Finalist, ReLit Award

Amazon.ca's 50 Essential Canadian Books selection

First published in 1997 to much critical acclaim, Salvage King, Ya! is a novel firmly rooted in Canada’s favourite national pastime—hockey. Critics have called Salvage King, Ya! “the great Canadian novel,” and a “postmodern Canadian classic.” Drinkwater, Jarman’s n …

This title is complimentary to Hancock House's first Mildred Valley Thornton book released in 2000, Buffalo People: Portraits of a Vanishing Nation. Potlatch People concentrates on the lives and legends of the Coastal Indian Tribes. Mildred Valley Thornton had an abiding passion which she pursued with almost missionary fervor throughout her life-th …

The legendary Emily Carr was primarily a painter, but she first gained recognition as a writer. Her first book, published in 1941, was titled Klee Wyck ("Laughing One"), in honour of the name that the Native people fo the west coast gave her as an intrepid young woman. The book was a hit with both critics and the public, won the prestigious Governo …

Even more than hockey, what unites Canadians from coast to coast is sex. Inspired by a recent poll that ranked Canadians among the sexiest peoples on Earth, Chris Gudgeon set out to investigate the truth about sex and sexuality in Canada. Based on original research and interviews with historians, sexperts, and social commentators, his book covers e …

This is the fourth installment of the bestselling international lesbian erotica series, Hot & Bothered, that consist of stories of 1,000 words or less that articulate desire between women.

Hot & Bothered 4 includes stories by many award-winning writers, including Lesléa Newman, Lucy Jane Bledsoe, Carol Queen, Nisa Donnelly, Barrie Jean Borich, Gabr …

Toronto, named by UNESCO as the world's most multicultural city, attracts thousands of tourists annually to its fascinating neighbourhoods and thriving cultural scene. But in its 250-year history, Toronto has also become a place of many intriguing secrets.

Toronto: The Unknown City delves into the lesser-known spaces and stories of the city that's n …

The third installment of the bestselling international gay men's erotica series, consisting of stories of 1,000 words or less that articulate desire between men.

Previous books in the series have made bestseller lists, and feature many award-winning writers and anthologists among their contributors. Quickies 3 features 69+ stories by writers living …

In one generation, women's international soccer has taken its place on the world sports stage. This book traces its history from its first golden age in the late 19th century to the present. Along the way are such peak moments as the legendary 1991 first-ever Women's World Championship that pitted the U.S. against the Norwegians before 60,000 screa …

Succession is a story cycle about a rural community in transition. It follows Al, a musician burned out from too many nights playing the same classic rock songs, as he returns from Vancouver to the farm where he grew up in the Bearspaw district near Calgary.

Al's story is intertwined with those of his family, friends, and neighbours, as they struggl …

Canada’s current, punishment-oriented system for dealing with young offenders does not work; it simply ensures that we jail more youth than any other country, including the United States. Green and Healy argue that a new approach is needed and offer ample local and global evidence to make the case for a shift to restorative justice. Tough on Kids …

When Ambrose is forced to sell his horse because of an injury, he must find a new animal that can handle the rigors of the mountains while packing for his uncleís trail-riding outfit.

To save an old lady's beloved companion from the meat-buyers, Ambrose buys a horse who would be better off in retirement than climbing the treacherous trails of the R …

When an adult neighbor is brutally murdered during a high-school house party, everyone in school seems to have an idea who did it, but no one will go to the police.

Jen was there and saw the body and she has her own ideas about who is responsible. As a reporter for the school TV show, she decides to try and uncover the truth and discover if a classm …

This chapter book of Greek myths presents the epic history of the Minoan civilization. The novel connects famous myths; Zeus and Rhea, Theseus, Ariadne and the Minotaur, Icarus and Daedalus, Jason and Medea with little known tales of the Bronze Giant, Phaedra and the Ash tree spirits.

Island of the Minotaur weaves together the famous and the forgott …

A stunning drama of love and intrigue set against the backdrop of war in Yugoslavia, where power is used to manipulate and break people.

