100 books like The Rez Sisters

By Tomson Highway,

Here are 100 books that The Rez Sisters fans have personally recommended if you like The Rez Sisters. Shepherd is a community of 11,000+ authors and super readers sharing their favorite books with the world.

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Book cover of Almighty Voice and His Wife

Drew Hayden Taylor Author Of The Night Wanderer

From my list on Indigenous plays on the people and community.

Why am I passionate about this?

Drew Hayden Taylor is an award-winning playwright, novelist, journalist, and filmmaker. Born and raised on the Curve Lake First Nation in Ontario (Anishnawbe), Drew has had over a hundred productions of his plays and enjoys spreading the gospel of Indigenous literature across the world. 

Drew's book list on Indigenous plays on the people and community

Drew Hayden Taylor Why did Drew love this book?

A historical play that tells the story of a single Cree warrior doing battle with the Canadian military. Each of the two acts approaches the story differently. The first is more linear and poetic, the second more lyrical and surreal. Many have said they loved the first act and hated the second. And vice versa. Whatever you may feel, an excellent exploration of colonization as seen through the eyes of a poet.

By Daniel David Moses,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Almighty Voice and His Wife as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

A modern classic about the place of First Nations people in Canada.


Book cover of Where the Blood Mixes

Drew Hayden Taylor Author Of The Night Wanderer

From my list on Indigenous plays on the people and community.

Why am I passionate about this?

Drew Hayden Taylor is an award-winning playwright, novelist, journalist, and filmmaker. Born and raised on the Curve Lake First Nation in Ontario (Anishnawbe), Drew has had over a hundred productions of his plays and enjoys spreading the gospel of Indigenous literature across the world. 

Drew's book list on Indigenous plays on the people and community

Drew Hayden Taylor Why did Drew love this book?

An amazing play that explores the repercussions of Residential schools on the Indigenous population, and how its effects are frequently intergenerational. Winner of Canada’s Governor General’s Award for Best Drama, this play spares no one as it sheds light on the damage and healing happening in Indigenous communities across the country. 

By Kevin Loring,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Where the Blood Mixes as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Where the Blood Mixes is meant to expose the shadows below the surface of the author’s First Nations heritage, and to celebrate its survivors. Though torn down years ago, the memories of their Residential School still live deep inside the hearts of those who spent their childhoods there. For some, like Floyd, the legacy of that trauma has been passed down through families for generations. But what is the greater story, what lies untold beneath Floyd’s alcoholism, under the pain and isolation of the play’s main character?

Loring’s title was inspired by the mistranslation of the N’lakap’mux (Thompson) place name…


Book cover of The Berlin Blues

Drew Hayden Taylor Author Of The Night Wanderer

From my list on Indigenous plays on the people and community.

Why am I passionate about this?

Drew Hayden Taylor is an award-winning playwright, novelist, journalist, and filmmaker. Born and raised on the Curve Lake First Nation in Ontario (Anishnawbe), Drew has had over a hundred productions of his plays and enjoys spreading the gospel of Indigenous literature across the world. 

Drew's book list on Indigenous plays on the people and community

Drew Hayden Taylor Why did Drew love this book?

Many of the plays written by Indigenous playwrights are usually dark and critical. This play is a little different. It’s an unabashed comedy celebrating the Indigenous sense of humour. Essentially, the play is about two German entrepreneurs who travel to a First Nations community planning to build the world’s largest Native theme park, called Ojibway world. The play deals with stereotypes and the global marketing of culture. 

By Drew Hayden Taylor,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked The Berlin Blues as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

A consortium of German developers shows up on the fictional Otter Lake Reserve with a seemingly irresistible offer to improve the local economy: the creation of “Ojibway World,” a Native theme park designed to attract European tourists, causing hilarious personal and political divisions within the local community.

The Berlin Blues concludes Drew Hayden Taylor’s Blues quartet, showcasing contemporary stereotypes of First Nations people, including a fair number that originate from Indigenous communities themselves, to the often outraged delight of his international audiences.

