Living is a process of continuous transformation: we have been embryos, children, adolescents, thin, fat, sick, better again. And as humans, we are always at odds with at least one part of our bodies. Have we inherited the family nose? Is there nothing to be done for our finicky stomach or our limp hair?

In the Flesh is an intelligent, witty, and pr …

In 2006, the Prime Minister apologized to the Chinese people for the legislated discrimination created by Canada’s head tax laws in the first half of the twentieth century, acknowledging the far-reaching and long-term consequences it has had on their families. A Cowherd in Paradise is the story of one such family.

The book chronicles the remarkab …

Getting three trucks and two horses stuck in the mud on "a good road" into BC's wild, remote interior was just the start of Bruce Watt's hilarious adventures—and it was his honeymoon, too. When the newly married Watt moved there in 1948 to take up ranching, he was a just a kid in his early 20s. He and his wife fell in love with Big Creek, three h …

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""Because ultimately, this is a story about unconditional love, about warming to the notion of commitment, about setting off on a voyage away from the shores of self-involvement and self-obsession. My Year of the Racehorse is a poignant, unsentimental, zappingly written and regularly side-splitting investigation of what it truly means to care abou …

Anyone interested in genealogy, personal history and memoirs can turn their passion into a business. Communities, families, and even corporations are increasingly seeking out professional writers and historians to record their stories. For anyone who is interested in personal history and writing, this is an essential resource for turning your passi …

Crossing Canada by rail has long been among the travel wonders of the world, but in 1990 government cutbacks forced the remarkable Canadian to make its last run from Vancouver to Toronto. Amid the political controversy that raged during the last years of the route's existence, Terry Pindell covered 18,000 miles of Canadian rails. In this fascinatin …

Now available in paperback, in this courageous memoir, Fawzia Koofi, Afghanistan's most popular female politician, gives us her first-hand account of Afghan history through the rule of the Mujahedeen and Taliban, her experiences of the Afghanistan War, and the effects of these events on the lives of women in Afghanistan. In writing Letters to My Da …

"To see the peacekeeper myth ably demolished...one must pick up Lewis MacKenzie's own memoir, Soldiers Made Me Look Good. Loaded with anecdotes, and delivered in MacKenzie's suffer-fools-badly style, it's easily the speed-read of the bunch." -- Calgary Herald

A riveting follow-up to the best-selling Peacekeeper, including MacKenzie's provocative vie …

The 13 short pieces featured in Passionate Gardener roam widely and wildly, examining, among other things, common idiosyncrasies and the collective chaos of garden clubs, the host of psychopathologies that afflict "plants people," and obsessive-compulsive behavior such as the chronic moving of plants. This is an irreverent exploration of the fierce …

"A soldier's story told from the inside, passionate, riveting and extremely necessary." -- David Adams Richards, Giller Prize-winning novelist

"Gut-wrenching, wryly humorous and well-written." -- Atlantic Books Today

When Canadian soldier Fred Doucette was deployed to Bosnia-Herzegovina as a UN peacekeeper in 1995, he had a premonition that this tour …

"With her debut, Krista Bridge has created a book that will rock you to your knees...Krista Bridge is a master. Her stories are so realistic that it is hard to believe they are fiction. I kept reading The Virgin Spy as if it was a memoir -- it was that compelling, that believable." -- Event

A stunning debut short-story collection from an award-winni …

Annie Garland Foster was born in Fredericton, NB, in 1875. She was an educator, nurse, politician, social reformer, journalist and biographer of Pauline Johnson. But she was also a bit of a mystery.

In 1939, Annie wrote an autobiography titled "Passing Through" in which she described the challenges and adventures of her earlier life: as a co-ed at U …

One of Canada's most accomplished business leaders reflects on his influential role in the industry that built British Columbia.

