Read Hamilton
Your City. Your Authors. Your Books
Read Local with the Hamilton Lit List
Discover local authors. Explore the themes, history, and relationships that make us who we are.
Life is different in Hamilton, and so is the literature we produce. Find your next great read in this selection of exciting local books, all published by independent Ontario publishers.
Browse by Children's and Young Adult, Fiction, Mystery/Thriller, Non-Fiction, and Poetry!
Children’s/Young Adult
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Why Are You So Quiet? Hamilton author! Into a world where it often seems nobody is listening comes a poignant story that celebrates the power of silence. |
stay up Hamilton illustrator! An incisive, innovative, and inviting take on fighting oppression and fighting for racial justice. |
Swept Away Flamborough author! A frog-shaped garden sprinkler, a mismatched pair of ladies’ gloves, and an ugly flower picture made of human hair do not add up to murder. Or do they? |
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Other Words for Nonno Hamilton author! A girl and her grandfather bond over a shared love of words. |
Hug? Hamilton author & illustrator! How many hugs is too many? This girl’s had enough! |
Hide-and-Seek Hamilton author! In this fun game of hide-and-seek, young children learn all about positional prepositions. |
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We Are Many Hamilton author! A quirky story with a kid’s-eye view of the curious ways people behave in groups. |
Wingmaker Hamilton author! A creative take on the ever-popular subject of metamorphosis. |
Going Up! Hamilton illustrator! An elevator ride to a birthday party turns into a shared experience bursting with joy. |
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A Terrible Tide Hamilton author! Based on the true story of an earthquake that shook Newfoundland's Burin Peninsula. |
The Great Outer Dark After his voyage across the galaxy, Nate Silva arrives home to find Hamilton in the grip of a monstrous triumvirate. |
The Midnight Games Hamilton author! A thrilling young adult novel set in gritty, post-industrial Hamilton. |
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The Medusa Deep Hamilton author! The electrifying follow-up to award-winning young adult novel The Midnight Games. |
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Fiction
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Chrysalis Hamilton author! Genre-blending stories of transformation and belonging that centre women of colour and explore queerness, family, and community. |
Finding Edward Hamilton author! Cyril Rowntree migrates to Toronto from Jamaica in 2012. Managing a precarious balance of work and university he begins to navigate his way through the implications of being racialized in his challenging new land. |
Lump Hamilton author! A dark, satiric novel about a woman whose attempt to escape crises in her health and marriage ends up causing more chaos. |
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Boy Hamilton author! A story as magical as it is real, that asks, if you could stop and restart time for a second chance, would you? |
The Marigold Hamilton author! In a near-future Toronto buffeted by environmental chaos and unfettered development, an unsettling new lifeform begins to grow beneath the surface, feeding off the past. |
Congratulations On Everything Hamilton author! Ambition, failure, sex, and the service industry. |
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Saints Unexpected Hamilton author! A nimble debut novel featuring a magical Niche and a motley cast of neighbourhood misfits. |
River, Diverted Hamilton author & radio host! A light-hearted and subtly serious read that will captivate readers. |
With My Back to the World Hamilton author! An ambitious novel that explores unexpected motherhood, creativity, race, love and faith. |
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The Fishers of Paradise Set in Hamilton! The boathouse community along the shores of Dundas Marsh has come under siege and young Egypt Fisher is faced with the prospect of losing her home. |
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Mystery/Thriller
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General of Tiananmen Square Burlington author! Ava Lee squares off against the Chinese government over a controversial film depicting the infamous Tiananmen Square Massacre in the latest thriller from bestselling author Ian Hamilton. |
Middlemen Hamilton author! In the fifth instalment of the celebrated MacNeice Mysteries, police track a bloody trail to a grisly crime scene in the woods, uncovering a series of murders that appears to be the work of professional hitmen. |
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Bitter Paradise Set in Hamilton! Fans of Bones and Coroner will love Dr. Zol Szabo, a doctor who is out to solve medical mysteries before it’s too late. |
Running from the Dead Hamilton author! After a search for a kidnapped boy ends in murder, private detective Sam Jones takes matters into his own hands. |
Non-Fiction
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Crisis and Contagion: Hamilton author! As capitalist forces work to shove what we have learned from the Covid-19 pandemic down the memory hole, Crisis and Contagion offers a must-read for those wanting to seize this moment of change and revolution. |
Beryl: Hamilton author! A complex portrait of a woman who defied and challenged gender and disability norms of her time, paving the way for disability justice. |
Shift Change: Hamilton’s industrial age is over. Instead, an urban renaissance is taking shape. But who wins and who loses in the city’s not-too-distant future? |
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Showdown! Based on interviews and other archival materials, this graphic history illustrates how Hamilton workers translated their experience of work and organizing in the '30s and '40s into a new kind of unionism. |
