Check out what Quebecers are reading this month! We’ve compiled lists with our colleagues at BookNet Canada to show the bestselling titles in Quebec, both overall and amongst titles from Canadian-owned publishers.

The Bestseller and Top Circulated Lists are compiled by the Association of English-language Publishers of Quebec from information provided by BookNet Canada’s national sales tracking service, SalesData, and national public library circulation data tracking service, LibraryData.

Top Fiction from Canadian-Owned Publishers

🍁 = Canadian author, ⚜️= Quebec-based author, Bold = AELAQ member publisher

Top Non-Fiction from Canadian-Owned Publishers

🍁 = Canadian author, ⚜️= Quebec-based author, Bold = AELAQ member publisher

Top Fiction Overall

🍁 = Canadian author, ⚜️= Quebec-based author, Bold = AELAQ member publisher

Top Non-Fiction Overall

🍁 = Canadian author, ⚜️= Quebec-based author, Bold = AELAQ member publisher

The post October 2026 Read Quebec Bestseller Lists appeared first on Read Quebec.

Founded in 2016 through an initiative spearheaded by then-Head Librarian at Concordia University Guylaine Beaudry and founding Director Geoffrey Little, Concordia University Press is celebrating its tenth year with seven publication series in production, and twenty-five books published. I sat down with its current Director, Ryan Van Huijstee, who joined the team in 2019 as the Acquisitions Editor, to reflect on the last decade of Montréal’s only fully open-access, non-profit scholarly press. 

Read Quebec: How was Concordia University Press founded? 

Ryan Van Huijstee: The time felt right, I think, in 2016, when Concordia was going through a growth period, to develop an open-access publisher. The library at Concordia was the prime mover on this. It was Guylaine Beaudry, who’s now the Dean of Libraries at McGill, and Geoffrey Little, who’s now the Dean of Libraries over at the University of Western Ontario. Librarians are behind this effort, which is to produce more open-access book scholarship. This is to make information that’s substantiated, verified, and peer-reviewed by the best scholars in the world available to the public for free to better inform critical discussions and assessments. Certainly, this is a time of a lot of misinformation and disinformation. 

I joined in 2019, right before the first book. At that point, we only had canvas bags and no books to put them in. Our first book was Ken Lum’s [Everything is Relevant: Writings on Art and Life, 1991–2018], which came out in January 2020. What could go wrong? Everything shuts down, right? It was a funny moment because it did, in some ways, allow us to hunker down and develop more works. This fall, we’re publishing our twenty-fifth book since 2020! 

RQ: The press has a strong focus on built spaces, art, and expansive definitions of what media is. Is that a part of the press’s mandate?

RVH: We wanted to position art writing by artists as a form of scholarly and critical production. There was an early interest in experimenting and playing with the margins of what counts as scholarly publishing. When you’re a new publisher, you want to make it clear to the outside world what you’re interested in, so people start bringing you submissions. It’s a challenge to start off and then try to figure out how you form and present an identity. For us, this was through visual culture, gender and sexuality studies, media studies, architecture, social history, cultural history, these sorts of areas. 

We’ve also been thinking consciously of what kinds of books we want to publish if we’re also giving them away for free. We want to make that material accessible to anybody with an internet connection, but we also want to support a thriving print culture, which is reflected in the design work. It also helps to subsidize and support the cost of giving it away for free. If you produce these beautiful editions, people still want to buy them. 

RQ: Some books like Lauren Beck’s Canada’s Place Names and How to Change Them are scholarly volumes but have also circulated widely outside of academic circles. Can you say more about that?

RVH: Lauren keeps getting interviewed lately because of the Lake Ontario renaming. It’s an issue that she’s looking at through a historical lens. Names will continue to be revisited and changed for a range of different reasons, which she outlines well in that book. That was a book that connected with public readership, in part because of the topicality.

I like to think of scholarly publishing as slow publishing, but it’s worthwhile because it’s substantiated, rather than just reactive to a present tense, one that is often just a current event that’s constantly getting swept up in another current. 

The cover is by Sébastien Aubin. That book won a cover design mention for the Association of University Presses Book, Jacket, and Journal Show. He took a Jean de Brébeuf map from the seventeenth century and took these bodies of water and foregrounded them as the central feature, instead of the land being the central feature. He wanted to subvert and change it, and as an Indigenous designer, he wanted to foreground waterways as the central methods of communication and transport. Then he also inverted the image, to make it familiar but unfamiliar.

RQ: How does the Press interface with the challenges and the affordances of a place like Montréal, a multilingual space?

RVH: It’s one of the most curious and distinct places in the world, and we all get to benefit from that. As a result of these kinds of collisions of cultural environments, you get the sort of interest in interdisciplinary work and experience. It’s a culture that loves culture. I’ve lived in four provinces in Canada, and nowhere is art, and literature, and music more prominent than here. The amount of public art here is incredible, and we benefit from that as an open-access publisher that also gets to produce all this work and give it to the public for free. 

We’re also very lucky that we’re a university press in a city that has so many universities, so many students, and so many researchers, as well as other institutions that are interested in research and developing writing, whether that’s the museums or with our colleagues at the Canadian Centre for Architecture.

RQ: What is a day like here at the Concordia University Press?

RVH: The day can really change. Often, we will be doing a public event, tabling at a book fair, here or elsewhere. There’s a lot of time spent reading on a computer. We’ve been fortunate to do a lot of in-house editing, whether that’s developmental editing or copyediting. We collaborate on a lot of things because we’re a small staff. We all get to do a little bit of everything. 

One of the best days I ever had in publishing was in November 2022. We were coming out of lockdowns and finally returning to in-person living. It was the Read Quebec Book Fair, and it was happening in the Concordia [Webster Library] Atrium. We had two books show up from the printer on the same day. It was Lauren Beck’s Canada’s Place Names and How to Change Them and Alex D. Ketchum’s Ingredients for Revolution.

I got to open the boxes, inspect the printer’s work, say that I thought it was very good, release them, and then take the books immediately downstairs and sell them at a public book fair. Alex got to come by because she was local and was literally signing books within two hours of us releasing it.

RQ: What will the next decade of the Press bring?

RVH: More books. More fun books! I think some things have been gradually changing over the last couple years, where before people said, “Oh, I didn’t know Concordia had a university press.” Now it’s, “Oh, I’ve got that book, and I really like it.”

We have a great book coming out that is called Climate Change Cookery: Recipes and Resilience in England’s Little Ice Age, 1550–1700 [by Madeline Bassnett], which looks at this period where there was a small glaciation and the Thames kept freezing over. She is looking at how the first recipe collections, English cookbooks, were recording the weather and famine, intemperate climate and unexpected weather, and how these were affecting food practices. It’s a funny parallel, because it’s a through-the-looking-glass thing where, obviously, we’re on fire right now, but they were freezing. It’s a fun, thoughtful, beautifully written scholarly work.

Paisley Conrad is a writer and critic. She lives in Montréal.

Illustration by Oliver Gadoury.

The post 10 Years of Concordia University Press appeared first on Read Quebec.

Check out what Quebecers are reading this month! We’ve compiled lists with our colleagues at BookNet Canada to show the bestselling titles in Quebec, both overall and amongst titles from Canadian-owned publishers.

The Bestseller and Top Circulated Lists are compiled by the Association of English-language Publishers of Quebec from information provided by BookNet Canada’s national sales tracking service, SalesData, and national public library circulation data tracking service, LibraryData.

Top Fiction from Canadian-Owned Publishers

🍁 = Canadian author, ⚜️= Quebec-based author, Bold = AELAQ member publisher

Top Non-Fiction from Canadian-Owned Publishers

🍁 = Canadian author, ⚜️= Quebec-based author, Bold = AELAQ member publisher

Top Fiction Overall

🍁 = Canadian author, ⚜️= Quebec-based author, Bold = AELAQ member publisher

Top Non-Fiction Overall

🍁 = Canadian author, ⚜️= Quebec-based author, Bold = AELAQ member publisher

The post September 2026 Read Quebec Bestseller Lists appeared first on Read Quebec.

Applications are now open to exhibit at the 11th edition of the Read Quebec Book Fair! This annual celebration of Quebec’s English-language literature returns on December 5 and 6, 2026 in the beautiful and historic Casa d’Italia.

Book, magazine and journal publishers, as well as literary associations from across Canada are welcome to apply. As exhibition space is limited, all applications will be reviewed by our book fair committee. We will aim to get back to all applicants in a timely manner.

New this year: we have rented additional space to hold events outside of the main exhibition room. In addition to our usual book fair programming, we have a limited number of slots in the schedule for exhibitor events. This is a great opportunity for you to host a launch or showcase featuring several of your authors.

