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Diane Schoemperlen | This is Not My Life: A Memoir of Love, Prison, and Other Complications | HarperAvenue | 368 pp; $22.99 | April 23

How does a Governor General’s Award-winning author find herself in a relationship with a man behind bars for second-degree murder? Before she had the experience, Diane Schoemperlen couldn’t have told you, either. Love is always harrowing, but not like this: Schoemperlen’s memoir — and her telling of it — is both brave and riveting.

Ken Dryden | The Game | Collins | 336 pp; $19.99 | Available now

Your hockey team didn’t make the playoffs, did it? Don’t worry, they weren’t going to win the Cup anyway. Now you have time to finally read (or re-read) Ken Dryden’s The Game while some other team south of the border romps to the championship. Even the Bostonian Bill Simmons called this Canadiens hall of famer’s memoir the best hockey book ever — maybe the best sports book ever. Read about a time when the Red Wings were pathetic, the Islanders were great, the Canadiens were still the greatest, and goalies were lawyers.

Péter Gárdos, translated by Elizabeth Szász | Fever at Dawn | A Novel | House of Anansi Press | 304 pp; $25 | April 30

A Hungarian concentration camp survivor with a terminal diagnosis writes 117 letters to 117 women survivors in the hopes of finding a wife and dreaming a future into being. One of them writes back to entertain herself as she recovers. In fact, she has written the first letter to her future husband. It sounds like the beginning of a novel — and it is — but it’s based on the true story of Péter Gárdos’ parents and the 96 letters they exchanged.

Leonard Cohen | Beautiful Losers | A Novel | McClelland & Stewart | 264 pp; $21 | Available now

It’s hard to believe the novel famously called “the most revolting book ever written in Canada” is turning fifty years old (the same review also called it “probably the most interesting Canadian book of the year,” but that part often gets left out). Love it/hate it again like the first time.