30 Canadian books to read in winter 2026
There's something for every reader to curl up with while the weather is frightful
When snow starts blowing on a dark winter night, nothing feels as good as staying in with a warm blanket, a hot cup of tea and a good book.
If this is your chilly-season vibe, you've come to the right place. CBC Books has curated a list of 30 buzzworthy Canadian books to read this winter.
From fiction to poetry, nonfiction to comics, picture books to YA, there's something for every reader to curl up with while the weather is frightful.
The Tiger and the Cosmonaut by Eddy Boudel Tan
The Tiger and the Cosmonaut by Eddy Boudel Tan centres on Casper Han, who is brought back to his remote B.C. hometown when his father disappears. His father is later found wandering the nearby woods, confused and clutching a pair of scissors, trapped in the memory of the tragic night when Casper's twin brother went missing 20 years before. The Tiger and the Cosmonaut was shortlisted for the 2025 Giller Prize.
Boudel Tan is a writer based in Vancouver, where he co-founded the Sidewalk Supper Project. He is the author of After Elias and The Rebellious Tide. Tan has been a finalist for the Edmund White Award, the ReLit Best Novel Award, and the Ferro-Grumley Award, and was named a Rising Star by Writers' Trust of Canada in 2021. His work has been featured in publications such as Joyland and Yolk, among others.
Fela by Jibola Fagbamiye and Conor McCreery
Fela: Music is the Weapon, a graphic novel by Jibola Fagbamiye and Conor McCreery, is based on the life of Nigerian superstar musician Fela Kuti. The book follows Kuti's journey after he joins the Black Power movement and risks his career — and his life — fighting against his country's corrupt military government.
Fagbamiye is a Toronto-based visual artist. His work exploring African history and North American pop culture has been exhibited in galleries in Los Angeles, Lagos and Toronto.
McCreery is a Toronto-based comic book artist. He has done work for BOOM!, Dark Horse and DC, among many other publishers.
9 Times My Work Has Been Ripped Off by Raymond Biesinger
9 Times My Work Has Been Ripped Off is a graphic memoir detailing New York Times and New Yorker illustrator Raymond Biesinger's decades of experience working in the creative field. The book serves as an informal guide for professional creatives to protect themselves from exploitation.
Biesinger is a Montreal-based graphic artist and co-author of the 2022 book 305 Lost Buildings of Canada.
Wellwater by Karen Solie
Wellwater is a poetry collection that explores the intersection of cultural, economic and personal ideas of value, addressing aging, housing and environmental and economic crises.
Celebrating persistence in the natural world, Wellwater offers a message that hope is the only way to tackle these issues.
Karen Solie is the author of several poetry collections, including Short Haul Engine, Modern and Normal, Pigeon, The Road In Is Not the Same Road Out and The Caiplie Caves. Wellwater was on the shortlist for the 2025 T.S. Eliot Prize and a co-winner for the 2025 Forward Prize for Poetry. She teaches half-time in Scotland at the University of St. Andrews, and spends the remainder of the year in Canada.
The Idea of an Entire Life by Billy-Ray Belcourt
The Idea of an Entire Life is a poetry collection by Billy-Ray Belcourt. The deeply personal collection tackles issues like love, queerness and politics. The Idea of an Entire Life is Belcourt's sixth book.
Belcourt is an author and poet from the Driftpile Cree Nation and a professor at the University of British Columbia. His five previous books include This Wound is a World, NDN Coping Mechanisms: Notes from the Field, A History of My Brief Body, A Minor Chorus and Coexistence. A Minor Chorus is on the longlist for Canada Reads 2026.
Other Worlds by Andre Alexis
Spanning from 19th-century Trinidad and Tobago to a small town in Ontario, from Amherst, Massachusetts to modern-day Toronto, Other Worlds is a short story collection that explores characters encountering moments of profound puzzlement in these diverse settings. Other Worlds was shortlisted for the Toronto Book Awards in 2025.
André Alexis was born in Port of Spain, Trinidad and Tobago, and raised in Ottawa. His debut novel, Childhood, won the Books in Canada First Novel Award (now known as the Amazon.ca First Novel Award) and the Trillium Book Award, and was shortlisted for the Scotiabank Giller Prize and the Rogers Writers' Trust Fiction Prize. His other books include Pastoral, Asylum, The Hidden Keys, Despair and Other Stories of Ottawa and Days by Moonlight, which won the 2019 Rogers Writers' Trust Fiction Prize and was on the 2019 Scotiabank Giller Prize longlist.