There is a $250 fee payable to AELAQ to cover the administrative, sound technician and equipment rental costs for events running one hour in length. We would add your event to the official fair program, and include it in all marketing and PR materials. Exhibitors would be responsible for all author or speaker honoraria, and any food or beverage costs if applicable, and book sales related to the event. If you are interested, please submit an event proposal along with your application.

Please see the pricing and exhibitor eligibility details below. We look forward to welcoming you at the fair!

About the Read Quebec Book Fair

The Read Quebec Book Fair was founded in 2015. It’s an occasion to celebrate English-language writing from here, and to encourage booklovers of all ages and interests to browse, buy and get books signed.

In 2025, we opened up the fair to publishers from outside of Quebec for the first time. We aim to continue this tradition in celebrating a diverse range of literature from across Canada this holiday season.

Find photos from our 2025 fair here, and learn more about past editions of the fair here.

2026 Fair Dates and Location

Casa d’Italia
Dec. 5-6, 2026
505 rue Jean-Talon E
Montreal, QC

https://maps.app.goo.gl/xqYFzijkDvFoE7n39

Exhibitor Pricing

Rates

• $250 before October 1st
• $300 after October 1st

AELAQ Member Rates

• Suggested price: $200
• Pay it forward price: $300
• Solidarity price / Early bird: $150 before October 1st

If you can afford the suggested or pay-it-forward tables, we are grateful for the support. These efforts allow us to keep the fair accessible for smaller and emerging presses. After October 1, 2026, the early bird / solidarity price for members will no longer be available.

For multiple table reservations, exhibitors are free to choose a combination of sponsor, solidarity or suggested price tables. Note that we will do our best to accommodate multiple table reservations if space allows.

Each table reservation includes:

• 6 ft. table
• 2 chairs
• Signage identifying your publishing house / exhibitor name
• Black tablecloth
• Name tags

Eligibility criteria

As the book fair is organized by the Association of English-language Publishers, our focus is on attracting Canadian-owned publishers to exhibit. Authors with traditional Canadian publishers who are interested in participating are encouraged to pass along the application information to their publishers.

While the mandate and focus of the fair is to celebrate and sell English-language books, we acknowledge the rich multilingual context within which the fair exists in Montreal, and welcome applications from publishers of books in other languages.

Cancellation policy

Until September 30, 2026: full refund

Until October 31, 2026: 50% refund

From November 1, 2026 onwards: no refund

For any questions, please contact alexandra@aelaq.org.

The post Applications are Open to Table at the 2026 Read Quebec Book Fair! appeared first on Read Quebec.

Check out what Quebecers are reading this month! We’ve compiled lists with our colleagues at BookNet Canada to show the bestselling titles in Quebec, both overall and amongst titles from Canadian-owned publishers.

The Bestseller and Top Circulated Lists are compiled by the Association of English-language Publishers of Quebec from information provided by BookNet Canada’s national sales tracking service, SalesData, and national public library circulation data tracking service, LibraryData.

Top Fiction from Canadian-Owned Publishers

🍁 = Canadian author, ⚜️= Quebec-based author, Bold = AELAQ member publisher

Top Non-Fiction from Canadian-Owned Publishers

🍁 = Canadian author, ⚜️= Quebec-based author, Bold = AELAQ member publisher

Top Fiction Overall

🍁 = Canadian author, ⚜️= Quebec-based author, Bold = AELAQ member publisher

Top Non-Fiction Overall

🍁 = Canadian author, ⚜️= Quebec-based author, Bold = AELAQ member publisher

The post August 2026 Read Quebec Bestseller Lists appeared first on Read Quebec.

Check out what Quebecers are reading this month! We’ve compiled lists with our colleagues at BookNet Canada to show the bestselling titles in Quebec, both overall and amongst titles from Canadian-owned publishers.

The Bestseller and Top Circulated Lists are compiled by the Association of English-language Publishers of Quebec from information provided by BookNet Canada’s national sales tracking service, SalesData, and national public library circulation data tracking service, LibraryData.

