•Finalist, Hilary Weston Writers’ Trust Prize for Non-Fiction

When Candace Savage and her partner buy a house in the romantic little town of Eastend, she has no idea what awaits her. At first she enjoys exploring the area around their new home, including the boyhood haunts of the celebrated American writer Wallace Stegner, the back roads of the …

With irreverent and at times mordant humor, Most of Me chronicles Robyn Michele Levy's early, mysterious symptoms (a dragging left foot, a crash into “downward dead dog” position on the yoga mat), the devastating Parkinson’s diagnosis, her subsequent discovery of two lumps in her breast (Little Lump and Big Blob), her mastectomy and her life s …

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A national bestseller hailed as ""a testimony of courage."" -- Maclean's

On a sunny fall day in 1983, Patricia Van Tighem and her husband, Trevor Janz, were brutally attacked by a bear while hiking in the Canadian Rockies. Janz was severely hurt, but Van Tighem suffered even more serious, disfiguring injuries, and that she survived was a miracle.

A …

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 …

"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 …

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 …

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 …

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 …

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 …

Winner, SFU Writer's Studio's First Book Competition (2010)

Winner, Canadian Authors Association Exporting Alberta Award (2011)

Unmarried and pregnant in 1968 Winnipeg, teenager Myrl Coulter found herself at a loss. Unable (and perhaps unwilling) to support her child, Myrl’s parents forced her to give the baby up for adoption. After being sent to a …

Unmarried and pregnant in 1968 Winnipeg, teenager Myrl Coulter found herself at a loss. Unable (and perhaps unwilling) to support her child, Myrl's parents forced her to give the baby up for adoption. After being sent to a home for unwed mothers, Myrl gave birth in a desolate hospital room and then found herself at the mercy of the closed adoption …

A spellbinding memoir of survival and courage from Afghanistan's most popular female politician.

"The story of Koofi's life is almost cinematic in its juxtaposition of triumph and tragedy, hope and despair." -- Maclean's

"A powerful and moving reminder that in the midst of Afghanistan's decades of struggle, hope and humanity prevail. Letters to My Da …

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""A touching -- if decidedly and deliberately offbeat -- family memoir...Expect to encounter laughs and tugs on the heartstrings in pretty much equal amounts."" -- Booklist

""Burgess has written not only the funniest book published this year, but one of the most moving memoirs Canada's prairies have offered up."" -- The Tyee

One of Canada's funniest …

Victoria, BC, July 11th 191. . . . With red eyes and a body guard of sniffing "faithfuls" attending us, we start on our long trip abroad. . . .

So begins Emily Carr's memoir of her trip to England with her sister Alice. They travel across Canada by rail to board an ocean liner in Quebec City, meeting interesting characters and having many adventure …

A darkly humourous memoir of a 1960s summer spent in a cemetery.

First published in hardcover in 2008, In the Land of Long Fingernails was shortlisted for the Trillium Book Prize, the Stephen Leacock Memorial Medal for Humour, and the Toronto Book Awards.

During the hazy summer of 1969, Charles Wilkins, then a university student, took a job as a gra …

Chosen as a Globe 100 Best Book of the year in 2011! Chosen as the Best Memoir of 2011 by Library Journal! Chosen as a Best Book (non-fiction) for 2011 by Publishers Weekly!

"With Tiger, Tiger, Fragoso has created from the ashes of her childhood a stunning, brave, personal book." -- Edmonton Journal

"It is at once beautiful and appalling, a true-life …

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Armed with wit and humour, an internationally acclaimed cycling writer tackles the longest mountain bike race in the world.

