The poems in The Broken Face explore a sacramental, imaginative vision within contexts of crime, perception, memory and love. In this collection, Russell Thornton returns to the vital themes of intimacy and family, loss, fear and hope, bringing to each poem the essential quality of a myth or incantation. Reverent and revealing, within those familia …

Each fisherman steps onto the docks, sees Peter Gordon's boat the MV Kalua, glances at the other members of the charter and feels a rush of anticipation. The challenge is on to see who will catch the biggest fish.

Told with a skipper's authority, Stalking Salmon and Wrestling Drunks recounts the highs and lows of fishing with tourists, including de …

This is a book with a mission. On one level it is a celebration of the great Canadian poet Al Purdy by eminent writers who were his contemporaries. It is also part of a campaign to preserve the place that was the centre of Purdy's writing universe--his home, a lakeside A-frame cottage in Ameliasburgh, Ontario, where he and his wife Eurithe lived f …

Mike McCardell's bestselling books about finding rays of pure sunshine among the dark byways of the big city have a full measure of heartwarming tales but this time he declares, "I have found the answer to enjoying an incredible life, no matter who you are or where you are or what you are doing or how much you weigh."

In his 2008 book, Getting to th …

We always knew James Barber played an important role in freeing us from our culinary hang-ups but it wasn't until he passed away in 2007 that a truly astonishing outpouring of tributes from famous chefs and ordinary cooks alike made clear the full extent of his impact. For James didn't just want to make us better cooks; he wanted to help us live be …

No aspect of this harrowing journey was more difficult--or deadly--than the trek over the Chilkoot Trail: a fifty-three kilometre journey over the coastal mountains from the tidewaters of Alaska, through British Columbia to the headwaters of the Yukon River. But even before the gold rush, the trail was an important First Nations trade and travel ro …

With her parents on vacation and her stern grandmother's arrival delayed, sixteen-year-old Anne McLaughlin-Scott is on her own for a day in the exciting San Francisco of 1970. Anne feels stifled at home and wants to live with her free-spirited Aunt Ruth in Vancouver, BC. So when she encounters a childhood crush, now a draft dodger heading north him …

Sarah Carson is a mother of two and grandmother of two more, living quietly on the BC coast and minding her own business and generally being quite ordinary - or so it seems until one fine day when she goes out to work in her garden and she has a stroke.

From that moment, the lives of everyone around Sarah begin to change. Her daughter Lorraine puts …

Some say Mike McCardell's "feel-good" stories that cap the six o'clock evening news on BCTV are the best part of the program - the only reason they watch the news. One thing is certain, over the years McCardell has earned the loyalty of hundreds of thousands of fans. In this, his first book, he presents an intriguing and often hilarious behind-the- …

Crows Do Not Have Retirement, David Zieroth's sixth book of poems, explores the many lives of the spirit and the flesh: lives that challenge, bewilder and excite. With the fluidity of language and sharpness of image that he is known for, Zieroth voyages through the conflicting worlds of dream and everyday life, exploring feelings of extreme self-ir …

For as long as we have communicated by words, men and women have turned to poets to help them express the surges of emotion that accompany the feelings we call romantic love. Recognizing that "love's domain is as huge, as vast as Canada itself," acclaimed poet Tom Wayman set out in 1997 to compile an anthology of the nation's best poetry on the sub …

It's the 1950s, and just when Terry Belshaw -- the unlikely hero of Peter Trower's two previous novels, Grogan's Café and Dead Man's Ticket -- vows never to log again, his circumstances change and he needs to return to BC's backwoods to get a stake, and fast.

His newest adventures -- gripping and ominous -- are detailed in The Judas Hills, in which …

Craig has finally made first string on the high school football team and is looking forward to the season ahead. But suddenly his best friend Ray is surpassing him and everyone else on the football field. When Craig learns his friend is on steroids, or what Ray calls his "vitamin program," he decides to start a steroid program of his own.

At first C …

From "surviving ground zero in the nuclear family," to "feeling fear at the Fall Fair," to "quelling a taste for champagne on a tap-water budget," Gordon Kirkland writes about survival - survival in the '90s, that is.

Looking back, Kirkland acknowledges his life has always been filled with laughter. He comes from a family who was like "Monty Python …

Founder/Editor Howard White predicts that Raincoast Chronicles 17 will come to be known as the "bad medicine" issue. From the queasy feeling that pioneer medicine inspires in Margaret McKirdy's "The Doctor Book" to Robin Ward's profile of Francis Rattenbury - British Columbia's favourite architect - whose chequered career ended in a classic "Agatha …

Rowan Hanson, the extraordinary heroine of this new novel by bestselling author Anne Cameron, learns to be independent at an early age. Her mother dies in childbirth, she is raised in a floating logging camp by her grandmother, she makes her own way working for the SPCA and BC Ferries. When she gets involved with Jim, she refuses to get involved wi …