Songs of Love on a December Night

A November 2025 Reading Is a Lifestyle Subscription Book Pick.

From one of Canada’s greatest novelists comes a tale of dark aspirations, betrayal and murder.

When Colonel Musselman is found dead from an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound, a rumour soon surfaces that he was murdered by his own teenage son, Jamie. As weeks, months and years pass, Jamie—shy and withdrawn but brilliant—continues to maintain his innocence. Yet few others, besides his fiancée, Gertie, believe him. Suspected, harassed and questioned, Jamie is finally tried and convicted of the crime. But nothing is as it seems. Before the murder, unlikely alliances between a self-styled revolutionary recently expelled from university, a young man claiming Indigenous heritage, and Gertie’s own hapless father had long ago set the stage for intrigue and bloodletting. As the aftermath of this crime threatens to destroy both the innocent and the guilty, it is left to a few citizens who have been dismissed and overlooked to solve what the others, blinded by their arrogance and personal vanity, refuse to admit.

Richly conceived and utterly fearless in its examination of morality, justice, prejudice and corruption, Songs of Love on a December Night is an epic exploration of the self-betrayal that we are capable of, and of the redemption we so often aspire to.

Story Locale: Miramachi, New Brunswick