Flesh by David Szalay
In Flesh, 15-year-old István has a relationship with a married woman, causing his life to spiral out of control. As he grows older, he continues to live a life of recklessness, achieving all his desires for a time — until they threaten to undo him completely. Flesh won the 2025 Booker Prize.
David Szalay was born in Montreal, but grew up in London and now lives in Vienna. Some of Szalay's other titles include the novel London and the South-East, which won the Betty Trask Prize and the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize, and All That Man Is, which was shortlisted for the 2016 Man Booker Prize and won the 2016 Gordon Burn Prize. He received the Edge Hill Short Story Prize and the Reader's Choice Award in October 2019.
Habs Nation by Brendan Kelly
Habs Nation tells the history of the Montreal Canadiens while highlighting how the team is not just about hockey. The book explores the influence that the Habs have had on the province of Quebec, even bridging the linguistic divide in Montreal.
Brendan Kelly talks with some of the Canadiens' greats, as well as journalists, politicians and even filmmakers, about the special bond that fans have with the team.
Kelly is a sports and culture journalist for the Montreal Gazette. He was one of the founders of the now defunct Montreal Mirror weekly newspaper. Kelly is also a columnist on CBC Radio and Radio-Canada. He is based in Montreal.
The Paris Express by Emma Donoghue
The Paris Express takes readers aboard a suspenseful train journey from the Normandy coast to Paris. Inspired by a real-life photo of a train hanging off the side of Montparnasse station, The Paris Express unfolds over the course of one fateful day, featuring the fascinating stories of the passengers, from a young boy traveling solo to a pregnant woman on the run, the devoted railway workers and a young anarchist on a mission. The Paris Express was shortlisted for the 2025 Giller Prize.
Donoghue is an Irish Canadian writer whose books include the novels Landing, Room, Frog Music, The Wonder, The Pull of the Stars, Learned by Heart and the children's book The Lotterys Plus One. Room was an international bestseller and was adapted into a critically acclaimed film starring Brie Larson. The Pull of the Stars was longlisted for the 2020 Scotiabank Giller Prize and Canada Reads 2025 and shortlisted for the Trillium Book Award.
The Hunger We Pass Down by Jen Sookfong Lee
In The Hunger We Pass Down, someone — or something — begins to clean up the house for overwhelmed single mother Alice Chow. While it's a little unsettling, she's happy to have extra time to spend with her kids and her mother, who finally decides to open up and share stories about her family history. As the past reveals itself, the family's demons, both real and subconscious, start to make themselves known.
Jen Sookfong Lee has written the memoir Superfan, which was a finalist for the 2024 Forest of Reading Evergreen Award and the City of Vancouver Book Award; the novel The Conjoined; the non-fiction book Gentleman of the Shade; and the poetry collection The Shadow List. Lee is an editor for ECW Press. She's from Vancouver's East Side and currently lives in North Burnaby, B.C. The Hunger We Pass Down is on the longlist for Canada Reads 2026.
Julie Chan is Dead by Liann Zhang
In Julie Chan is Dead, Julie Chan and her identical twin sister, Chloe VanHuusen, are polar opposites and barely communicate after being separated at a young age. But when Chloe, a popular influencer, mysteriously dies, Julie steps in to take her place and is thrust into a glamorous world with millions of followers. However, she quickly learns that Chloe's seemingly flawless life was far from it, and as she uncovers the sinister cause behind her death, it casts Julie as the next target.
Liann Zhang is a second-generation Chinese Canadian writer who was a former skincare content creator. She holds a psychology and criminology degree from the University of Toronto and splits her time between Vancouver and Toronto. Julie Chan is Dead is Zhang's debut novel. It's on the longlist for Canada Reads 2026.
Small Ceremonies by Kyle Edwards
In the city of Winnipeg, two Indigenous boys are on the cusp of adulthood, imagining a future filled with possibility and greatness. In Small Ceremonies, their stories are intertwined with others in the community, who are also searching for purpose, all of which ultimately leads to one fateful and tragic night. Small Ceremonies won the 2025 Governor General's Literary Award for fiction.
Kyle Edwards is an award-winning Anishinaabe journalist and writer from the Lake Manitoba First Nation and a member of the Ebb and Flow First Nation. His work has appeared in the BBC News World, CBC, Maclean's, Native News Online and the Toronto Star.