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Top Fiction from Canadian-Owned Publishers

Rank	Title	Contributors	Publisher
1	Dogs on Dates	Luke Healy	Drawn & Quarterly Publications
2	Inherited Hunger	Rose Brik🍁	Indigo Books & Music Inc.
3	Our Lady of Mile End	Sarah Gilbert ⚜️	Anvil Press
4	Letters to Kafka	Christine Estima 🍁	House of Anansi Press
5	Riverwork	Lisa Robertson 🍁	Coach House Books
6	Please Look Into the Mirror	Michaela Angemeer 🍁	Indigo Books & Music Inc.
7	Cannon	Lee Lai ⚜️	Drawn & Quarterly Publications
8	Betas	Nick Maandag 🍁	Drawn & Quarterly Publications
9	Veil Volume 4: Transparent Burns	Kotteri	UDON Entertainment Corporation
10	Appleguy and Beefwood	Cedar Van Tassel	Drawn & Quarterly Publications

🍁 = Canadian author, ⚜️= Quebec-based author, Bold = AELAQ member publisher

Top Non-Fiction from Canadian-Owned Publishers

Rank	Title	Contributors	Publisher
1	Every Salad Ever	Greta Podleski ⚜️	One Spoon Media Incorporated
2	The Wealthy Barber	David Chilton 🍁	Financial Awareness Corporation
3	Opioids and Organs	Arizona O’Neill⚜️	Drawn & Quarterly Publications
4	Letters from Montreal: Tales of an Exceptional City	Madi Haslam 🍁	Vehicule Press
5	Dangerous Memory: Coming of Age in the Decade of Greed	Charlie Angus 🍁	House of Anansi Press
6	Charity and Sylvia	Tillie Walden	Drawn & Quarterly Publications
7	Are You Willing to Die for the Cause	Chris Oliveros ⚜️	Drawn & Quarterly Publications
8	Exploring Montréal: 151 Best Buildings	Robin Ward	Douglas and McIntyre (2013) Ltd.
9	Ducks: Two Years in the Oil Sands	Kate Beaton 🍁	Drawn & Quarterly Publications
10	Leonard Cohen: On a Wire	Philippe Girard and Helge Dascher ⚜️	Drawn & Quarterly Publications

🍁 = Canadian author, ⚜️= Quebec-based author, Bold = AELAQ member publisher

Top Fiction Overall

Rank	Title	Contributors	Publisher
1	Yesteryear	Caro Claire Burke	Knopf Canada
2	The Deal	Elle Kennedy 🍁	Sourcebooks, Incorporated
3	The Score	Elle Kennedy 🍁	Sourcebooks, Incorporated
4	The Odyssey	Homer	Arcturus Publishing
5	Dungeon Crawler Carl	Matt Dinniman	Penguin Publishing Group
6	The Mistake	Elle Kennedy 🍁	Sourcebooks, Incorporated
7	Project Hail Mary	Andy Weir	Random House Publishing Group
8	Every Summer After	Carley Fortune 🍁	Penguin Canada
9	Theo of Golden	Allen Levi	Simon & Schuster, Incorporated
10	The Calamity Club	Kathryn Stockett	Doubleday Canada

🍁 = Canadian author, ⚜️= Quebec-based author, Bold = AELAQ member publisher

Top Non-Fiction Overall

Rank	Title	Contributors	Publisher
1	Regime Change: Inside the Imperial Presidency of Donald Trump	Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan	Simon & Schuster, Incorporated
2	Atomic Habits	James Clear	Penguin Publishing Group
3	The Let Them Theory	Mel Robbins and Swayer Robbins	Hay House, Incorporated
4	The Ride of a Lifetime: Lessons Learned from 15 Years as CEO of the Walt Disney Company	Robert Iger	Random House Publishing Group
5	Strangers: A Memoir of Marriage	Belle Burden	Random House Publishing Group
6	The Psychology of Money	Morgan Housel	Harriman House Publishing
7	Every Salad Ever	Greta Podleski ⚜️	One Spoon Media Incorporated
8	Tuesdays with Morrie	Mitch Albom	The Crown Publishing Group
9	The Wealthy Barber	David Chilton 🍁	Financial Awareness Corporation
10	Opioids and Organs	Arizona O’Neill ⚜️	Drawn & Quarterly Publications

🍁 = Canadian author, ⚜️= Quebec-based author, Bold = AELAQ member publisher

Appleguy and Beefwood

Fiction, Graphic novel

Cedar Van Tassel

Are You Willing to Die for the Cause? (Paperback)

Graphic novel, Nonfiction

Chris Oliveros

Betas

Fiction, Graphic novel

Nick Maandag

Cannon

Graphic novel

Lee Lai

Dogs On Dates

Fiction, Graphic novel

Luke Healy

Ducks: Two Years in the Oil Sands

Graphic novel, Memoir

Kate Beaton

Leonard Cohen: On a Wire

Graphic novel

Philippe Girard

Opioids & Organs

Graphic novel

Arizona O'Neill

Our Lady of Mile End

Fiction

Sarah Gilbert

No results found.