From a privileged early childhood in Vienna to an overnight escape from Hitler's grasp, to the seven decades spent building Canadian Forest Products with his father and uncle, Peter Bentley's life story is one of great ch …

In Wake-Up Call, Sterling Haynes shares the humorous and sometimes tragic tales of his life as a frontier doctor: a man shoots off his big toe in a drunken binge and then begs the doc to get him to Sunday Mass on time, an inmate swallows a spoon to avoid solitary confinement, an accident with a Murphy bed leaves a man hanging for more than ten hour …

Veteran broadcaster Terry David Mulligan takes readers on a galloping romp down the roads he’s travelled, from busting bad guys as a Mountie to spinning records as a DJ to sampling fine wines around the world. He reminisces about growing up in the North Vancouver neighbourhood known as Skunk Hollow, and about the hard price he paid to leave the M …

"Oliver Dubois told me about the time he got in a fight with another guy and all the men came out to see the fun. He said he knocked the guy out cold, but he didn't fall down because there were so many Kleins standing around. He went on to name all of them and he said even Klein Klein was there. He was trying to make the point that at one time ther …

In 1926, Lillian Alling, a European immigrant, set out on a journey home from New York. She had little money and no transportation, but plenty of determination. In the three years that followed, Alling walked all the way to Dawson City, Yukon, crossing the North American continent on foot. She walked across the Canadian landscape, weathering the ba …

A controversial sport, rodeo is often seen as emblematic of the West's reputation as a “white man's country.” A Wilder West complicates this view, showing how rodeo has been an important contact zone -- a chaotic and unpredictable place of encounter that challenged expected social hierarchies. Rodeo has brought people together across racial and …

In 1860, at the age of fourteen, Susan Louisa Moir left England for British Columbia. After settling initially at Hope, she lived briefly in both Victoria and New Westminster, then B.C.’s two most important settlements. Returning to Hope, she helped her mother open the community’s first school, and in 1868 she married John Fall Allison, riding …

In 1857, the French Roman Catholic religious order, the Missionary Oblates of Mary Immaculate, began permanent missionary work among the Native peoples of British Columbia. The memoirs of Father Nicolas Coccola, a Corsican-born Oblate who arrived in the province in 1880, reveal the complexity of the work carried out by the ordinary missionary pries …

Spurred on by reports of gold in the Cariboo, adventurers from all over the world descended on British Columbia in the mid-1800s. Among them were ambitious easterners who accepted the challenge of the shorter but more arduous overland route across the prairies and the Rockies. One such man determined to find his fortune in the West was Thomas McMic …

Born and brought up in Whitechapel, John Sebastian Helmcken worked his way through apprenticeships as a chemist and a medical pupil before gaining admission to Guy's Hospital to complete his training. The accounts he gives of working class family life and of the great economic and social disadvantages he had to confront in order to become a doctor …

This book examines Canada’s collective memory of the First World War through the 1920s and 1930s. It is a cultural history, considering art, music, and literature. Thematically organized into such subjects as the symbolism of the soldier, the implications of war memory for Canadian nationalism, and the idea of a just war, the book draws on milita …

Patricia E. Roy is the winner of the 2013 Lifetime Achievement Award, Canadian Historical Association.

Patricia Roy’s latest book, The Oriental Question, continues her study into why British Columbians – and many Canadians from outside the province – were historically so opposed to Asian immigration. Drawing on contemporary press and governme …

Originally published in 1881, The Mysteries of Montreal is fully reprinted with an introduction by Peter Ward. Ward illuminates the life of Fuhrer and of midwives in Victorian Canada. He traces the role of the midwife through the ages and, placing Mrs. Fuhrer in the context of her times, discusses birth practices in a Canadian setting. As well, he …

As he enters his sixties, Bruce Springsteen remains a paragon of all that is cool and right. Born in the U.S.A. still ranks as one of the top-selling albums of all time, and Springsteen the man is an unstoppable force, selling out multi-city arena tours year after year. He's a genuine voice of the people, the bastard child of Woody Guthrie and Jame …

YVR weaves a suite of lyrics into a powerful long poem, a citywide Vancouversong. Combining memoir, civic history, love song, and social critique, it's a highly personal poem, vividly rooted in Vancouver life, and at the same time a charged portrait of social change. In three parts, it begins in disaffection and disruption, tracks its way back into …

She grew up playing on log booms and living in float houses, and at nine years old she learned to shoot a rifle and hunt game. Strong-willed and independent, Betty Frank always had a difficult time following the rules laid down by others. Rather than sit in a classroom and learn the times tables, she preferred to be out roaming the hills with her . …

In Kerosene, her debut book of poetry, Jamella Hagen weaves individual memories into a narrative that charts the process of orientation and growing maturity within shifting geographical locations.

