THE OTTAWA REVIEW OF BOOKS

We face strange times as a deadly virus crawls through our communities, challenging the resilience of health systems and the continuity of our economies. Undoubtedly, this will inspire many books, both fact and fiction. The world is much larger though than this current...

Reviewed by Ian Thomas Shaw

Some novels have strong openings followed by a memorable crescendo, only to peter out in the last third of the narrative. Anita Kushwaha's Secret Lives of Mothers & Daughters does the opposite. So much so that the last 130 pages would be bril...

Reviewed by Timothy Niedermann

Jerry Levy’s second volume of short stories confirms his status as a challenging and engaging Canadian writer. This latest collection (like his first, Urban Legend, which appeared in 2013) focuses primarily on urban individuals, many of wh...

Reviewed by Jim Napier

In Spiked, author Randall Denley offers readers a political thriller wrapped up in a murder mystery and grounded in a convincing portrait of Ottawa’s nuanced and high-pressure political scene.

Kris Redner is a forty-year-old Crime columnist for the...

Reviewed by Wendy Hawkin

A Yukon camping getaway in December with a Newfoundland dog and a wolf-dog tells you how much Casey and Eric need a break alone together. Eric Dalton is the Sheriff of Rockton, a Yukon town of two hundred rebellious refugees and Casey Duncan is...

A still snowy spring is around the corner in Ottawa. Cross your fingers for a few crocuses by the end of the month, and sit back and enjoy five new ORB reviews on the works of novelists Megan Gail Coles, Brian Van Norman, Richard King and Mike Martin and poet Elee Kral...

Reviewed by Menaka Raman-Wilms 

Small Game Hunting at the Local Coward Gun Club is a memorable, consuming story. The book follows several individuals through a day during a February storm in St. John’s, where personal conflicts collide at a small restaurant in town. Whi...

Reviewed by Amanda Hale

Brian Van Norman’s novel, Against the Machine: Luddites, is not only a great read, it is an important book that accomplishes what historical fiction does best: it shines the torch of a specific historical event on a parallel contemporary trend....

Reviewed by Ian Thomas Shaw

Richard King's latest crime novel, A Stab at Life, offers readers a fresh look at sleuthing and medical science. Set in Montreal, it also draws on that city's rich multicultural and bilingual setting. 

The story opens with police officers, Gil...

Reviewed by Jim Napier

Grand Bank is a small village located on the south coast of Newfoundland. Like all such communities on the island, it has strong ties to the sea and fishing. And also like the other villages and small towns, it is changing, experiencing crimes tha...