CANCON COMFORT
All Our Wrong Todays
Elan Mastai Penguin Random House One of the big problems with time travel, author Douglas Adams notes, lies in trying to figure out all the verb tenses.
Vancouver-born screenwriter Elan Mastai deftly handles these and many other conundrums in his first novel, All Our Wrong Todays, a comic romp of time travel, alternate universes, romance and several plot twists that in lesser hands might just have become a tangle.
Mastai’s sad sack antihero comes from the future all those breathless 1950s magazines promised us — with jet packs, flying cars, cheap clean energy and slick technology. That shiny future is his present, and would have been ours, too. But a failed experiment alters the timeline to thrust him into the one we have now, grimy with crime, poverty, disease — and damn it, no flying cars. Can he restore his timeline? Does he even want to? — David Barber
The Futures
Anna Pitoniak Lee Boudreaux Books British Columbia hockey player Evan and Boston society girl Julia meet as undergraduates at Yale. After graduating, the young lovers move to New York City, where Evan has landed a sought-after job at a hedge fund. As Julia struggles to find work, cracks in their relationship begin to appear.
Told by each character in alternating chapters, Evan and Julia share their secrets — and the devastating consequences of their actions are revealed.
Whistler, B.C.-born Pitoniak’s debut is a pageturner filled with raw emotion sure to take readers back to the exhilaration and fears of embarking upon a new adventure, as well as the euphoric highs and crushing lows of first love. — Cathy Thom
The Twenty-Three
Linwood Barclay Penguin Random House Linwood Barclay vows he’ll never again take on the logistical challenges of writing a trilogy. But he has not failed with his three exciting novels set in the beleaguered community of Promise Falls. Each book — Broken Promise, Far From True and The Twenty-Three — works as a standalone read. But they also work collectively as the townsfolk deal with a succession of sinister events.
Barclay is a skilled plotter and a master at cranking up the suspense. But his novels also seem to be about real people, fallible people, faced with mayhem in their community. This is terrific escapist reading. — Jamie Portman
American War
Omar El Akkad McCelland & Stewart Omar El Akkad’s dystopian debut novel is engrossing enough to keep you occupied through the dog days of summer. El Akkad, an award-winning Canadian journalist, sets this epic tale 60 years in the future when tensions escalate into a second U.S. civil war. But while the existing divisions in the U.S. give the book context, American War is fairly apolitical in exploring the harrowing impact of conflict, particularly on the losing side. At the heart is a dark coming-of-age tale about an energetic and curious young girl’s slow corruption by hatred and fear. Not a light read, but hard to put down. — Eric Volmers