The top forthcoming books in Canadian libraries

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From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Say You'll Remember Me comes a beautiful, compelling novel that revels in laughter, friendship, and the messy choices life can throw our way.

In everyone’s life, there’s a split-second decision that can change everything...

For Larissa, it came when choosing who to ride home with after a concert. That night, she had no idea she’d met the perfect man. She and Chris are great friends, co-parenting a slightly unhinged rescue Yorkie, sharing their favorite books, and judging bread (pumpernickel for the win!). For the first time amid all her side hustles to scrape by, things finally feel easy.

But she didn’t choose Chris to drive her home all those months ago—she went with his best friend, and he became her boyfriend. All Chris wants is for Larissa to be happy. Standing by on the sidelines is slowly killing him, but making a move would destroy someone else. How can something that feels so right be absolutely impossible?

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From #1 internationally bestselling author Freida McFadden!

Everyone has secrets. Some are worse than others.

Influencer and baking sensation April Masterson knows the secret to the perfect gooey brownies. Or how to make key lime squares that will melt in your mouth. But if you keep watching her offline, you may find out some other secrets about April. Secrets she'd rather you didn't know.

Like… Where did her son go when he snuck out late at night? What was she doing with the local soccer coach behind fogged windows?

And what's buried in her backyard?

April's secrets are enough to destroy her.

I'll make sure of that.

#1 New York Times bestselling author Freida McFadden peels back the layers of a seemingly flawless life to expose a picture of obsession, deception, and the quiet menace that waits just beyond the frame.

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Academy Award winning actress Viola Davis and the world's #1 bestselling author James Patterson’s Judge Stone “delivers first-class courtroom drama, small-town excitement, and strong characters all wrapped in a moral dilemma. Tense, readable, and relevant.” (Kirkus Reviews, starred review)

“Talk about a power combo! ... With Davis’s razor-sharp emotional insight and Patterson’s mastery of rocket-fuel pacing, this is the dream team to deliver an up-all-night read that will keep the group chat buzzing.” —Oprah Daily

“Wonderfully satisfying ... This legal thriller from [a] superstar duo ... demands attention from its opening pages and never lets go.” —Booklist, starred review

All rise... for Judge Stone.

The most respected citizen in Union Springs, Alabama (population 3,314), is Judge Mary Stone. She holds two responsibilities sacred: running her family farm and presiding over her courtroom. It's there she draws the most controversial case in the history of the South.

Criminally, it’s open-and-shut.

Ethically, there is no middle ground. Essentially, it’s a choice between life and death.

No judge can satisfy everyone. It would be dangerous to try. But Judge Stone is willing to fight to bring justice to the people and place she loves.

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#1 New York Times bestselling author Sandra Brown delivers a new signature sexy suspense about a detective seeking justice for his murdered wife with the help of a psychotherapist … while fighting an undeniable attraction to her.

Two years ago, Detective Mitch Haskell lost his wife to a vicious act of retribution, and has since attributed her murder to two men: Roland Malone and the unidentified mastermind of the crime known only as Oz. Malone, a ruthless executioner and drug dealer who fronts as a restaurant owner, neutralizes so cleanly that he doesn’t leave a trace. And he performs his handiwork at the biddings of Oz, the faceless kingpin of a drug trafficking operation whose name alone evokes terror.

Obsessively vowing to avenge his late wife’s murder, Mitch has been on a downward spiral, jeopardizing his closest relationships and drinking excessively to numb his pain. After going one step too far, Detective John Bowie, his former best friend and now his boss, has forced Mitch to get therapy to sort himself out.

Dr. Dylan Reede is immediately empathetic to the pain she senses beneath Mitch’s cavalier attitude and wisecracking. She’s determined to make the most of his mandated sessions. But from the moment Mitch breezes into her office, Dylan finds it a struggle to maintain the professional and personal boundaries that keep her own tragic past at a safe distance.

As Mitch begins to close in on Oz and Malone’s operation, they’re prepared to stop him by any means necessary. And when it’s revealed that Dylan might hold the key to bringing them to justice, Mitch and Dylan’s irresistible attraction to each other may not only compromise both of them professionally, but place them in Oz’s bullseye.