Yet Europeans and other ethnic groups are not exempt from Taylor’s incisive but good-humoured caricatures. Central to the…


Book cover of Copper Thunderbird

Drew Hayden Taylor Author Of The Night Wanderer

From my list on Indigenous plays on the people and community.

Why am I passionate about this?

Drew Hayden Taylor is an award-winning playwright, novelist, journalist, and filmmaker. Born and raised on the Curve Lake First Nation in Ontario (Anishnawbe), Drew has had over a hundred productions of his plays and enjoys spreading the gospel of Indigenous literature across the world. 

Drew's book list on Indigenous plays on the people and community

Drew Hayden Taylor Why did Drew love this book?

An amazing play about an amazing man, artist Norval Morrisseau. Surreal and yet very real, the play deals with three very important periods in this groundbreaking artist's life as he created a whole genre of Canadian art. The audience is given a window into the man's highs and lows, and how in the end, he became rose above it all and became a legend.

By Marie Clements,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Copper Thunderbird as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Copper Thunderbird is a play on canvases based on the life of Norval Morrisseau. Inside the power-lines which Morrisseau boldly defined in his art were the colours he experienced between his Ojibwa cosmology, his life on the street, and his spiritual and philosophical transformations to become the Father of Contemporary Native Art and a Grand Shaman. Appearing simultaneously in this multi-layered drama as a small boy, a young warrior and an old man, Morrisseau confronts his many selves over the Faustian destiny he encountered during his vision quest—a momentary terror that led to a life wracked by both triumph and…


Book cover of Canzone di Guerra

Brian Castro Author Of The Garden Book

From my list on writing that falls between the cracks of genre.

Why am I passionate about this?

I am an aficionado of lost objects, lost time, afterlives; of writing which never “fitted” its era. Examples would be that of John Aubrey, Herman Melville, Fernando Pessoa, Djuna Barnes, Elizabeth Hardwick, Ralph Ellison… the list goes on. I look for writing that has stood the test of time, not celebrated for the fame and bling of the moment. I look for the futile products of those who possessed genius, but who never earned enough readers until decades or centuries later, once they were released from the prison-house of genre. I look for the posthumous brilliance of language; the phosphoric glow of its offerings and of the buried treasures found therein.

Brian's book list on writing that falls between the cracks of genre

Brian Castro Why did Brian love this book?

I just love the way she is so contemptuous of people telling false “stories”. Her writing falls between every genre imaginable, a collage of well-researched facts and the indelible list of the horrors of war. She makes lists as monuments to dead victims; she names names; she calls out nationalism and racism. Wry and ironic, she has composed a battle-hymn against the barbarity of the Yugoslav wars between 1991 and 2001. To my lasting regret, I missed meeting her in Melbourne not long before she died. 

By Daša Drndić,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Canzone di Guerra as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Tea Radan, the narrator of the novel Canzone di Guerra, reflects on her own past and in doing so, composes a forgotten mosaic of historical events that she wants to first tear apart and then reassemble with all the missing fragments. In front of the readers eyes, a collage of different genres takes place - from (pseudo) autobiography to documentary material and culinary recipes. With them, the author Dasa Drndic skillfully explores different perspectives on the issue of emigration, the unresolved history of the Second World War, while emphasizing the absurdity of politics of differences between neighboring nations. The narrator…


Book cover of Out of School: Information Art and the Toronto School of Communication

William J. Buxton Author Of Harold Innis on Peter Pond: Biography, Cultural Memory, and the Continental Fur Trade

From my list on By or about the Canadian philosopher Marshall McLuhan (.

Why am I passionate about this?

William J. Buxton is Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Communication Studies and Senior Fellow, Centre for Sensory Studies, at Concordia University Montreal, Qc, Canada. He is also professeur associé au Département d’information et de communication de l’Université Laval, Québec City, Québec, Canada. He has edited and co-edited five books related to the life and works of the Canadian political economist and media theorist, Harold Adams Innis.

