- canadian (96)
- pre-confederation (to 1867) (24)
- literary (21)
- post-confederation (1867-) (15)
- short stories (single author) (13)
- personal memoirs (10)
- native american (9)
- native canadian (9)
- greek & roman (7)
- holocaust (6)
- sports (6)
- anthologies (multiple authors) (5)
- historical (5)
- political (5)
- social history (5)
- adolescence (4)
- death & dying (4)
- environment (4)
- europe (4)
- friendship (4)
Quiet Reformers
This lively biography of Bishop Edward Cridge and his wife Mary paints a vivid picture of early Victoria as it developed from an isolated Hudson's Bay Company post into the bustling capital of British Columbia. Recruited from England by Governor James Douglas in 1854 to be the Church of England chaplain of Fort Victoria, Edward Cridge became an imp …
Essentials, The
From Franz Boas to Alice Munro: welcome to an unprecedented panorama of the most significant authors and books of British Columbia culled from Alan Twigg's unrivalled knowledge of more than two centuries of B.C. literary history. The Essentials is the new bible of who wrote what, and why, in B.C., produced with the cooperation of Simon Fraser Unive …
River Odyssey
In the third volume of the Submarine Outlaw Series, Alfred sets off in his submarine up the dark and wilful St. Lawrence River. With Hollie and Seaweed, his dog and seagull crew, Alfred follows the route of Jacques Cartier, nearly five hundred years before them, as they sail down the Strait of Belle Isle into the largest river mouth in the world. B …
Ghost of Heroes Past
Thirteen-year-old Johnny Anders is something of a misfit, with no friends and a poor school record, but all this begins to change when he is awakened one night to find a soldier-ghost in his bedroom. Johnny is taken back in time to meet a series of unusual heroes in Canada's war history. These include Joan Bamford Fletcher, who commandeered Japanes …
Hannah and the Spindle Whorl
When twelve-year-old Hannah uncovers an ancient Salish spindle whorl hidden in a cave near her home in Cowichan Bay, she is transported back to a village called Tl'ulpalus, in a time before Europeans had settled in the area. Through the agency of a trickster raven, Hannah befriends Yisella, a young Salish girl, and is welcomed into village life. He …
Invention of the World, The
Jack Hodgins begins The Invention of the World with a ferry worker waving you aboard a ship that will take you not only to Vancouver Island but into a world of magic. The far west coast of Canada has always been regarded as a "land's end" where the eccentrics of the world come to plot out the last best utopia. Hodgins both invents a world and shows …
Skin Like Mine
InSkin Like Mine Garry Gottfriedson offers a suite of poems that peel away the skin of contemporary first nations society to reveal an inside view of individual experience. Gottfriedson speaks of "minds full of anticipation" yet with "tongues pointing arrowheads." Today's youth, he says, are "afraid of themselves." He finds that both individuals an …
Strange Bedfellows
The English language has never been overly concerned with purity. For centuries it has slept around and been seduced by many foreign influences, indulging in promiscuous relations that have contributed to many alluring word histories. Combining his etymological talents with those of the muck-raking journalist, Howard Richler exposes the often louch …
Follow the Elephant
What thirteen-year-old boy wants to travel on a hopeless quest to India with his grandmother? Not Ben Leeson, whose anger about his father’s recent death has led him to escape into the isolated world of computer games. India is the last place Ben ever thought of visiting and his grandmother is the last person he’d ever dreamed of travelling wit …
Survivor's Leave
It's 1944, and two young Canadian able seamen, Glen Cassley and Arthur "Ding Dong" Bell, find their ship sinking beneath them after a German submarine unleashes an acoustic torpedo. Miraculously, everyone on board survives, and Glen shouts out triumphantly:
"You know what this means, Ding? Survivor's Leave. We qualify for Survivor's Leave!"