The post July 2026 Read Quebec Bestseller Lists appeared first on Read Quebec.

The post Quebec Book Day! – Bonus Episode appeared first on Read Quebec.

By Read Quebec Staff

August 12 is Quebec Book Day, known in French as « Le 12 août, j’achète un livre québécois  ». Founded in 2014 by authors Patrice Cazeault & Amélie Dubé, August 12 has since become one of the highest-selling days for bookstores across the province.

Since last year’s celebration, our Quebec-based publishers have released new titles to widespread acclaim: Leila Marshy’s My Thievery of the People (Baraka Books) took home the 2025 Danuta Gleed Literary Award; Val Bah’s Subterrane (Véhicule Press) won the 2025 Amazon First Novel Prize; and Lee Lai’s Cannon (Drawn & Quarterly) won the 2026 Stella Prize and was a finalist for the 2026 Carol Shields Prize for Fiction, to name just a few.  

Here at Read Quebec, we’re excited to showcase the latest local literature with a special focus on English-language books published, written, and translated within Quebec. Beyond bestsellers and prizewinners, we’re also eager to share hidden gems and forthcoming titles that may just become your next pageturner. 

Head to ReadQuebec.ca/Books to discover our Fall catalogue, and share your recommendations by tagging us on social media. Looking for inspiration? Get started with some favourites from our team below, or pick up a copy of the new Montreal Review of Books to read about some of the latest releases!

12 Books for August 12

Malcolm’s Picks

100 Sculptural Circumstances by Dean Garlick

Self-published, 2026

From the publisher’s website:

“100 Sculptural Circumstances is my debut, full-length photo book. It’s an unfolding of 103 images resurrected from 500 sculptural circumstances. a slideshow I sequenced in the summer of 2025 as part an art proposal that never found a home.

This work documents the forces of creation and destruction at play in the urban environment of Montreal. The overflow of material objects results in art-like installations and chance assemblages of discarded ephemera. I call these photographic opportunities sculptural circumstances.”

Buy this book

Read the mRb review

The Guilt Trippers by Philippe Mineau

Baraka Books, 2026

From the publisher’s website:

“Moe Tremblay is struggling with domesticity. New to Montréal, his wife climbs the corporate law ladder while he stays home with the kids. It sounded like a good idea. Then Dean shows up. Enticing him with tales of grime and glory, he convinces Moe to join his band, Guilt Trip.

This opens the door to a world of aging musician journeymen and a local music scene that is soiled and sexy, alluring and dangerous. The Guilt Trippers is a darkly funny and moving take on modern parenthood, the Montréal music scene, and some of the musicians who call it home.”

Buy this book

The Longest Death by Kevin Jagernauth

Conundrum Press, 2025

From the publisher’s website:

“Two lovers plot a daring heist in this atmospheric noir about fate and fortune on the fringes of the American dream.

Post-war Riverton has little to offer Richard, a mild-mannered loner working a dead-end job. When he meets Marlon, a smooth-talking confidence man, Richard finds his partner in crime, and together, they hatch a plan to rob the vault at Eddy & Dowd Safe Deposit Company—a once-in-a-lifetime score that will fund their escape to the Big City, where they can live and love as they desire.

Their plans are complicated by a recent divorcée scheming her own route to wealth, a disgraced ex-cop, and a paranoid tycoon scrambling to hold onto his crumbling empire. As Richard and Marlon race towards their destiny, reckless violence threatens both their plans and their devotion to each other.

Inspired by the iconic lexicon and unsparing storytelling of Raymond Chandler and Patricia Highsmith, The Longest Death weaves a twisted morality tale about what it means to love someone at any cost.”

Buy this book

Read the mRb review

Priscilla’s Picks

Daphnis and Chloe by Colin McAdam

Biblioasis, 2026

From the publisher’s website:

“There’s a city on an island in the Pacific that can only be reached by ferry, a city where a mechanic named Frank opens a garage with his old friend Charlie. Both men marry the women they love but are unable to have children. There are drugs on the streets of this city that take away pain for strings of minutes and bring synthetic rapture; and by these streets the couples are given two babies, abandoned under strange circumstances. The boy they name Daphnis, and the girl Chloe.

