- canadian (63)
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- short stories (single author) (32)
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- erotica (11)
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Dear Scarlet
Longlisted for Canada Reads; Finalist, City of Calgary W.O. Mitchell Book Prize
In this intimate and moving graphic memoir, Teresa Wong writes and illustrates the story of her struggle with postpartum depression in the form of a letter to her daughter Scarlet. Equal parts heartbreaking and funny, Dear Scarlet perfectly captures the quiet desperation …
Double Melancholy
According to Didier Eribon, melancholy is where it all starts and where it also ends: the lifelong process of mourning that each homosexual experiences, and through which they construct their own identity. In this beguiling book, an introverted, anxious, ambitious, artistically gifted queer Filipino-Canadian boy finds solace, inspiration, and a "sy …
Death Threat
Finalist, Lambda Literary Award and Doug Wright Award
In the fall of 2017, the acclaimed writer and musician Vivek Shraya began receiving vivid and disturbing transphobic hate mail from a stranger. Celebrated artist Ness Lee brings these letters and Shraya's responses to them to startling life in Death Threat, a comic book that, by its existence, be …
Shut Up You're Pretty
CANADA READS RUNNER-UP, 2024
Winner, Trillium Book Award and Edmund White Award for Debut Fiction; Finalist, Rogers Writers' Trust of Canada Fiction Prize; a Globe and Mail Best Book of the Year
In Tea Mutonji's disarming debut story collection, a woman contemplates her Congolese traditions during a family wedding, a teenage girl looks for happiness …
Being Chinese in Canada
After the Canadian Pacific Railway was completed in 1885—construction of the western stretch was largely built by Chinese workers—the Canadian government imposed a punitive head tax to deter Chinese citizens from coming to Canada. The exorbitant tax strongly discouraged those who had already emigrated from sending for wives and children left in …
Tonguebreaker
Finalist, Audre Lorde Award for Lesbian Poetry
In their fourth collection of poetry, Lambda Literary Award-winning poet and writer Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha continues her excavation of working-class queer brown femme survivorhood and desire.
Tonguebreaker is about surviving the unsurvivable: living through hate crimes, the suicides of queer k …
The Walking Boy
The Walking Boy is a quest novel set in early eighth-century Tang Dynasty China, in the final days of the rule of the first Female Emperor Wu Zhao. The ailing hermit monk Harelip sends his disciple Baoshi on a pilgrimage from Mount Hua to Chang'an, the Western capital; Baoshi is the "walking boy" charged with locating Harelip's missing former lover …
Disintegrate/Dissociate
Winner, Dayne Ogilvie Prize for LGBTQ Emerging Writers (Writers' Trust of Canada) and the Indigenous Voices Award; finalist, Publishing Triangle Award for Trans and Gender-Variant Literature
In her powerful debut collection of poetry, Arielle Twist unravels the complexities of human relationships after death and metamorphosis. In these spare yet pow …
The Great NDN Paradox
In an era when talks of reconciliation between Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples strive to atone for past wrongs (and tragic injustices that persist to this day), Ryan McMahon's debut story collection takes a sharp, unwavering, and yes, hilarious look at the paradoxical state of Aboriginal-settler relations, and the ironies, pitfalls, and sweet …
Trudeaumania
In 1968, Canadians dared to take a chance on a new kind of politician. Pierre Trudeau became the leader of the Liberal Party in April and two months later won the federal election. His meteoric rise to power was driven by Trudeaumania, an explosive mix of passion and fear fueled by media hype and nationalist ambition. This book traces what happened …
Synchro Boy
Sixteen-year-old Bart Lively desperately wants to feel comfortable in his own skin. Being a jock doesn't mean he isn't the target of gay jokes, and the macho culture of his swim team is wearing him down. When he gives in to his curiosity and tries synchronized swimming, he discovers he has a natural talent -- not to mention a spark with one of the …
Live at The Cellar
In the 1950s and ’60s, co‐operative jazz clubs such as Vancouver’s Cellar, Edmonton’s Yardbird Suite, and Halifax’s 777 Barrington Street opened their doors in response to new forms of jazz expression emerging after the war and a lack of available performance spaces outside major urban centres. Operated on a not‐for-profit basis by the …
Sketchtasy
Sketchtasy takes place in that late-night moment when everything comes together, and everything falls apart: it's an urgent, glittering, devastating novel about the perils of queer world-making in the mid-'90s.
