8 books to read if you loved Bad Cree by Jessica Johns

Athlete and CBC Sports broadcaster Dallas Soonias championed Bad Cree on Canada Reads 2024. The horror-infused debut novel made it to Day Three of the competition. 

Bad Cree centres around a young woman named Mackenzie, who is haunted by terrifying nightmares and wracked with guilt about her sister Sabrina's untimely death. The lines between her dreams and reality start to blur when she begins seeing a murder of crows following her around the city — and starts getting threatening text messages from someone claiming to be her dead sister.

Looking to escape, Mackenzie heads back to her hometown in rural Alberta where she finds her family still entrenched in their grief. With her dreams intensifying and getting more dangerous, Mackenzie must confront a violent family legacy and reconcile with the land and her community.

• 'It's not like you can put it on the doorstep': Dallas Soonias talks trauma in the subtext of Bad Cree

Johns is a queer nehiyaw aunty with English-Irish ancestry and a member of Sucker Creek First Nation. Johns won the 2020 Writers' Trust Journey Prize for the short story Bad Cree, which evolved into the novel of the same name. Bad Cree also won the MacEwan Book of the Year prize. Johns is currently based in Edmonton.

Here are eight books to read if you loved Bad Cree.

The Marrow Thieves by Cherie Dimaline

​Similar to Bad Cree in its horror-filled descriptions and exploration of Indigenous experiences, The Marrow Thieves takes places in a world where climate change has ravaged the Earth and a continent-wide hunt and slaughter of Indigenous people is underway. Wanted for their bone marrow, which contains the lost ability to dream, a group of Indigenous people seek refuge in the old lands.

In 2017, The Marrow Thieves won the Governor General's Literary Award for Young people's literature — text and the Kirkus Prize for young readers' literature. The sequel, Hunting by Stars, was released in 2021.

The Marrow Thieves was defended by Jully Black on Canada Reads 2018.

• After blockbuster book The Marrow Thieves, 'peer pressure' led Cherie Dimaline to pen sequel Hunting by Stars

Cherie Dimaline is a Métis author and editor. Her other books include Hunting by Stars, Red Rooms, The Girl Who Grew a Galaxy, A Gentle Habit and Empire of Wild. The Marrow Thieves was named one of Time magazine's top 100 YA novels of all time. Dimaline won the 2021 Writers' Trust Engel Findley Award, recognizing the accomplishments of a fiction writer in the middle of her career.

And Then She Fell by Alicia Elliott

And Then She Fell is a horror novel which follows a young woman named Alice struggling to navigate the early days of motherhood and live up to the unrealistic expectations of those around her.

• Alicia Elliott's novel And Then She Fell longlisted for $51K Women's Prize for Fiction

Alicia Elliott is a Mohawk writer currently based in Brantford, Ont. She is also the author of the nonfiction book A Mind Spread Out on the Ground, a columnist for CBC Arts and CBC Books named her a writer to watch in 2019. She was chosen by Tanya Talaga as the 2018 recipient of the RBC Taylor Emerging Writer Award. And Then She Fell is Elliott's debut novel.

We're All in This Together by Amy Jones

We're All in This Together begins with 63-year-old Thunder Bay grandmother Kate Parker going over a waterfall in a barrel. She survives the fall (and a cellphone video of the feat goes viral), but slips into a coma a short while later. Her large, eclectic family is thrown out of its comfort zone, with a wide range of colourful characters taking the wheel of the narrative. 

We're All in This Together won the Northern Lit Award and was a finalist for the Stephen Leacock Medal for Humour.

• Amy Jones on finding the humour in family drama

Amy Jones is a writer from Nova Scotia who now lives in Hamilton, Ont. Her books include the novels Pebble & Dove and Every Little Piece of Me and the short story collection What Boys Like. Jones won the 2006 CBC Short Story Prize.

Crow Winter by Karen McBride

Since Hazel Ellis returned home to Spirit Bear Point First Nation, an old crow has been visiting her dreams to tell her he's come to save her in the novel Crow Winter. As Hazel investigates what this could mean, she discovers an old magic awakening in the quarry on her late father's land. The adventure Hazel embarks on will have a lasting impact on her family and community. 

• Why Karen McBride's debut novel Crow Winter is rooted in the real and the magical worlds

Karen McBride is an Algonquin Anishinaabe writer from the Timiskaming First Nation in the territory that is now Quebec. Crow Winter is her first novel.

Bone and Bread by Saleema Nawaz

Like Bad Cree, Bone and Bread tells the story of a woman struggling to accept her sister's death. Bone and Bread finds Beena grappling with her sister Sadhana's sudden death and has her searching their unusual past for answers. The two were orphaned as teens and raised in Montreal's Hasidic community by their traditional Sikh uncle, where they struggled to understand their cultural heritage and faced intense personal struggles.

Bone and Bread was defended by Farah Mohamed on Canada Reads 2016 and won the Paragraphe Hugh MacLennan Prize for Fiction.

• Saleema Nawaz: How Bone and Bread had the most Montreal of origins

Saleema Nawaz was born in Ottawa and lives in Montreal's Mile End neighbourhood. She is also the author of the novel Songs for the End of the World.

Moon of the Crusted Snow by Waubgeshig Rice

In Moon of the Crusted Snow, a northern Anishinaabe community loses power just as winter arrives, burying roads and creating panic as the food supply slowly runs out. Newcomers begin to arrive on the reserve, escaping a nearby crisis, and tension builds as disease begins taking lives. As chaos takes hold, a small group turns to the land and Anishinaabe tradition to start rebuilding and restoring harmony.

Moon of the Crusted Snow was on the Canada Reads 2023 longlist.

• Why Waubgeshig Rice wrote a dystopian novel about the collapse of society from an Indigenous perspective

Waubgeshig Rice is an Anishinaabe author and journalist originally from Wasauksing First Nation. He is also the author of the short story collection Midnight Sweatlodge and the novels Legacy and Moon of the Turning Leaves, the sequel to Moon of the Crusted Snow. He used to be the host of CBC Radio's Up North.

Son of a Trickster by Eden Robinson

Son of a Trickster is about Jared, a compassionate 16-year-old, maker of famous weed cookies, the caretaker of his elderly neighbours, the son of an unreliable father and unhinged, though loving in her way, mother. As Jared ably cares for those around him, in between getting black-out drunk, he shrugs off the magical and strange happenings that follow him around. Son of a Trickster, a warm, funny and rich novel, was on the shortlist for the 2017 Scotiabank Giller Prize.

Son of a Trickster was on the shortlist for Canada Reads 2020, when it was defended by Kaniehtiio Horn.

• Why it took Eden Robinson eight years to write Son of a Trickster

Eden Robinson is a author from Kitamaat, B.C. She is also the author of the novels Monkey Beach, Trickster Drift and Return of the Trickster.

LISTEN | Eden Robinson discusses Son of a Trickster: 

CBC Books7:17Eden Robinson on her novel Son of a Trickster

Eden Robinson talks to CBC Afternoon Drive host Chris dela Torre about her novel Son of a Trickster, which will be defended by Kaniehtiio Horn on Canada Reads 2020.

Bad Medicine by Christopher Twin

Inspired by Cree folklore and modern Cree life, Bad Medicine follows five teens who share chilling horror stories around a campfire. It was on the Canada Reads 2024 longlist. 

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Christopher Twin is from the Swan River First Nations reservation in northern Alberta. Currently based in Edmonton, he does comic work and illustrations as a freelancer.