Each week, Globe and Mail staffers and readers share what they’re reading now, whether it’s a hot new release or an old book they’re discovering for the first time. Tell me about a book you loved and we might publish your recommendation. Fill out this form, or send your book recommendation to Lara Pingue at lpingue@globeandmail.com
Find your next favourite book with our review archive
Summer 2026: The best new books of the season
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The Correspondent
When a friend put a copy of The Correspondent in my hands, she said, ‘You’re welcome.’ I’m indeed thankful for this beautiful novel by Virginia Evans, which tells the life story of an aging, successful modern woman, Sybil, told exclusively through her letters to family, friends and perfect strangers. It’s the best new book I have read this year. The storyline is tight, the characters compelling. I tore through it until the climax stopped me in my tracks. Love, tragedy and redemption combine to create a story about doing your best, and understanding that you can always do better.
-Globe reader Michelle Doucet, Ottawa
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The One-Hundred Years of Lenni and Margot
I recently had the pleasure of rereading The One-Hundred Years of Lenni and Margot, and was quickly reminded why it hooked me the first time. It’s the story of the unlikely friendship between 17-year-old Lenni and 83-year-old Margot, who form a bond after meeting in the hospital where Lenni is dying. This beautiful book never sinks into maudlin emotions, and instead celebrates friendship with humour and warmth. It also raises a universal concern about being alive. As Lenni reminds us, “But it isn’t enough to have been a particle in the great extant of existence. I want, we want, more. We want for people to know us who we are and who we will be. And after we’ve gone, to know who we were.”
-Globe reader Susan Beiderwieden, Victoria
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Who Killed Charles Dickens?
Novelist Howard Kurlandski takes you to London circa 1870s with his debut novel, Who Killed Charles Dickens? The tale follows Dickens as he tries to complete his last novel amid a plot to take him down. Kurlandski masterfully paints an authentic picture, full of detailed research and language that is pure Dickens. It’s a humourous book, which is subtly woven into the plot and effectively breaks the tension. The ending will surprise readers, too.
-Globe reader Ron Zack, Toronto
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What We Keep Silent
Toronto author Karen Grose’s new thriller, What We Keep Silent, is about a hospital data breach that threatens to expose long-held family secrets. This full-throttle pulse pounder filled with blackmail and high-stakes family drama left me turning pages late into the night. It’s also a complex story, covering themes of loyalty, love, regret and our universal need to belong. What We Keep Silent is a thrilling read written by a Canadian author.
-Globe reader Yen Tran, Mississauga
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Almost English
Having grown up in a family with two cultures, I appreciated Charlotte Mendelson’s humorous novel, Almost English. It tells the story of 16-year-old Marina, who escapes her tiny London apartment where she lives with her mother and elderly Hungarian relatives to attend an English private boarding school, where she fails to fit in. (I had the same experience at my own private school in England.) This book does an excellent job of outlining the fraught mother-daughter bond and captures both the claustrophobia and delights of domestic life in an immigrant family while poking fun at England’s class system.
-Globe reader Robin Arnfield, Okanagan, B.C.
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The Vow
As a romance reader, I jumped at the chance to read Barbara Avon’s newest novel, The Vow. It tells the love story of a boxer and a struggling writer in the face of adversity. Without giving too much away, the couple’s first encounter at a local bar reminded me of a scene from Indecent Proposal with Robert Redford. This book is about strength, hope and overcoming tremendous obstacles. Be warned: Keep a box of tissues nearby. I felt as though I had been through 12 rounds of a boxing match by the end of this book.
-Globe reader Bessie Prokes, Thorold, Ont.
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The Siege
Ben Macintyre’s The Siege tells the gripping true story of the 1980 terrorist takeover of the Iranian Embassy in London when 26 people were taken hostage. Macintyre’s detailed account takes the perspectives of both captors and captives, ratcheting up the tension as negotiations fail and British security forces and top-ranking officials strategize a solution and rescue attempt. Written with precision and verve, the book made me feel like I was watching an action movie. Macintyre, a journalist, is an exceptional storyteller who writes with clarity and balances the action with reflective moments and larger contextual insights. Macintyre has also authored Operation Mincemeat, A Spy Among Friends and Rogue Heroes, all of which I highly recommend. (My Googling reveals that The Siege is currently being adapted for TV by Will Smith of Slow Horses.)
-Globe reader Nigel Smith, Toronto
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Montreal Standard Time: Early Journalism
Montreal Standard Time is a true and precious gem: A collection of Mavis Gallant’s writings from her years as a journalist for The Montreal Standard newspaper from 1944 to 1950. Gallant had a wide reach into the concerns of the times: displaced persons and immigrants being settled in Canada at the end of the war, war brides adjusting to this foreign land, work in the mines, unwed mothers and the Maternity home, the conditions in old age homes and more. With compassion and clarity, she took on psychoanalysis, romance, the price of books, cartoons, listening to jazz, drug crime in Montreal. Her wit was always razor-sharp. In ‘Sarah of Saskatchewan’, she brilliantly parodied ‘Sarah Binks’ by Paul Hiebert, itself a parody. Every reader who has been affected by a Mavis Gallant story will want to find Montreal Standard Time to marvel at her writing and breadth of interests, and to get a view of life and social conditions in postwar Montreal.
-Globe reader Gwen Harris, Toronto
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The Heart-Shaped Tin: Love, Loss, and Kitchen Objects
Full of tender observations under clever one-word chapter themes (e.g. Junk, Tools, Gifts), The Heart-Shaped Tin: Love, Loss, and Kitchen Objects serves an emotional feast. While author Bee Wilson writes that an object is just that, its limitation is “also its power.” Donating your mother’s lovingly-used platter seems to double your loss; a spoon in the Montreal Holocaust Museum, made covertly by a Second World War Nazi prisoner, holds a world more than soup. Photos, global objects, a wee bit of humour, historical references, readings and citations provide welcome sentimental tempering.
-Globe reader Cynthia Martin, Port Dalhousie, Ont.
Anarchists in Love, Robert HoughSupplied
Anarchists in Love, Robert Hough
As wealth disparity widens in the Western world, I am seeing more suggestions that we have entered a new “Gilded Age.” This set me off to find out what transpired in the original Gilded Age of the late 1800s and how relevant it may be in modern times. Happily, I found a wonderful guide to this era in Robert Hough’s novel, Anarchists in Love. Hough explores the Gilded Age from the vantage of two prominent radicals of the time, Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman. Beyond anarchist ideology and politics and a palette of wild characters rich and poor, the story is propelled by the deep and complicated relationship between Goldman and Berkman. The novel is rich in reminders of activism and protest that seem to be lacking in our current Gilded Age.
-Globe reader Stuart Culbertson, Victoria
Unceded: Understanding British Columbia’s Colonial Past and Why It Matters Now
The question of Indigenous rights and title is much in the news these days, often for all the wrong reasons. George Abbott’s new book, Unceded: Understanding British Columbia’s Colonial Past and Why It Matters Now, is a clear, useful and interesting account of how and why “the land question,” as it has been called, remains unsettled in British Columbia. Drawing on primary sources, he traces the decisions that have been taken with respect to Indigenous lands since the establishment of the Colony of Vancouver Island in 1849. While he writes from a clear moral stance and a strong desire for reconciliation, this is not a harangue but rather a compelling and highly readable – if often infuriating – reconstruction of events. All British Columbians would benefit from refreshing their knowledge of their province’s history through the pages of this well-researched book.
-Globe reader Liseanne Forand, North Saanich, B.C.