William's book list on By or about the Canadian philosopher Marshall McLuhan (

William J. Buxton Why did William love this book?

This book dovetails with those of Kitnick as well as Sharma and Singh. While framed by a broader concern with the emergence of the Toronto School of Communication, it gives particular attention to how McLuhan’s notions about “information art,” came to influence artistic practice through initiatives such as “N.E. Thing and Company” (NETCO), Robert Smithson’s West Coast work and “General Idea.” Echoing some of the issues raised by the Sharma/Singh collection, he examines these ventures through the lens of power and gender. It is impeccably edited and handsomely illustrated, in line with the high production standards of McGill-Queen’s University Press.

By Adam Lauder,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Out of School as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Through a series of focused and interconnected case studies, Out of School explores the long history of information art associated with the Toronto School of Communication. It highlights the perspectives of artists inspired by the speculations of Marshall McLuhan and colleagues as well as the philosophical underpinnings of the Toronto School's ideas about information.

Using pre-Internet media such as telex and the telecopier, the artists explored in this book materialized visionary concepts of information without the aid of computers. Harbingers of contemporary digital culture, Bertram Brooker, N.E. Thing Co., Robert Smithson, Wyndham Lewis, General Idea, and other artists approached information…


Book cover of The Water Rat of Wanchai

Rosemary McCracken Author Of Uncharted Waters

From my list on Canadian mysteries.

Why am I passionate about this?

I’m a Canadian writer who started writing fiction after a career as a journalist at newspapers across the country. I’ve always marvelled at the diversity of Canada, and I try to portray that diversity in my own stories set in Toronto, one of the world’s most multicultural cities. And I revel in stories by fellow Canadian crime writers, tales filled with First Nations characters, and characters with Ukrainian, Russian, Asian, African, and British backgrounds, stories set in various parts of our far-flung country. The five novels I have focused on here are just a few of my favorites.

Rosemary's book list on Canadian mysteries

Rosemary McCracken Why did Rosemary love this book?

The Water Rat of Wanchai is the first book in the Ava Lee crime thriller series. Tough, fearless Ava is a forensic accountant who travels to exotic locales (all well-known to author Ian Hamilton) chasing bad debts. The settings aren’t Canadian, but Ava is: she immigrated to Canada from Hong Kong as a child, and grew up in Richmond Hill, outside Toronto. Her current home is in Toronto’s trendy Yorkville neighborhood, but she has strong business ties to Asia. In many ways, she’s a typical Canadian—raised and educated in Canada, with ties to another part of the world, and fluent in a language other than Canada’s two official languages, English and French. All 15 Ava Lee books deliver on two fronts: they are crime thrillers and delightful armchair travel.

By Ian Hamilton,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked The Water Rat of Wanchai as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Meet Ava Lee — the smartest, most stylish heroine in crime fiction since Stieg Larsson’s Lisbeth Salandar — in the first installment of the wildly popular Ava Lee novels. 

Ava Lee is a young Chinese-Canadian forensic accountant, who specializes in recovering massive debts and works for an elderly Hong Kong–based “Uncle,” who may or may not have ties to the triads. At 115 lbs., she hardly seems a threat. But her razor-sharp intelligence and unorthodox rules of engagements allow her to succeed where traditional methods have failed.

In The Water Rat of Wanchai Ava is persuaded to help an old…


Book cover of Stray Bullets

Vicky Earle Author Of What Happened to Frank?

From my list on books with quirky characters in intriguing places.

Why am I passionate about this?

I have loved stories all my life, not only to read but to write. I have a particular passion for mysteries and will soon be releasing the sixth book in my Meg Sheppard Mystery Series. I read for enjoyment and prefer fast-paced stories with compelling characters. I’ve selected these books because they’re great reads and I hope you find them as entertaining as I did!

Vicky's book list on books with quirky characters in intriguing places

Vicky Earle Why did Vicky love this book?

I loved this fast-paced mystery with its suspense and captivating characters. 

