Curiosities

LONGLISTED FOR THE 2025 CAROL SHIELDS PRIZE FOR FICTION • FINALIST FOR THE 2024 GILLER PRIZE • SHORTLISTED FOR THE 2025 FERRO-GRUMLEY AWARD FOR LGBTQ FICTION • The Globe and Mail’s Best Books of 2024 • CBC’s Best Canadian Fiction of 2024

“Singular and surprising, Curiosities is a captivating story of hope, change, and belonging, and first and foremost a testament to varieties of love that endure beyond any one history or era.” —2024 Giller Jury Citation

“Dazzling. . . . Intellectually stimulating and an offbeat dip into history, Curiosities appeals as a dense puzzle that’s intriguing fun. . . . A riot of cerebral invention . . . the novel grips with fervent tales of affection, love, and duty as it conjures a panicked era where witchery was no laughing matter.” —Toronto Star

“Imaginatively rendered. . . . By zeroing in on figures who very easily could have disappeared forever, past lives so unknown they may as well not have existed, Anne’s ‘minor figures’ feel intensely detailed; major, even. . . . You will be rewarded.” —The British Columbia Review

“Curiosities arrives like a little sun from another period to warm the reader with the joy and pleasure of knowledge, even as it illuminates the terrors and confusion that arise from ignorance. Wonders and disasters tumble over fractured lives and loves, but Fleming’s conjuring of the past alive in our present is so deft and sure it might be witchcraft. I loved this book.” —Marina Endicott

“Curiosities is pure delight. Anne Fleming draws us in so that we feel we are living the characters’ lives, whether braving the North Atlantic on a sailing ship, or stealing away for a forbidden tryst in the English countryside. And she does it all with a light touch that has the reader dancing through peril and pleasure.” —Ann-Marie MacDonald, author of Fayne