This is Boston in 1995, a city defined by a rabid fear of difference. Alexa, an incisive twenty-one-year-old queen, faces everyday brutality …
The Scent of Pomegranates and Rose Water
The traditions of Syrian cooking, which go back hundreds of years, are notable for their sensory components, in which aroma and texture are as important as taste and nutrition. Over the centuries, the unique dishes of Greater Syria (bilaad al-shaam) were preserved by those who cooked them. For cooks in imperial households, family homes, or on simpl …
Care Work
Finalist, Judy Grahn Award for Lesbian Nonfiction
In their new, long-awaited collection of essays, Lambda Literary Award-winning writer and longtime disability justice activist and performance artist Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha explores the politics and realities of disability justice, a movement that centres the lives and leadership of sick an …
The Woo-Woo
2019 CANADA READS FINALIST
Shortlisted for the Hilary Weston Writers' Trust of Canada Prize for Nonfiction; Winner, Hubert Evans Nonfiction Prize; Longlisted for the Stephen Leacock Medal for Humour
In this jaw-dropping, darkly comedic memoir, a young woman comes of age in a dysfunctional Asian family who blame their woes on ghosts and demons when t …
Murder by Milkshake
Finalist for Bill Duthie Booksellers' Choice Prize (BC Book Prizes); Crime Writers of Canada Arthur Ellis Award; City of Vancouver Book Award
When forty-year-old Esther Castellani died a slow and agonizing death in Vancouver in 1965, the official cause was at first undetermined. The day after Esther's funeral, her husband, Rene, packed up his girlfr …
The Tiger Flu
WINNER, Lambda Literary Award
In this visionary novel by Larissa Lai -- her first in sixteen years -- a community of parthenogenic women, sent into exile by patriarchal and corporate Salt Water City, go to war against disease, technology, and an economic system that threatens them with extinction.
Kirilow is a doctor apprentice whose lover, Peristrop …
Chinatown Ghosts
Jim Wong-Chu is a legend in the Asian Canadian writing community. As founder of the Asian Canadian Writers' Workshop (and its magazine Ricepaper), he constantly encouraged and inspired writers across the country to get their work published and acknowledged, from Paul Yee and Evelyn Lau to Madeleine Thien and Catherine Hernandez. When Jim passed awa …
The Antifa Comic Book
The shocking images of neo-Nazis marching in Charlottesville, Virginia, in the summer of 2017 linger, but so do those of the passionate anti-fascist protestors who risked their lives to do the right thing. In this stirring graphic non-fiction book by the author of The 500 Years of Resistance Comic Book, Gord Hill looks at the history of fascism ove …
if wants to be the same as is
Drawn from 22 books of poetry published by David Bromige in his lifetime, if wants to be the same as is chronicles the career of one of contemporary poetry's most distinctive writers. Born in London, England, in 1933, raised in Canada, and a resident for most of his adult life of California, David Bromige is just as difficult to pin down in terms o …
Jonny Appleseed
2021 CANADA READS WINNER
WINNER, Lambda Literary Award; Georges Bugnet Award for Fiction
Finalist, Governor General's Literary Award for Fiction; Amazon Canada First Novel Award; Indigenous Voices Award; Carol Shields Winnipeg Book Award; Firecracker Award for Fiction
Longlisted for the Scotiabank Giller Prize
A Globe and Mail Best Book of the Year
A to …
Forward
American Library Association Stonewall Honor Book
A moving and intimate LGBTQ graphic novel about two women, both of whom are trying to put the pieces of their lives back together.
