MARCH LOOKAHEAD

The National Post’s Paul Taunton previews this month’s most talked-about books.

Fallen Glory

The Lives and Deaths of History’s Greatest Buildings by James Crawford (Picador, 640 pp; $49) March 7 The subtitle says it all. For book readers, the chapter on the Library at Alexandria ( and Julius Caesars possible role in its demise) will be of particular interest, but perhaps the most fascinating chapter profiles not a building but an entire city – just not a physical one. Crawford’s elegy for Geocities ( and web 1.0) is a strangely affecting remembrance of something that was far less trite and far more amazing than most of us realized.

One Day We’ll All Be Dead and None of This Will Matter

Essays by Scaachi Koul (Doubleday Canada, 256 pp; $25) – March 7 Though she’s best known for her work as a senior writer at BuzzFeed and her energetic twitter presence, Scaachi Koul’s debut essay collection adds depth to the topics she frequents: coming of age, frustrations stemming from male privilege and racism, growing up with immigrant parents, awkward daily interactions and the general awfulness in the world.

Vimy: The Battle and the Legend

by Tim Cook (Penguin Canada, 512 pp; $38) March 7 Canada’s sesquicentennial overlaps with the centenary of the First World War, and nowhere more poignantly than the Battle of Vimy Ridge, where many argue Canada shed its colonial status and truly became a nation. Who better to give it the book- length treatment than Tim Cook, author of the Charles Taylor Prize-winning Shock Troops: Canadians Fighting the Great War 1917– 18, among other books on Canada in wartime.

Barrelling Forward

Stories by Eva Crocker (House of Anansi, 264 pp; $19.95) — March 18 The manuscript for Crocker’s collection was shortlisted for the Fresh Fish Award for Emerging Writers, and it delivers on its promise as a published book. Story collections are difficult to describe succinctly, which is why reviewers often focus on voice. This Newfoundland writer has a memorable one, and we should get to know it well.

The Twelve Lives of Samuel Hawley

by Hannah Tinti (The Dial Press, 400 pp; $34) March 28 Tinti’s f ollow- up to The Good Thief invokes classical myth in the present day with a story about fate – and confronting it. A father and daughter try to make a new life in a coastal town after being on the run, her father’s story traced through twelve chapters after his twelve bullet wounds, until it meets them in the present.