Alison Acheson’s Blue Hours (May) is a novel about fatherhood, grief, unanswerable questions, and the small, magical moments that make up life. In Dead Writers (March), a  collaborative omnibus-style fiction project by Jean Marc Ah-Sen, Michael LaPointe, Cassidy McFadzean, and Naben Ruthnum, these four writers navigate the protean concept of the "bargain" in novella-length stories. And André Alexis, the award-winning author of Fifteen Dogs, conjures up worlds—real, invented, uncanny—in the story collection Other Worlds.

To Place a Rabbit (May) is the witty, irresistible debut novel from award-winning poet Madhur Anand about entangled desire in books, life and love. Through the as-yet-untold story of Newfoundland soldiers in Italy during the Second World War, The Saltbox Olive (May), by Angela Antle, is an evocative tale of the complex interactions between past and present, told through one woman’s search for the truth of her family’s mysterious past. And Natalie Appleton’s debut, I Want to Die in My Boots (April), is the story of Belle Jane, the woman who ran one of Canada’s largest cattle thieving rings in the 1920s, who brilliantly broke every taboo, took the names of five different husbands, and nearly followed the tragic end of her great hero, the outlaw queen Belle Starr.

With her trademark wit, keen observation of human foibles, deep love of textiles and craft, and ear for spicy dialogue, Katherine Ashenburg deftly creates a page-turning tale in her latest novel Margaret’s New Look (May). We Could be Rats (January) is a moving story about two very different sisters, and a love letter to childhood, growing up, and the power of imagination—from Emily Austin, the bestselling author of Everyone in This Room Will Someday Be Dead and Interesting Facts About Space. And bestselling author Linwood Barclay enters new territory with Whistle (May), a supernatural chiller in which a woman and her young son move to a small town looking for a fresh start, only to be haunted by disturbing events and strange visions when they find a mysterious train set in a storage shed.

Curse of the Savoy (February, by Ron Base, the fourth in the Priscilla Tempest mystery series, is a gripping tale of suspense set against the backdrop of high society and 1960s London. A Daughter’s Place (May), by Martha Bátiz, is a sweeping historical romance inspired by the real-life daughter of Miguel de Cervantes, celebrated author of Don Quixote. The Boy Who Was Saved By Jazz (May), by Tom Bentley-Fisher, is a coming-of-age story and meditation on belonging. And Rob Benvie’s The Damagers (June) is a stark, incendiary novel about two sisters seeking refuge with a reclusive cult in the Adirondacks: a parable of power, how it is claimed, wielded—and how it transforms.

When an author relocates to Germany for a year with her family, she hopes to find the cure for her writer’s block, but with her vacation home double-booked by an unexpected tenant and terrifying international headlines, her new book practically writes itself—will the plot and peril prove too much in The Tenant (June), by M.S. Berry? In Home Fires Burn (June), the conclusion of Anthony Bidulka's award-winning Merry Bell trilogy, an investigation uncovers old wounds which never healed, and Merry's own wounds are revealed as she confronts her pre-transition past and questions the boundaries of family and friendship. Acclaimed writer Heather Birrell makes her return to fiction with Born (June), a novel exploring what happens when an English teacher goes into labour during a Toronto high school lockdown. And Caroline Bishop is back with The Day I Left You (February), an epic love story about Greta and Henry, who by chance meet in 1982 East Berlin and find a love that’s meant to last a lifetime—until Greta vanishes.

Sparse and dreamy, Griffin Bjerke-Clarke’s debut novel He Who Would Walk the Earth (April) explores memory, identity, trauma, and healing through a timeless journey. Amaranthine Chevrolet (May), by Dennis E. Bolen, is the story of one teenage boy’s curious road trip across a radically changing country. USA Today bestseller Hannah Bonan-Young’s Out of the Woods (January) is a life-affirming comedy of errors as two nature-averse people fight their way out of the woods in order to find their way back to each other. And Eddy Boudel-Tan's The Tiger and the Cosmonaut (April) is a noirish page-turner about a mysterious disappearance and a moving portrait of a Chinese Canadian family navigating insecurities, expectations, and simmering anger in their small BC town.

