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Three to a Loaf is the First World War story of Rory Ferrall, a young Canadian officer of Anglo-German descent who, after being wounded and disfigured at Ypres, comes to the attention of British military intelligence. Ferrall’s German background is valuable to the war’s planners. Hundreds of German-Americans had returned to the Fatherland to fight for the Kaiser at the outbreak of war in August 1914 and the British captured one.

People cannot readily be categorized, nor some books. Second Rising is one of them. In her publishing debut, Canadian fiction writer Catherine Wiebe is as refreshing as she is startling with this fictional memoir of birthing and memory, a chronicle of food prepared, bread baked, and human skin bringing first experience of the world. Who knew that a grandmother kneaded sorrow into each loaf of bread she baked, or that her memories were preserved along with the pickles she and her granddaughter made?

How much money is too much? And how fast is too fast in life? Investment star Paris Smith steps onto the top rungs of the corporate ladder, only to discover he is caught between his need for fulfillment and his need for understanding, between his drive for power and his inability to cope with his growing emptiness where there was once love. When his wife disappears from the core of his life, Smith’s loneliness and sense of disconnection threaten to overwhelm him.

One of Canada’s best-loved sleuths returns in her sixth hair-raising adventure. Victims’ advocate Camilla MacPhee is following the trial of Lloyd Brugel, a ruthless criminal kingpin charged with a fatal firebombing. Shes looking forward to seeing him convicted, but when his sleazy counsel is found dead, it conveniently delays the proceedings. The lawyer, no saint himself, was drowned and shot. In case that message was too subtle, an old joke featuring dead lawyers shows up.

When an old man dies a seemingly natural death in a parking lot, only Inspector Michael Green finds it suspicious. Something about the closed case has caught his eye - why did the victim have a mysterious gash on his head, inflicted around the time of his death? Talking to the man's family only increases Green's curiosity. They are obviously hiding something about the old man, who lived in isolation as though avoiding painful memories. A search of his house turns up an old tool box with a hidden compartment containing a German ID card from World War II.

Camilla MacPhee is the black sheep of her perfect, blonde family, although she runs a law office specializing in Justice for Victims of violent crimes. However, her uneasy association with the world of crime takes a bizarre turn when a vicious, vindictive fashion columnist with underworld connections named Mitzi Brochu is crucified in a downtown hotel room. The problem is that Camilla’s best friend Robin was on her way to meet the victim, and has become the main suspect.

Ottawa Homicide Inspector Michael Green is absolutely obsessed with his job, a condition which has almost ruined his marriage several times. When the biggest case of his career comes up, his position, his relationships and several lives are put into grave danger. A young graduate student and scion of a rich family is found expertly stabbed in the stacks of a university library, but no one seems to have the slightest idea why. But as Green probes into the circumstances of the young man’s life, a tangled web of jealousy and intrigue is revealed.

Circumstances force Dag, a young snowboarder, to give up his sport and to find another way to live. He embarks on two paths, the first a subsistence job as a barista in a coffee mega-chain, where he works hard to be a worker extraordinaire. He also invents an online alter ego who pronounces his own brand of wisdom and rant, expressing what Dag can’t in his role of coffee slave. Dag doesn’t know who he is any more. Crapped out of his sport. Can do no right by his best friend. Can do no wrong by his girl roommate. Pursued by the corporate paranoia of his coffee overlords.

In 1874, after their father is wounded by hard men who have stolen a number of mares and Smokey, a prized stallion, sixteen-year-old Rob McCann and his adopted Native brother, Luke, ride frantically to Fort Ellice, Manitoba, in the vain expectation that the horse rustlers have stopped there. Learning that a new force called the North-West Mounted Police has come west, the brothers continue south to locate them and ask for help. The NWMP commander, Colonel George French, desperately attempts to have the boys escorted home.

Eric Zweig is a managing editor with Dan Diamond & Associates, consulting publishers to the National Hockey League. He has written about sports and sports history for many major publications, including the Toronto Star and the Globe and Mail His non-fiction sports books for young people include Star Power: The Legend and Lore of Cyclone Taylor and Crazy Canucks. He lives in Owen Sound, Ontario.