“Be careful of reading health books. You may die of a misprint”

—Mark Twain (1835-1910), American author and humorist

Winning the prestigious Booker Prize once is enough to propel an author to the pinnacle of the literary world. But to win it twice – becoming the first female author ever to do so–for two consecutive novels? That’s the rarefied air author Hilary Mantel breathes. The 67-year-old received the prize for the first two instalments of her Thomas Cromwell trilogy, Wolf Hall (2009) and Bring Up the Bodies (2012). Now, with the conclusion of the trilogy, The

Mirror and the Light, imminent, it’s only a matter of time before we see if the British-born scribe can score the first ever Booker hat trick, edging out even Canada’s literary queen Margaret Atwood (also a two-time Booker winner, for The Blind Assassin in 2000 and The Testaments in 2019).

Speaking of Canadian queens, artist Selina Alko, who grew up in British Columbia, creates a por-trait of celebrated songstress Joni Mitchell’s life through original artwork in Joni: The Lyrical Life

of Joni Mitchell. Another former Booker winner, Julian Barnes ( The Sense of an Ending, 2011), returns with a non-fiction portrait of belle époque Paris and some of its legendary figures – from Marcel Proust to Sarah Bernhardt to Oscar Wilde – while recounting the life of renowned French doctor Samuel Pozzi in The Man in the

Red Coat. Famed Chilean scribe Isabel Allende, 77, pens a story of love, exile and longing for home in the wake of the Spanish Civil War in A Long Petal of the Sea, and Canadian novelist Emily St. John Mandel follows up her awardwinning 2014 book Station Eleven with The Glass Hotel, a mysterious tale of a missing woman and an international financial scheme that’s already landed on a slew of “most anticipated books” lists. —Mike Crisolago