Annotation:Wolf Totem should resonate deeply with Prairie readers — it’s basically a western, a story of tribes of aboriginal horsemen dispossessed by urban colonialists, a story of a vast grassland frontier destroyed by industrial farm techniques. Read it, not just as a great adventure story, but as a way of seeing our own narrative from a new, subversive perspective. — Paula Simons, columnist

Annotation:The story is told from the viewpoint of a dog named Enzo (after Enzo Ferrari) as he takes stock of his life on his deathbed. With the soul of a philosopher, his knowledge of the world from watching television and an obsession with opposable thumbs, Enzo is not like other dogs. Enzo is the companion of an amateur race car driver named Denny Swift and through Denny, Enzo discovers that life, like racing, is not just about going fast. The book is ultimately about faith, hope and perseverance and the triumph of the spirit, both canine and human. — Ian Stewart, copy editor

Annotation:A gripping, powerful tale, and not just because it’s wonderfully, lyrically written. This compelling read from Irish playwright Sebastian Barry is built around the mystery of identity — that people are not who you think they are. It’s the story of Roseanne McNulty, an old lady confined for years to a mental hospital, and her psychiatrist Dr. Grene, who must move his patients out of the hospital, which is closing. His efforts to uncover Roseanne’s past bring the unexpected. You won’t be able to put it down. — Sheila Pratt, reporter

Annotation:This story of the immigrant experience has no words but the illustrations in Shaun Tan’s 2006 masterpiece are so evocative the book might as well have as many words as War and Peace. In this magic realism graphic novel, Tan tells the story of a man who must leave his homeland, which is in the grips of totalitarianism. The protagonist crosses the ocean on a boat to live in a new world city. This city has the feel of a metropolis like New York, but it’s a strange enough place that it brings home the reality of how difficult it must be for a newcomer to adapt to new languages, customs, plants and animals. On the face of it, the book is for children but any adult who gets hold of it is unlikely to say another word until turning the last page. — David Staples, columnist

Annotation:Hands down, the most beautiful read of my year. In a similar vein to Iñárritu films (Babel, Amores Perros), this book is a collection of stories told by 11 vaguely connected characters in New York. Colum McCann’s flawed characters are so perfectly, evocatively rendered they’re like literary sculptures that together form an allegory for New York, a place targeted by crazy French tightrope walkers and terrorists alike. “We find, as in old jewelry, the gone days of our lives,” writes McCann, who, with a poet’s eye, describes chimneys’ output as “scarves of smoke” and, with an old man’s wisdom, gives meaning to the nobodies, to the mundane: “ … how much courage it takes to live an ordinary life.” — Elizabeth Withey, reporter

Annotation:Jon Krakauer delivers another fascinating read in Where Men Win Glory, his 2009 chronicle of the too-short life and tragic death of Pat Tillman. Tillman, a bone-crushing tackler with the NFL’s Arizona Cardinals, walked away from fame and fortune after the 9/11 terrorist attacks to enlist in the U.S. army. He was killed in a firefight in a remote canyon in eastern Afghanistan in 2004. But the ugly facts, once exposed, told a very different tale. Tillman was in fact killed by “friendly fire” after his twitchy, trigger-happy fellow soldiers mistook him for a Taliban fighter. — Gary Lamphier, columnist

Annotation:I loved Ann Patchett’s Bel Canto, about a group of people taken hostage during a birthday party in South America. But her latest book is even better. Patchett returns to South America, following mousey scientist Marina Singh as she finds herself unexpectedly torn from the comfort of her laboratory and plunked into a snake- and insect-infested jungle in search of the truth behind the death of her longtime friend and lab partner. — Keri Sweetman, Arts & Life editor

Annotation:Stanley Hauerwas’s unflinchingly honest memoir of faith. Hauerwas is a potty-mouthed son of a Texas bricklayer who builds an unlikely narrative that takes him from father’s apprentice to Yale, Notre Dame and Duke University, — Brent Wittmeier, reporter

Annotation:Almost 40 years old. Classic sports journalism in a used paperback that has full colour ads for Brut aftershave in the middle of it. What I liked was that it was not just about a storied baseball team, the Brooklyn Dodgers, but also about what happens to the players after baseball. — David Howell, City editor

Annotation:The writing in Eleanor Catton’s debut novel is razor-sharp and rampant with cleverness. The Rehearsal is elegant in its opacity. And the prose feels alive, visceral and heart-pounding, dripping and dank with the seething power of raw untapped story. — David Johnston, social media specialist