FIRE AND FURY: The Allied Bombing of Germany, 1942-1945 By Randall Hansen, Anchor Canada, 353 pages, $22
U of T historian Hansen examines Allied bombing during the Second World War from the perspectives of the airmen, the politicians and senior military personnel, and the civilians on the ground who were suffering. Nominated for this year's Governor-General's Award for non-fiction.
STILL LIFE WITH JUNE By Darren Greer, Cormorant, 301 pages, $20
The winner of the 2004 ReLit Award, Still Life features struggling writer Cameron Dobbs, who works at a Salvation Army treatment centre and pores over confidential client files in search of stories. When one of the patients hangs himself, Cameron becomes obsessed with the man's past, seeking out his sister, June, an institutionalized Down syndrome child, and pretending to be her long-lost brother.
A MERCY By Toni Morrison, Vintage Canada, 196 pages, $21
A slave mother in 1680s America casts off her daughter when their owner gives the child to Anglo-Dutch trader Jacob Vaark in payment for a debt. The child, Florens, seeks love from an older servant woman at her new home, then from a handsome, never-enslaved African blacksmith.
BLUE LIMBO By Terence M. Green, Phoenix Pick, 175 pages, $8.50
Mitch Helwig is a Toronto cop in the not-so-distant future. His partner has been killed, his wife is filing for divorce and he has been suspended from the force for getting in the face of corrupt officialdom. And he's just getting started.
THE PYRAMID By Henning Mankell, translated by Ebba Segerberg, Vintage Canada, 392 pages, $21
Five stories track Kurt Wallander from his days as a rookie patrolman to his present life as a veteran homicide detective.