Graveyard Shift at the Lemonade Stand (May) is the first collection of short stories from award-winning author Tim Bowling, exploring childhood, work, and aging. Holly Brickley’s debut is Deep Cuts (February), a love story about two people pulled apart by the same force that draws them together: music. Exploring the clandestinity of queer abuse, the fierceness of friendship, and the magic of found family, milktooth (May), by Jaime Burnet, is a bold, inventive, lyrical and darkly funny story about finding the strength to cut away what's harmed you and create something entirely new. And ranging from the realistic to the speculative, Catherine Bush’s stories in Skin (April) tackle the condition of our restless, unruly world amidst the tumult of viruses, climate change, and ecological crises, bringing to life unusual and perplexing intimacies.

Lady Lucy Revelstoke and her pickpocket-turned-maid Elf are once again embarking on a transatlantic crossing in Melodie Campbell’s The Silent Film Star Murders (March). Furthermore, the Lake (March), by Michael e. Casteels, is an artfully disjointed novel whose narrator—too fearful of commitment to commit to a name—navigates a world where memory and dream intermingle. And Su Chang’s debut, The Immortal Woman (March), is a generational story of identity and freedom that reveals a rarely seen insider’s view of China’s contemporary history.

In the near-future science fiction thriller The Midnight Project (May), Christy Climenhage has created a frighteningly real world on the verge of collapse with, as disaster strikes, two friends needing to decide whether to cling to their old life or to let go and embrace a new path for humanity. Simultaneously a high-stakes mystery and an in-depth exploration of grief and loss, The Beltane Massacre (June), by Ray Critch, is reminiscent of a classic spy novel with a modern twist—Rowan McRae is a different kind of hero for a different age who must learn how to move on after experiencing unthinkable tragedy. And Favourite Daughter, by Morgan Dick, is a darkly funny debut novel about two estranged sisters unknowingly thrown together by their problematic father’s dying wish.

From Emma Donoghue comes The Paris Express (March), a taut and suspenseful historical novel that reimagines an 1895 French railway disaster, an event famously documented in dramatic photographs. Edited by Jeff Dupuis and A.G. Pasquella, Devouring Tomorrow: Fiction from the Future of Food (March) is an anthology of speculative short fiction imagining the possibilities of our food-insecure future. And ferociously piercing the heart of an Indigenous city, Kyle Edwards's sparkling debut Small Ceremonies (April) is a heartbreaking yet humour-flecked portrayal of navigating identity and place, trauma and recovery, and growing up in a land that doesn't love you.

We Are Dreams in the Eternal Machine (January) is  haunting novel exploring AI and the meaning of human existence from Deni Ellis Béchard, the award-winning author of Cures for Hunger and Into the Sun. Acclaimed novelist Rebecca Fisseha makes her rom-com debut with Only Because It’s You (May), a story about how sometimes you need to take a leap of faith to land exactly where you're meant to be. Alice Fitzpatrick's A Dark Death (June) is about a quiet summer on a sleepy Welsh island that turns out to be anything but quiet—a conman is posing as a psychic and group of archaeology students believe they've unearthed evidence of a Roman temple, and then they find a dead body, which is even more startling, and amateur sleuth Kate Galway can't help but get involved. Palm Meridian (May), by Grace Flahive, is a rollicking, big-hearted story of long-lost love, friendship, and a life well-lived, set at a Florida retirement resort for queer women, on the last day of resident Hannah Cardin’s life

Dashiell Hammett’s Red Harvest and Mark Haddon’s The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time meet The Big Lebowski in RIP Scoot (March), by Sara Flemington, a literary mystery that asks us to examine what stories, real or fiction, become the metaphors we use for working through our own challenges and uncertainties. Finding Flora (April), by Elinor Florence, is rollicking historical novel set in turn-of-the-century Alberta about a young woman on the run from her abusive husband who uses a legal loophole to claim a homestead in the Wild West. And Palace Trash (May), by Roger Fojdo, is a mystery about Cyprian Ghezo, crown prince of Dahomey (now Benin), as a student at Sorbonne University.

Carley Fortune returns with One Golden Summer (May), a brand new trip to the lake. In Shipwrecked Souls (January), the much-anticipated next mystery in Barbara Fradkin's Inspector Green series, the impetuous Ottawa detective sails headlong into the case of an elderly woman from Ukraine. And as Henderson Freeman tries to understand his father, he comes to understand himself, the rich history of Black lives in North America, and his father’s commitment to Canada as the place to live out his hopes and dreams in Cecil Foster’s novel George’s Run (May).

