Hardship, intrigue, humor, and tragedy went into author Dale Alsager's successful struggle to lasso The Incredible Gang Ranch, North America's largest cattle ranching empire and once the largest in the world at four million acres. Family squabbles, jealousies, and desperate financial hardship have gone into the continuing legal battle to keep it. T …

First in new photobook series geared to surveying buffs from prolific author and historian, Jay Sherwood. In 1917 Canada commemorated its 50th anniversary against the backdrop of World War I. Although the war effort was the main focus of the federal and provincial governments, some important projects continued. The Alberta-BC boundary survey, which …

A passionate and powerful collection of photographs that proves that, for better or worse, Vancouver knows how to make its voice heard.

Vancouver has long been a city on edge. From the 1907 anti-Asian race riots to the Amchitka protests, from Doukhobor demonstrations to the Stanley Cup riots, Vancouver has a long and rich history of making its opini …

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 …

This historical novel reimagines the North-West resistance of 1885 through the Métis women of Batoche, and in particular the rebellious outsider, Josette Lavoie. When Riel arrives from Montana, he discovers that Josette is the granddaughter of Chief Big Bear, whom he needs as an ally, but Josette resists becoming his disciple when she learns that …

The third book in the popular Lane Winslow mystery series by an author the Globe and Mail has called a “writer to watch.”

It’s early spring of 1947 in idyllic King’s Cove, and the Hughes ladies, mère et filles, are gardening and sorting through the jars of food that have been put up for the winter. But while cleaning up after the roof of th …

Vancouver is in an uproar over the death by gunshot of a Scottish nanny, Janet Stewart. An almost deliberately ham-handed police investigation has Constable Hook suspecting a cover-up. The powerful United Council of Scottish Societies is demanding an inquiry. The killing has become a political issue with an election not far away.

The city is buzzing …

Set in the late 1920s, at the height of prohibition, this is the story of Emmett Dougal, fisherman and rumrunner who, after having his boat shot out from under him by the Coast Guard off the coast of Maine, decides to return to his Puget Sound roots. Emmett's journey to rediscover a sense of home puts him on a dangerous path when he is forced back …

The second instalment in the Lane Winslow mystery series; for fans of the Maisie Dobbs and Bess Crawford series.

On a snowy day in December 1946, Lane Winslow—a former British intelligence agent who’s escaped to the rural Canadian community of King’s Cove in pursuit of a tranquil life—is introduced to the local hot springs. While there she o …

The key to a carefree garden is to know which plants will thrive under local conditions and which ones are better left at the nursery. With watering restrictions becoming increasingly common, and rising concerns about exotic invasive species, gardeners have to be savvy about plant selection, making native plants both a practical and ecological choi …

Shortlisted, 2018 Forest of Reading Golden Oak Award

Most Canadians are familiar with John McCrae through his iconic poem “In Flanders Fields,” which was penned on the battlefields of the First World War and remains a symbol of remembrance to this day. Although he will always be remembered as a war poet, the Guelph, Ontario, native was a physici …

Fresh out of the freewheeling sixties, the seventies was a decade of immense change for Vancouver—a time of protest, political upheaval, economic boom, and cultural evolution. Through it all, the Vancouver Sun's award-winning photographers chronicled the city’s metamorphosis. Shooting more than 4,500 photo assignments each year, they covered new …

A smart and enchanting postwar mystery that will appeal to fans of the Maisie Dobbs series by Jacqueline Winspear.

It is 1946, and war-weary young ex-intelligence officer Lane Winslow leaves London to look for a fresh start. When she finds herself happily settled into a sleepy hamlet in the interior of British Columbia surrounded by a suitably eclec …

A biography of the extraordinary Nellie Cashman, a well-loved miner, entrepreneur and philanthropist who lived and worked in the roughest boomtowns of the West in the late-nineteenth century.

At a time when well-bred women wore tight corsets and entertained each other at tea, Nellie Cashman (1845–1925) was trekking for hundreds of miles through bl …

A biography of the extraordinary Nellie Cashman, a well-loved miner, entrepreneur and philanthropist who lived and worked in the roughest boomtowns of the West in the late-nineteenth century.

At a time when well-bred women wore tight corsets and entertained each other at tea, Nellie Cashman (1845–1925) was trekking for hundreds of miles through bl …

British Columbia, 1983. Work on a new highway through the province must start immediately in order to be ready for Expo 86. Trying to gain the town of Hope's approval for the project, Highways Minister Clint Matheson dines with Chief Edwin Baptiste, and hears of the First Nations legend of Siaman who haunts Portia Bench, a perfect route through the …

In the triumphs of their victories and the horrors of their losses, Canadian combatants first tested their military skills on the battlefields of Europe. In Hell's Corner, one of Canada's master historians tells the story of how Canada became involved in World War I, how it fought the war and how it emerged from that conflict a stronger and more un …

It’s 1965. Twenty-two-year-old Linda Wise despairs of escaping her overprotective parents and her hometown, where far too many know she was sexually assaulted as a teenager. Deliverance arrives in the form of marriage to the charismatic, twenty-six-year-old Ronald Brunson, a newly ordained Methodist minister who ignites her passion for social jus …

In the early 1700s, Ocracoke Island, located at the tip of North Carolina's Outer Banks, was the home of Edward Teach, better known as Blackbeard, the infamous pirate. His reign of terror lasted a mere two years, but during this time he ruled the seas from the Outer Banks to the Caribbean. The end came in 1718 when the British attacked and killed B …

