Dark fantasy explores the demands of being human — and our perfectly imperfect creations

The never-ending news cycle inundates us with stories of mental illness, violence and the tech bro obsession with artificial intelligence (AI), and it is these threads Torontonian Bar Fridman-Tell intertwines to create her unique and compelling dark fantasy debut.

Abandoned by their parents to the indifferent care of a housekeeper and a tutor, siblings Rory and Wynne make the best of life in their isolated country house. Together they pass their days adventuring through meadow and forest, until Wynne turns 15 and begins to distance herself from eight-year-old Rory. “I’m too old to play with you,” she says, but Rory won’t stop following her.

With the nearest village “endless fields away,” Wynne knows her lonely brother will never find another friend, but this doesn’t eliminate her need for privacy. Desperate, she offers to get Rory a companion and he watches, wide-eyed, while she weaves flowers, branches, leaves and fruit into “a little girl… doll-perfect and Rory-sized” before “muttering a steady stream of words” that bring her to life.

What Wynne has magicked into being is a Blodeuwedd (Welsh for “flower face”), a creature who, though mute, proves to be “the perfect playmate.” Rory calls her Daye and soon comes to cherish her as “a bosom friend, a confidant” who promises she’ll never leave him.

Stunning stories explore families’ untreated mental illnesses

There’s Always More to Say is a beautiful debut collection of stories from English-born Montreal author Natalie Southworth.

The nine stories within are filled with ache and grace, often naming (without shaming) the toll that untreated and/or undiagnosed mental illness takes on families, and the fractured realities that youth in these upbringings are left to navigate on their own.

Already this summary is no match for the elegance of the collection, which blends a delicacy and clarity with dignity in its portrayals of nuanced shifts in sanity.

The DSM (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders) is mentioned once, but otherwise Southworth’s characters — children, siblings, mothers, fathers, friends, puppeteers, realtors, politicians, live-in nannies — use the language at their disposal to name the dissonance of mental instability, including “strange,” “spiral,” “fluorescent-lit,” “that kind of brain” and “ambiguously alive.”

Romany family’s plight uplifting, haunting chronicled in gritty, magical prose

Lynn Hutchinson Lee, a multimedia artist and prolific writer of speculative short stories, focuses on the intersection of poverty-stricken workers in 1980s Ontario and the lasting traditions of the Romany people after they’ve emigrated to Canada.

Hutchinson Lee is of mixed ancestry, and is of Anglo-Romany descent on her father’s side. She writes frequently about Romany culture and traditions, as can be seen in the stories she’s published in numerous Canadian journals and anthologies, her previous novella, Origins of Desire in Orchid Fens, and in her debut novel Nightshade.

Set in the ’80s in Ontario’s tobacco belt, the novel follows Zelda, her mother and aunties, who travel as itinerant workers on various farms. At the novel’s outset, the family has just been hired on at a tobacco plantation owned by Jack Tormentine. The workers, and thus Zelda and her family, are provided only an abandoned and filthy hotel as lodgings. The work in the tobacco fields is gruelling and dangerous.

While travelling in search of work, the Romany women hold fast and bring their traditions along with them, including a troupe of elaborate puppets. They perform puppet shows for extra money, but the puppets are also extended members of the family with their own personalities and, in the case of Puri Dai — the grandmother puppet — voices of their own.

NATO (including Canada) anything but peacekeepers in world conflict: author

In the decades following the founding of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) in 1949 by 12 Western nations, many of its members, including Canada, have participated in military campaigns which, according to the author of the relatively brief but fact-packed Canada & NATO, suggest the alliance fosters more death and destruction than peace and goodwill.

Examples of subterfuge, political manipulation and even timely assassinations reveal the birth pains that accompanied NATO’s arrival onto the world stage and its subsequent participation in regional wars, far removed from its originally intended Western Hemisphere protectorate, giving credence to the book’s subtitle, Myth of a Global Peacekeeper.

Comfortably readable in one sitting, this book summarizes NATO’s decades-long involvement in world affairs, as compiled by Manitoba writer Owen Schalk, who traces NATO’s controversial actions while offering alternative assessments of its contributions to world harmony.

Schalk’s published work includes Canada in Afghanistan (2023) and Targeting Libya (2025). He now boldly offers reasons for Canada’s withdrawal from NATO, positioning himself as a progressive-minded critic of Canada’s support for an organization he opines has consistently failed to live up to its stated “defensive” purpose.

Canada’s Artemis II astronaut gives thumbs-up to ‘Project Hail Mary’ starring Canadian Ryan Gosling

HOUSTON (AP) — The new space movie “Project Hail Mary” starring Ryan Gosling is getting rave reviews more than halfway to the moon.

Canadian astronaut Jeremy Hansen said Saturday that he and his Artemis II crewmates got to watch the film with their families before launching on the lunar fly-around. He said it was “a real treat” to view the movie while getting ready for his own space adventure.

Gosling, a fellow Canadian, sent best wishes to the four astronauts ahead of Wednesday's liftoff.