Lunch-Bucket Lives: A bumpy ride through the history of Hamilton’s working people from the 1890s to the 1930s. |
Gods of the Hammer: In the late 1970s and early 1980s, no Canadian band rocked harder, louder or to more hardcore fans than Hamilton, Ontario's own Teenage Head. |
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Haunted Hamilton Hamilton, Ontario, may seem just like any other city, but a haunted past is hidden beneath it. |
Inside Hamilton's Museums Exploring Hamilton through its heritage museums. |
Unbuilt Hamilton Unbuilt Hamilton explores the origins and fates of unrealized building, planning, and transportation proposals from the early nineteenth century to the early twenty-first. |
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My Body Is Distant Hamilton author! An electrifying and vulnerable memoir that invites readers into an intimate conversation about our digital and physical selves, gender, and belonging. |
The Way Between Things Hamilton author! A stunning full-colour art book and the first to explore the career of award-winning visual artist Sandra Meigs |
Treat Me Like Dirt Hamilton author! Treat Me Like Dirt captures the personalities that drove the original Toronto punk scene. |
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Hidden Harvest Hamilton author! A thoroughly researched page-turner about this unprecedented operation — and bust. |
Hamilton Street Names Love, murder, betrayal, political intrigue — stories about Hamilton's past. |
The Hamiltonians A collection of stories about the most interesting and influential people who made Hamilton their home. |
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Hamilton's Hockey Tigers The colourful story of the only NHL team ever to go on strike. The game of hockey in Hamilton — and the NHL — was forever changed. |
Heritage of Stone A fascinating new perspective on the histories of communities of south-western Ontario, including Hamilton. |
Heritage Treasures The Hamilton region's finest heritage homes come to life in glorious colour in the pages of this authoritative book. |
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Ontario House Styles The distinctive architecture of the province's 18th and 19th century homes, including some from Hamilton and the surrounding area. |
I Just Wrote this Five Minutes Ago Hamilton author! I Just Wrote This Five Minutes Ago are the words nobody wants to hear from a fledgling poet behind a microphone. |
Momento: On Standing in Front of Art Hamilton author! A poetic daydream about the curious, otherworldly, but urgent and existential experience of art, artifacts, and the buildings that house them. |
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Can You Believe It? Hamilton author! Everything kids need to know to tell facts from “fake news” on the internet. |
Mad for Ads Hamilton illustrator! A behind-the-scenes look at advertising and its influence. |
Viaticum Hamilton author! Viaticum explore life's most basic questions-and its biggest illusions. |
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Imagining Imagining: From his childhood home in Ireland to his long-time home in Hamilton, Barwin shares the thoughts that keep him up at night and the ideas that keep him creating. |
Her Name Was Margaret: A heartbreaking true story of the life and death of a homeless woman on Hamilton's streets. |
I Thought He Was Dead: Hamilton author! The perfect book for those looking to reinvent themselves at any time of life. |
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Chasing Zebras: Hamilton author! A memoir of growth, tragedy and triumph, and the importance of openness.
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Reclaiming Hamilton: Some of Hamilton’s most tireless advocates chart the rise of a new ambitious city. |
Daylighting Chedoke: Chedoke Creek is one of six creeks that weave their way through Hamilton, but it is the most hidden, lost to culverts and concrete. |
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Yardwork: A beloved book about the layered histories of Hamilton and Niagara escarpment. |
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Poetry
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The Gods of East Wawanosh Hamilton author! Clear-eyed, curious, compassionate, Marilyn Gear Pilling meditates on our mortality and the light in which it casts both our longing for the ideal and our embrace of the real. |
The Most Charming Creatures Hamilton author! The Most Charming Creatures explores the contemporary and its language, considering our wonder, sorrow, bewilderment, anxiety, and tenderness. |
A Cemetery for Holes Hamilton author! Poetic language bends and breaks, resists and reforms under the stress of family trauma. |
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Danger Flower Hamilton author! In this necessary debut, the poet forms essential survival strategies for a changing world. |
Granted Hamilton author! These poems represent a study of being and of becoming. |
Fluke Print Hamilton author! Poetry that reflects on and reimagines creativity, emotion and intellect. |
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Slack Action Hamilton author! Jeffery Donaldson's fifth collection suggests that all life is middle life. |
Adventurize Your Summer! Hamilton author! A wide-ranging look at travel, art and life. |
Moving to Climate Change Hours Hamilton author! From industrial accidents to frozen highways, Belot charts what faces a working man in stripped-down lyric poetry. |
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Divided Hamilton author! Both a lament and paean to a world that is vanishing. |
The Truth is Told Better This Way Hamilton author! Straddling dreamy, ethereal images and brutal honesty, The Truth is Told Better This Way unravels its secrets one line at a time. |
No Work Finished Here: Rewriting Andy Warhol Hamilton author! The poems in this collection hiss and pop with confessional whispers. |
