What the judges say about the shortlist:

Inside Toronto: Urban Interiors 1880s to 1920s
Sally Gibson (Cormorant Books Inc.)

Inside Toronto lifts the skirts of our city's history and shows us both the poverty and the glamour of early Torontonians. Visually enticing and full of the stories of women, children, immigrants and others, this book is impossible to put down.

Toronto
Geoffrey James (Douglas & McIntyre)

Ninety seven stunning photographic images of a Toronto you recognize, that stir something in you, yet you are taken aback by the stark, harsh reality of a bygone era and an uncertain future; decay mixed with modernity. Worn out classics and the pristine new are juxtaposed. Is ours a City or a complex collection of suburbs? You decide.

Bloodletting & Miraculous Cures
Vincent Lam (Doubleday Canada)

These 12 interwoven short stories expose the medical profession in Toronto and beyond, following four young doctors through student life to their struggles as practicing physicians. The stories are fascinating, riveting and heartbreaking in their honesty.

Consolation
Michael Redhill (Doubleday Canada)

An impressively researched and beautifully realized novel, Consolation bridges 150 years in the life of the city through the deaths of two Torontonians: J.G. Hallam, an English apothecary-turned-photographer, who seeks to establish himself in mid-19th century Toronto, and Professor David Hollis, a 'forensic geologist' who drowns in the city's harbour at the end of the 20th century. This is an intriguing story, written with grace and clarity — that slips gently in and out of time but holds fast to the details of its Toronto setting and its genuinely-moving exploration of the complexities of memory, truth and love.

Uptown Downtown
Raymond Souster (The Battered Silicon Dispatch Box)

As he has in the past, the prolific poet evokes scenes and images of Toronto with gentle humour and, occasionally, outrage. Though his style may be associated with the older schools of "modernism" and "imagism," he has doggedly and humbly documented his vision of the city over the past fifty years. Plus, he's so lacking in pomposity that he actually writes poems about baseball. This is a pleasant read.