Summary: Nonrotating black holes in three and four dimensions are shown to possess a canonical entropy obeying the Bekenstein-Hawking area law together with a leading correction (for large horizon areas) given by the logarithm of the area with a universal finite negative coefficient, provided one assumes that the quantum black hole mass spectrum has a power-law relation with the quantum area spectrum found in nonperturbative canonical quantum general relativity. The thermal instability associated with asymptotically flat black holes appears in the appropriate domain for the index characterizing this power-law relation, where the canonical entropy (free energy) is seen to turn complex.