I saw what the mural was all about. The entire war was portrayed on it from the asylum's point of view. The tanks with predatory smiles, the civilians naked with zippers up their middles so the soldiers could open …

The boy sleeps and dreams and wakes and feels the same. Different, but the same. The core of his body burns bright, hazy but strong. He's never felt so strong as he does now, on the verge of something he's not sure about, and terribly excited.
-from "The Boy Who Stopped"

In these raw, uncompromising stories, author George K. Ilsley explores the thi …

The big flood tide that accompanies the full moon is a pivotal event for those who make a living from the sea. Salmon returning to their natal rivers and streams always come in on the full moon tide, so this is the best time for fishing. And since the full moon ebb tide retreats farther than usual, it's also the best time to gather shellfish.

Bill …

This compelling biography of Doug Hepburn, the weightlifter who won gold for Canada in Stockholm in 1953 and at the British Empire Games in Vancouver in 1954, delivers fascinating, first-hand information about an unusual Vancouver athlete and the sporting world of the 1950s and 1960s. In this plain-spoken and moving biography of a strength legend, …

Set in the present day, John Wilson's young adult novel Adrift in Time explores the tensions in family life between parents and children. It also demonstrates how the new generation's knowledge of the family's past can ease those tensions.

The novel opens with Ian, a teenager, finding that he no longer enjoys spending his summer holidays at the fami …

With unique insight and straightforward prose, Wingwalkers tells the saga of Canada's other airline, a scrappy western mongrel that, through eight decades and numerous name changes--Canadian Airways, Queen Charlotte Airlines, CP Air, PWA, Wardair and Canadian Airlines International--transformed itself from a bush flying and mining operation into an …

The litany of environmental bad news -- rapid extinction of species, pollution, depleted food sources -- can be overwhelming, but there's hope too. In this thoughtful look at whatís happening behind the grim headlines, authors David Suzuki and Holly Dressel show that thousands of individuals, groups, and businesses are already changing their ways. …

Every year, a team of ex-NHLers, including such greats as Bobby Hull, Tiger Williams, and Frank Mahovlich, travels around Canada playing hockey and raising money for charity. Known as the NHL Oldtimers or Legendary Heroes of Hockey, they get the kind of attention that Mario Lemieux and Paul Kariya get today, playing to sellout crowds in Calgary, Ed …

Winner, 25th Annual 3-Day Novel Contest

"Recommended Reading," Sunburst Award Jury

Best SF and Fantasy Books of 2003, Locus Magazine

Meet Finnigan Heller, drifter: reclusive, abrasive, and clairvoyant. He's also been struck by lightning more times than you've had hot dinners. It happens in every town he passes through. But is he following the weather …

When jazz musicians of the “30s and “40s were gettin” down, when things were really cookin” they—d say, Yeah, make it tight like that. It meant things were good, as good as they could get. It's a good thing in fiction, too. The stories in Jim Christy's latest collection span time and space, taking us from the depression-era Deep South to …

Winner of the W.O. Mitchell/City of Calgary Award

A debut collection, these stories are set in the corporeal world of adult endeavour: the mall, the office, the subdivision. It's these settings that W. Mark Giles exploits - locking his sights on eerily familiar characters, excavating their fears, intimacies, and the dark machinery behind their actio …

With a thousand members throughout the province, the Federation of BC Writers is one of the most active and vigorous writers' organizations in the country. The Fed Anthology, edited by Susan Musgrave on the occasion of the group's 25th anniversary, is a colourful bazaar of previously unpublished fiction and poetry by nearly 50 of those members. Lik …

In an era when picture postcards became a unique new way to "call home," they quickly established a role in enticing an ongoing parade of tourists to British Columbia. This book features an impressive collection of black-and-white lithograph images that were sold to the public in the early twentieth century. Documenting life in British Columbia dur …

The Nanaimo Bastion, which marked its 150th anniversary in 2003, remains a prominent symbol of Nanaimo's heritage as an HBC fort, coal-mining centre and transportation hub, a vital link between other developing parts of Vancouver Island and the Lower Mainland. Hub City, the second volume in Jan Peterson's trilogy on Nanaimo's vibrant history, tells …

This engaging collection of verse captures the history and experience of the Mounties from the 1800s to the present day. Ranging from humorous to poignant, these poems reflect the moods and adventures of Arctic survivors, plains horsemen, vulnerable trainees and witty veterans. Collectively, they will entertain anyone who has ever been or known a M …

A BC classic—over 100,000 copies in print!