Rotenberg’s experience as a criminal lawyer in Toronto, Canada, provides a richness and believability that I found compelling. The courtroom drama is full of intrigue and is thrilling to read. 

I enjoyed the twists and surprises as this captivating whodunit unfolded. 

By Robert Rotenberg,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Stray Bullets as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

From the bestselling author of Old City Hall comes Robert Rotenberg’s third intricate mystery set on the streets and in the courtrooms of Toronto.

In The Guilty Plea and Old City Hall, critically acclaimed author Robert Rotenberg created gripping page-turners that captured audiences in Canada and around the world.

In Stray Bullets, Rotenberg takes the reader to a snowy November evening. Outside a busy downtown doughnut shop, gunshots ring out and a young boy is critically hurt. Soon Detective Ari Greene is on scene. How many shots were fired? How many guns? How many witnesses?

With grieving parents and a…


Book cover of Muddy York Mud: Scandal & Scurrility In Upper Canada

Ann Birch Author Of A Daughter Rebels

From my list on brave women who dared to challenge the norms.

Why am I passionate about this?

For a number of years, I was a historical interpreter at two of Toronto’s oldest and finest houses. While looking at the furniture, paintings, and below-stairs bells and open-hearth cooking in these upper-class mansions, I became immersed in the lives of the people who once lived in these places. I have always been interested in history, and I have a post-graduate degree in Canadian literature, but my schooling in history seemed confined to the Tudor period and Greek and Roman times. Working in Toronto’s fine homes led me to a deep understanding of the fascinating history we have right here on our doorstep!

Ann's book list on brave women who dared to challenge the norms

Ann Birch Why did Ann love this book?

I found this book at a sale about 20 years ago, and it opened my eyes to the fascinating early history about my city, Toronto. It’s filled with information about the scandals, tragedies, and courtroom clashes of the prominent families of the times, the problems faced by early immigrants, and the attempts of a government elite to control the town’s inhabitants. Some of it seems very relevant for today!

By Chris Raible,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Muddy York Mud as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Book by Raible, Chris


Book cover of No Place Like Home

Landra Jennings Author Of Wand

From my list on middle grade with fresh takes on portal fantasy.

Why am I passionate about this?

Middle grade always takes a big portion of my TBR pile. I love the hopefulness that kids this age have. And for a child reader, a book can be a way to work out big emotions in a place far removed from their own life. I love the function of a portal in taking the reader that much further away from their reality. As a child, the fantasy A Wrinkle in Time got me through a difficult period. This love of fantasy and children’s literature is the reason I started writing in the first place. And why I got an MFA in writing specifically for children and young adults. 

Landra's book list on middle grade with fresh takes on portal fantasy

Landra Jennings Why did Landra love this book?

I read the Canadian printing of this book, but hopefully the publishers won’t be changing too much for the American printing.

Like the heroine in The Wizard of Oz (and I’m assuming the title is a nod to that classic line, “There’s no place like home.”), Lan is whisked away by a mysterious wind, but I really like the fact that she discovers she has called for the wind herself. I also love that the wind takes her into the novel she’s reading (I’m sure you can see a theme here with one of my other picks!) and that she can then change the story’s outcome. 

By Linh S. Nguyễn,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked No Place Like Home as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it. This book is for kids age 9, 10, 11, and 12.

What is this book about?

Sweeping in scope and timeless in tone, No Place like Home is a middle-grade portal fantasy unlike any other

Lan, a teenager who recently came to Canada from Vietnam, spends every day searching for a sense of belonging. Books are the only things that make her feel at ease. But it comes as a shock when a mysterious wind whisks her right into the pages of her latest fantasy read. More shocking still is the fact that she herself summoned this wind!

Plunged into the magical world of Silva, Lan realizes she has much to offer protagonists Annabelle and Marlow.…


5 book lists we think you will like!

Interested in First Nations, Toronto, and Canada?

First Nations 10 books
Toronto 64 books
Canada 451 books