Still smarting years after a horrible breakup, Rayanne diligently buries herself in her work. Aside from work, she has her cat. And other than her cat, she has her crushes …
Little Fish
WINNER, Amazon Canada First Novel Award; Lambda Literary Award; Firecracker Award for Fiction
Finalist, Carol Shields Winnipeg Book Award
A Globe and Mail Best Book of the Year
It's the dead of winter in Winnipeg and Wendy Reimer, a thirty-year-old trans woman, feels like her life is frozen in place. When her Oma passes away Wendy receives an unexpect …
Property Values
The worlds of urban gentrification, overpriced real estate, and gang violence collide in this wry and sardonic crime novel by author and comedian Charles Demers (Vancouver Special, The Horrors).
As a shaky truce between suburban gangsters starts to unravel, schlubby civilian Scott Clark has other things on his mind: if he can't afford to buy out his …
The Plague
A modern retelling of the Camus classic that posits its story of infectious disease and quarantine in our contemporary age of social justice and rising inequity.
At first it's the dead rats; they start dying in cataclysmic numbers, followed by other city creatures. Then people begin experiencing flu-like symptoms as well as swellings in their lymph …
Sodom Road Exit
Lambda Literary Award and Sunburst Award finalist; a Globe and Mail Best Book of the Year
It's the summer of 1990, and Crystal Beach in Ontario has lost its beloved, long-running amusement park, leaving the lakeside village a virtual ghost town. It is back to this fallen community Starla Mia Martin must return to live with her overbearing mother aft …
Religion and Canadian Party Politics
Religion is usually thought of as inconsequential to contemporary Canadian politics. This book takes a hard look at just how much influence faith continues to have in federal, provincial, and territorial arenas. Drawing on case studies from across the country, it explores three important axes of religiously based contention – Protestant vs. Catho …
Manila by Night
A Queer Film Classic on a controversial 1980 film by queer Filipino filmmaker Ishmael Bernal.
A Queer Film Classic on Ishmael Bernal's 1980 film that follows a dozen characters, all denizens of Manila's sordid yet exuberant underworld, as they pursue life, love, and pleasure. Bernal cited Robert Altman's Nashville as one of the influences on his epi …
Body Music
From the author of Blue Is the Warmest Color: a beautiful, bittersweet graphic novel on the complexities of love.
Jul Maroh's first book, Blue Is the Warmest Color, was a graphic novel phenomenon; it was a New York Times bestseller, and the controversial film adaptation by French director Abdellatif Kechiche won the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Fes …
Fighting for Space
Winner, George Ryga Award for Social Awareness in Literature
Finalist, Roderick Haig-Brown Regional Prize (BC Book Prizes)
Finalist, Vancouver Book Award
North America is in the grips of a drug epidemic. While deaths across the continent soar, Travis Lupick's Fighting for Space explains the concept of harm reduction as a crucial component of a city' …
Saigon Calling
A sequel to the acclaimed Such a Lovely Little War: growing up Vietnamese in swinging London as the Vietnam war intensifies.
Marcelino Truong's first book about the early years of the Vietnam war, the graphic memoir Such a Lovely Little War (2016), received starred reviews in Publishers Weekly and Kirkus Reviews and was named "one the season's best …
What I Think Happened
A wickedly funny book in which the author recasts historical events and personalities from her own feminist perspective.
What I Think Happened, the debut book by comedian Evany Rosen, is really two books: a savvy, no-holds-barred romp through the history of the western world, and the personal story of a self-described "failed academic" who recasts …
Dutch Feast
Taste Canada Award finalist
A modern take on Dutch cuisine that highlights the ways that simple meals bring joy and comfort.
In the same way that British, Scandinavian, and German food have undergone a renaissance in recent years, Dutch cuisine is going to be the next big thing, according to writer and blogger Emily Wight. Her new cookbook reimagines …
Oracle Bone
A magic-realist novel set in seventh-century China featuring ghosts, martial arts, and the transformative oracle bone.
Life in seventh-century China teems with magic, fox spirits, and demons; there is a fervent belief that the extraordinary resides within the lives of both commoners and royalty. During the years when the empress Wu Zhao gains ascend …
From the Stars in the Sky to the Fish in the Sea
A magical gender variant child brings transformation and change to the world around them thanks to their mother's enduring love.
