ABSENT By Sherri Vanderveen, Penguin Canada, 277 pages, $18
Otto Sinclair burned down his childhood home and walked away from his family, moving across the country, taking a new name and making a new life for himself. Then, 28 years later, he returns to the family he abandoned, searching for resolution. But his family, shaped by his abandonment, has become a tangle of their own insecurities.
APPROACHES TO POLITICS By Pierre Elliott Trudeau, Oxford University Press, 89 pages, $12.95
A collection of short essays from the 1950s shows that Trudeau thought long and hard about the fundamental principles of politics and government long before he entered the national consciousness.
GRAVE GOODS By Ariana Franklin, Penguin Canada, 439 pages, $13.50
In 1176, an arsonist burns historic Glastonbury Abbey to the ground, revealing two hidden skeletons, a man and a woman. The monks would love for them to be Arthur and Guinevere, and Henry II imposes his will on Adelia Aguilar, Mistress of the Art of Death, to examine the bones and pronounce on their identity.
THE BELIEVERS By Zoe Heller, Vintage Canada, 335 pages, $21
New York radical activist and lawyer Joel Litvinoff is felled by a stroke, revealing a secret that forces his wife to re-examing her 40-year marriage. Meanwhile, their children are struggling with their own dilemmas and doubts.
MAIMONIDES: The Life and World of One of Civilization's Greatest Minds By Joel L. Kraemer, Doubleday, 621 pages, $22
Kraemer, a respected scholar of religion, examines the life and times of Maimonides, the pre-eminent medieval Jewish philosopher and one of the greatest Torah scholars of the Middle Ages.