100 books like Eleanor Jones is Not a Murderer

Gabby Petito. Natalee Holloway. Laci Peterson. These names probably sound familiar. Lauren Cho, Stephany Flores, and Latoyia Figueroa might not. This illustrates what news anchor Gwen Ifill dubbed “missing white woman syndrome,” the disproportionate media coverage in missing persons cases that attractive, upper-middle-class white women receive.

McDiarmid’s moving book illustrates this phenomenon, following the cases of thousands of Indigenous women who have disappeared from a stretch of road in British Columbia dubbed “The Highway of Tears.” For decades, the cases garnered little media attention until a white woman named Nicole Hoar disappeared in 2002, bringing more resources and coverage.

In painstaking detail, this immersive and necessary book follows several of these previously ignored women’s lives, illustrating the systemic issues that failed the victims and their loved ones.

This book was a safe haven for me. I was feeling uninspired to write nonfiction and unable to focus on the memoir that I had tasked myself with writing. I wanted to write something meaningful and vulnerable yet somehow keep my power and agency to myself. 

Truthfully, this book felt like a safety net. Habib manages to write about her upbringing as a Muslim woman and her relationship to her queerness while also allowing the story to meander between power and vulnerability. It taught me a lot, and I am thankful I got to read it. 

Fung writes a powerful story about survival, her captivity, and her indomitable spirit under the most perilous of circumstances that she lived through in Kabul, Afghanistan after being grabbed by the Taliban. As the Canadian reporter describes her bone-chilling account of the horrific twenty-eight days, I am left in awe of her strength and courage. 

I loved this book because I loved the characters. Richards invested them with dignity even when they were flawed or endlessly frustrated by fate. They can go through life largely unnoticed except by their closest acquaintances and relatives. But they offer hope despite their failures and tragedies.

This was the first novel in Richards’ Miramichi Trilogy. It and the two subsequent novels, plus much of Richards’ later work, create a strong sense of the province of New Brunswick, even when the characters have a universal quality.

How many Canadians knew of the Second World War German submarine campaign against our east coast and even the inshore waters of the St. Lawrence River?

Michael Hadley delivers this fascinating story in a richly detailed book based in masses of Canadian and German sources. German U-boats sank more than 20 merchant and naval vessels in the Gulf of St. Lawrence and in the river without loss to themselves and also landed spies and erected an automated weather station in Labrador.

Some of these sinkings were within sight of land and one vessel, the small ferry Caribou, was sunk with heavy loss of civilian life. Hadley’s well-illustrated, authoritative book takes you from the U-boat attacks to the Canadian military responses to the political and social consequences of unpreparedness. It’s a reminder that Canada, too, was a battlefront.

I love this book’s choc-a-block presentation of actual archival fragments from Jewish life in the British colonies that would eventually become Canada.

I also like that the book’s husband-wife, antiquarian, author team aimed to fuse together two objectives in one book: on the one hand, to paint a relatable picture of what Jewish life looked like during this period when Upper Canada was still being formed, and on the other hand, to account for the step-by-step process of Jews gaining civil rights in the new world.

When I teach Canadian Jewish history, I not only read this book with my students but also bring them into the archives that contain Godfrey’s trove of archival fragments of early Jewish Canadiana, which they collected before and while writing the book.

Bill Mason was a legend in the world of paddling. He was old-school: red and black plaid wool shirt, wood-and-canvas canoe, canvas lean-to-style tent. His sojourns in the North Woods inspired me in my own explorations of the Deep South. When he paddled Lake Superior, I thought of Louisiana's Atchafalaya Swamp. When he canoed the Hood River, I thought of Mississippi's Pascagoula.

This book combines in-depth advice on wilderness travel with accounts of some of Bill's own journeys. He was also an artist and filmmaker. His documentary, Waterwalker, is a must-see classic for anyone who loves adventure on the water. 

Birgitta Wallace spent decades at L’Anse aux Meadows, which she excavated and expertly interpreted. The happy coincidence of a supremely important site being placed in the hands of a supremely gifted archaeologist has been a boon for both public and scholarly understanding of the site. This lavishly illustrated book is at once a guidebook for the site and an account of its historical significance. 

I picked this book up on a whim, I’m glad I did. It was a pleasant surprise with no expectations. A simple, easy-to-read story with art guiding you frame by frame from artist Ann Xu. The smooth art guides you through the effortless story. It shines a light from a different perspective of life. It is soft, warm, and enlightening as we question death around the corner (especially close for the elderly woman in this story who literally vacuums up death). If you are looking for something different from a harsh dystopian/superhero graphic novel, pick up Shadow Life.

I suggest that you read this one on a Sunday morning.

Even though Daisy and Brittney are the POV leads of this tale, Ivy – a character without a POV – is the reason I added this book to the list. All three girls are complex leads that seem to wind up tighter before the book delivers a gory, emotional gut-punch of an ending. It's like the embodiment of "they had me in the first half, I'm not gon' lie."

I still feel a swell in my chest when I remember the ending of this book. The feelings of unease I felt as I crept deeper into this haunted house story are just as memorable as the utter relief that ripped through me throughout the epic finale.

I cried, I screamed, and most importantly—I felt a LOT.