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Named a Most Anticipated Book of 2026 by Esquire • Marie Claire • Art+ • The Times • The Guardian • The Observer • The Financial Times • BBC • The Sydney Morning Herald • A Globe and Mail Spring 2026 Read

From the author of the international bestseller Life of Pi, a brilliant retelling of the Trojan War from two commoners: an ancient soldier and modern scholar.

“The past is never done with: always the song continues”

Harlow Donne has devoted his life to the Classical world. When a chance comes up to study an obscure collection of papyrus fragments at Oxford University, he seizes it. Though it means leaving his daughter and fracturing marriage back home in Canada, this is the kind of career break he desperately needs.

In the depths of the Bodleian Library, Harlow discovers a lost account of the Trojan War, a glimpse into the founding of Western civilization itself. He names the epic poem The Psoad, after its protagonist, a Greek commoner identified as Psoas of Midea, but known to all as son of nobody.

As sole translator and interpreter of The Psoad, Harlow dedicates the poem and its footnotes to his daughter, Helen. Under his gaze, the text unlocks echoes of Ancient Greece into the present day, and a personal message to his beloved child appears. Despite the two-thousand-year gap between the two, a thread hasn’t frayed: the universal song of homesickness and regret, of ambition, love, and grief.

In this masterpiece of myth, history, and domesticity, Son of Nobody explores how stories become facts, the price we pay to share them, and how we live—then, now, and always.

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Named a Most Anticipated Book of 2026 by The New York Times, The Washington Post, Time, Oprah Daily, Today, BookPage, Goodreads, and more

From the iconic crime writer who “inspires cultic devotion in readers” (The New Yorker) and has been called “incandescent” by Stephen King, comes the third and final book in the million-copy-bestselling Cal Hooper trilogy.

On a cold night in the remote Irish village of Ardnakelty, a girl goes missing. Sweet, loving Rachel Holohan was about to be engaged to the son of the local big shot. Instead, she’s dead in the river.

In a close-knit small town, a death like this isn’t simple. It comes wrapped in generations-old grudges and power struggles, and it splits the townland in two. Retired Chicago detective Cal Hooper has friends here now, and he owes them loyalty, but his fiancée Lena wants nothing to do with Ardnakelty’s tangles. As the feud becomes more vicious, their settled peace starts to crack apart. And when they uncover a scheme that casts a new light on Rachel’s death and threatens the whole village, they find themselves in the firing line.

“One of the greatest crime novelists writing today” (Vox) crafts a masterwork of atmospheric suspense that brings the story of one of her most beloved characters to a spellbinding conclusion.

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A mother bestows a life-changing legacy on her five adult daughters in this profoundly moving novel from #1 New York Times bestselling author Danielle Steel.

After the unexpected death of their mother, Felicia Morgan Weston, her five daughters are summoned to a historic Connecticut farmhouse for the reading of her will. Still reeling from shock, they hear revelations that will potentially change their lives—and they realize there was much more to their mother than they ever knew.

Charlotte, the oldest, always resented her mother’s advice, but now misses her terribly. An entrepreneur and single mother, she doesn’t dare hope for a second chance at love.

Although content with her career as a TV producer and her life with her partner in Greenwich Village, Quinne is about to have an opportunity to dream bigger.

Former ballet dancer Olivia has lived as a paraplegic since a car accident twelve years ago. Refusing to be a burden, she has denied herself the love of her life.

Despite her mother’s disapproval, Veronica resigned herself to a secret relationship with an ambitious married senator.

Happily married mother of three Isabelle has just found out that her husband is having an affair with his much younger intern.

Each sister is about to receive a gift beyond her wildest dreams from their very private but loving mother, who considered all her girls her favorites. Danielle Steel’s new novel is a moving testament to the power of a mother’s love and the importance of fully embracing life.

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From the author of the acclaimed bestseller The Light Between Oceans comes a breathtaking and epic novel set in the vast outback of Australia—about tragedy, family secrets, and the enduring power of love.