And so begins a book unlike anything else, a modern retelling of an ancient story. Part Ovid and part True Romance, and narrated by Eros himself, Daphnis and Chloe offers a pulpy meditation on love and beauty, on people triumphing over darkness by wrestling deep within it, on the solace of art, and on the simple but profound pleasure provided to a blind old man as he holds his wife’s hand and listens to an increasingly familiar story.”

Buy this book

Between the Island and the Turtle by Karine Rosso, translated by Anita Anand

QC Fiction, 2026

From the publisher’s website:

“In the tumult of the pandemic, a writer hopes the quarantine might provide the space to finally complete a decades-old project on her travels throughout Latin America. But an unexpected disease suddenly clouds her eyes. Poetic, inventive, introspective, Between the Island and the Turtle follows the author’s shifts in vision from past to present, shedding light on what it is to witness suffering and illness, ultimately questioning what literature can do in times of crisis.”

Buy this book

Read the mRb review

Mind the Gap by Alice Zorn

NeWest Press, 2026

From the publisher’s website:

“With an uncompromising and relatable voice, Zorn travels through Mexico, Morocco, Texas, England, Austria, Tunisia, and northeastern Quebec in these seven short stories and one novella, each following a compelling narrator on a quest — to find someone who does not wish to be found, to discover the truth behind family secrets, to expiate guilt, to make new bonds, to realize a dream. Far from home, facing new mirrors, characters leave old selves behind and discover new ones. Alice Zorn shines once again in this exploration of friendship, love, art, work, gender, and cultural identity in this spectacular collection of travel fiction.”

Buy this book

Read the mRb review

Alexandra’s Picks

The Mongoose by Joana Mosi

Pow Pow Press, 2025

From the publisher’s website:

“In a lonely house by the sea, a woman is haunted by ghosts unseen and memories unspoken.

In the aftermath of a devastating loss, Júlia finds herself living with her unemployed brother Joel in their grandmother’s beach house, uncertain of what comes next. Júlia tries to convince her family and friends that she’s doing just fine, but when her nascent garden plot is destroyed one night, Júlia becomes obsessed with finding the culprit… A mongoose whose existence no one else seems to believe in.”

Buy this book

Read the mRb review

Ninan: Tiohtiá:ke, Montreal by Michel Jean, translated by Susan Ouriou

House of Anansi, 2026

From the publisher’s website:

“Exiled from his community, a young Innu man finds himself adrift on the streets of Montreal.

Released from prison after ten years spent behind bars for the murder of his violent, alcoholic father, Élie Mestenapeo finds himself out in the world again, but alone. Banished for life from his community, Nutashkuan, he heads south to Montreal, where he becomes part of a new community—Cree, Nakota, Inuit, Innu, Mohawk, and Atikamekw come together in Cabot Square. There, Élie meets Mary and Tracy, Inuuk twin sisters who take him under their wing; Jimmy, a Nakota man who hands out hot meals to those the city has forgotten; and Mafia Doc, an aging, self-proclaimed nurse who refuses to abandon his tent even as winter’s brutal cold descends. When old wounds threaten to reopen, Élie’s loved ones worry what a search for truth might do to him and the community around him.

In this deeply compassionate novel, Michel Jean gives voice to those living on society’s margins. With tenderness and unflinching honesty, he reveals lives scarred by violence and addiction but also sustained by resilience, kinship, and the faint, persistent light of hope.”

Buy this book

Fragile Like a Bomb by Catherine Fred Lavarenne, translated by Natalia Hero

Véhicule Press, 2024

From the publisher’s website:

“Stéphanie, a Montréal writer, is recruited by a left-wing provincial party to run in their upcoming elections. After a surprise victory she is, despite her inexperience, appointed Québec’s Minister of Culture. As she navigates her new role, a wave of #MeToo denunciations erupts in the literary world. Stéphanie begins to make connections between her own experiences and those of the survivors daring to speak out. Fragile Like a Bomb is a powerful, illuminating novel that reveals how men’s violence against women is both intimate and institutional, shaping everything from personal memory to public culture.”

Buy this book

Rebecca’s Picks

My Summer Vacation by Zeenat Nagree

Véhicule Press, 2026

From the publisher’s website:

“An auto-fictional account of a childhood ending in turn-of-the-century India, delivered by an entrancing new voice.