Growing up in the 1930s, Adeline Beale knows little of the outside world or the looming shadows of a second world war. Addie—as her grandfather Chauncey Beynon Beale affectionately calls her—believes that everything she could ever want or need is to be found on Chauncey’s cattle ranch, the place her family calls home, or in the little town tw …

In 1922 a lone woman arrives in a filthy frontier mining town in the Pacific Northwest. Her goal: to resurrect her dead uncle’s newspaper. Within two days a naked man is shot dead, a famous man is rumoured to be heading their way and the only man capable of fixing her broken-down press so that she might spread this news is a Chinese printer from …

Known to most as a polarizing figure in Canadian and British Columbian politics, and an outspoken voice in print and radio, Rafe Mair shares with his readers the side to him that is entirely human, relatable, and even loving in his latest memoir, I Remember Horsebuns. Above all, Rafe shares his love affair with Vancouver, British Columbia.Starting …

Ching Shih was the most powerful pirate in China. She stole everything--from jewels, to people, to opium. In 1844, Ching Shih and her husband created a secret plan to move her fortune from China to Hawaii for safekeeping, even as a rival pirate fleet plotted to intercept her treasure ships. But the forces of nature intervened and in a mighty storm …

A stirring graphic novel based on the extraordinary book by Irene Nemirovsky.

Suite Francaise, an extraordinary novel about village life in France just as it was plunged into chaos with the German invasion of 1940, was a publishing sensation ten years ago; Irene Nemirovsky completed the two-volume book, part of a planned larger series, in the early …

Dot, whose name reflects her stature, has always had big dreams—but her dreams have to be put on hold while she searches for the truth about her parents. She gets a job as a seamstress at a lakeside resort in rural Ontario and falls hard for Eddie, a charming local boy who is equal parts helpful and distracting as Dot investigates her past. Searc …

Paul Yee's first novel for adults: an historical account of a Chinese man on a journey to find the mother of his son.

For more than thirty years, Paul Yee has written about his Chinese-Canadian heritage in award-winning books for young readers as well as adult non-fiction. Here, in his first work of fiction for adults, he takes us on a harrowing jou …

The year is 1885 and Abigail Peacock is resisting what seems to be an inevitable future—a sensible career as a teacher and marriage to the earnestly attentive local storeowner.

But then she buys a rifle, and everything changes.

This Godforsaken Place is the absorbing tale of one tenacious woman’s journey set against dramatic myths of the Canadi …

Tales of the Emperor is based on the life of Qin Shi Huang (circa 260–210 BCE), the “First Emperor” – he who unified China, gave it his name, built the Great Wall, entombed an army of terra cotta soldiers, authored legalism, erased history, insinuated governance, and established paranoia as a national characteristic. His dynasty did not out …

As Hitler's Third Reich crumbles and Stalin's Army advances, German civilians in the Eastern territories are forced to flee for their lives.Leaving her dying mother, Liesel and her four young children hope they can make it from their home in Poland across the Oder River to safety. But all that awaits them is terror and uncertainty in a brutal new r …

Winner of a 2016 Independent Publisher Book Award

Born a slave on a rice plantation in South Carolina, John Ware (1845–1905) became one of the most successful independent ranchers in southern Alberta through the sheer force of his will and through his incredible skill at the cowboy trade.

This fascinating historical novel details his adventures, as …

As Hitler's Third Reich crumbles and Stalin's army advances, German civilians in the Eastern territories are forced to flee for their lives. Leaving her dying mother, Liesel and her four young children hope they can make it from their home in Poland across the Oder River to safety. But all that awaits them is terror and uncertainty in a brutal new …

On a foggy evening in November 1905, 48-year-old Thomas Jackson returned to his home on Melville Street in Vancouver after nine months of prospecting north of the Skeena. Jackson was happy because he had made an important gold strike. Four days later he was dead from strychnine poisoning. Any of the other four people living in the house on Melville …

Through his incredibly varied fifty-year career, John J. Healy left an indelible mark on the Canadian and American west. At different points in his storied life, Healy was a soldier, a trapper, a prospector, a free trader, an explorer, a horse dealer, a scout, a lawman, a newspaper editor, a speculator, a merchant, a capitalist, a historian, and a …

Zachary's Horses picks up where Zachary’s Gold left off and continues the adventures of Zachary Beddoes. It is 1870, and the ex-lawman is hiding out in the capital of colonial British Columbia, using the name Lincoln Zachary. He soon befriends a series of locals: a young woman with a mysterious background; a pair of young English gentlemen, who a …

Zachary's Horses picks up where Zachary’s Gold left off and continues the adventures of Zachary Beddoes. It is 1870, and the ex-lawman is hiding out in the capital of colonial British Columbia, using the name Lincoln Zachary. He soon befriends a series of locals: a young woman with a mysterious background; a pair of young English gentlemen, who a …

Found on the history shelves of the Greater Victoria Public Library, these twenty true stories are brought to life by Stephen Ruttan. They draw a picture of the life of a city with a recent past that's both unconventional and colourful. From Miss Wilson and her famous parrot, Louis, to Jimmy Chicken Island, named after a man who acquired his surnam …

In 1948, a small ship carrying Estonian refugees arrived at Pier 21 in Halifax. In this absorbing work, anthropologist Lynda Mannik analyzes the refugee experience through the photographic record of those who made that harrowing voyage. Drawing on a collection of photographs taken during the voyage and at Pier 21, Mannik asks surviving passengers t …

High finance, wilderness adventures, violence, and questionable legal tactics all played important roles in the history of the North West Company. William McGillivray, head of the company from 1804 until 1821, was arguably the most powerful businessman in Canada in the early nineteenth century.

William McGillivray emigrated from the Scottish Highlan …