We love books so much that we positively worship at the altar of books within books. And so today we're featuring nine fictitious books from Canadian literature. How many of these do you recognize? (Books of origin are revealed below.)

1) Groundwork by Jakob Beer: This was the first poetry collection by Beer, and it deals with memory (of the Holocaust in particular) in terms of themes of archeology and excavation, with secrets and mysteries buried deep undeground. Beer was killed in Athens in 1993.

2) The Blind Assassin by Laura Chase: Inspired by real life events, Chase's book is a novel within a novel, a science fiction story set on the planet Zycron told by a radical socialist to the lover with which he is having an illicit affair. The novel was published not long after Chase's death in 1947, when she drove her car off a bridge into Toronto's St. Clair Ravine.

3) Turrets of Tantripp by Louise K. Delacourt: The prolific Delacourt penned a number of Gothic romance novels during the 1960s and '70s. Her books, with their covers featuring gloomy, foreboding castles and apprehensive maidens in modified nightgowns, hair streaming in the wind, eyes bulging like those of a goiter victim, toes poised for flight, are considered trash of the lowest order.

4) Thistle Harvest by John Foster: From his books he must be a Canadian, but no more information can be had. His publishers won't say a word. Quite likely John Foster is a nom de plume. His books are so popular that librarians can't keep them on the shelves. They're not novels, but nature books, all about the woods and birds and bugs and things like that. These are not to be read for enjoyment, as enjoyable books are dangerous, but it is permissible, even laudable, to read them to improve one's mind and one's religion.

5) A Mysterious Three Headed Book by an Unknown Author(s): Forgotten by a customer at a Montreal bookshop in 1994. It's a book about pirates, the same old story. A close glance will reveal an inconsistant typeface, and margin width. The book is actually composed of a set of fascicles taken from several books and rougly cut and bound together. These are fragments—literally. Debris. Flotsam and jetsam. The bookbinder salvaged the wreckage of three books and sewed them together. It's a piece of craftsmanship, not a mass-printed object. 

6) Swann’s Song by Mary Swann: A stapled pamphlet printed in Kingston, Ontario in 1966. There are exactly one hundred pages in the book and the pages contain one hundred and twenty five poems. Only about twenty copies are known to have survived out of the original printing of two hundred and fifty. Swann was a farmer's wife who had published some of her poems previously in the back pages of local newspapers. Swann's Song was published not long after its author's violent death.

7) Glove Pond by Roger Thorpe: Unstoppable rage smolders amid the imploding remains of a dying marriage. A college-town academic, Steve, is hectored and tormented by his bullying, shrewish wife, Gloria. The appearance of a younger successful novelist, Kyle Falconcrest, and his wife, Brittany, becomes the final ingredient in a powder keg of lust, revenge, alcoholism and unthinkable secrets.

8) To the Four Directions by Lazarus Took: The previously unknown fifth novel by British YA fantasy writer Took. Published in a very limited edition during the 1950s and completely forgotten—it was not published by Sprite Press with the four other titles, and doesn't appear in any of the online databases or bibliographies. If you encounter this novel, you're advised to read it at your own risk.

9) My Thyme is Up by Reta Winters: A light novel. A novel for summertime, a book to read while seated in an Ikea wicker chair with the sun falling on the pages as faintly and evenly as human breath. The story of a woman and a man, Alicia and Roman, who live in Wychwood, who clamour and romp and cling to the island that is their life's predicament—they long for love. Winner of the Offenden Prize, which recognizes literary quality and honours accessibility.

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What other fictitious Canadian books belong on our list? Let us know in the comments!