Whether in Tokyo, Vancouver or Washington, readers will soon be toting books to enjoy under the cherry blossoms. In this issue, ORB’s core reviewers offer you some tantalizing insights into six Canadian books of fiction and non-fiction worth a read in the Spring sunshine. Vincent Brault’s translated novel The Ghost of Suzuko is a splendid attempt in writing a Japanese novel from a Quebec perspective. Marius Kociejowski’s The Factotum in the Book Trade is an exceptional memoir by a not particularly memorable man whose observations about the trade in the written word both illuminate and amuse. Crime and thriller fiction are well represented by reviews of recent works by Sarah Kades, Lis Angus and A.M. Todd, and rounding up this issue is Timothy Christian’s memoir of Ernest Hemingway’s widow, Mary Welsh Hemingway. We hope you enjoy this issue of the Ottawa Review of Books.