A Mouth Full of Salt (April) is Reem Gaafar’s debut novel and winner of the 2023 Island Prize, set in South Sudan, uncovering a country on the brink of seismic change as its women decide for themselves which traditions are fit for purpose—and which prophecies it's time to rewrite. Loosely based on historical fact, Horsefly (May), by) Mireille Gagné, translated by Pablo Strauss, is a terrifying tale about the ways in which we try to dominate nature, and how nature will, inevitably, wreak retribution upon us. Taking the form of a memoir, Sky Gilbert’s The Blue House (April) relates the story of Rupert Goldmann, a cello virtuoso by the age of twelve, who becomes a composer, and whose life collapses into depression and possible madness when no orchestra will perform his symphonies. And, excluded from society, the characters in Rosalind's Goldsmith's Inside the House Inside (April) are outcasts, cut off from each other, from their future, from their own lives and from sanity and meaning.

From bestseller Genevieve Graham comes On Isabella Street (April), a gripping novel set in Toronto and Vietnam during the turbulent '60s about two women caught up in powerful social movements and the tragedy that will bring them together. A Punjabi American lawyer at a mysterious federal intelligence agency fights to keep his career, marriage, and morality intact in The Snares (April), a gripping post-9/11 drama from Rav Grewal-Kök. And with the caustic daring of Brett Easton Ellis and the offbeat, psychological insight of Douglas Coupland, You Crushed It (April), by Jean-Philippe Baril Guérard, translated by Neil Smith, is a captivating exploration of love and the corroding nature of power in creative industries.

A darkly comic suspense novel, She’s a Lamb! (April), by Meredith Hambrock, is an edgy and incisive novel that marches toward showtime with a growing unease about the dangers of magical thinking and the depths of delusion. Stolen Sisters (March), by Leahdawn Helena, is a first-of-its-kind play that gives voice to the lives and legacies of three Beothuk women and girls whose names have survived in historical record. In order to collect on their husbands’ life insurance policies, three middle-aged friends turn to murder—unaware that their husbands have a devious plan of their own in The Retirement Plan (April), by Sue Hincenbergs. And The Ignis Psalter (April), by Danny Jacobs, explores coming of age in a rural area of New Brunswick haunted by a prolific, almost artistic arsonist, who may just be one of the family.

Mika Jacobsen follows up her whip-smart essay collection Modern Fables with her fiction debut, Good Victory (February), stories about the absurdity of growing up and being human in the 21st century. When her grown daughter is suspected of murder, a charming and tenacious widow digs into the case to unmask the real killer in Detective Aunty (May), a twisty, page-turning whodunit and the first book in a cozy new detective series from Uzma Jalaluddin. And based on a true story, Kasia Jaronczyk’s Voices in the Air (February) is set against a Poland under martial law in 1982, asking what would drive women to risk the lives of their children and innocent people to leave their mother country forever.

An evocative work of historical fiction, Kath Jonathan’s The Resistance Painter (March) examines the little-known story of Poland’s extraordinary World War Two resistance army and the contemporary lives of two artists, grandmother and granddaughter, inextricably linked by a wartime betrayal. Felicity Alexander is supposed to be charming audiences at New York's Metropolitan Opera, not placed under house arrest in Grenada in October 1983 when the Americans invade, as she is in The World So Wide (April), by Zilla Jones. And Susan Juby’s Buddhist butler and reluctant investigator Helen Thorpe is back in Contemplation of a Crime (May), with Helen banding together with her fellow butler-school graduates to rescue her very wealthy employer and his son.

For readers of Elmore Leonard and George Pelecanos, Dietrich Kalteis’s Dirty Little War (March) is a tense crime novel set in mob-filled Chicago during the 1920s Prohibition. Both sweeping and intimate, Guy Gavriel Kay’s Written on the Dark (May) is an elegant tour de force about power and ambition playing out amid the equally intense human need for art and beauty, and memories to be left behind. And Susanna Kearsley’s latest is The King’s Messenger (March), set during the reign of James I, in which emissary Andrew Logan must complete a vital mission on behalf of the king—a mission that will threaten not only his own life, but everything he holds dear.