When we do something that can’t be undone or mended, how do we go on living? How do we find our North Star when there is no right answer? These are the questions at the center of M. L. Stedman’s unforgettable and magisterial new novel, A Far-flung Life. From the author of the beloved and bestselling The Light Between Oceans, this is a sweeping and epic story of a family, a tragedy, and the aftermath that reverberates for decades.

Remote Western Australia, 1958: here, for generations, the MacBrides have lived on a vast sheep station, Meredith Downs. It is a million acres, an ocean of arid land. On an ordinary day, on a lonely road, under the unending blue sky, patriarch Phil MacBride swerves to avoid a kangaroo. In seconds the lives of the entire MacBride family are shattered. And then, tragedy revisits when a twist of consequences claims the life of one sibling, and leads another to give up everything for the sake of an innocent child. Matt, the youngest MacBride, is plunged into a moral and emotional journey for which there is no map, no guide. The secrets at the heart of this gutting and beautiful story force him to choose between love and duty, sacrifice and happiness.

A Far-flung Life is a tale about family and belonging, fate and time. It is about people trying to do their best, and each, for private reasons, seeking shelter from the storm of life.

Can a fleeting moment unravel a whole life, mar it indelibly and irrevocably? Can compassion, resilience and forgiveness allow us to come to terms with our human imperfections? These are the questions Stedman asks in A Far-flung Life, her profoundly moving, uplifting, and luminous new novel about what the heart can endure for the sake of love.

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“Not your typical celebrity memoir.” —Jimmy Kimmel

Unflinchingly honest and darkly funny, You with the Sad Eyes unveils a side of Christina Applegate we’ve never seen, forever cementing her formidable and iconoclastic legacy.

Christina Applegate came of age on sets and stages, expected to be on time, with lines learned, ready for lights-camera-action. What started as a financial necessity soon became an emotional escape from a tumultuous home life in the infamous Laurel Canyon scene of the 70s and 80s. She rocketed to stardom on the sitcom Married...with Children and went on to captivate audiences in classics like Don’t Tell Mom the Babysitters Dead…, Anchorman, and Dead to Me in her five-decade long career.

Then it all stopped. A Multiple Sclerosis diagnosis in 2021 confined her to a king-sized bed and the company of memories she’d rather forget: memories of the self-doubt and body dysmorphia that stalked her meteoric rise, of her mother’s fight against addiction and abuse after her father left, and of the tax life had taken on her body and mind that was suddenly coming due.

Now, at her most intimate and vulnerable, she unveils a story not even those closest to her fully know. She returns to the diaries she kept her whole life, finding the pain matched by joy, the losses mitigated by the extraordinary, and the weight of life lifted by her unrelenting belief that something greater lay ahead. No longer willing to lock herself away and with the perspective only our own mortality can bring, she knew it was imperative to tell it all.

You with the Sad Eyes presents a remarkable woman and her legacy. In her own words, “I truly believe that books can make people feel less alone. That’s why I’m doing this. You with the Sad Eyes won’t be some big violin scratching for my life. But it will be real. It will be filled with the ups and downs, the humor and grief of life.

So here I am.

Real me.

Lots to say.”

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Ten heists. Ten suspects. A murder mystery only Ernest Cunningham can solve in this delightfully clever and twisty new novel in Benjamin Stevenson’s bestselling series—perfect for fans of Richard Osman and Anthony Horowitz.

I’ve spent the last few years solving murders. But a bank heist is a new one, even for me. I’ve never been a hostage before.

The doors are chained shut. No one in or out. Which means that when someone in the bank is murdered, everyone is a suspect.

THE BANK ROBBER

THE MANAGER

THE SECURITY GUARD

THE KID

THE FILM PRODUCER

THE PRIEST

THE RECEPTIONIST

THE PATIENT

THE CAREGIVER

ME

Turns out, more than one person planned to rob the bank today. You can steal more from a bank than just money.

