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."
Mrs. Amor de Cosmos has been entertaining British Columbia's commercial fishermen for over 15 years with her popular "A Letter From Home" columns. In 1981, her letters became a feature of the national tabloid newspaper Canadian Fishing Report, and in 1992, her columns began appearing each month in British Columbia's leading commercial fishing magazine, The Westcoast Fisherman. Her work has also been published in the anthology Working the Tides: A Portrait of Canada's West Coast Fishery (Harbour, 1996).
No one knows who Mrs. Amor de Cosmos is, and she prefers to keep her identity a secret. But she comes from a fishing family, learned the trade from her father, and became owner with her husband of a small combination troller-gillnetter and then a small seiner. Since her divorce she has also tried to make a living in the shrimp industry and the roe herring fishery. She reportedly lives in Steveston, where she prowls the docks, visits her Uncle Ed the irascible troller and gets gossip from the Scientific Fisherman. Along the way she comments upon everything from a left-handed halibut to fishermen's taxes to the difficulties in getting a job - in short, life in the industry from an unusual perspective.