He’s on edge while she’s en pointe in Spiral (January), a fake-dating sports romance from Bal Khabra, the author of the smash hit Collide. Striving to get ahead in a world of scams, Hamid is caught in the fervour surrounding a charismatic social-media imam with questionable intentions in The Hypebeast (April), by Adnan Khan. And moving between Lahore, London and Toronto, Drinking the Ocean (May), by Saad Omar Khan, is a story of connections lost and found and of the many kinds of love that shape a life, whether familial, romantic or spiritual.

Monica Kidd’s The Crane (February) begins in 1968, after James Anderson’s brother is killed in the Vietnam, James turning his back on his family’s military legacy and travelling to Newfoundland to fulfill a promise his brother made to a fellow soldier, where he becomes swept into an intergenerational family secret. Fran Kimmel’s Cattail Lane (April) is an uplifting family drama about overcoming the past and the extraordinary power of second chances. And Emma Knight’s fiction debut is the bestselling The Life Cycle of the Common Octopus (January), at once a love story, a story of female friendship and motherhood, and a mystery surrounding an extraordinary British family.

Aaron Kreuter’s Lake Burntshore (April) is a funny and emotionally resonant coming-of-age novel about one summer of momentous social and political change at a Jewish sleepaway camp. Lee Kvern’s latest is Catch You on the Flipside (April), a puzzle-in-progress making up a whole picture examining how everything from political espionage to intimate partner violence affects not only its direct participants but also bystanders and witnesses. And the first novel from award-winning poet Ben Ladouceur, I Remember Lights (April) is a vital reminder of forgotten history and a visceral exploration of the details of queer life, depicting a time when the world promised everything to everyone, however irresponsibly.

Loaded with complex characters and intricately staged action, and set in a fragmented, fascinating world of dangerous magics and cryptic gods, Seventhblade (June), by Tonia Laird, is a masterful new fantasy adventure from a bright, emerging Indigenous voice. The Paper Birds (June), by Jeanette Lynes, is a World War Two love story that reveals the struggles and sacrifices of everyday working women during the war and highlights the previously unknown codebreaking work undertaken by women in Canada. A Quiet Disappearance (March),
by Rabindranath Maharaj, is a collection of beautifully crafted stories in which older men and women from the Caribbean islands confront their pasts, with regrets and wonder as they discover subtle epiphanies. And bestseller Bianca Marais is back with A Most Puzzling Murder (June), interspersed with riddles and puzzles, a one-of-a-kind mystery that will leave you guessing and gasping until the very last page.

A Story Can Be Told About Pain (May), by Lisa Martin, is a profound meditation on loss and survival, a novel that reminds us why we tell each other stories—to revel in the beauty of language, to find solace, and to boldly confront the truth in order to heal. The Road to Goderich (June), by Linda McQuaig, is a tale of love, deception, and betrayal unfolds against the backdrop of the 1837 rebellion in Upper Canada. Quietly, Loving Everyone (March), Curtis McRae's debut collection of stories, assembles a meditative and often profound cycle of portraits pulled from everyday Canadian life. And set in a world dominated by conspiracy theories and disaster responses, Sean Minogue's debut novel Terminal Solstice (May) follows the overlapping stories of three characters on a harrowing quest for survival where their future depends on a single moment in time.

A novel concerned with sports, labour, and God, award-winning poet Jacob McArthur Mooney’s debut novel The Northern is a funny and heartbreaking book about the series of disappointments that characterize the progress of growing up. Rick Mofina’s latest thriller is If Two Are Dead (April). And in The Creation of Half-Broken People (April), with a nod to classics of the Gothic genre, Siphiwe Gloria Ndlovu weaves the threads of a complex colonial history into the present through people “half-broken” by the stigmas of race and mental illness, all the while balancing the humanity of her characters against the cruelty of empire in a hypnotic, haunting account of love and magic.

Rag Pickers (June) is a collection of 18 short stories that challenge the essential loneliness of the human condition, Blaine Newton writing with wry humour, deep observation, and an off-kilter perspective, bringing his skill as a playwright to crackling dialogue and polished prose. The Ones We Loved (April), by Tarisai Ngangura, pulls from literary stewards of Black Americana such as Toni Morrison and Zora Neale Hurston, shaping characters whose way of loving is inherited and channelled into the lands they inhabit, the people they care for and the present they cling to. And lighthearted, timely, and funny, Snap is Susin Nielsen (April) at the top of her storytelling game, delivering flawed but relatable characters whose heartaches, foibles, and choices will make you cringe as you laugh out loud.

