Beatrice and Virgil, by Yann Martel (Knopf Canada, April). Easily the book event of the season, the novel we've been awaiting since Life of Pi, nine long years ago. In what is billed as a Holocaust parable, a struggling writer who's also a taxidermist (so many are) does not kill animals but preserves them, including howler monkey Virgil and donkey Beatrice.
Cigar Box Banjo, by Paul Quarrington (GreyStone, May). Having been diagnosed with lung cancer, the writer and musician extraordinaire recounts a life experienced from inside the music, his own journey (he's now lead singer and rhythm guitarist for Porkbelly Futures) and the meaning and making of songs.
The Value of Nothing, by Raj Patel (HarperCollins, January). One response to the financial crisis is to cast a new critical eye on consumerism: what, why and how much we buy. Acclaimed economist Raj Patel takes things a step further, looking at how and why we price and value things. For instance, he pegs the real cost of a Big Mac at $200.
Solar, by Ian McEwan (Random House Canada, April). A satirical novel by the masterful McEwan that is at once about climate change and about the ambitions and self-deceptions of an aging Nobel Prize physicist.
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Nomad, by Ayaan Hirsi Ali (Knopf, April). This third memoir-cum-manifesto by a heroic refugee who fled her ordained female role describes her efforts to reconcile her Islamic heritage with her passion for Western values.
Point Omega, by Don DeLillo (Scribner, Feb.) DeLillo has been our most prophetic novelist, taking on conspiracy theory, cover-ups and 9/11. In this novella, he probes the secret manipulations of American war strategists.
I Know I Am, But What Are You?, by Samantha Bee (Simon Spotlight, April). Can't wait until September for Jon Stewart, or just a fan of The Daily Show? Either way, pleasure is promised, and more than a few laughs in this memoiristic collection by Canadian trouper Bee. Think David Sedaris and Sarah Vowell.
Absence of Mind, by Marilynne Robinson (Yale University Press, May). The brilliant American novelist (Housekeeping, Gilead) turns her attention to the science-versus-religion wars, and finds individual consciousness the key to getting past all the rhetoric.
Jane's Fame, by Claire Harman (Holt, March). Austen wrote six completed novels, each a masterpiece. Harman takes us through her very full afterlife, her seesawing reputation and the current Jane-mania, with its hundreds of hundreds of pale parasitic pastiches - and a few good movies.
Diet for a Hot Planet: the Climate Crisis at the End of Your Fork and What You Can Do About It, by Anna Lappé (Bloomsbury, March). Following in the oven mitts of her mother - Frances Moore Lappé wrote the hugely influential Diet for a Small Planet - Anna Lappé proposes ways to help save the Earth by changing radically what we eat and how we produce it.
