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The following 15 titles (plus a list of 10 honourable mentions) will likely be of interest to savvy readers possessing a diverse range of tastes and literary sensibilities.��

1. The Harder I Fight, The More I Love You

Neko Case

Grand Central, Jan. 28

American musician Neko Case practically became a household name in Canada owing to her tenure in Vancouver indie-rock band the New Pornographers. In her debut memoir, she casts a wide recollective net across her past, blending ruminations of a latchkey childhood in the woods of Tacoma, Wash., with thoughts on the music industry and a life committed to an unpredictable artistic path.

2. Fundamentally

Nussaibah Younis

Tiny Reparations Books, Feb. 25

In this debut comedic novel, Dr. Nadia Amin secures her dream job with the UN after she publishes an article about rehabilitating ISIS brides, the women recruited by the Islamic State to marry jihadi fighters. Content to leave England for Iraq after a disastrous breakup, Nadia feels a strong urge to help one of the women reintegrate into civilian life, particularly because the hard-headed former bride also once called East London home.

3. R.I.P. Scoot

Sara Flemington

Nightwood Editions, March 11

In Toronto author Flemington’s strange mystery, Austin’s isolation is having a detrimental effect on his quality of life, but when he adopts a stray cat who likes to munch on chewed-off squirrel tails, his living situation improves. After Scoot the cat dies three weeks later, Austin is surprised to find that a substantial reward is being offered for his safe return. This missed opportunity gnaws at Austin, who becomes obsessed with unravelling the connections Scoot formerly held with Walmart squatters and Japanese muralists.

4. The Buffalo Hunter Hunter

Stephen Graham Jones

Simon & Schuster/Saga Press, March 18��

An unearthed Lutheran pastor’s diary from 1912 contains transcriptions of a confession from a member of the Blackfeet Nation named Good Stab. The secret chronicle of a massacre of 217 Blackfeet has wide implications for the present, and is the latest offering from Stephen Graham Jones, a rising star of the Indigenous horror genre.

5. Quietly, Loving Everyone

Curtis John McRae

Vehicule Press/Esplanade Books, March 20��

In his debut collection of stories, Yolk Literary Journal co-founder Curtis John McRae writes about humans on the cusp of profound realizations, whether they are contending with critical medical diagnoses or witnessing neighbourhoods metamorphose into unrecognizable husks of their former selves.

6. Barbara

Joni Murphy

Book*hug Press, March 25

Barbara, the daughter of a Manhattan Project engineer, is trying to survive the tragedy of her mother’s suicide; while she carries this trauma with her, it does not impede her rise to becoming one of the silver screen’s most prominent actors from the 1950s to the ‘70s. In the same way that a bomb can reduce human lives into mere statistics, Barbara must contend with how her films can sometimes amount to hollow representations of the feminine mystique.

7. Devouring Tomorrow

Edited by A.G. Pasquella and Jeff Dupuis

Dundurn Press/Rare Machines, March 25

An anthology of speculative writing engaging with the subject of food scarcity, “Devouring Tomorrow” features stories — by Gary Barwin, Ji Hong Sayo, Anuja Varghese, A.G.A. Wilmot and others —��about lab-grown meat gaining consciousness, airborne pathogens wreaking havoc on crop species, and the end of insect-pollination cycles.

8. Nobody Asked for This

Georgia Toews

Doubleday Canada, March 25

From Toronto novelist Toews comes a serious tale set in the world of comedy. Between performing late-night standup sets and grieving the death of her mother, Virginia is adrift in a world of emotional imbalances. A sliver of hope opens when a fellow comic expresses an interest in her. But when their date leads to a devastating sexual assault, Virginia must confront her industry’s lack of accountability and the comedian’s impulse to find material in even the darkest moments of trauma.

9. A Mouth Full of Salt

Reem Gaafar

Invisible Publishing, April 1

The lives of three women questioning the value of tradition intersect at a time of impending civil war, and their journey takes them to haunted Sudanese farming villages as well as the metropolitan bustle of Khartoum. Sudanese writer and physician Reem Gaafar now calls Canada home, and this will be the first time that her Island Prize-winning debut novel will be available in this country.

10. Everything Is Fine Here

Iryn Tushabe

House of Anansi, April 22

In Ugandan-Canadian writer Tushabe’s new novel, Aine Kamara fears for her sister Mbabazi’s safety while living under Uganda’s draconian anti-homosexuality laws. Realizing that her mother’s Orthodox Christian household is just as restrictive an environment, Aine takes refuge in Mbabazi and her partner’s home in the city of Kampala, where acts of homophobic violence are on the rise.

11. Girl on Girl: How Pop Culture Turned a Generation of Women Against Themselves

Sophie Gilbert

McClelland & Stewart, April 29

In a consideration of feminism’s waning currency, cultural critic Gilbert traces the erosion of women’s rights to a moment at the turn of the last century when female self-affirmation gave way to cynical collusion with the male gaze. Not merely a historical excavation of the last 20 years of popular media, the book also looks to the dreary future that might lie ahead if an ideological course correction proves impossible.

12. The Book of Records

Madeleine Thien

Knopf Canada, May 6

In the metaphysical migrant housing complex known as “The Sea,” Lina’s upbringing is entrusted to neighbours whose lives mirror notable historical personages like Hannah Arendt and Baruch Spinoza. Lina’s desire to understand the true nature of her surroundings tests her relationship with her father, and might come at the cost of her own security.

13. The River Is Waiting

Wally Lamb

Simon & Schuster/Marysue Rucci Books, May 6

In this fictional look into the state of the American prison system, bestselling author Lamb exposes how one mistake can permanently upend a life. Convict Corby Ledbetter trades in a marriage, a job, and a newborn baby for the cruelty of his fellow inmates, though a burgeoning friendship with a prison librarian offers small consolation.

14. A Song for Wildcats

Caitlin Galway

Dundurn Press/Rare Machines, May 6

In this collection of five novelettes by Toronto writer Galway, historical upheavals create profound intimacies between lost souls. Two girls become infatuated with each other in the Australian wilderness following a devastating war, an orphan and his aunt grow close during the height of the Troubles in Ireland, and the May 1968 student revolts compel two men to start an inquiry into the nature of queer love.

15. Warhol’s Muses: The Artists, Misfits, and Superstars Destroyed by the Factory Fame Machine

Laurence Leamer

G.P. Putnam’s Sons, May 6

The author of “Capote’s Women” delves into the lives of 10 women drawn to Andy Warhol’s glamorous and happening Factory studio. A master at media manipulation, Warhol gave little thought to the actors and models who orbited his rising star, and Leamer does not shy away from the ways that the artist had “no regard for their safety, their dignity, or their lives.”

ALSO OF INTEREST:

“Three Days in June,” by Anne Tyler (Bond Street, Feb. 11); “The Antidote,” by Karen Russell (Knopf, March 11); “The Paris Express,” by Emma Donoghue (Simon & Schuster/Summit, March 18); “Crumb: A Cartoonist’s Life,” by Dan Nadel (Scribner, April 15); “Matriarch,” by Tina Knowles (One World, April 22); “The Fun Times Brigade,” by��Lindsay Zier-Vogel (Book*hug Press, May 1); “The Exclusion Zone,” by Alexis Von Konigslow (Wolsak & Wynn, May 6); “Milktooth,” by��Jaime Burnet (Vagrant Press, May 6); “Fox,” by Joyce Carol Oates (Hogarth, June 17); “Vera, or Faith,” by Gary Shteyngart (Random House, July 8)