For Paul Howard, who has ridden the entire Tour de France route during the race itself -- setting off at 4 am each day to avoid being caught by the pros -- riding an adventure cycling race should hold little fear. Still, this …

Widely recognized as a classic of northern-exploration literature, A Journey to the Northern Ocean is Samuel Hearne's story of his three-year trek to seek a trade route across the Barrens in the Northwest Territories. Hearne was a superb reporter, from his anguished description of the massacre of helpless Eskimos by his Indian companions to his met …

At once a memoir, a work of philosophy, a story of European immigration to Canada's dark places of the earth, and an exploration of the roots and effects of colonialism, The Wolves At Evelyn: Journeys Through a Dark Century is a stylistic and rhetorical tour de force from one of Canada's master prose stylists.

Dissident communists fleeing 1920s Germ …

Rumble Seat is an evocative, poetically-written memoir of artist Helen Piddington's childhood in the Victoria suburb of Esquimalt--and what a childhood it was! The Piddingtons arrived from Quebec in 1924, and settled into a life that in many ways typified well-off Victoria families of the period. Helen's father, Major Arthur Grosvenor Piddington, w …

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""A layered, rambling, deceptively casual mixture of music history, coming-of-age inarrative and reflection on mortality."" -- Globe and Mail

A musician and writer's memoir looks death in the face and reminisces about a life in song.

As a kid, Paul Quarrington had a favourite song. In it, a boy fashions a banjo from a cigar box, pluckily sets off fo …

When 25-year-old Jo climbed down the ramp of the freighter Canadian Star to set foot in Vancouver, BC, in the summer of 1967, she'd never heard of log salvaging. But within two-and-a-half years, the immigrant from England would quit her teaching job and join forces with one of the most enigmatic salvagers of the Sunshine Coast. Dick and Jo Hammond …

"p class=""book_description"">""Whether it's the sign of a symbiotic marriage or of seasoned writers crafting a seamless travel collage, the narrative in this road trip through America flows as easily as a new car on an empty highway."" -- Globe & Mail

Part travelogue, part exploration-a road trip into the reality behind the cultural myth that is Am …

A Globe 100 Book of the Year for 2010.

"An ingenious, richly executed book...a mix of the 'important' and the 'great read.'" -- National Post

A Year of Living Generously follows award-winning journalist Lawrence Scanlan as he volunteers with 12 different charities, among them well-known institutions Habitat for Humanity, the St. Vincent de Paul Socie …

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A personal and revealing exploration of a life lived close to the earth, from one of Canada's best-loved gardeners.

Called ""a green-thumb rogue"" (Star Tribune, Minneapolis), accomplished novelist, satirist, and garden writer Des Kennedy describes his life journey from a childhood of strict Irish Catholicism in Britain to a charmed existence amid …

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""The two greatest things about Carpenter's sterling hunting memoir is how well-informed and precise it is -- positively erudite; but never show-offish or exclusive. The second involves how much this knowing-ness is the natural tropism of the author’s great and generous heart, his love for all creatures -- including the human one."" -- Richard F …

Meet the dazzling women of Paris: from Colette to Nancy Mitford, Marie Antoinette to Coco Chanel, Napoleon's Josephine to Edith Wharton. Rule breakers and style setters, these women were utterly diverse, yet they shared one common passion -- Paris, the world's headquarters of femininity.

At a turning point in her life, Lucinda Holdforth journeys to …

"P class=""book_description"">The imaginative, hilarious, and moving memoir of a woman coping with both Parkinson's disease and breast cancer.

At age forty-three, Robyn Levy was diagnosed with Parkinson's disease and, eight months later, with breast cancer. With irreverent and at times mordant humour, Most of Me chronicles Levy's early, mysterious s …

In 1903, eighteen years after leading the Métis Army against the Northwest Expeditionary Force and the Northwest Mounted Police at Fish Creek, Duck Lake and Batoche, Louis Riel’s Adjutant General Gabriel Dumont dictated his memoirs to a group of friends, one of whom is thought to have written Dumont’s stories out in longhand during that epic …

