The stories that make up There’s Always More to Say focus on characters struggling to achieve what they think they should want despite the demands and loneliness of modern life. A puppeteer attempts to reinvent himself as a realtor. Preteen girls strive to become like their absentee fathers. A nanny must decide between her future or that of the family dog. A high-achieving working mother is imprisoned by her antidepressants.

Infused with humour and verve, yet full of warmth, Southworth interrogates the quest for more and what it means when ambition clashes with private reality.

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There are various themes explored throughout these pages connected to some form of memory. Memory as construct that is both built, destroyed, and altered daily, its reliability fleeting. The physical objects that connect us to memory and how these are manifestations and representations filled with artificial meaning yet are often the only things left of us when we’re gone. Nostalgia as crutch and a curse, offering up memories that are self-serving rather than accurate. And how utterly terrifying it is when the memories themselves begin to vanish along with lucidity, as cognitive faculties fail us.

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In the tradition of the serialized novels of Charles Dickens, Heather O’Neill brings us Valentine in Montreal. Originally published in weekly instalments in the Montreal Gazette, this is the unforgettable story of Valentine, a lonely orphan working in a depanneur at a Montreal metro station, who spots her look-alike. As Valentine follows this seeming twin onto the subway and out into the city, her world is changed—she meets gangsters, composers, ballet dancers, and a cricket playing a mournful tune, and she experiences the city in all its teeming energy.

Valentine in Montreal is the playful, moving, and surprising story of a young woman who finds connection and the courage to break free of what has been holding her back. It’s also a celebration of Montreal and its artistry and vibrancy, both above and below ground. Illustrations by graphic artist Arizona O’Neill run throughout.

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“Ah, there’s that famous lip quiver!” says Jackie’s abductor and student. Jackie has been determined to be the “saddest living person in the entire world” by a mysterious team of alien abductors. His earthly musical celebrity is nothing compared to his emotional superstar status in the eyes of these curious and peculiar shape-shifters. Jackie is forced to perform his sadness over and over again on command, so his captors can study and master this very puzzling, very human emotion. Until just like that, Jackie is returned to his old life. Trying to comprehend what has happened, he joins a support group. It’s a sea of conspiracy theorists, emotional vampires, and simpatico “real” abductees. As each person tells their story, he realizes he may never know.

Holy Lacrimony is classic DeForge–oscillating between shockingly dirty, casually funny and earnestly engaged in the socio-politics of his fictive worlds. Part abstract shape blending and part hieroglyphic storytelling, each image is a discrete and tightly designed object of beauty that never loses the forward motion of the best personal cartooning. DeForge continues to prove that he’s the single most innovative and empathetic cartoonist in the past twenty years.

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Growing up in neighbouring villages on the tiny island nation of St Vincent, teenage best friends Gordon and Allen are secret lovers until they are forced apart their community’s traditional expectations and their fear of how others will react. They each complete their university studies abroad, encountering worlds where there is less hostility toward LGBTQ+ people. Tempted to stay, both men ultimately return home, hiding who they are.

Their secret lives come at the expense of others, and Gordon’s wife, Maureen, is the first to be irreparably harmed. She has confided her secrets to an accusatory journal, and it is now up to Gordon to keep it from the local media and the unforgiving eyes of the authorities. If the truth is revealed, he and Allan will be the next victims.

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Annapurna, the Indian Goddess of Nourishment, presides over a rich harvest of stories reimagined for the twenty-first-century palate. Here, food manifests as ploy, bargain, symbolic communication, a bone of contention, a lesson, as it weaves through the lives of a cast of characters — kings and commoners, witches and goddesses, gurus and bandits, refugees and travellers.

Each story is followed by a vegetarian recipe offered up by a character. Gathered from the four corners of India, there are well-known dishes like nourishing dal and irresistible mango lassi, novelties like avial and Bengali khichari, as well as a new twist on beloved foods, such as samosas with a peas and coconut filling.

Infused with humane values, expertly blending the timeless and the contemporary, the magical and the everyday, encompassing East, West, and the in-between, this fusion of fiction and food will delight and inspire.

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