The B222 Team's Fall & Winter Reading Recs

With Halloween just around the corner, autumn is officially upon us. The colder seasons are perfect for visiting cafes and cozying up with a book! Our 2025-2026 B222 team is so excited to share their fall and winter book recs and favourite authors. Get to know the students behind the B222 Journal below.

Lia - Managing Editor

Favourite genre: Literary fiction, poetry

Favourite author: Clarice Lispector

Fall/Winter Book Rec: Transit by Rachel Cusk 

(Indigo)

The second novel in the Outline trilogy and a finalist for the Scotiabank Giller Prize, Transit follows a writer and her sons after they move to London in the wake of a family collapse. While adjusting to life in a new city, the narrator begins a journey of self-reflection on the tensions between wanting to remain within (or flee) our real lives.

Lia's thoughts on Transit:

In autumn, I tend to reach for summer reads to warm up as we transition into the colder months. Transit is the novel that made me reflect on these states of transition from the changing seasons, adaptation to newness and the abandonment of old, and, of course, the moments of progress in between.

Emma - Editorial Assistant 

Favourite genre: Literary journalism

Favourite author: Joan Didion

Fall/Winter Book Rec: All the Living & the Dead by Hayley Campbell 

(Indigo)

All the Living & the Dead: From Embalmers to Executioners, an Exploration of the People Who Have Made Death Their Living is a compelling collection of interviews with workers in the “death industry”. A perfect non-fiction novel for anyone looking for more spooky season reads! 

Micaela - Prose Editor

Favourite genre: Non-fiction, specifically memoirs and short essays

Favourite author: Anne T. Donahue

Fall/Winter Book Rec: Look Ma, No Hands by Gabrielle Drolet

(Indigo)

A candid and humorous memoir that follows Drolet’s diagnosis with chronic pain that impacted her ability to write and make art. Chapters move through different moments and cities as Drolet re-learns what it means to carry out both mundane and creative tasks while coming into her early adulthood. 

Paige - Poetry Editor

Favourite genre: Literary fiction, poetry

Favourite author: Elena Ferrante 

Fall/Winter Book Rec: The Rachel Incident by Caroline O’Donoghue 

(Indigo)

A comedic and chaotic novel that follows protagonist Rachel and her love-at-first sight friendship with a young man named James. The two find themselves navigating friendship, romance, and secrets after Rachel falls in love with her married professor (and his rich, glamorous wife becomes involved). A humorous coming-of-age triumph set in Cork, Ireland. 

Mara - Art Editor 

Favourite genre: Contemporary fiction, poetry 

Favourite author: Sarah Winman

Fall/Winter Book Rec: Lie With Me by Philippe Besson

(Indigo)

Translated from French by Molly Ringwald, Lie With Me centres around protagonist Philippe, who spots a young man outside a hotel who resembles his first love. From there, the novel travels through time as Philippe looks back on his first relationship with a boy named Thomas in high school, recounting their secret, life-altering romance through time. 

Mara's thoughts on Lie With Me:

Despite its slim length, Lie With Me lingers in my mind months after reading it. Told from the perspective of a middle-aged man reminiscing about a summer in his youth, Besson's prose masterfully fuses these two points of views, allowing readers to sink into both a mature, wiser lens whilst being sucked in by the passion of a first love.

Naya - Art Director

Favourite genre: Historical fiction, Westerns

Favourite author: Ron Hansen

Fall/Winter Book Rec: 2666 by Roberto Bolaño

(Indigo)

Translated from Spanish by Natasha Wimmer, 2666 is the posthumous novel from the award-winning Chilean author. Strange and beautiful, the story follows students, academics, convicts, and other unforgettable characters whose lives intersect in SantaTeresa, a fictional city on the U.S.-Mexico border where hundreds of factory workers have disappeared. 

Macie - Newsletter Editor

Favourite genre: Literary fiction, poetry

Favourite author: Toni Morrison

Fall/Winter Book Rec: Daughter by Claudia Dey

(Indigo)

A Globe and Mail Best Book of the Year, Daughter follows playwright and actress Mona as she seeks to make a life of her own in the shadow of her celebrity father’s betrayals and affairs. Vivid and cutting prose with the essence of autofiction.  