He has won two National Magazine Awards in Canada, and he was recognized as an Emerging Indigenous Journalist by the Canadian Association of Journalists. A graduate of what is now Toronto Metropolitan University, he is currently a Provost Fellow at the University of Southern California, where he is pursuing a PhD in creative writing and literature.
As the Earth Dreams, edited by Terese Mason Pierre
As the Earth Dreams is a short story anthology of speculative fiction by Black Canadian authors. From teenagers flying on a magic carpet to a masseuse attending her mother's fourth funeral, the stories span time, space and our understanding of the world, while envisioning stunning Black futures.
Terese Mason Pierre is a Toronto writer and editor at Augur magazine. Her work has appeared in The Walrus, Room, Brick, Quill & Quire, Uncanny Magazine and Fantasy Magazine. She won the Writers' Trust Journey Prize and was named a Writers' Trust Writing Star in 2023. Her debut poetry collection, Myth, was published in spring 2025.
Muybridge by Guy Delisle
In 1870s Sacramento, photographer Eadweard Muybridge takes on a challenge from railroad tycoon Leland Stanford — to prove whether a horse's hooves ever leave the ground while galloping. In the process, Muybridge unknowingly pioneers time-lapse photography, laying the foundation for motion pictures as we know them.
Despite his groundbreaking discoveries, his life is marked by betrayal, intrigue and tragedy. In the graphic novel, Muybridge, acclaimed cartoonist Guy Delisle captures the highs and lows of Muybridge's career, bringing his story to life with sharp detail and emotional depth.
Delisle is an author and cartoonist originally from Québec City. His books include Burma Chronicles, Jerusalem: Chronicles from the Holy City, Pyongyang, and Shenzhen.
This Place Kills Me by Mariko Tamaki, illustrated by Nicole Goux
This Place Kills Me is a YA graphic mystery novel set at the prestigious Wilberton Academy, home of the elite and exclusive Wilberton Theatrical Society. Elizabeth Woodward is a talented and popular thespian who is starring as Juliet in the Society's performance of Romeo and Juliet. But Elizabeth is found dead the morning of opening night, and transfer student Abby is the last person to see her alive.
Abby gets pulled into the mystery of Elizabeth's death and what is really going on at her new prep school. This Place Kills Me is told through letters, diary entries, news articles and comics.
This Place Kills Me is for ages 14 and up.
Mariko Tamaki is a Toronto-born writer. Her other books include the YA novels (you) Set Me On Fire and Saving Montgomery Sole. She's also the author of many superhero comics for DC Comics, Darkhorse and Marvel. In 2024, she won three Eisner Awards for the graphic novel Roaming, created with her cousin Jillian Tamaki, and in 2025 she won the Eisner Award for best limited series for Zatanna: Bring Down the House, which she created with Spanish artist Javier Rodriguez.
Nicole Goux is an Eisner-nominated illustrator and cartoonist based in Los Angeles.
No One Knows Us There by Jessica Bebenek
The poems in No One Knows Us There show two portraits of early womanhood. The first, a devoted granddaughter responding to needs in hospital hallways, the second, the same woman 10 years older, looking at her younger self with compassion and hopes for healing.
Jessica Bebenek is a queer interdisciplinary poet, bookmaker and educator living between Tiohtià:ke (Montreal) and an off-grid shack on unceded Anishinaabeg territory. Bebenek's writing has been nominated for the Journey Prize, twice nominated for the Pushcart Prize, and in 2021 she was a finalist for the 2021 Bronwen Wallace Award for Emerging Writers in Poetry.
Shadow Price by Farah Ghafoor
Shadow Price borrows its title from the finance term — "the estimated price of a good or service for which no market price exists." It's a poetry collection that explores what holds value in a capitalistic world.
Farah Ghafoor is a poet whose work has appeared in The Walrus, Prism International, Room, Ninth Letter and Hobart. Her poems have been taught at Iowa State University and have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize, Best New Poets and Best of the Net. She won the E.J. Pratt Medal and Prize in Poetry. Born in New York and raised in New Brunswick and Ontario, she currently works as a financial analyst in Toronto.
i cut my tongue on a broken country by Kyo Lee
Through the poet's reflections on growing up queer and Korean Canadian, i cut my tongue on a broken country poignantly details her coming-of-age that's marked with beauty, pain and a quest for love.
