With the Canlit fall season soon to be upon us, Labour Day weekend seems the perfect time to catch up on last year's top releases. Many of the best-reviewed novels have just been released in paperback. Here's a sampling of five of the best, available at most local bookstores across Canada:

Colony of Unrequited Dreams
Author Wayne Johnson received rave reviews in both the U.S. and Canada for this epic mystery an love story set in Newfoundland. Particularly memorable is his fictional turnaround of Joey Smallwood, the province's first premiere and a mythic figure on the rock. His nemesis is a newspaper columnist.

Summer Gone
David Macfarlane's first novel was acclaimed by the critics, nominated for a Governor-General's award, and was just published in the United States. There's little drama but plenty of poetry in the main character's experience of summer vacations in Ontario's more rustic cottage and camping country in the decades before the suburbanization of Georgian Bay. (If you want to know more about the writing of the book, visit our archives for an on-line interview with Macfarlane.)

A Good House
Author Bonnie Burnard won the 1999 Giller Prize for this compelling story of one southern Ontario family over three generations, from the end of the Second World War to the end of the 20th century. The novel has a sweet nostalgia for the past, and for smalltown life, but brings the tale into the modern era with sharp insight.

Lost Girls
Andrew Pyper's debut novel has already been optioned by Danny DeVito's film company. It's a dark comedy about a young lawyer working on his first murder trial. He's defending a teacher suspected of killing two 14-year-old girls who are mising and presumed dead.

All Tomorrow's Parties
William Gibson's been cranking out the most literary science fiction in the English language. This latest is a densely-layered look at present life, from the perspective of one of Gibson's most popular characers, brought back from the future to deal with a "nodal point -- a moment in history when certain patterns, trends and data associations converge in a critical moment that can irrevocably change life on earth.

Film Fest Coverage
The Toronto International Film Festival starts right after Labour Day, and I'll be checking in to see what's hot and what's not. Meanwhile, if you're a filmmaker or an aspiring filmmaker, you should know in advance about the Rogers Industry Centre (Sept. 7 to 16). All the swell premieres and parties at Bistro 990 may seem like the place to be seen, but if you're still climbing your way up the industry, the biz conference is the place to meet and greet and get noticed.

These industry seminars offer lots of background on the Canadian and global film markets, but there are also coffee breaks and Q & A sessions. Plenty of chances to make yourself noticed and bend a big-wing's ear. This year's Keynote Interview is with Academy Award winning producer Jeremy Thomas, whose worked on money-making art house films with Bernardo Bertolucci, Takeshi Kitano, Stephen Frears, Nicolas Roeg, David Cronenberg and many others. There are lots of other straight conference sessions, but one of the highlights is Telefilm Canada's Pitch This, "a programme aimed at galvanizing the conventional pitch for both pitcher and audience." The winner of the unconventional sales pitch for a major motion picture will take home $6,000.

Some of the all-inclusive passes are already sold out, but you can still get some tickets to this industry-only event. More details: