Diversity is the word of the month as Canadian publishers release some highly anticipated books

Heart Berries: A Memoir, by Terese Marie Mailhot, is the raw, revelatory story of Mailhot’s deeply dysfunctional early life on Seabird Island First Nation, in B.C.’s Fraser Valley. The daughter of an activist mom and a father who was an artist, abusive drunk and, ultimately, a murder victim, Mailhot began writing as therapy after she was diagnosed with bipolar II and post-traumatic stress disorders. She shares moments of struggle, shame and survival in what’s already being hailed as a literary triumph. (Doubleday Canada, March 13)

Five love stories spanning 50 years intersect in Toronto-based writer Arif Anwar’s debut novel The Storm. Inspired by the devastating 1970 Bhola cyclone, Bangladesh-born Anwar assembles an international cast — Austrian Buddhist monk, female British doctor, Japanese fighter pilot, poor Bangladeshi fisher and wealthy Indian couple — whose tales simmer and build on an appropriately epic scale. (HarperCollins Canada, March 13)

Touted as Knopf Canada’s “oldest new face of fiction,” 72-year-old Toronto writer Katherine Ashenburg is no novice. Her non-fiction works include The Mourner’s Dance: What We Do When People Die and The Dirt on Clean: An Unsanitized History. Her debut novel, Sofie & Cecilia, mixes fact and fiction. Based on the life and early 20th-century times of two Swedish artists, it explores the long-term friendship of their fictionalized wives — artist Sofie and curator Cecilia — as they navigate balancing work, marriage, creative and family lives. (Knopf Canada, March 31)

That Time I Loved You, by Carrianne Leung (The Wondrous Woo) peels back the happy facades of shiny new homes in a 1970s Scarborough subdivision, where a diverse community of newcomers suffers a series of extremely unfortunate events. A coming-of-age story, it circles back to a Chinese-Canadian teen named June between peeks behind her neighbours’ closed doors. (HarperCollins Canada, March 27 )