C&C Happening

Welcome to 2025!!! We are a little late getting started here due to vacation, sickness, and losing the first & second draft (eep!). But we are thrilled to be back. But before we look forward into 2025, let’s take a quick look back at 2024. We were going to to our top 10 bestsellers, but we had so many ties, that we had to do the top 6, which is actually 13 books.

We love this list! There are plenty of Hamilton authors, indie publishers, and book club books on this list. Warms a poor ole booksellers heart! Thanks so the people to who buy, write, and publish these great books every year!

The City & The City Books Bestsellers 2024

In the 6th position, we have a four way tie! 3 are Hamiltonians and we were thrilled to do cool launches for all three which included huge cakes, crazy musical backing, and a bingo game! The books are:

All You Can Kill - Pasha Malla’s terrifying and hilarious follow up to Kill the Mall, finds our hero now on a resort where everything it not as it seems.

Inside Every Dream, A Raging Sea - Liz Worth’s gorgeous, witchy new books of poems inspired by her tarot card readings.

Scandal at the Alphorn Factory - Gary Barwin has been writing short stories for 25 (!) years and he just keeps getting better.

Intermezzo - Sally Rooney does not live in Hamilton, but you might have heard about her anyways.

Husbands - Holly Gramazio’s writes about a woman who keeps getting new husbands from the attic and our first book club book on the list. Tons of fun.

The Marigold - Andrew F Sullivan’s book is still going strong after making the top 3 last year. Let’s keep this creepy, wonderful book going.

The Serviceberry - Robin Wall Kimmerer’s bold and inspiring vision for how to orient our lives around gratitude, reciprocity, and community, based on the lessons of the natural world didn’t come out until November and we sold out 2 weeks before Christmas and we are thrilled to see this important book on the list.

Another 4 way tie!

All Fours - Miranda July’s wry, take on a 45 year old woman quest for a new type of freedom.

Never Whistle At Night - A collection of Indigenous stories that are a celebration of Indigenous peoples’ survival and imagination, and a glorious reveling in all the things an ill-advised whistle might summon.

The Hundred Years’ War on Palestine - Rashid Khalidi - A landmark history of one hundred years of war waged against the Palestinians from the foremost US historian of the Middle East, told through pivotal events and family history.

The Social Safety Net - Nora Loreto - We were lucky to host Nora’s launch this fall. This is first book in the Canada in Decline series, tracking the forty-year attack on Canada's welfare state.

The Future - Catherine Leroux trans by Susan Ouriou was the winner of Canada Reads and another book club pick. In an alternate history in which the French never surrendered Detroit, children protect their own kingdom in the trees.

Parable of the Sower - Octavia Butler’s seminal book, originally released in 1993, eerily prophesied many terrifying events that are happening now south of border with only being a few months off. Another book club pick and an incredible read.

EVENTS

January