Creatures made of paper coming alive. A magical mathematical formula that takes away emotions. A toilet baby?!? These are just some of the fantastic stories we read this week from our short story collections. Are you a fan of short stories?

Books mentioned on this episode: The Paper Menagerie by Ken Liu, What It Means When a Man Falls from the Sky by Lesley Nneka Arimah, and Cursed Bunny by Bora Chung, translated by Anton Hur. 

Go bananas! Get ready for some strange, bizarre, and surreal tales. Books mentioned on this episode: My Volcano by John Elizabeth Stinzi, The Regional Office is Under Attack! by Manuel Gonzales, Modelland by Tyra Banks, The Complete Cosmicomics by Italo Calvino, and House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski.

Take some real historical figures and throw them into a fictional world. What would you get? These five amazing books: A Clash of Steel by CB Lee, Stoker's Wilde by Melissa Prusi and Steven Hopstaken, The Twilight World by Werner Herzog, See What I Have Done by Sarah Schmidt, and Sudden Death by Álvaro Enrigue.

It's absolutely delightful when finding one book leads you to another book, and another book, and another book. In this Keep It Fictional episode, we talked about the rabbit holes we have been in and a book we discovered while we were there. Books mentioned in this episode: The Perfect Nine: The Epic of Gĩkũyũ and Mũmbi by Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o, The Story of My Teeth by Valeria Luiselli (translated by Christina MacSweeney), My Friend Anna: The True Story of a Fake Heiress by Rachel DeLoache Williams, and The World of Lore: Monstrous Creatures by Aaron Mahnke.

Summer is here and Gabriel has asked all their book friends to go exploring in this episode of Keep It Fictional. Books mentioned in this episode: The Hike by Drew Magary, Atlas Obscura by by Dylan Thuras, Ella Morton, and Joshua Foer, The Martian Chronicles by Ray Bradbury, Delicious in Dungeon by Ryoko Kui, and Eighty Days by A.C. Esguerra.

Even if you are not a huge sports fan, we hope you will enjoy these sports fiction and non-fiction. Books mentioned in this episode: Real by Takehiko Inoue, Take Your Eye Off the Puck: How to Watch Hockey by Knowing Where to Look by Greg Wyshynski, and Home Field Advantage by Dahlia Adler.

June 21 is National Indigenous Peoples Day in Canada. Read a book by an indigenous author along with our Keep It Fictional librarians. They recommend: The Björkan Sagas by Harold R. Johnson, Medicine River by Thomas King, The Birchbark House by Louise Erdrich, Borders by Thomas King, and Elatsoe by Darcie Little Badger.

Celebrate Pride Month with the Keep It Fictional Librarians from the Port Moody Public Library! Books mentioned on this episode: Gender Failure by Ivan Coyote and Rae Spoon, Dead Collections by Isaac Fellman, The Siren Queen by Nghi Vo, and Our Wives Under the Sea by Julia Armfield.

We are so excited to introduce you to Port Moody Public Library's Adult Summer Reading Club in this episode. Learn more about our "Book of Life" game and what the Keep It Fictional librarians are going to read for their game. More information about our reading club at https://portmoodylibrary.ca/BookOfLife

Books mentioned in this episode: Anansi Boys by Neil Gaiman, My Sister's Big Fat Indian Wedding by Sajni Patel, Gideon the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir, There's No Such Thing as an Easy Job by Kikuko Tsumura, Scattered All Over the Earth by Yoko Tawada, Defenestrate by Renee Branum, and A Magic Steeped in Poison by Judy I. Lin. 

As part of our mini-series where we read books on a topic that we tend to associate with one of our book friends, this week, we dive into one of Corene's interests: cults. Books mentioned in this episode: Cult X by Fuminori Nakamura, The Maidens by Alex Michaelides, The Road to Jonestown: Jim Jones and Peoples Temple by Jeff Guinn, and Salvation Day by Kali Wallace.