With fun …
Women on Ice
Women on Ice is the first book to focus upon the vibrant world of women's ice hockey in western Canada during the First World War and through the 1920s. The Vancouver Amazons were one of the most important teams during this perod. Their championship laurels and their association with hockey's famous Patrick brothers distinguish the Amazons from oth …
Tibetans in Exile
Alan Twigg has here recovered the amazing story of how George and Ingeborg while travelling in northern India in 1961 encountered many of the Tibetan refugees who had fled over the mountain passes. Appalled by the condition of the children, huddled together with inadequate bedding, surviving on a diet of thin soup and momos, steamed dumplings of mi …
Shifting Sands
This bilingual edition is the first English translation of Aquin's ground-breaking novella. Alone in exotic Naples, an impassioned François anticipates the arrival of girlfriend Hélène. Uncertainty and impatience warp his waiting into an obsessive mélange of recollection and speculation. His interior monologue threads its way through a diso …
Journey to Atlantis
In this sequel to the prize-winning young adult novel Submarine Outlaw, the sea of myth and legends beckons young Alfred once again, and the intrepid young explorer answers the call. With his loyal crew of a dog and a seagull by his side, Alfred sails across the Atlantic in his homemade submarine and enters the Mediterranean in search of the fabled …
Les sables mouvants / Shifting Sands
This bilingual edition is the first English translation of Aquin's groundbreaking novella. It is also the first time it appears in French, outside of the multi-volume critical edition. With this novella the young Aquin turned away from ordinary narrative towards the signature qualities of his later writing. Frank sexuality, grotesque imagery and an …
Chasing a Star
When Sophie LaGrange hears that her idol, Olympic gold medal winner Barbara Ann Scott, is coming to town to star in the Hollywood Ice Review in the fall of 1951, she can't wait to meet the famous figure skater. But Sophie's mother says they can't afford the tickets for the show, so Sophie plots to meet Barbara Ann some other way.
From a Speaking Place
Which famous Canadian poet is a "gunman"? When did Bangalore move to Saskatchewan? Why is poetry a painting? a crime? What rare advice can you find in Romance novels? Who sings with the frogs? And what ever did happen to Pauline? Answering these and other questions, From a Speaking Place invites you into a conversation about what it means to be a r …
Tragic Links
Tragic Links is award-winning author Cathy Beveridge's fourth young adult novel focusing on Canadian historic disasters. This time Jolene and her family find themselves in Quebec where her father is conducting research for his Museum of Disasters. From the first, Jolene finds herself caught up in an old family feud and a new romantic friendship wit …
River of Gold
In this sequel to the best-selling novel When Eagles Call, two Hawaiian labourers - Kimo Kanui and his friend Moku - end their contract with the Hudson's Bay Company in For Langley and trek north to join the great Cariboo gold rush of the early 1860s. Along with a black man from the Carolinas and a native Sto:lo woman won and freed in a card game, …
From Green to Gold
Harold Enrico is that rare poet who combines the deepest traditions of our history, our spirituality, with the colourful imagery of the Pacific Northwest. Enrico's poetry has been selected for Chicago's Poetry Magazine and acclaimed by Theodore Roethke, George Woodcock and Choice magazine. From Green to Gold contains the finest poems from Enrico's …
I Have My Mother's Eyes
This Holocaust memoir crosses generations. In I Have My Mother's Eyes, Barbara Ruth Bluman chronicles her mother's dramatic journey from Nazi-occupied Poland to western British Columbia, where her legacy lives on. Bluman sets an urgent and intimate tone as she follows Zosia Hoffenberg from her genteel upbringing in Warsaw through the shock of the b …
Dead Can't Dance, The
With a mother's touch, a lover's touch and the sure hand of an undertaker, Pam Calabrese MacLean compels the reader to take a dangerous look behind every façade, even though we will long to look away. Her women are fierce with their men, protective of their children and abrupt with the world. She observes the minutiae of life with an eye of apprec …
John Donne and the Line of Wit
John Donne and the Line of Wit: From Metaphysical to Modernist is a study of influence, adaptation, historical imitation and invention. In his own time, Donne was celebrated for his distinctive style, especially for what his contemporaries recognized as "strong lines," that is, witty conceits or unusual, often unexpected and surprising comparisons. …
Submarine Outlaw (audio book)
