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Showing 1 - 18 of 18 items
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Customs and cultures, Biography, Canadian authors (Non-fiction)
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Searching for Serafim is a layered exploration of the life of Serafim "Joe" Fortes. A Trinidad native who arrived on…
the shores of Canada in 1885, Fortes was heralded as a hero in Vancouver for saving dozens of people from drowning as the city's first lifeguard, and his funeral drew the largest crowd ever recorded in the city's history. Since his passing, Fortes has been commemorated with a postage stamp and local buildings named in his honour. Yet, little has been discussed about how he navigated an openly white supremacist society as an Afro Latino man. In Searching for Serafim, author Ruby Smith Díaz seeks to unravel the complicated legacy of a local legend to learn more about who Fortes was as a person. She draws from historical documents to form an insightful critique of the role that settler colonialism and anti-Black racism played in Fortes's publicized story and reconstructs his life, from over a century later, through a contemporary Black perspective, weaving poetry and personal reflections alongside archival research. The result is a moving and thought-provoking book about displacement, identity, and dignity. With black-and-white photos
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Serious and literary fiction, General fiction, Family stories
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In this stunning tale of love and loss, a middle-aged cartographer, suffering from memory loss and claustrophobia, hikes through the…
interior of British Columbia in search of a treehouse where he spent one memorable summer on the run with his four siblings. In Rufous and Calliope, Sarah Louise Butler takes readers deep into the rugged British Columbia Interior, where the mysteries of nature collide with the fragile threads of memory. Rufous Flanagan, a modern-day cartographer, embarks on a solo trek through an ancient mountain pass in search of the treehouse hideaway where he spent one memorable childhood summer on the run with his three older half-siblings and his twin sister, Calliope. With every step, the vast, untamed wilderness presents both a physical and emotional challenge, as Rufous must confront not only treacherous terrain, but the unravelling of his own mind. His memories-sometimes vivid, sometimes slipping away-become a map guiding him through towering forests, dry creek beds and smoke-filled skies. Yet, in this wilderness, not everything is as it seems. Echoes of the past lead Rufous on a journey that blurs the line between dream and reality. As the elements close in, this novel offers an unforgettable tale of survival, memory and the bond between siblings.
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General fiction, Indigenous peoples in Canada fiction
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It's the summer of 1989, and Mia is on her own—adjusting to life without her ex-best friend, Lara. Summer vacation…
starts off well enough as Mia binges MuchMusic and learns how to jar fish with her aunty and uncle. Then her grandma starts feeling unwell. At first, Mia isn't too worried, but when a call comes in from the clinic to say her grandmother has to go to the hospital in Vancouver, everyone realizes this is serious. Mia and her mom and aunties head to the city to be by her grandmother's side. Mia mostly ping-pongs from the hospital to the motel, but she also gets to see some of the city and eat (too much) takeout. She even joins a basketball camp at the Friendship Centre, where she meets a teen coach who inspires her to get back into the game she loves and delve deeper into what it means to be Indigenous. As time passes, Mia's grandmother's health doesn't improve, and she has to face the fact that her beloved grandma might not get better
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Biography
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A personal and historical story of identity, place, and belonging from a Musqueam-Chinese Elder caught between cultures. It's taken most…
of Larry Grant's long life for his extraordinary heritage to be appreciated. He was born in a hop field outside Vancouver in 1936, the son of a Musqueam cultural leader and an immigrant from a village in Guangdong, China. In 1940, when the Indian agent discovered that their mother had married a non-status man, Larry and his two siblings were stripped of their status. With one stroke of the pen, they were disenfranchised—no longer recognized as Indigenous. Reconciling is a series of conversations between Larry and writer Scott Steedman as they visit pivotal geographical places together, including the Musqueam reserve, Chinatown, the site of the Mission residential school, the Vancouver docks and the University of British Columbia. Larry tells the story of his life, including his thoughts on reconciliation and the path forward for First Nations and Canada. His life echoes the barely known story of Vancouver and spans key events of the last two centuries, including Chinese immigration and the Head Tax, the ravages of residential school and now Indigenous revival and the accompanying change in worldview. When Larry talks about reconciliation, he uses the verb reconciling , an ongoing, unfinished process we're all going through, Indigenous and settler, immigrant and Canadian-born. "I have been reconciling my whole life, with my inner self," he explains. "To not belong was forced upon me by the colonial society that surrounded me. But reconciling with myself is part of all that."