At age seventeen, Jim Taylor began a career in writing as part-time high school sports reporter. Forty-eight years, some 7,500 five-a-week columns, three times as many radio shows and twelve books later, Jim Taylor is undeniably one of Canada's most loved sports writers. In Hello, Sweetheart? Gimmie Rewrite!, Taylor looks back at half a century of …

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 …

The twenty contemporary writers featured in this anthology have one thing in common: a connection to British Columbia, to a specific time, landscape, or community in BC. Their essays and memoirs have been inspired by, or are in some way affected by, the particular "sense of place" that sets that left-hand corner of the country apart from other prov …

From the Introduction by Brian Fawcett "A first clue to how this book is going to work lies in the book's title: Topic Sentence. In the title story, written in 1970, Persky took on the two questions that dog every artist in the post-modern: What is the subject matter, and how can it be articulated? Since both questions are unanswerable, Persky twis …

Earle Birney (1904-1995), the father of modern Canadian poetry, was one of Canada's finest writers and the author of "David," arguably the most popular Canadian poem of all time. One Muddy Hand: Selected Poems features Birney's best work, spanning his entire writing career from 1926 to 1987.

Born in Calgary, Birney grew up in different parts of Alb …

Best Books of 2005, Ottawa Xpress

Writer's Trust of Canada's "Warm Weather Reads Recommended by Writers" list (recommended by Robert Hough)

Confessions of a Small Press Racketeer is equal parts literary memoir, advice for the emerging writer, and reckless tirade. Ross has been active in the Canadian literary underground for a quarter of a century: he …

For much of the legendary BC politician-cum-hotliner's career, calling him a socialist would have risked a scorching riposte if not a punch in the nose, but in his latest book that is the label he gives himself. Has the old warrior gone over to the other side? Well, not exactly. Rafe Mair has dominated the British Columbia airwaves for years, pulli …

Greenpeace is known around the world for its activism and education surrounding environmental and biodiversity issues. With a presence in more than forty countries across Europe, the Americas, Asia, and the Pacific, Greenpeace is undoubtedly a dominant force in the realm of environmental activism. This is the story of how Greenpeace came to be.

In S …

The gripping tale of one man’s survival in the wilderness.

On the night of April 9, 1997, Warren Macdonald took his final step as a "complete" human being. A fit and experienced hiker, Macdonald had set out with a new Dutch companion to make the grueling climb to the top of Australia’s spectacular Mount Bowen. They lost their way after a full da …

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A touching and hilarious memoir of an absent mother and a vanished time. Throughout her childhood, Marion Farrant heard exotic stories of the sophisticated life her mother, Nancy, led aboard cruise ships and in Australia. Nancy's world of furs, jewels, cigarette holders, and handsome men seemed miles away from the west-coast hamlet of Cordova Bay, …

Throughout her childhood, Marion Farrant heard exotic stories of the sophisticated life her mother, Nancy, led aboard cruise ships and in Australia. Nancy’s world of furs, jewels, cigarette holders, and handsome men seemed miles away from the west-coast hamlet of Cordova Bay, where Marion lived with her aunt and uncle, running wild on the beach w …

American Whiskey Bar is a remarkable faux memoir about the un-making of a film--a film which Michael Turner was commissioned to write. However, whether or not this film was ever made is debatable. And only one print is said to exist. Nevertheless, American Whiskey Bar, a film seen by only a handful of people, is well on its way to becoming a curiou …

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 …

'The Door Is Open' is a compassionate, reflective, and informative memoir about three-and-a-half years spent volunteering at a skid row drop-in centre in Vancouver's downtown eastside. In an area most renowned for its shocking social ills, and the notorious distinction of holding the country's "very poorest forward sortation area of all 7,000 posta …

"P class=""book_description"">A delightful and informative trek across the globe by a witty, intelligent, and courageous Victorian artist and adventurer.

In 1871, at age 41, Marianne North, an artist with a keen interest in botany, decided to travel the world on a quest to paint as many plants and flowers as she could find in their natural habitat. …