We, the Kindling (February), by Otoniya J. Okot Bitek, is a luminous novel centred around the unforgettable voices of schoolgirls in Uganda who survive capture by the Lord's Resistance Army. A teenage refugee chases stardom but finds her purpose in Canada’s abortion-rights movement in As Good a Place as Any (March), by Rebecca Papucaru. Following literary mystery Beneath Her Skin, Salt on Her Tongue (June) is the thrilling next chapter in the award-winning Kes Morris series by C.S. Porter. Long-buried secrets will be revealed in The Maid’s Secret (April), an intriguing and heartwarming novel and Nita Prose’s follow-up to the #1 New York Times bestselling The Maid and The Mystery Guest. And Former Haida Gwaii reporter and freelance writer Heather Ramsay makes her fiction debut with A Room in the Forest (February), a coming-of-age novel about challenging old beliefs and finding one’s place in the world.

Romantic, spellbinding, and empowering, The Legend of Meneka (January), by Kritika H. Rao, breathes new life into Hindu mythology to weave a lustrous tale of a woman discovering the cosmic power within herself. Pratap Reddy’s Remaindered People and Other Stories (March) focuses on other sides of immigration, exploring the often-neglected aspects: the plight of empty-nesters left behind in India, parents compelled to immigrate with their adult children, about immigrants returning to their home country for good or for holiday, of people aspiring to migrate but falling by the wayside. And Agatha Christie meets Nordic noir in bestseller Eliza Reid’s fiction debut, Death on the Island (May), about diplomats stranded on a windswept Icelandic island with a murderer in their midst.

The second title of Elizabeth Renzetti and Kate Hilton’s Quill & Packet mystery series is Widows and Orphans (May), set at a major wellness and self-actualization summit at which Cat Conway’s mother, Marian Conway, bestselling author and defiantly mediocre parent, is on the agenda—and so is murder. Maria Reva follows up her award-winning debut collection Good Citizens Need Not Fear with the novel Endling (June), about a biologist in Ukraine battling to save the country’s snail species from the brink of extinction. And the second installment of Greg Rhyno’s whip smart Dame Polara mystery series is Who By Water (April), in which Dame uncovers sinister evidence that an old enemy has resurfaced, realizing that before she can discover what happened to the man she once loved, she’ll have to confront the woman who once tried to destroy her.

Food writer Amy Rosen’s fiction debut is Off Menu (June), the story of Ruthie who’s faced with the impossible task of being expected to focus on school, cooking, career planning, baking, friends, and deciding between two hot guys, one of whom also thinks that John Cusack is woefully underrated (!). Robert Rotenberg’s One Minute More (February) is an unstoppable thriller set in 1988 when—a mere 100 hours before world leaders gather for the G7 summit—police receive a hot tip that an assassin is on the way. And, inspired by real female snipers and interpreters who worked in the Red Army during World War II, The Night Sparrow, by Shelly Sanders, is a portrait of friendship, resilience and courage under extraordinary circumstances.

Having tried his hand at medicine, pickpocketing, and good old-fashioned thuggery, Seamus Caron has finally settled into life as a private detective in the Toronto-set Angelhunting (June), by Ji Hong Sayo, but when a detective friend calls in a favour, he must find a killer before a murder sparks an all-out gang war. Suspended between life and death, Anna Pearl brings both her son and daughter together, releases truths long denied, and mentors an imaginative grasp of growth and garden those living nearby can discover with their own hands in When Anna Pearl Lay Down in the Garden (March), by (author) Deborah Schnitzer. And Iris and the Dead (June), by Miranda Schreiber, unfurls the hidden power dynamics of abuse, offering a beguiling inquiry into intergenerational trauma, moral ambiguity, and queer identity.

