Established by Toronto City Council in 1974, the Toronto Book Awards honour works of literary merit that are inspired by the city and its residents.
Toronto Public Library has created a reading list of the 2026 shortlist titles.
September 21 at 7 p.m.
Arts & Letters Club, 14 Elm St.
Tickets $38.82
September 26, 12:45 to 4:30 p.m.
David Pecaut Square at 215 King St. W.
Free admission.
November 10 at 7 p.m.
Toronto Reference Library, 798 Yonge St.
Free admission. Registration is required.
It’s summer in Toronto and two teenage girls are brutally murdered in a rundown high-rise community at the heart of the most diverse and multicultural city in the world. As middle-aged, loner detective Jamieson Abel investigates under heightened media scrutiny, a gripping story about class, race, real estate greed and police corruption emerges. Cherry Beach is more than just a stylish crime mystery told in vivid, sharp prose with noirish twists and turns that will keep you on the edge of your seat. Layered with social commentary and imbued with a philosophical search for meaning, it is a portrait of a man and a city in flux, heaving under the pressures of urban decay, violence and existential angst.
Examining a brutal crime and its punishment, Carolyn Strange carries us back to 1950s Toronto for an unflinching look at the city and its people. Fatal Confession explores not just the actions of teenage Linda Lampkin and her murderer, Robert Fitton, but the broader concepts of sexual consent and the death penalty. With empathy, rigour and a storyteller’s style, Strange unpacks society’s response to the case, and the crucial role played by the media, the legal system and ordinary people. All the while, she reminds us why true crime is important—not as salacious entertainment but as a mirror. Like all great history books, this one makes us look at our own times too: how will our attitudes and legal decisions be regarded by future generations? What aren’t we seeing about ourselves in the here and now? Fatal Confession is a gripping, meaningful read.
“The Global South doesn’t need charity,” declares Crispin in Sharon Bala’s Good Guys, “we owe them wealth redistribution.” Good Guys is an emotionally captivating story that brings depth and nuance to Crispin’s statement. Bala sheds light on the issue of philanthropy through multiple characters involved in or affected by it. The heart-wrenching climax illustrates that Crispin’s idealism may be tarnished by realities on the ground—the flaws in knowledge, intention, activism and sincerity. But the good-natured satire reminds us that the solution is not to discontinue charity, but rather to get a fuller picture.
If Virginia Woolf had lived in present-day Toronto, she might write something like Kate Cayley’s Property. A novel of dazzling interiority, Cayley skillfully juggles the anxieties, desires, and obsessions of four families living on one unnamed West End street over the course of a single fateful day. While homes are demolished and rebuilt over buried creeks and capital courses like a riverway from one neighbourhood of the city to another, Property swims through the private psychodramas of its characters, all of whom seem fully realized as they flow towards a dinner party that will change their lives forever. Addressing contemporary concerns without feeling laden by them and evoking the feeling of living in Toronto without naming a single geographical feature, this very human story demonstrates its ambitions while bookending a singular truth: that no matter what occurs in the legacies we hand to our children, the true inheritors of this city are the rats that burrow underneath it.
Balancing an enchanting story about young love mixed with the soft edges of challenges almost all teenagers face when navigating friendship, family and identity, You Started It offers a gorgeous exploration of learning how to simultaneously belong and be comfortable in one’s own skin. Jackie Khalilieh anchors some of Toronto’s most iconic landmarks in this story about a Palestinian-Canadian teen’s journey in overcoming a summer breakup and crippling anxiety while rediscovering and finding dignity in her family’s cultural heritage. Khalilieh offers us a romantically charming tale filled with vibrant characters who, despite their youthful faults, endear themselves to readers.