When at year’s end a schoolteacher asks her pupils to write an essay about their vacations over the summer, twelve-year-old Zeenat turns the routine exercise into a daily exploration of her innermost thoughts. It is the dawn of a new millennium, and she’s coming of age in a politically unstable Mumbai that is still resolutely Bombay to her Muslim community. Though the world beyond her window is full of change, Zeenat spends long hours bored inside her family apartment, preoccupied with the cockroaches under the fridge, the pigeon’s nest above the cupboard, the shared toilet in the building, and the American shows on TV. At night, she reads English books in the kitchen as she questions where she fits between languages in this post-colonial society.  But as summer drags on, the boredom of her  routine gives way to anxieties around the place of women in society, the violence that lurks underneath their daily lives, and the anticipation of childhood’s end.”

Buy this book

The Story of Your Life by Kathryn Jezer-Morton

Penguin Random House Canada, 2026

From the publisher’s website:

“Over the past two decades, platforms like Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok have revolutionized how we document and share information about our lives. Social media is where our history lives now.

In The Story of Your Life, journalist and New York columnist Kathryn Jezer-Morton examines how these algorithm-driven platforms change not only how we share our experiences but how we feel about the experiences themselves. What stories do we choose to tell, and how do these choices reflect and shape our evolving identities?

Through rigorous research and wide-ranging interviews with everyday people, Jezer-Morton explores how the platforms on which we have told our life stories for the past twenty years have determined what those stories have come to look and sound like. Today our attention spans are short, and our stories reflect that, with spectacle and exaggeration playing ever-larger roles in our accounts of our experiences. By examining how we share, talk, and post about our milestones, vacations, homes, relationships, hardships, politics, and more, Jezer-Morton shows just how pervasive and influential our social media platforms have become in how we view ourselves and what we consider to be a life well lived.”

Buy this book

Layaway Child by Chanel Sutherland

House of Anansi, 2026

From the publisher’s website:

“In Sentence, Mikhail Iossel performs a remarkable juggling act between genres and countries. Can you write a “Russian” sentence in English? The author has found a perfect syntactical solution to the opposition of past and present in this groundbreaking collection of one-sentence stories: everything is simultaneous, breathless, in a dizzying spin of memory and imagination. The past and the present are inseparable—but the sentence is here, as a celebration of linguistic freedom and virtuosity.”

Buy this book

Read the mRb review

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Featured Books

100 Sculptural Circumstances by Dean Garlick

Nonfiction

Self

Dean Garlick

Ninan: Tiohtiá:ke, Montreal

Fiction

House of Anansi

Michel Jean, trans. Susan Ouriou

My Summer Vacation

Fiction, Memoir

Véhicule Press

Zeenat Nagree

Between the Island and the Turtle

Fiction

QC Fiction

Karine Rosso, trans. Anita Anand

Fragile Like a Bomb

Fiction

QC Fiction / Baraka Books

Catherine Fred Lavarenne, trans. by Natalia Hero

The Guilt Trippers

Fiction

Baraka Books

Philippe Mineau

The Longest Death

Fiction

House of Anansi

Kevin Jagernauth

Daphnis and Chloe

Fiction

Biblioasis

Colin McAdam

Mind the Gap

Fiction

NeWest Press

Alice Zorn

The Story of Your Life

Nonfiction

Penguin Random House

Kathryn Jezer-Morton

The Mongoose

Graphic novel

Pow Pow Press

Joana Mosi

Layaway Child: Stories

Fiction

House of Anansi

Chanel Sutherland

No results found.

The post On August 12, I’m Buying a Quebecois Book! appeared first on Read Quebec.

Check out what Quebecers are reading this month! We’ve compiled lists with our colleagues at BookNet Canada to show the bestselling titles in Quebec, both overall and amongst titles from Canadian-owned publishers.

The Bestseller and Top Circulated Lists are compiled by the Association of English-language Publishers of Quebec from information provided by BookNet Canada’s national sales tracking service, SalesData, and national public library circulation data tracking service, LibraryData.

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Top Fiction from Canadian-Owned Publishers

Rank	Title	Contributors	Publisher
1	The Longest Death	Kevin Jagernauth ⚜️	House of Anansi Press
2	Riverwork	Lisa Roberston 🍁	Coach House Books
3	Lavender Spike	Rachel Tremblay ⚜️	ECW Press
4	Our Lady of Mile End	Sarah Gilbert ⚜️	Anvil Press
5	The Cat Laughs	Louise Carson ⚜️	Signature Editions
6	Temporary Palaces	Jeff Miller 🍁	House of Anansi Press
7	Moon of the Crusted Snow	Waubgeshig Rice 🍁	ECW Press
8	The Wax Child	Olga Ravn; Martin Aitken	Book*hug
9	Blood Typed	Jane Doucet 🍁	Nimbus Publishing, Limited
10	The Heart of Man	Jón Kalman Stefánsson; Philip Roughton	Biblioasis