Love and War Western Style (May), by Rose Scollard, presents three radio plays commissioned by the CBC in the early 1990s, snappy dialogue, whip-quick storytelling, and vivacious humour coming together in these clever deconstructions of familiar romantic vehicles—the western, the Hollywood musical, the romance novel. The Fatal Scroll (May), Eric Siblin, is crime novel inspired by a real place—the Villa dei Papri, the only surviving library from antiquity—and coincides with the Vesuvius Challenge, a real-life international competition to decipher Herculaneum scrolls. Set amid the arid glamour of Lebanon’s beaches and urban landscapes, Where the Jasmine Blooms (April), by Zeina Sleiman, is at once a political historical thriller and a Muslim feminist love story. Travelling from Montreal to Ottawa to Toronto—and as far as New York, Beijing, and Buenos Aires—and spanning the first two decades of the 21st century, The Road Between Us (May), by Bindu Suresh, is an episodic novel that explores why we make the decisions we do and the effects those decisions have on the people we love.

Aurora Stewart de Peña’s debut novel Julius Julius (June) reveals the cracks in the veneer of the creative industries, and the crisis of consciousness underneath in a novel full of compassion, humour, and blonde sausage dogs. From Booker Prize-shortlisted author David Szalay, comes Flesh (March), a propulsive, hypnotic novel about a man who is unravelled by a series of events beyond his grasp. And Madeleine Thien returns with The Book of Records (May), which holds a mirror to the idea of fate in history, interrogates questions of legacy, explores how the political factors of a collective moment may determine an individual's future, and beautifully shows the infinite joys of art and intellectual endeavour.

Two gay men with a lifetime of secrets face their insular, homophobic island’s rancour in A Different Hurricane (January), by H. Nigel Thomas. Nobody Asked for This (March) is a razor-sharp dramedy following a 20-something female comic as she navigates family grief, a dysfunctional friendship, and a date gone very wrong, from Georgia Toews, author of Hey, Good Luck Out There. And Everything is Fine Here (April), by Iryn Tushabe, is a tender coming-of-age novel set in Uganda in which a young woman grapples with the truth about her sister in a country that punishes gay people.

Part ghost story, part literary thriller, The Exclusion Zone (May), by Alexis von Konigslow, is a mesmerizing story that reminds us all to listen to our hearts as well as the earth, weaving the struggles of women in science with the impact of politics, both past and present, on people and on the environment. For readers of The English Patient and All the Light We Cannot See comes The Riveter, (February), by Jack Wang, a cross-cultural love story set against the dramatic backdrop of the Allied invasion of Europe in World War Two. Set in the waning days of the Klondike Gold Rush, Ley Lines (May), by Tim Welsh, begins in the mythical boom town of Sawdust City, Yukon Territory,  with luckless prospector Steve Ladle accepting an unusual job offer: accompany a local con artist to the unconquered top of a nearby mountain. And Pools (June), by Martin West, delves into themes of excess through the lens of the 1980s party culture in Vancouver.

In Vanessa Westermann’s Shudder Pulp (May), the second instalment of the Charley Scott mystery series, life imitates art when Laura, a mercenary newcomer with a controversial agenda, claims she was attacked by a lake monster she accuses Charley of raising, and then hours later, Laura is found dead by dry drowning. Iona Whishaw’s Lane Winslow returns to solve another mystery in The Cost of a Hostage (April), which sees Lane trekking through Mexico while the team back in Nelson pursue an open-and-shut and then open-again kidnapping. And PI Dave Wakeland returns to the streets of Vancouver for his most dangerous case yet in Sam Wiebe’s latest, The Last Exile (March).

One house, 100 years—Here (May), by Heidi Wicks, is a collection of interconnected short stories that bend time with a complex and varied cast of characters passing through a single mansion in Newfoundland, confronting the ghosts of family, perseverance, redemption, and survival. With deft comic turns and strikingly touching moments, Jeff Wilson’s Castor’s Choice (March) is a perfect pick for fans of Terry Fallis. And return to the Kingdom of Íseldur, where enemies become lovers and dark secrets hide around each corner, in Kingdom of Claw (January), the sequel to Demi Winters’ Viking-inspired romantic fantasy The Road of Bones.

In Clea Young’s arresting sophomore collection, Welcome to the Neighbourhood (May), friendships fail, families stumble, and neighbours know each other’s business. In the razor-sharp, diabolical debut thriller Julie Chan is Dead (April), by Lianne Zhang, a young woman steps into her deceased twin’s influencer life, only to discover dark secrets hidden behind her social media façade. And Lindsay Zier-Vogel’s second novel, The Fun Times Brigade (May) examines the challenge of reconciling artistry with motherhood, and the ways we ultimately fail and find the need to forgive those we love.