What the judges said about the shortlist:

James FitzGerald - What Disturbs Our Blood
(Random House Canada)

Author James FitzGerald hails from two generations of doctors whose medical achievements left a great impact on the Canadian health system. But these great men also suffered great falls that the FitzGerald family kept secret. Not only is this memoir a gripping, deeply personal story about family relationships and family secrets, it is also a fascinating, well-researched history of Toronto, Canadian medicine and public health, and the treatment of mental illness.

James King - Étienne's Alphabet
(Cormorant Books Inc.)

Artist, orphan and creative genius, Étienne Morneau is a protagonist defined by lists and routine. In Étienne's Alphabet, his story moves from Montreal to Toronto and takes the reader along with each magnificent detail in an astonishingly rich telling of a life set in mid 20th Century Canadian history. Étienne's story is revealed through objects, mapped into chapters titled with letters of the alphabet, starting with A and ending with Z. Each chapter begins with a literary etching of a letter, which moves well beyond description and architecture to personifying, celebrating and at times, reviling. The book is a wonderfully unique narrative gem a testament to King's gift for taking the seemingly mundane and bringing it to life with poetic detail.

Rabindranath Maharaj - The Amazing Absorbing Boy
(Knopf Canada)

The Amazing Absorbing Boy is the journey through Toronto of a seventeen-year-old Trinidadian boy sent to live with his estranged father in Canada following the death of his mother. In the absence of parental supervision — and even interest — this optimistic teen immigrant sets out from his Regent Park home to discover the wonders of the City. The characters he meets along the way, including relatives who visit from Trinidad and Toronto denizens that he encounters around the city — are colourful, often funny and invariably also struggling to cope with life and isolation. With his fourth novel, writer Rabindranath Maharaj creates a complex, witty and hopeful portrait of an imaginative youth determined to forge his own path in multi-cultural Toronto.

Nicholas Ruddock - The Parabolist
(Doubleday Canada)

Cadavers, med students, Mexican poetry and a smattering of Crisco are but a few of the ingredients in this literary page-turner. With a vivid cast of characters and evocative prose, first-time novelist Nicholas Ruddock takes us on a delirious ride through the streets of 1970s Toronto as an intricate mystery unfolds. Darkly humourous, sensual and erudite, The Parabolist is at once an auspicious debut and a sumptuous, adrenaline-fueled read.

Alissa York - Fauna
(Random House Canada)

With a unique cast of characters drawn from the margins of society, Fauna vividly brings us into the hidden veins of our urban landscape's half-tamed ravines. Illuminating the resilience of the natural world in our midst, Alissa York engages us with her narrative ingenuity and the powerful poetic cadence of her refreshing and finely-crafted prose. Fauna is a tale that could only be set in Toronto — a Toronto with us every day but rarely noticed.