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Environment, Science and technology, Economics, Canadian authors (Non-fiction)
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An incendiary anti-capitalist response to climate change rooted in hope for the future, this book is a tool or a…
weapon, depending on how you use it Despite the naysayers, climate change is a fact. We know that global temperatures are rising, that weather patterns are changing, that forest fires, droughts, flooding, severe storms, and heat waves are the new normal. We know this planet is teetering on the edge of climate collapse, an apocalyptic event that threatens not only the future of human civilization, but also the millions of other unique life forms on Earth. We know it's all our fault-it's the direct result of human beings burning fossil fuels and spewing out carbon emissions at such a fantastic pace that we've changed the fate of the entire planet, and it leaves most of us feeling helpless. What can any of us really do? This Book Is a Knife is a startling essay collection that explores the origins and dangers of climate change through a critique of capitalism and an exploration of the ways in which we might radically reimagine our world before it's too late. Rooted in L.E. Fox's background as a science journalist, This Book Is a Knife is a frank, plain-spoken, and sharply incisive series of missives designed to wake us up to the urgent reality of climate change and the lies we are fed based on the fact that the real issue is neither climate nor the environment-it's capitalism. Fierce and unapologetic, This Book Is a Knife is a passionate and unique dissection of climate change that offers new possibilities for saving the world.
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Women biography, Journals and memoirs, Science and medicine biography, Canadian authors (Non-fiction), Nature, Science and technology
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In Meltdown, Sarah Boon tells us about field adventures in snow and ice, the tough decision of choosing an academic…
career over that of a writer, and the challenges she faces as a woman in science. Her story blends adventure and academia as she traverses John Evans Glacier on Ellesmere Island, builds weather stations in northern British Columbia, samples proglacial rivers, and scares away grizzlies with helicopters. Along the way, Boon finds inspiration in the stories of historic female explorers like Mary Schäffer Warren and Phyllis Munday, celebrating the tenacity of women in the field. But her path isn't without obstacles. In addition to the physical and psychological rigors of fieldwork, Boon faces gender bias, departmental politics, and job insecurity in academia. Her journey is also marked by injury, struggles with imposter syndrome, and a serious mental health diagnosis. Meltdown is an honest and reflective narrative about the process of finding your identity, the need for open conversations around mental health and science, and one woman's pursuit of balance between her career and personal life.
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Canadian non-fiction, Poetry, Canadian authors (Non-fiction)
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The Book of Z reconsiders mystical possibilities - above all, longing for divine union - found by poets within scriptural…
language. For a thousand years the story of Zulaykha - "the wife of Aziz" in the Qur'an - and her passion for Yusuf has been celebrated in classical and contemporary Persian and Urdu poetry, in Muslim folk traditions, and in Persian and Mughal miniature painting. At the same time, as the Biblical "wife of Potiphar" she has been just as indelibly cast as temptress in misogynistic cautionary tales and canonical Western art. Rahat Kurd writes in the vividly imagined voice of a Zulaykha who considers her Abrahamic lineage from its estranged and fragmented reality, asking what consolation human desire and divine longing might offer our shared present tense.
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Short stories, Humourous fiction, Canadian authors (Fiction)
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Set on an island in BC's Salish Sea, a richly imagined and often hilarious collection of linked stories by Bill…
Gaston, a master of the art of short fiction. Eleven stories feature a cast of characters striving to overcome pasts that often include a catastrophic error. On Tunnel Island, moral misjudgments, semi-legal schemes, and antisocial gaffes abound as characters seek a remedy for what ails them: loneliness, heartbreak, grief. Jack ekes out a living doing odd jobs and minding the estates of absent owners, until he takes a lover's bad advice and rents their houses through Airbnb. A dying woman retains her wry Wiccan sense of humour while lovingly ministered to by her partner - in between his trips to hand out Halloween candy at their door. The almost mystical disappearance of a toddler is revisited years later when her parents remarry in a surreal outdoor ceremony. Highly original and empathetic, Tunnel Island is electrified by dark undercurrents that jolt and illuminate by turns. Bill Gaston's bighearted vision of life on a heavily forested island immerses readers in a world rendered tender and tolerable by human folly and our stumbling attempts at redemption.