Who is stealing what? Are they willing to kill for it? And can I solve the crime before the police kick down the door and rescue us?

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A vividly rendered graphic novel adaptation of Lauren Tarshis's bestselling I Survived the California Wildfires, 2018, with text adapted by Georgia Ball and art by Cassie Anderson.

All across California, deadly wildfires rage . . .

Still reeling from the life-changing challenges that propelled him and his mother across the country, Josh finds solace in the California wilderness and in the newfound friendship with his cousin Holly.

But on a trip into the nearby forest, Josh and Holly suddenly find themselves in the middle of a frighteningly powerful firestorm, one which threatens to burn down everything in its path. Josh needs to confront the family issues burning him up inside, but first he'll have to survive the flames roaring all around him.

Lauren Tarshis's New York Times bestselling I SURVIVED series blazes to life in this graphic novel edition. Perfect for readers who prefer the graphic novel format, or for existing fans of the I Survived chapter book series, these graphic novels combine historical facts with high-action storytelling that's sure to keep readers turning the pages. Includes a nonfiction section at the back with facts and photos about the real-life event.

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"When I'm faced with a Pilkey fan looking to branch out, this graphic novel is the first book I reach for... If eight books aren't enough, the spinoff series, Agents of S.U.I.T., continues the fun." ―The New York Times

More than four million copies in print!

InvestiGators fans, get ready to dive into the fourth volume of Agents of S.U.I.T. with the weirdest mystery yet!

Someone has stolen the Notorious P.I.G. food truck, and with it, Piggy Smalls’s special BBQ sauce! But before Bongo and Marsha can solve the case, they need to solve the problems they’re having with each other. To help them realize what a great team they truly are, General Inspector decides to split them up. He assigns Marsha to work with Cilantro on a super-secret pilot program, and Bongo to work with Sven on a not so-secret reality competition: "Sew You Think You Can Sew!”

But here’s the rub: This season includes a chef challenge, and underground sources say Piggy Smalls's notorious sauce was stolen to help one of the contestants win!

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For once, instead of causing trouble, Zomboss is in trouble and needs help finding his missing dog!

The twenty-fifth standalone Plants vs. Zombies graphic novel!

Dr. Zomboss, the constant scourge of Neighborville and leader of the zombie army, needs help! While normally Patrice, Nate, Crazy Dave, and the plants wouldn’t be concerned at all, it’s his dog that's missing, and who wouldn’t want to help someone find their lost dog?! Of course, since it’s Zomboss, there’s no telling what could go wrong! And his dog may be the smartest one, for getting itself lost!

Written by the brilliantly clever Paul Tobin and featuring gorgeous artwork by talented artist Christianne Gillenardo-Goudreau!

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This bright, sturdy board book is a fabulous celebration of puppy-dog love and friendship, featuring a die-cut cover and Sandra Boynton’s legendary pizzazz!

Based on the song wonderfully sung by Dwight Yoakam on Frog Trouble (Boynton’s celebrated country music album), I’ve Got a Dog is a jaunty and captivating board book about the many ways a dog brings joy and companionship. Whether they are howling tunes or sitting quietly by your side, when you've got a dog, you’ve got a lifelong friend.

I've got a dog. And he’s got me. / We get along so easily.
Wherever I go, he’s by my side. / I’ve got a dog. I’m satisfied.

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If one day buds bloom and birds chirp, and the next day a late snow falls from the sky, is it spring? Will it ever be spring? An evergreen, child-friendly picture book that explores themes of patience, hope, the seasons, and nature by the New York Times bestseller and Caldecott Medalist Kevin Henkes.

A flower in the garden down the street. Birds in the sky. Buds on the branches in the park. It must be spring.

But wait! What is this icy gust of wind? Why are snowflakes falling from heavy gray clouds? Will it ever be spring? Yes, says the sun. Just be patient.

Kevin Henkes, the #1 New York Times bestseller who has been awarded the Caldecott Medal, two Caldecott Honors, two Newbery Honors, two Geisel Honors, the Children’s Literature Lecture Award, and Children’s Literature Legacy Award, among numerous other honors, has created a masterful and classic picture book that combines an evocative call-and-response text with delicate and lovely illustrations. Readers will be left assured that the sun—and spring—will always come again.