Quin - Social Media Manager

Favourite genre: High fantasy, literary fiction

Favourite author: Edgar Allen Poe

Fall/Winter Book Rec: Once and Future Witches by Alix E. Harrow

(Indigo)

Set in 1893 in New Salem, witches are considered a thing of the past, with witchcraft reduced to small charms and rhymes. Three sisters join the suffragist movement only to find themselves hunted by those who don’t want to give witches the vote. The sisters must return to the old magics and create new alliances if they want to survive. 

Adam - Social Media Manager

Favourite genre: Comedy

Favourite author: Walter Isaacson

Fall/Winter Book Rec: Mister Miracle by Tom King

(Indigo)

A DC comic following Scott Free, a world-famous escape artist and his wife, Big Barda, who must overcome the wars raging in their homelands and stop a new weapon from destroying everything they love. Classic superhero vibes! 

Aislin - Events Coordinator

Favourite genre: Literary romance

Favourite author: Jane Austen

Fall/Winter Book Rec: Smoke Gets in Your Eyes by Caitlin Doughty

(Indigo)

Smoke Gets in Your Eyes: And Other Lessons from the Crematory follows Doughty’s curiosity for the morbid and macabre in a dark and hilarious memoir. Pairs perfectly with Emma’s fall/winter rec! 

Sarah - Events Coordinator

Favourite genre: Murder mysteries

Favourite author: Cara Hunter

Fall/Winter Book Rec: The Mysterious Case of the Alperton Angels by Janice Hallett 

(Indigo)

This fictional crime thriller centres around the “Alperton Angels”, a cult who once convinced a teenage girl that her baby was the anti-christ. Now that the child is turning eighteen, writer Amanda Bailey seeks to find their identity and revive her career by writing about the case. With rival author Oliver Menzies also searching for the child, the two writers soon become tangled in a mystery that is more dark and strange than they ever could have realized. 

Sam - Reader

Favourite genre: Speculative fiction

Favourite author: Sydney Hegele 

Fall/Winter Book Rec: The Green Bone Saga by Fonda Lee

In an Asian-inspired fantasy metropolis, powerful families fight for a monopoly over the jade market, with jade stones being used to enhance magical abilities and protect the island of Kekon from invasion. When a new drug is created that lets anyone wield jade, the Kauls and their rival family, the Ayts, find themselves in an all-out clan war. 

Quinn - Reader

Favourite genre: Philosophical fiction and non-fiction 

Favourite author: Robinson Jeffers

Fall/Winter Book Rec: And Then She Fell by Alicia Elliot

(Indigo)

An Indigenous Voices Award Winner long-listed for the Women’s Prize for Fiction, And Then She Fell follows Mohawk woman Alice as she tries to raise a family in Toronto and pursue her dream of writing a modern retelling of the Haudenosaunee story of the creation of the world. As her passive-aggressive white neighbours become more threatening, and Alice begins hearing voices and losing pieces of time, she realizes that finishing her story is the key to saving herself and her newborn daughter, Dawn. 

Sydney - Reader 

Favourite genre: Literary fiction

Favourite author: Lisa Taddeo 

Fall/Winter Book Rec: Writers and Lovers by Lily King

(Indigo)

Reeling from her mother’s death and a recent love affair, Casey Peabody, a former child golf prodigy, now waits tables in 1997 Massachusetts.  While she clutches onto her creative ambitions, her world fractures even more when she falls in love with two different men. A humorous and unforgettable portrait of an artist as a young woman. 

Sydney's thoughts on Lovers and Writers:

I think about this book and Casey often. It is a quick read and King pulls off the arguably daunting task of writing a book about a writer trying to write a book with ease. Casey deals with the trauma of losing her mother, discovering who she is and waiting tables as she battles the egos of (some) male writers while finding her own voice and place in the literary world.

That concludes the B222 team's reading recs for the fall and winter season. Already read some of our suggestions? Leave us your (spoiler-free) reviews in the comments.

Happy reading!