Kyo Lee is a high school student from Waterloo, Ont. Her work is featured in PRISM International, Nimrod, The Forge Literary Magazine and This Magazine, among others. She is the youngest winner of the CBC Poetry Prize, for her poem lotus flower blooming into breasts, and the youngest finalist for the RBC Bronwen Wallace Award.
Goalie by Ben von Jagow
Goalie is a book of poetry that follows a hockey player's journey through his career, exploring the intricacies of the sport and the dynamics of teams, as well as casting light on Canadian life as a whole.
Ben von Jagow is an Ottawa-based poet and writer. His work has been featured in Canadian Literature, Prairie Fire and The Antigonish Review, among others. His debut poetry collection is Goalie and includes the poems that were longlisted for the CBC Poetry Prize in 2020.
No Fault by Haley Mlotek
At age 10, Haley Mlotek told her mother to get a divorce. In No Fault, Mlotek shares how divorce was a constant presence in her life, with her mother running a mediation and marriage counselling practice, and Mlotek spending her preteen years handling calls and drafting parenting plans for couples splitting up. However, her understanding on divorce would completely change when she went through the experience of divorcing her own husband after 12 years.
Mlotek is a Montreal-based writer and editor whose work has appeared in The New York Times Magazine, The New Yorker and ELLE, among others. A founding member of the Freelance Solidarity Project, Mlotek also teaches in the English and journalism departments at Concordia University. She previously worked as deputy editor at SSENSE, style editor at MTV News, editor at The Hairpin and publisher of WORN Fashion Journal.
The Migrant Rain Falls in Reverse by Vinh Nguyen
In his memoir, The Migrant Rain Falls in Reverse, Vinh Nguyen retraces his family's journey from post-war Vietnam to Canada — and how this moment in history resonates with experiences in the diaspora today. The work is a genre-bending mix of real-life experiences, meticulous research and inventive history to explore the nature of family, immigration and identity.
The Migrant Rain Falls in Reverse was a finalist for the 2025 Governor General Literary Award for nonfiction and was shortlisted for the 2025 Toronto Book Award.
Nguyen is a Toronto-based writer, editor and educator whose work has been published in Brick, Literary Hub and The Malahat Review. He is a nonfiction editor at The New Quarterly, where he curates an ongoing series on refugee, migrant and diasporic writing. He was shortlisted for a National Magazine Award and won the John Charles Polanyi Prize for Literature. In 2022, he was a Lambda Literary nonfiction fellow.
Brown Girl in the Snow by Yolanda T. Marshall, illustrated by Marianne Ferrer
Inspired by a traditional Caribbean children's song, Brown Girl in the Snow is the story of Amina, who moves to a snowy new home where there are no coconut trees and no gardens full of sweet potatoes. But a determined Amina finds a library book about greenhouse gardening that may just make it possible for her plants to grow.
Brown Girl in the Snow is for ages 4 to 8.
Yolanda T. Marshall is a writer of children's books including Hot Cross Buns for Everyone and My Soca Birthday Party. Marshall was born in Guyana and grew up in Scarborough, Ont., surrounded by Caribbean culture.
Marianne Ferrer is an illustrator originally from Venezuela and now living in Montreal. Previous children's books that Ferrer illustrated include The Weedflower, Wake Up, Little Pin!, 111 Trees, Mel and Mo's Marvelous Balancing Act and Carmen and the House That Gaudí Built.
Labrador Skies by Kayla Williams, illustrated by Kayla Williams & Thamires Paredes
Labrador Skies is a beautiful picture book for babies and toddlers. Written in rhyming text, the bedtime story celebrates the beauty of Labrador — from snowmobiles gliding through silent forests to the auroras dancing in the sky — while gently helping young children to fall asleep.
Labrador Skies is for ages 0 to 4.
Kayla Williams is a mixed Inuk artist, writer and designer from Goose Bay, N.L. Williams also wrote and illustrated the picture book, Aurora's Journey.
Thamires Paredes is an artist and illustrator from Brazil. She previously illustrated the picture book My Ittu, which was written by Laura Deal.
Rez Kid by Andrea Landry, illustrated by Isabella Fassler
In Rez Kid, the phrase that starts out as a schoolyard taunt becomes a point of pride. When the little girl at the centre of the story gets off the bus and speaks to each of her family members about the teasing, they encourage her to share about Indigenous ways of life with the children at school.
Rez Kid is for ages 4 to 7.