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Featuring over a dozen prehistoric facts! Get ready for another exciting museum adventure with the Berenstain Bears! This time, they’re stepping back in time to explore the wonders of the Ice Age.

From mighty woolly mammoths to the fierce saber-tooth cats, this leveled reader makes it easy for children to sound out simple words and sentences while learning fascinating facts about the past.

Packed with classic charm from the New York Times bestselling series, Visit the Ice Age is a delightful way to spark curiosity and a love for history.

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Gabby and the Gabby Cats head to the Fairy Festival in this Level 1 Reader from the world of DreamWorks Gabby's Dollhouse!

It's fairy o'clock in the dollhouse, and Gabby and the Gabby Cats can't wait to go to Kitty Fairy's Fairy Festival! Will they have a fairy-tastic time? Find out in this Level 1 Reader, which is full of adorable art from the hit show DreamWorks Gabby's Dollhouse!

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The Sweet Valley Twins are no strangers to vying for attention. But when their mom starts focusing on helping a friend, the twins face a tough choice: should they team up against her or make room for someone new in their family?

Dive into the fun and drama of this New York Times bestselling graphic novel series!

The Sweet Valley Twins have a lot of work to do. Between Elizabeth's newspaper articles and Jessica's new celebrity cook book project, there's barely any time for anything else! When their friend Mary decides to help them both, the twins are relieved—but Mary seems more determined to help their mom around the house than them with their work!

Jessica is suspicious that Mary is more interested in Mrs.Wakefield being her new mom than in actually being friends with the twins, but Elizabeth isn't so sure. There has to be a reason why she'd rather be with the Wakefields than at home, right?

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We are Dragon Girls -- hear us roar!

Selena and her friends Charlotte and Layla are shocked to discover they are all Flower Dragons. They have been called to the Magic Forest because each girl has special talents this unusual place needs to survive. Selena is a Sunflower Dragon—she has traded her human form for powerful wings, glittering scales, and a roar that shakes the ground.

As a Dragon Girl, she must help break the evil spell that the Fury Queen has cast over the Magic Forest. The forest’s animals are deep in a sleep they can’t wake up from, unless the Flower Dragons can collect all the ingredients for a special perfume. Selena’s hope glows as bright as the tallest sunflower and she’s determined to lead her friends to success.

Read all the books in the Flower Dragon arc!

#19: Selena the Sunflower Dragon

#20: Charlotte the Rose Dragon

#21: Layla the Water Lily Dragon

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An Instant New York Times Bestseller and Indie Bestseller

“Lucas DuBois is proof that a mere kitten can be the bravest of lions by always standing up for what's right.” —Alan Gratz, New York Times bestselling author of Refugee

The acclaimed, New York Times bestselling author of Pax delivers an historical novel about an orphan during WWII who discovers unexpected courage within himself when he becomes involved with the Resistance.

Petit éclair. That’s what the other boys at the orphanage call Lucas DuBois. Lucas is tired of his cowardly reputation, just as he’s tired of the war and the Nazi occupation of his French village. He longs to show how brave he can be.

He gets the chance when he saves a litter of kittens from cruel boys and brings them to an abandoned stable to care for them. There he comes upon a stranger who is none too happy to see him: Alice, the daughter of a horse trainer, who is hiding her filly from German soldiers.

Soon Lucas begins to realize they are not the only ones in the village with secrets. The housekeeper at the German maternity home and a priest at the orphanage pass coded messages; a young mother at the home makes dangerous plans to keep her baby from forced adoption; and a neighbor in town may be harboring a Jewish family.

Emboldened by the unlikely heroes all around him, Lucas is forced to decide how much he is willing to risk to make the most courageous rescue of all.

Perfect for fans of Alan Gratz, Ruta Sepetys, and Kimberly Brubaker Bradley, this accessible novel, told in short chapters, illuminates a little-known aspect of World War II history.