Whenever a new novel causes a sensation, I’m always anxious to crack its spine. Now, having read American Dervish, I have to wonder, why this book? Why now?

In Dinaw Mengestu’s How To Read The Air, all the characters have troubled pasts that have made them emotional shells.

Even if you’re not a fan of books about the web, you’ll see the value of media guru Jeff Jarvis’s Public Parts In very clear and accessible language,  he argues that our obsession with privacy squanders opportunities to make connections in the connected world.

Chad Harbach’s debut novel has landed on many year-end best lists, including the New York Times Book Review, no less, and – be still, my heart – it has a baseball theme. So how could I resist?

Art is a valuable commodity – no surprise there. What’s astonishing is how much gets stolen and how little law enforcement agencies can do about it.

You’ve never read a story like The Free World, which is why this novel matters deeply – and, presumably, why it landed on this year’s Giller short list.

It’s crazy odd that Whose Streets?: The Toronto G20 And The Challenges Of Summit Protest landed on my desk on the week of Occupy T.O.’s gentle eviction from St. James Park.

Is Brit author Helen Oyeyemi really only 26? Mr. Fox displays more worldly wisdom and literary craft than a 20-something ought to have.

From abortion to sex work, Ami McKay fearlessly confronts hard issues in women’s history. In her debut novel, The Birth House, an early-20th-century small-town midwife in Nova Scotia faces opposition from a reactionary doctor.

How far will people go to achieve their dreams of wealth and respectability? This is the thorny question addressed in Aravind Adiga’s darkly comic third novel, Last Man In Tower.

I have been known to mock the Governor General’s fiction jury when it appears to worry more about its mandate than about the quality of the work. Because the GGs want to honour the regions, for example, the  fine but not spectacular Cool Water, which came out of the Prairies, took the prize last year.