Jim Wong-Chu Emerging Writers Award winner: an Asian woman traces her mother's past journey in order to learn who she really is and where she belongs. When Lily was eleven years old, her mother, Swee Hua, walked away from the family, never...
However far away
Pal, Rajinderpal S.
Paper Book
Longlist, Canada Reads 2025 A sweeping family saga set against the backdrop of a Sikh wedding. On the morning of his nephew's wedding, Devinder Gill is certain the delicate balance of his life will not be upset. Dev is married to Kuldip, and together they are raising two young...
Clyde Fans : a picture novel in five parts
Seth
Paper Book
Appeared on 20 best of the year lists, including The New York Times, Washington Post, The Guardian, and more! "Open Clyde Fans and let Seth take you into his time machine. There's no room for nostalgia in Seth's vision. The past is as sharp and painful...
Girl runner : a novel
Snyder, Carrie
Paper Book
Longlist, Canada Reads 2025 Shortlist, Rogers Writers' Trust Fiction Prize 2014 Girl Runneris the story of Aganetha Smart, a former Olympic athlete who was famous in the 1920s, but now, at age 104, lives in a nursing home, alone and forgotten by history. For Aganetha, a competitive...
All our ordinary stories : a multigenerational family odyssey
Wong, Teresa
Paper Book
From the author of Dear Scarlet comes a graphic memoir about the obstacles one daughter faces as she attempts to connect with her immigrant parents Beginning with her mother's stroke in 2014, Teresa Wong takes us on a moving journey through time and place to locate the...

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