I was travelling for much of Fall 2025 and let my book reviewing lapse. Now that I’m back in Canada, here’s a favourite read from the past six months.
Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan, 2021. Shortlisted for the Booker Prize. Irish Times Readers’ Choice for Best Irish Book of the Century.
Small Things Like These delivers storytelling at its finest. Not a wasted word.
Keegan’s 2021 novellais a masterpiece of tone and fidelity, powerfully evocative of life in Ireland. The tale is reminiscent of The Dead, a short story in James Joyce’s Dubliners. Both are Irish gems.
Sit in front of a hearth with a loved one and read Keegan’s book out loud to them.
Detective Ivy Bourque’s hometown in The Color Red & Silver Moon Rising. (The photo shows the tidy side of Cape Cod. The dark side? It’s in the telling. To download free previews, click the links below.)
Anyone who’s been to ‘The Rock’ knows Newfoundlanders love to tell stories. I can’t think of any Newfoundland and Labrador author more accomplished than Michael Crummey.
Over a span of six novels, from River Thieves (2001) to The Adversary (2023), Crummey has wrangled and harnessed Newfoundland English, transforming an ever-changing spoken vernacular into prose – a difficult task, one he’s discharged with flying colours.
Each of Crummey’s novels is both a haunting tale and a feast of words. He spins splendid descriptions and memorable dialogs. If you want to hear Newfoundland and feel it too, pick up a Crummey novel.
Crummey’s latest, The Adversary, winner of the 2025 International Dublin Literary Award, catapults the reader to the fishing port of Mockbeggar, Newfoundland. It’s the late 1700s. One year the Atlantic is choked with cod; the next, it’s barren. One day the sky is clear; the next, it’s a howling grey wolf. The novel delivers an evocative tale, an unsparing story of two warring siblings.
PS: List of Michael Crummey novels in order of publication: River Thieves (2001); The Wreckage (2005); Galore (2009); Sweetland (2014); The Innocents (2019); The Adversary (2023). Crummey has also published poetry, short stories, and non-fiction. For further information, see the author on Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Crummey.
Ontario Morning Book Column, Wednesday, January 15, 2025. CBC Radio’s Nav Nanwa invited me to talk about Silver Moon Rising and Detective Ivy Bourque.
Click here to listen to the interview (Duration: 7 minutes).
Synopsis: Author A.M. Potter delves into North Noir. Potter’s latest novel, Silver Moon Rising, the second in the Detective Ivy Bourque series, has been nominated for an Edgar Award (Best Original Paperback) and ITW Award (Best Series Novel).
To give a book is to give a window into another world. Here are four gift ideas for the 2024 Holidays.
First, a mystery/detective suggestion:
The Lock-Up by John Banville, 2023. Booker Prize-Winner John Banville writes inventive whodunits that also happen to be eloquent and atmospheric. The Lock-Up, a Strafford and Quirke Mystery, evokes the sights, smells, and sounds of mid-1900s Ireland. If your giftee is a fan of character-driven detective tales, giftwrap The Lock-Up for them.
In Winter I Get Up at Night by Jane Urquhart, 2024. Longlisted for the 2024 Giller Prize. Urquhart’s latest novel cements her reputation as one of Canada’s finest historical fiction authors. The novel is a wide-sweeping tale encompassing artistry, education, and politics in the first half of the twentieth century. Sure to please lovers of Canadiana as well as historical and prairie fiction.
Playground by Richard Powers, 2024. Given his wide fictional lens, Pulitzer Prize-Winner Richard Powers is one of the most thought-provoking American novelists of the past ten years. Although the opening sags a bit, Playgroundsoon lifts off and the story soars, a tale intertwining AI and the future of the world’s oceans. The novel is, by turns, playful and disquieting. It is also inventive, evocative, and forward-looking.
Held by Anne Michaels, 2024. Shortlisted for the 2024 Booker Prize | Winner of the 2024 Giller Prize. Heldis poetic without being precious, revealing solid bones under a lyrical skin. The novel won’t be everyone’s cup of tea. Some will find the storyline scattered. Like C.S. Richardson’s All The Colour In the World, Heldrequires the reader to slow down. If they do, Michaels’ cadence and imagery will pull them in.
North Noir 