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Poetry, Canadian authors (Non-fiction)
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Amber Dawn's latest poetry collection flaunts the chronically pained body as a source of lewd feminine power As a novelist,…
memoirist, and poet, Amber Dawn regularly lays her heart bare in work that is fiery, raw, and intensely personal. In Buzzkill Clamshell, her third poetry collection, Amber Dawn circumvents the expectations of so-called confessional poetry, offering twisted mythmaking, extreme hyperbole, and lyrical gutter-mouthing that explore themes of sick and disabled queerness, aging, and desire. With poems populated by severed heads, domme swan maidens, horny oracles, and other horrible purveyors of pleasure, Buzzkill Clamshell reads as if a leather dyke and a demonic goat had a baby-gleefully embracing the perverse while stomping its way through chronic pain and complex PTSD. Already acclaimed for her candid and often kinky verse, Amber Dawn pushes further into trauma-informed eroticism with self-assured irreverence and uncomfortable abjectivity. Beneath her brilliant, carnivalesque imagery lies a prayer-not for the pain to end, but for finding fantastic new ways to cope with it.
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Adventure stories, Science fiction
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★ SEVEN STARRED REVIEWS! ★“It’s rare to find a book so thought-provoking and haunting that also feels like it’s welcoming…
the reader with a warm hug.” - The New York TimesWith all the heart of The Wild Robot and the wonder of A Rover's Story, two children and one robot form an unbreakable bond as they survive in a world that values the efficiency of tech over the care of humanity. JieJie and her little brother, DiDi, are living on their own in a barren desert while their mother works tirelessly to earn their admission into Oasis City. Their days are filled with weathering sandstorms and scavenging for water, but everything changes when they come across an AI-powered robot lying dormant in an abandoned junkyard.Filled with equal parts hope and suspense, Oasis tells the story of a potentially not-so-distant future that you won’t ever forget."Perfectly blending story and art, this deeply compelling fable assures middle-grade readers that, with resilience, adaptability, and the hope for connection, love can prevail even amid desolation." - Booklist, starred review"The children are at the heart of the narrative, and the family they form, unconventional as it may be, offers a breath of hope in a dark time." - Kirkus, starred review
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General fiction, Multi-cultural fiction, LGBTQ+ fiction, Canadian fiction, School stories
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Perfect for fans of Mason Deaver and Becky Albertalli, this tender, raucous novel follows a rule-following, perfectionist teen who starts…
an underground GSA club at her conservative Catholic high school, from the acclaimed author of Kings, Queens, and In-Betweens.Cassie Perera is a star student in St. Luke's junior class. But the new school year brings an unwelcome surprise—the return to St. Luke's of Cassie's former friend, Ben, who left a few years ago after a homophobic bullying incident Cassie knows she didn't do enough to prevent.Still harboring guilt from her inaction, Cassie decides, in her usual, overzealous way, to team up with the neighboring public school to found an underground Gender and Sexuality Alliance—as a complicated strategy for making things up to Ben. Secretly, Cassie is also tempted by the possibility of opening up about her own sexuality for the first time.As Cassie’s new friends urge her out of her comfort zone, she unlocks a kind of joy and freedom she’s never felt before—even as she struggles to balance these experiences with her typical tightrope of being the perfect daughter, student, and Catholic.Cassie’s perfectly curated life unravels into turmoil, but can she embrace the mess enough to piece together something new?