Top Non-Fiction from Canadian-Owned Publishers

Rank	Title	Contributors	Publisher
1	Opioids and Organs	Arizona O’Neill ⚜️	Drawn & Quarterly Publications
2	Every Salad Ever	Greta Podleski 🍁	One Spoon Media Incorporated
3	The Wealthy Barber	David Chilton 🍁	Financial Awareness Corporation
4	Letters from Montreal	Madi Haslam 🍁	Véhicule Press
5	Change Your World	Michael Ungar 🍁	Sutherland House Inc., The
6	Back to Beer… and Hockey	Helen Antoniou ⚜️	McGill-Queen’s University Press
7	Other Endings	Anita Slominska ⚜️	McGill-Queen’s University Press
8	Ducks	Kate Beaton 🍁	Drawn & Quarterly Publications
9	Exploring Montréal	Robin Ward 🍁	Douglas and McIntyre (2013) Ltd.
10	Powerful Thinking	Adrienne Gear 🍁	Pembroke Publishers, Limited

Top Fiction Overall

Rank	Title	Contributors	Publisher
1	Yesteryear	Caro Claire Burke	Knopf Canada
2	The Deal	Elle Kennedy 🍁	Sourcebooks, Incorporated
3	Theo of Golden	Allen Levi 🍁	Simon & Schuster, Incorporated
4	The Mistake	Elle Kennedy 🍁	Sourcebooks, Incorporated
5	Dungeon Crawler Carl	Matt Dinniman	Penguin Publishing Group
6	The Score	Elle Kennedy 🍁	Sourcebooks, Incorporated
7	The Divorce	Frieda McFadden	Sourcebooks, Incorporated
8	Project Hail Mary	Andy Weir	Random House Publishing Group
9	Every Summer After	Carley Fortune 🍁	Penguin Canada
10	Whistler	Ann Patchett	HarperCollins Publishers

Top Non-Fiction Overall

Rank	Title	Contributors	Publisher
1	Murdoku	Manuel Garand ⚜️	Union Square Publishing
2	The Odyssey	Homer	Arcturus Publishing
3	The Illustrated Guide to Visible Learning	John Hattie, et al.	Corwin Press
4	Atomic Habits	James Clear	Penguin Publishing Group
5	Regime Change	Maggie Haberman; Jonathan Swan	Simon & Schuster, Incorporated
6	Strangers	Belle Burden	Random House Publishing Group
7	The Odyssey	Homer, trans. Emily Wilson	W. W. Norton & Company, Incorporated
8	Famesick	Lena Dunham	Doubleday Canada
9	Opioids and Organs	Arizona O’Neill ⚜️	Drawn & Quarterly Publications
10	The Let Them Theory	Mel Robbins; Sawyer Robbins	Hay House, Incorporated

Featured Books

Back to Beer … and Hockey: The Story of Eric Molson

Nonfiction

Helen Antoniou

Lavender Spike

Fiction

Rachel Tremblay

Letters From Montreal: Tales of an Exceptional City

Nonfiction

Madi Haslam, editor

Murdoku : 80 Murder Mystery Logic Puzzles

Nonfiction

Manuel Garand

Opioids & Organs

Graphic novel

Arizona O'Neill

Other Endings

Memoir, Nonfiction

Anita Slominska

Our Lady of Mile End

Fiction

Sarah Gilbert

The Cat Laughs

Fiction

Louise Carson

The Longest Death

Fiction

Kevin Jagernauth

No results found.

The post June 2026 Read Quebec Bestseller Lists appeared first on Read Quebec.

Check out what Quebecers are reading this month! We’ve compiled lists with our colleagues at BookNet Canada to show the bestselling titles in Quebec, both overall and amongst titles from Canadian-owned publishers.

The Bestseller and Top Circulated Lists are compiled by the Association of English-language Publishers of Quebec from information rovided by BookNet Canada’s national sales tracking service, SalesData, and national public library circulation data tracking service, LibraryData.

Top Fiction from Canadian-Owned Publishers

Top Non-Fiction from Canadian-Owned Publishers

Top Fiction Overall

Top Non-Fiction Overall

The post May 2026 Read Quebec Bestseller Lists appeared first on Read Quebec.