Submarine Outlaw takes young adult readers on a unique journey when Alfred, a young boy who wants to be an explorer - not a fisherman, as his family demands - teams up with a junkyard genius to build a submarine that he sails around the Maritimes. The book takes the reader through the hands-on process of submarine construction into the world of rea …
The Steppes Are the Colour of Sepia
The Steppes Are the Colour of Sepia: A Mennonite Memoir invites the reader to embark on a journey that traces the paths of ancestral memory over the steppes of the Russian empire to the valleys of Canada's Fraser River. Connie Braun's narrative continues where Sandra Birdsell's historical fiction Russlander has left off – back to the catastrophic …
Steppes Are the Colour of Sepia, The
The Steppes Are the Colour of Sepia: A Mennonite Memoir invites the reader to embark on a journey that traces the paths of ancestral memory over the steppes of the Russian empire to the valleys of Canada's Fraser River. Connie Braun's narrative continues where Sandra Birdsell's historical fiction Russlander has left off back to the catastrophic …
Borrowed Rooms
These poems, spare and nuanced, explore the borrowed rooms we inhabit in personal relationships: the temporary homes of marriage and parenting; the personas we carry for a little while and must ultimately abandon. In tight and unsentimental poems, Barbara Pelman grieves the death of a father, notes the changing dynamics of mothers and daughters, wa …
Hollyburn
This is the first book to be published on the rich and diverse history of Hollyburn, the forested, mountainous area above West Vancouver. Numerous photographs, most of which are published here for the first time, provide a visual appeal which evokes the spirit of earlier times. The history takes us from the First Nations people who used Hollyburn's …
Cascadia: The Elusive Utopia
This collection explores the unique spirituality and culture of Cascadia, which includes British Columbia, Washington and Oregon. Envied around the world, Cascadia is famous for its mountains, evergreens, and livable cities. Less well known is that Cascadia is home to the least institutionally religious people on the continent. Despite this, Cascad …
Cascadia
This book will appeal to anyone who wants to understand the unique culture and spirituality of the fast-growing Pacific Northwest, which includes British Columbia, Washington and Oregon. Envied by people around the world, Cascadia, as it is known, is remarkable for its famed mountains, evergreens, eagles, beaches and livable cities. Most people, ho …
Submarine Outlaw
Submarine Outlaw takes young adult readers on a unique journey when Alfred, a young boy who wants to be an explorer — not a fisherman, as his family demands — teams up with a junkyard genius to build a submarine that he sails around the Maritimes. The book takes the reader through the hands-on process of submarine construction into the world of …
Pete's Gold
Pete's Gold, a novel for readers ten and up, is a captivating book of adventure that will appeal in particular to boys. Luanne Armstrong takes the classic adventure story of the search for gold and updates it with the inclusion of a young boy's contemporary problems. Pete has been sent to stay with his grandmother in the country for the summer beca …
Writing the West Coast
This collection of over thirty essays by both well-known and emerging writers explores what it means to "be at home" on Canada's West Coast. Here the rainforest and the wild, stormy cost dominate one's sense of identity, a humbling perspective shared in memoirs by individuals who come to see themselves as part of a larger ecological community.
Alexa …
Anachronicles, The
The Anachronicles is a collection of unusually rich poems that are both proto- and post-colonial. The title itself - melding the two words "anachronism" and "chronicle" - points to how the poems explore events and exchanges in one place from two points in time.
Old Brown Suitcase, The
The Old Brown Suitcase, an award winning book that has sold extraordinarily well both nationally and internationally, now appears in a new edition by Ronsdale Press. The novel narrates the absorbing story of a young girl who survived the Holocaust against all odds.
At age fourteen, Slava comes to Canada with her parents and sister and a suitcase fil …
Girl in the Back Seat, The
In this fast-paced, on-the-road young adult novel, Norma Charles once again manages to include provocative social issues in an adventure story that will appeal to children from age twelve and up. Charles takes on the issue of young girls being forced to marry older men in polygamist religious communities. She also explores the issues surrounding mi …
Craft Perception and Practice
The series of Craft Perception and Practice volumes gives recognition to the exciting new developments in contemporary craft practice and scholarship. This second volume brings together 22 essays and critical commentaries by 19 independent critics and curators, professional artists, art historians, and studio art instructors. Illustrated with 40 co …