Andrea Landry is an Anishinaabe writer and university instructor from Pays Plat First Nation in northwestern Ontario, and currently resides on Poundmaker Cree Nation in Saskatchewan.
Isabella Fassler is an interdisciplinary artist based in Toronto. She also illustrated the picture book Garbage Gulls, which was shortlisted for a Maine Literary Award.
Something's Up with Arlo by Matteo L. Cerilli
In the middle-grade novel Something's Up with Arlo, 12-year-old Nero's best friend is a ghost called Arlo. Nero has relied on Arlo to look out for her — especially when the kids at school aren't being kind to her and her parents don't seem to notice. But when Nero is moved to a prestigious private school and is given the chance to "start over," something weird and unsettling happens with Arlo, and Nero worries that her best friend is transforming into something scary.
Something's Up with Arlo is for ages 8 to 12.
Matteo L. Cerilli is a transmasc writer and activist from Toronto. He is the author of the YA horror novel, Lockjaw. Something's Up with Arlo is his first novel for middle-grade readers.
Wavelength by Cale Plett
In the YA novel Wavelength, a young pop star and the lead singer of an alt-rock band are drawn to each other. Sasha is a 17-year-old nonbinary artist, famous by name but kept anonymous because of the way they cover their face during performances. When Sasha decides to finish out their senior year of high school in a midwestern city, they meet Lillian, the lead singer of Wavelength. As Sasha and Lillian contend with their growing feelings for each other, Sasha worries what will happen if everyone finds out who they really are.
Wavelength is for ages 12 and up.
Cale Plett is a nonbinary, genderfluid writer from Winnipeg. They are a Lambda Literary fellow and have participated in the Emerging Writers Residency at the Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity. Wavelength is their debut novel.
Graveyard Shift at the Lemonade Stand by Tim Bowling
Set in British Columbia and Edmonton, Graveyard Shift at the Lemonade Stand is a short story collection that covers a range of transformations, pinpointing the moment where things change. The 15 stories examine the passage of time through a mixture of deep ruminations and moments of levity and humour.
Tim Bowling has written 24 more works of poetry and prose, including the poetry collections In the Capital of Autumn, Darkness and Silence and The Memory Orchard. He has won five Alberta Book Awards and a Guggenheim Fellowship. Graveyard Shift at the Lemonade Stand was shortlisted for the 2025 Writers' Trust Atwood Gibson Award for fiction.
Julius Julius by Aurora Stewart de Peña
Julius Julius is a novel that tells the story of the world's oldest advertising agency, where ghosts roam the boardrooms and an unending lineage of blonde wiener dogs sleep under the office desks. As recounted through the perspectives of three people who work there in different time periods, the cracks of agency and the cost of stoking desire are revealed.
Aurora Stewart de Peña is a Toronto writer whose nonfiction and fiction has appeared in Vice, The Globe and Mail and The Ex-Puritan. Her plays have been produced around the world. She has worked for many advertising agencies throughout her career and won Clio, One Show and D&AD awards for her work. Julius Julius was shortlisted for the 2025 Writers' Trust Atwood Gibson Award for fiction.
Hunger by Susan Musgrave
Hunger: The Poetry of Susan Musgrave is a collection of poems from the author's last four books, serving as a window into Musgrave's body of work, showcasing the best aspects of the poet's personality.
Musgrave is one of Canada's most renowned poets and writers. She has received awards for poetry, fiction, nonfiction, personal essay, children's writing and for her work as an editor. She has published many books, including Love You More, More Blueberries and Kiss, Tickle, Cuddle, Hug. Musgrave won the 1996 CBC Award for Poetry.
She lives on the island of Haida Gwaii, where she owns a guest house called The Copper Beech House. Her experiences on Haida Gwaii inspired her cookbook A Taste of Haida Gwaii.
The Reign by Shane Neilson
Using lyrics, prose and images, The Reign crafts a modern fairy tale about an intellectually disabled man named Willard as he falls in love with a tyrannical industrialist who is also a whitetail buck. Set against the backdrop of Enniskillen, an expropriated New Brunswick community abandoned just before it became part of a military base, the myth unfolds into an unparalleled tale encompassing a wide range of forms.
Shane Neilson is a disabled poet, physician and critic from New Brunswick. He has published more than 20 books, including What To Feel, How To Feel, which was a finalist for the 2025 Governor General's Literary Award for nonfiction. Neilson now lives in Oakville, Ont.
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