A LAMBDA Award winner and breakout fiction sensation returns with a darkly funny slice of friendship strife

We arrive to wreckagea restaurant smashed to rubble, with tables and chairs upended riotously. Under the swampy nighttime cover of a Montreal heat-wave, this is where we meet our protagonist, Cannon, dripping in little beads of regret sweat. She was supposed to be closing the restaurant for the night, but instead, well, she destroyed it. The mess feels a bit like a horror-scapenot unlike the horror films Cannon and her best friend, Trish, watch together. Cooking dinner and digging into deep cuts of Australian horror films on their scheduled weekly hangs has become the glue in their rote relationship. In high school, they were each other’s lifelinetwo queer second-generation Chinese nerds trapped in the suburbs. Now, on the uncool side of their twenties, the essentialness of one another feels harder to pin down.

Yet, when our stoic and unbendingly well-behaved Cannon finds herselfvery uncharacteristicallysurrounded by smashed plates, it is Trish who shows up to pull her the hell outta there.

InCannon, Lee Lais much anticipated follow-up to the critically acclaimed and award-winningStone Fruit,the full palette of a nervous breakdown is just a slice of what Lai has on offer. As Cannons shoulders bend under the weight of an aging Gung-gung and an avoidant mother, Lais sharp sense of humor and sensitive eye produce a story that will hit readers with a smash.

Lee Laiis an Australian cartoonist living in Tiotia:ke (colonially known as Montreal, Canada). In 2021, she was selected as one of the National Book Foundations 5 Under 35 for her debut graphic novel,Stone Fruit, which went on to win several awards, including the Lambda Literary Award for Graphic Novel, the Cartoonist Studio Prize, the Lynd Ward Graphic Novel Prize, and two Ignatz Awards. Her comics have appeared on the New Yorker, McSweeneys, the New York Times, Granta Magazine, and the Museum of Modern Art Magazine.

A beautifully-drawn slice of life, filled with the kind of intimate, specific details that make the best fiction seem autobiographical. Adrian Tomine,Shortcomings

Beguilingly drawn,Cannondepicts a wide spectrum of adulthood with nuance and complexity. From one story unravels many stories, about friendships, situationships, work, familial obligations. I was struck by its attention and care. Ling Ma,Bliss Montage

InCannon, Lee Lai has performed a rare and powerful act of alchemythe images, narrative, and writing not only capture a life, but combine so that the book itself feels alive. Torrey Peters,Stag Dance

Its rare, and precious, when a momentin a movie, in a poem, in a comicsurges up at you as being True. And inCannon, Lee Lai does it again and again. Eleanor Davis,The Hard Tomorrow

• Publisher: Drawn and Quarterly
• Publish Date: September 9, 2025
• Language:English
• Hardcover: 304pages
• EAN/UPC: 9781770468023
• Dimensions: 8.7 x 7.4 x 1.1 inches | 2.0 pounds
• BISAC Categories: Comic & Graphic Novels, LGBTQ+, Contemporary Women