Here are three intriguing recent releases that may have escaped your notice. All have been receiving great reviews and award nominations from afar.

Just Pretending (M)
by Lisa Bird-Wilson

This title is nominated for four Saskatchewan Book Awards, including book of the year.

“A debut short story collection from one of Canada’s most exciting new Aboriginal voices. “In our family, it was Trish who was Going To Be Trouble; I was Such a Good Girl.” At times haunting, at times hilarious, ‘Just Pretending’ explores the moments in life that send us down pathways predetermined and not-yet-forged. These are the liminal, defining moments that mark irreversible transitions n girl to mother, confinement to freedom, wife to murderer. They are the melodramatic car-crash moments n the outcomes both horrific and too fascinating to tear our eyes from. And they are the unnoticed, infinitely tiny moments, seemingly insignificant (even ridiculous) yet holding the power to alter, to transform, to make strange. What links these stories is a sense of characters working n both with success and without, through action or reaction n to separate reality from perception and to make these moments into their lives’ new truths.”” – publisher

Let Him Go: a novel (M)
by Larry Watson

Winner of the Montana Book of the Year.

“Dalton, North Dakota. It’s September 1951: years since George and Margaret Blackledge lost their son James when he was thrown from a horse; months since his widow Lorna took off with their only grandson and married Donnie Weboy. Margaret is steadfast, resolved to find and retrieve her grandson Jimmy – the one person in this world keeping James’s memory alive – while George, a retired sheriff, is none too eager to stir up trouble. Unable to sway his wife from her mission, George takes to the road with Margaret by his side, traveling through the Dakota badlands to Gladstone, Montana. When Margaret tries to convince Lorna to return home to North Dakota and bring little Jimmy with her, the Blackledges find themselves entangled with the entire Weboy clan, who are determined not to give up the boy without a fight…” – publisher

We Live in Water (M)
by Jess Walter

A winning short story collection selected by the Pacific Northwest Booksellers Association.

“Stories in ‘We Live in Water’ range from comic tales of love to social satire and suspenseful crime fiction. Traveling from hip Portland to once-hip Seattle to never-hip Spokane, to a condemned casino in Las Vegas and a bottomless lake in the dark woods of Idaho, this is a world of lost fathers and redemptive con men, of personal struggles and diminished dreams.” – publisher