BC Books Online was created for anyone interested in BC-published books, and with librarians especially in mind. We'd like to make it easy for library staff to learn about books from BC publishers - both new releases and backlist titles - so you can inform your patrons and keep your collections up to date.
Our site features print books and ebooks - both new releases and backlist titles - all of which are available to order through regular trade channels. Browse our subject categories to find books of interest or create and export lists by category to cross-reference with your library's current collection.
A quick tip: When reviewing the "Browse by Category" listings, please note that these are based on standardized BISAC Subject Codes supplied by the books' publishers. You will find additional selections, grouped by theme or region, in our "BC Reading Lists."
Wayde Compton's first poetry book: a stunning set of poems documenting the migration of Blacks to Canada, specifically when the first Black settlers-facing an increasingly hostile racist government-left San Francisco and travelled north to British Columbia beginning in 1858.
With recurring themes of the unknowable, the crossroads, the trickster, and entropy, 49th Parallel Psalm jumbles history, time, and the Canadian black literary canon.
Shortlisted for the Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize
Only a few pages in, I knew I was in the presence of a writer of rare and edgy brilliance. His words don't just sound right; they have a certain feel in the mouth, begging to be read aloud: "this mess of embers I am left with," "the tindery contagion of humanity and electricity," "sloe on the rocks with a tonic Charybdis/and a quicklime twist." The poems, not set in any particular chronological order, have a sort of cumulative effect, creating an impression of a history written entirely with the right side of the brain... 49th Parallel Psalm is a passionate, funny, dangerous, maddeningly obscure, unbearably lucid book that crackles with anger and subversive energy.
-January Magazine