“Art imitates science and vice versa,” Hansen said during a live televised event arranged by the Canadian Space Agency. “I thought it was just such an inspirational example — somebody who goes out there and just gets what was done to save humanity. It’s a pretty extraordinary example that we can all follow.”

Wayward prairie scholar reconstructs ancient text as his life falls apart in Martel’s profound prose

As with other contemporary retellings of classical texts (Margaret Atwood’s The Penelopiad, Madeline Miller’s The Song of Achilles, Pat Barker’s The Silence of the Girls, Jennifer Saint’s Elektra), this challenging, rewarding new work by Canadian writer Yann Martel looks at the Trojan War from another angle, chronicling the decidedly unheroic experiences of an ordinary foot soldier.

Best known for 2012’s bestselling, Booker Prize-winning The Life of Pi, the Saskatoon-based Martel is obsessed with stories — why we need them, how we share them, why some narratives last while others are lost.

In this retelling of the Iliad, Martel relates not the noble exploits of the “god-blooded,” gold-bedecked heroes of the Trojan War, but the everyday miseries of Psoas, a humble cheesemaker from a scrubby hillside outside Midea, and his battles against rats, lice, fleas, mud, hunger and homesickness.

Martel relates this story of a common man through the eyes of another common man, Harlow Donne, who is working on his PhD in classics at a Saskatchewan university when he is offered a year of study and research at Oxford.

Ye attempts a comeback with sold-out LA-area concert, support from Lauryn Hill

LOS ANGELES (AP) — The artist formerly and possibly again known as Kanye West reveled in support from one of his musical idols, Lauryn Hill, as he staged a sold-out Southern California concert meant to mark a comeback from years of controversy.

Eleven months after releasing a song titled “Heil Hitler” and just over two months after publishing an apology letter for his antisemitism, Ye let two decades of hits — and 70,000 screaming loyal fans — speak the loudest on Friday night at SoFi Stadium.

"I want to thank y’all for sticking by me all these years. Through the hard times, through the low times," he told the crowd. “I love you for that.”

Hill joined Ye on a stage for the first time ever for an energetic rendition of his 2004 hit “All Falls Down,” which originally sampled her voice. Ye left the stage as she performed “Lost Ones” and “Doo Wop (That Thing)” before rejoining for his 2021 “Doo Wop”-sampling song “Believe What I Say.” They hugged as she exited.

Golden state governor’s uneven past, tussles with Trump chronicled in frank, fresh prose

California governor Gavin Newsom recently called Donald Trump a “jackass.”

He resorts to no such name-calling in his captivatingly offbeat memoir.

The U.S. president surfaces only at the tail end of the book. And Trump manages to indict himself as an idiot without need of pejoratives from Newsom.

Newsom is widely considered a top contender for the Democratic Party’s 2028 nomination for president. He has said he’s considering a run for the office, but deferring a decision until after the 2026 U.S. mid-term elections.

Canadian Paul Alexander Nolan sinks teeth into Broadway’s ‘The Lost Boys’ musical

Paul Alexander Nolan is sinking his teeth into his newest role as “The Lost Boys: A New Musical” hits Broadway. 

The production is generating buzz from audiences and praise from the original 1987 bloodsucker himself, Kiefer Sutherland.

"Doesn't Kiefer still look fantastic? You know, maybe he is a vampire," Nolan quipped.

Nearly a century of wondering: The American UFO saga, in reality and in fiction

UFOs, or the notion of them, have been around a long time. Here’s a look at how the various iterations of the subject — from government investigations to sightings to movies and TV — have unfolded since World War II:

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1947: First widely reported UFO sighting in US

On June 24, private pilot Kenneth A. Arnold reports seeing nine objects flying near Mount Rainier in Washington state. His was the first widely reported UFO sighting in this country and set off a wave of other reported sightings. On July 2, A ranch foreman checking on sheep finds strange debris spread over a prairie near Roswell, New Mexico. Authorities initially say the material is from a flying disc, but later say it is from a weather balloon.

Hollywood’s narrative on UFOs and ETs reaches back many decades

Before zombies shambled about, ghoulishly feasting on the flesh of those too slow to flee, aliens from outer space ruled movie theaters, drive-ins and late Saturday night creature features on television.

Even as Hollywood still drives how Americans envision little green men with big eyes and bigger heads, fiction soon could be separated from — or revealed as — fact if government agencies release secret files related to extraterrestrials and UFOs as called for in February by President Donald Trump.

The science fiction genre has shaped how people think about intelligent life elsewhere in the universe — “whether it’s invasion narratives or aliens coming to warn us that we’re on the wrong track or aliens just trying to come and make contact and help us with things or just say ‘hi,’” says Duke University professor Priscilla Wald, who teaches a class on science fiction and film.

Trump's announcement on social media followed former President Barack Obama suggesting in a podcast interview that aliens were real. Obama later clarified that he had not seen evidence that aliens had made contact, but said since the universe is so vast odds are good that life exists elsewhere.