Joe Garner's father, Oland, was the oldest of four brothers who were run out of South Carolina in 1903 by the Ku Klux Klan. Along with his bride, Lona, Oland headed west to San Francisco, then north to Victoria, BC. He found employment with Emily Carr's father. Ten years later he helped Emily build her …

This book goes beyond the dichotomies of “pro” and “anti” environmentalism to tell the stories of the women who seek to maintain resource use in rural places. The author links the experiences of women who seek to protect forestry as an industry, a livelihood, a community, and a culture to policy making by considering the effects of environm …

This book represents the first attempt to piece together all existing accounts of the December 1941 Battle of Hong Kong and the fighting between the Garrison and the invading Japanese. Banham makes use of the Garrison’s small size – only 14,000 soldiers – to weave a historical account from the perspectives of individuals, rather than big batt …

The Halifax Explosion of 1917 is a defining event in the Canadian consciousness, yet it has never been the subject of a sustained analytical history. Astonishingly, until now no one has consulted the large federal government archives that contain first-hand accounts of the disaster and the response of national authorities. Canada's recently establi …

Step into a world of dream, of fantasy, of erotic tales spiked with poetic imagery. Step into Quixotic Erotic, the new collection of lesbian erotica from Tamai Kobayashi.

Like being awakened from a dream by a soft, sensuous caress, the stories in Quixotic Erotic stimulate the senses. From a birthday surprise to a torrid office dalliance, these tales …

"In Japan, a person's blood type is as important as their horoscope. My type, like my grandmother's, is ab. This makes us universal recipients, able to receive blood from anyone, but give only to each other. A person with ab blood has no immunity to other types. No matter what blood they're given, it becomes a part of them, and they never resist."

U …

In The Whale People, young Atlin must one day succeed his father Nit-gass, a great whaling chief of the Hotsath people. The boy trains for his role with the mixture of yearning and apprehension experienced by every youth racing toward adulthood - except that in Atlin's case, his whole community is depending on his success.

With lean, sure-footed pro …

In Birth of a Bookworm, Michel Tremblay takes the reader on a tour of the books that have had a formative influence on the birth and early development of his creative imagination. Included are his readings of and reactions to some of the great classics of world literature by such writers as the Comtesse de Segur, Jules Verne, Robert Louis Stevenson …

These new, off-side stories continue M.A.C. Farrant’s exploration of the relation of fiction to the evolving corporate construction of reality in the media and information age. Objective reality (what’s out there) in our culture has become a performance of make-believe (fiction), and the disassociation and confusion this causes in our private …

In this fascinating historical novel, twelve-year-old Jolene travels back in time to the year 1903 and finds herself in the coal mining town of Frank on the eve of Canada's deadliest rockslide. Disguised as a boy, Jolene must face the wrath of an impatient teacher, challenge her ability as a gymnast, and disentangle herself from an embarrassing lov …

At the Mercy Seat explores the relentlessness of mercy as it permeates the natural world and also our relationships, openning them to mystery. Whether the poems reclaim biblical stories or the voices of McCaslin's poetic progenitors, they are compelling and finely nuanced events leading to a contemplative being-in-the-world, in which spirit and mat …

Here you'll find Yolen's dynamic, enchanting retellings of Jewish tales from around the world paired with Stemple's recipes for everything from challah to matzo brei to pomegranate couscous, tzimmes chicken, and rugelach, in creative versions of classic dishes that any family will delight in cooking together. And Jewish Fairy Tale Feasts is filled …

Acclaimed photographer Geoffrey James spent months tracking the Prairie light while photographing the city of Lethbridge and its environs. His exquisite eye caught the changing seasons of a town and a landscape in flux. Those images, which have established his international reputation as one of the finest contemporary photog-raphers of our time, re …

In the early nineteenth century, when the Hudson’s Bay Company sent men to its furthest posts along the coast of North America’s Pacific Northwest, the letters of those who cared for those men followed them in the Company’s supply ships. Sometimes, these letters missed their objects – the men had returned to Britain, or deserted their ships …

From the notorious Alan Twigg, publisher and editor of BC BookWorld, Canada's largest-circulating publication about books

One night in April, after a Sunday soccer game, Alan Twigg couldn't remember the names of his two sons or his wife - and he couldn't hold a pen. An emergency CAT scan revealed a large brain tumour squeezed against his motor corte …

From Canada's first World Champion, rower Ned Hanlan, to the unstoppable heroine Bobbie Rosenfeld, Canada has had its share of exceptional athletes. These great athletes forever changed the sports of basketball, hockey, track and field, rowing and skiing. These are their stories.