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."
Two friends are inexplicably drawn to a carnival-like orchid garden. A man works obsessively on restoring a mansion he has inherited. An urban dweller is haunted by the echo of cries in the night. A traveller is lured by highway signs directing him to a place that he has always known.
The stories in Home, the follow-up to Mark Macdonald's acclaimed novel Flat, feature characters searching for truth and clarity in a world that is sometimes deceptive, usually miraculous, and often inescapable. Full of dark compulsions and seemingly irrational tendencies, Home is a place where all is not as it seems: authority figures defy reality, and fate takes charge as life and death become mere observances.
Informed by terminal illness and a trust in the wonders of the world, these stories are about anxiety, foreboding, and a sense of calm resignation and peace with matters beyond our control.
Macdonald has written a literary, yet entertaining and imaginative, collection of stories that stands apart from, say, eighty per cent of the other Canadian short story collections of recent years. . . Home is truly something different for a change.
-Front & Centre
. . .Macdonald's sexual orientation is not a constant issue. . . it is not the subject of his entire oeuvre. His stories adhere to the "I'm here, I'm queer, and I'll talk about it if it comes up in the story" school of writing. Whether that qualifies Home as gay literature or simply literature by a gay author is an argument not worth having, since either way the miscellany is a worthwhile find.
-Gay People's Chronicle
Macdonald's fictional world is shadow-filled, chaotic and suffused with the uncomfortable feeling that all is not what it seems. [He] is a young writer who definitely has something to say.
-Toronto Star