Patterned on the author's own experience, the collection follows the story of a young woman's life, encompassing the beauty and harshness of a childhood s …

Universal stories of longing and belonging.

Our quest for origin and, by extension, identity is universal to the human experience. For the twenty-five contributors to Somebody’s Child, the topic of adoption is not—and perhaps never can be—a neutral issue. With unique courage, each of them discusses their experience of the adoption process. Som …

"p class=""book_description"">""Walk Like a Man is a touching and intimate look into one man's life, it also brings up bigger questions of fandom, of the public façade of celebrity, of the difference between art and artist."" -- Exclaim.ca

A frank, funny, and inventive blend of biography, music criticism, and memoir told in thirteen tracks.

As he en …

Winner of the BC National Award for Non-Fiction, and short-listed for both the Charles Taylor Prize for Literary Non-Fiction and the 2011 Hilary Weston Writer's Trust Award.

Eating Dirt is an extended postcard from the cut blocks — a vivid portrayal of one woman's life planting trees, her insights into the forest industry and its environmental imp …

What begins as a road trip through America soon becomes a journey of discovery into themselves and into the heart of the next-door neighbour they thought they knew. For Wayne Grady, the thrill of landscape and history is tempered by memories of racism and his own family roots. Merilyn Simonds, her ear tuned for the offbeat, finds curious echoes of …

A Hunter's Confession tells the story of hunting in David Carpenter's life, including the reasons he once loved it and the reasons he no longer pursues it. When he was a boy, Carpenter and his father and brother would head out along the side roads and into the prairie marshlands searching for duck, grouse, and partridge. As a young man, he began sk …

Bankrupt, homeless and with only an old Toyota Tercel to her name, Barbara Stewart has taken a job as a camp attendant at Trinidad 11, an oil-rig camp in northwestern Alberta. She was told it’s a “dry” camp—good news for a person hoping to stay sober—but she soon finds out this isn’t true. During the day, she mops floors, scrubs bathroo …

Award-winning novelist, screenwriter, and musician Paul Quarrington was diagnosed with stage-four lung cancer in summer 2009. Looking death in the face, he decided to go out singing, throwing everything he had into his work and demonstrating a creative energy that belied his illness. He performed with his band, recorded two new albums, and complete …

Set across Africa, this is a deeply engaging investigation of trauma, justice and the redemptive powers of imagination from an internationally acclaimed author.

Drink the Bitter Root is a provocative, emotionally charged account of one writer's travels in sub-Saharan Africa. Haunted by the 1993 murder of a Somali teenager by Canadian soldiers in wh …

Brought into the media spotlight by her great-niece Pamela Anderson, Auntie Vie burst onto the scene as Pamela’s biggest supporter on “Dancing with the Stars.” Unexpectedly, Auntie Vie’s distinctive balance of earned wisdom and chic glamour quickly charmed the media and viewers of all ages. Her door suddenly stormed by cameras and reporters …

Buying Saffron, a 24-foot racing sailboat, was an act of desperation meant to help single parent June Cameron and her youngest son validate themselves. It did that and more. A friend persuaded June to race the boat, and over the next decade June, either solo or with her all-female crew, competed in BC's major sailing races, taking home a lot of the …

Former RCMP Sergeant Charlie Scheideman, author of Policing the Fringe: The Curious Life of a Small-Town Mountie, is back with the same wry humour and a new collection of incredible stories drawn from his twenty-seven years of patrolling the small communities of the interior of British Columbia.

These new adventures have him re-polishing his boots …

Snakebit traces the author’s journey from a childhood fascination with snakes and amphibians, through academic flirtation, to professional association with some of the world’s greatest herpetologists. It leads the reader through desert, swamp, jungle, and lab to reveal the strange world of these cryptic creatures and the often stranger fraterni …

'Afflictions & Departures' is a collection of first-person experiential essays by writer and academic Madeline Sonik. Although Sonik explores some of the salient personal experiences of her young life, the essays in 'Afflictions & Departures' are not traditional memoir. In addition to incidents and feelings recaptured from memory, Sonik seeks out c …

Small Beneath the Sky is a tender, unsparing portrait of a family. It is also a book about place. Growing up in a small prairie city, where the local heroes were hockey players and curlers, Lorna Crozier never once dreamed of becoming a writer. Nonetheless, the grace, wisdom, and wit of her poetry have won her international acclaim. In this marvell …