Saleema Nawaz’s debut novel Bone and Bread (House of Anansi) sets poetic prose against the complex mythology of a small family. Beena and Sadhana are raised by an Indian father and an Irish mother above their family’s bagel shop in Montreal’s Mile End. But tragedy repeatedly strikes, leaving Sadhana hospitalized with anorexia, and Beena pregnant and alone at sixteen. Years later, Sadhana mysteriously dies, and, as Beena and her son sift through the past, Nawaz expertly captures the tension and tenacity of sisterhood, and the fine line between love and betrayal. While some elements of the story are less than believable, Nawaz’s well-crafted narrative and vivid descriptions immerse the reader in Beena and Sadhana’s world.
—Haley Cullingham

In Colin McAdam’s A Beautiful Truth (Hamish Hamilton), a childless couple adopts a baby chimpanzee that grows into a fussy, horny, 200-pound whirling dervish. If you can ...