BLACKOUTS
By Craig Boyko, McClelland & Stewart, 336 pages, $29.99
Craig Boyko's OZY, from this collection, snapped up the 2007 Journey Prize. The book is not so much a cabinet of wonders as a series of them, mysteriously linked. Standouts include the intricate Black Ink, a familial puzzle box of memory and regret, and Black Gang, a dark, thrilling seafaring tale.
EVIDENCE
By Ian Colford, Porcupine's Quill, 188 pages, $22.95
Redemption is elusive in Ian Colford's genre-bending book of fiction. Kostandin, orphan and war refugee, is a sort of ghost in the flesh flitting between continents and identities. This is a rich, shadowed, finely observant work.
PARDON OUR MONSTERS
By Andrew Hood, Véhicule, 182 pages, $17.95
From geeky pubescence to the storms of adulthood, Andrew Hood taps emotional aquifers. As you sense the reservoirs in yourself, he unexpectedly makes them gush. One or two of these stories rival our best: transparent conductors of Hood's wisdom and our human plight.
SEVEN OPENINGS OF THE HEAD
By Liane Keightley, Conundrum, 128 pages, $15
Oddball couples, butterscotch Life Savers, fried onions, an appalling wet dog, washroom sex like "Mozart on the piano" - Liane Keightley's choices read as uniquely hers: shrewd, risky and quirky, but never gratuitous, they are rather inspired and fresh and quietly revelatory..
IN THE GARDEN OF MEN
By John Kupferschmidt, 3-Day Books, 144 pages, $14.95
John Kupferschmidt's 3-Day Novel winner plunges us into Czechoslovakia as it reels from the Soviet takeover. It reads like a manuscript found in a Prague attic - Kafka meets Kundera. A son of Czech and Yugoslav refugees, Kupferschmidt channels ancestral spirits.
Honourable Mentions
IN A MIST
By Devon Code, Invisible Publishing, 126 pages, $14.95
Code's best stories slip smoothly under your skin to stir a sweet, complicated ache.
THINGS GO FLYING
By Shari Lapeña, Brindle & Glass, 220 pages, $22.95
Lapeña stretches belief with great charm, blending sensitive realism and spooky farce
ONCE
By Rebecca Rosenblum, Biblioasis, 210 pages, $19.95
At their best, Rosenblum's stories impel us to a fresh experiencing of life.