In the magical time between night and day, when both the sun and the moon are in the sky, a child is born in a little blue house on a hill. And Miu Lan is not just any child, but one who can change into any shape they can …
Liquor, Lust, and the Law
A new edition of the colourful history of Vancouver's Penthouse Nightclub, which celebrates its seventieth anniversary in 2017.
The after-hours watering hole for the famous and infamous, the Penthouse was opened in 1947 by brothers Joe, Ross, Mickey, and Jimmy Filippone and soon became the place to see and be seen in Vancouver in the 1950s and '60s. …
Tarry This Night
A powerful dystopian novel set during a new American civil war, about a polygamist cult leader and his followers.
In this eerily relevant, cautionary novel, a civil war is brewing in America. Below ground, a cult led by the deluded and narcissistic Father Ernst is ensconced in an underground bunker, waiting out the conflict. When the "Family" runs o …
Dead Reckoning
Finalist, Governor General's Literary Award for Non-Fiction
A Globe 100 Best Book of the Year
Finalist, Hubert Evans Non-Fiction Prize (BC Book Prizes)
When Carys Cragg was eleven, her father, a respected doctor, was brutally murdered in his own home by an intruder. Twenty years later, and despite the reservations of her family and friends, she decid …
In Case I Go
The latest by Angie Abdou: young Eli invokes the spirit, and the mistakes, of his great-great-grandfather.
In Canada Reads finalist Angie Abdou's fifth work of fiction, Eli and his parents have returned to their family home in Coalton, a small mountain town. The parents, Nicholas and Lucy, hope that by escaping their hectic city lives, they will res …
Don't Tell Me What to Do
An offbeat story collection about strange, imperfect people doing strange, imperfect things.
In poet Dina Del Bucchia's debut story collection, an older woman becomes obsessed with the state of her lawn, a pet architect jeopardizes her relationship with her wife over a wild bird, a cement mixer helps a woman fulfill her dreams, a former model become …
Culture Gap
The time is the early 1980s. Judith Plant and her new partner, Kip, are ready for a change. Inspired by the charismatic Fred Brown, their communications professor at Simon Fraser University, they join a commune in a remote valley near the Yalakom River, deep in BC's Coast Mountains. Culture Gap: Towards a New World in the Yalakom Valley tells the s …
Female Trouble
A Queer Film Classic on John Waters' 1974 dark comedy.
The first title in the Queer Film Classic series to focus on the work of legendary director and cinematic camp icon John Waters, best known for the underground classic Pink Flamingos and his later more commercial works such as Crybaby, starring Johnny Depp, and Hairspray, which was also made int …
Scarborough
SHORTLISTED FOR CANADA READS 2022
NOW A MOTION PICTURE directed by Shasha Nakhai and Rich Williamson; screenplay by Catherine Hernandez
Trillium Book Award and City of Toronto Book Award finalist; Edmund White Debut Fiction Award finalist; A Globe 100, National Post and Quill and Quire Best Book of the Year
Scarborough is a low-income, culturally dive …
Blood, Sweat, and Fear
Finalist, Crime Writers of Canada Arthur Ellis Award
During his forty-two-year-career he helped detectives in Vancouver, Victoria, and throughout BC solve hit-and-runs, safe-crackings, and some of the most sensational murder cases of the 20th century. Vance was constantly called to crime scenes and to testify in court because of his skills in serolo …
Home and Away
A cookbook inspired by how food from around the world not only connects us all, but also reminds us of home.
Cooking outside one's comfort zone is now easier than ever: ingredients once considered exotic are available at supermarkets across the country, and we're more open to exploring the far reaches of the world through food. This tantalizing cook …
Everything Is Awful and You're a Terrible Person
Winner, ReLit Award; Finalist, Ethel Wilson Fiction Prize (BC Book Prizes)
A YouTube star becomes famous after he documents his breakup online. An anxious, lactose-intolerant office worker obsesses over a stranger who says "Nice shorts, bro" to him in passing. A couple wants to open up their relationship to a ghost. A monster just wants to find love …