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."
He Leaves His Face in the Funeral Car is elegiac, lyrical, ironic; a series of reflections, recollections; a collection about relationships-to family, clocks, water, trees, ungulates, endings-recognizing that not all relationships are straightforward: a mother's secret false teeth, a teakettle riddled with bullet holes, pears and small knives. To leave a face in the funeral car is to fall out of time, to fall into history, to ponder the meanings of dust, the quiet records of suicide. Thisis poetry that covers a broad range, wide and changing, the strangeness of everyday life buoyed by the solace of language, the pleasure of song. Each word in its right place, each poem reflecting beyond surface meaning.
Arleen Paré's first book, Paper Trail, was awarded the Victoria Butler Book Prize and was shortlisted for the Dorothy Livesay Prize in Poetry. She has seven other poetry collections, including Leaving Now and Lake of Two Mountains, the 2014 winner of the Governor General's Literary Award for Poetry. Her writing has appeared in a number of literary journals and anthologies in Canada. She lives in Victoria and holds an MFA in poetry from the University of Victoria.
"In the case of this new book, Paré's poetry holds nothing less than the entire state of being, in constant beautiful and frustrating creation and decay."
—Amy Reiswig, Focus magazine