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Adventure stories, Fantasy
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Set in the world of New York Times bestseller Seraphina, a boy on the run from a dragon — among…
other dangers — seeks refuge in a haunted abbey in this wholly original YA ghost story about what haunts us, and what connects us.A few things to know about the town of St. Muckle's: It's too out-of-the-way to interest greedy lords, and too damp and muddy for marauding dragons to burn. And anyone, from a humble serf to a runaway nun, may earn their freedom by living for a year and a day within the town walls. Seven years ago, Charl and his mother fled to St. Muckle's and made it their safe-haven, building a new life in this so-called Peasant's Paradise. But when Charl sees something impossible — a ghost — soon the embers of his past are threatening to engulf his world in flame. A tragic accident is quickly followed by murder, a deadly plague, and a mercenary dragon. Charl manages to escape to an abandoned abbey outside of town, but finds no safety within those ruined walls. A treacherous nun, a chorus of murdered girls, and the fearsome Battle Bishop await, ready to ensnare him in a complex web of history, magic, and fate. For some things should never be forgotten, however much they haunt us, and Charl will need all his wisdom and resiliency if he is to fight for the world he knows . . . and the people he calls home.Discover more critically acclaimed fantasy from Rachel Hartman!SeraphinaShadow ScaleTess of the RoadIn the Serpent's Wake
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Indigenous peoples fictionArts and entertainment, Anthologies
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Bestselling author of Birdie, Tracey Lindberg, and renowned artist George Littlechild join together in a stunning collaboration of story and…
art to explore love in all its forms—romantic, familial, community and kin—in the Cree experience In The Cree Word for Love, author Tracey Lindberg and artist George Littlechild consider a teaching from an Elder that in their culture, the notion of love as constructed in Western society does not exist. Here, through original fiction and select iconic paintings, Lindberg and Littlechild respond. Together they have created and curated this collaboration which travels, season by season, mirroring the four rounds in ceremony, through the themes of the love within a family, ties of kinship, desire for romantic love and connection, strength in the face of loss and violence, and importance of self-love, as well as, crucially, a deeper exploration of the meaning of “all my relations.” Together, art and story inspire and move readers to recall our responsibilities to our human and more than human relations, to think about the obligation that is love, and to imagine what it could possibly mean to have no Cree word for love. The result is a powerful story about where we find connection, strength, and the many forms of what it means to live lovingly.
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General fiction, Mysteries and crime stories
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Buddhist butler and reluctant investigator Helen Thorpe bands together with her fellow butler-school graduates to rescue her very wealthy employer…
and his son in this new mystery by bestselling author Susan Juby Butler Helen Thorpe is not one to judge, but the participants in Close Encounters for Global Healing are astonishingly unpleasant. The five-day program brings together people from across the political spectrum with the goal of helping them bridge their ideological and personal differences. Helen and her employer, Mr. Levine, have come to Side Island to assist David, his youngest son, who is facilitating the course. The motley assortment of participants includes a burned-out environmental activist, an internet troll, a clued-out consumerist, an alleged white nationalist, and a man who was arrested at the Freedom Convoy in Ottawa. No one seems interested in a civil conversation, much less global healing, and each person has shown up with their own secret agenda. No rapprochement between the warring—or at least endlessly bickering—parties seems possible. But when something deadly happens, they must learn to work together. First, however, they must figure out who among them can be trusted.
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Historical fiction, Sports fiction
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When Wolfgang’s father dies, everything changes. Wolfie and his mother move to Calgary to stay with his grandfather, and Wolfie…
starts at a new school. Consumed by sadness, his mother stops speaking and rarely comes out of her bedroom. While he tries to adjust to his new life, Wolfie gets to know his grandpa and makes a friend, Jimmy, who introduces him to hockey. Though he misses his father terribly, Wolfgang finds moments of happiness, like when his mom finally emerges from her grief to rejoin the world, and when his grandpa teaches him how to skate. He even gets good enough to join Jimmy's hockey team! What haunts Wolfgang, though, is that no one will tell him how his father died...until one day he overhears his mom and grandpa say that his father took his own life. Now Wolfie has even more weight to bear—and so many questions. But even in the most difficult times, friendship, hope and hockey keep Wolfie going. The epub edition of this title is fully accessible.
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Journals and memoirs, Medicine, Law and crime
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Part memoir, part manifesto, Crackdown is a story of the drug war, told from the frontlines.Garth Mullins was born into…
a world too bright for him to fully see, and too unforgiving to fully accept him. Bullied by both kids and adults, who mocked his albinism and trivialized his blindness, Garth turned to activism and punk rock, seeking escape, and discovered a scene that embraced him for who he was. And yet he still couldn't quell a haunting pain that had overwhelmed him since he was a child, a deep need to "blank it all out." Until he tried heroin.Garth's experience as a heroin user—including dopesickness, incarceration and overdose—is an all-too-common story for those struggling with drug addiction. And for Garth, it was this revelation that propelled him to the forefront of drug user activism. He was witnessing firsthand the failure of abstinence-based recovery programs; the ceaseless deaths of friends and community members from unregulated, toxic drug supply and a lack of safer alternatives; the over-representation of drug users, particularly Indigenous and Black users, in jails and prisons. And he saw that far from the decades-long war on drugs being a success, it had been a deadly failure.Crackdown is an intimate portrait of Garth's relationship with opioids, and a searing indictment of a broken system that is failing drug users and non-users alike. With street drugs getting more toxic by the day, drug users and their families, friends and communities are left to pay the price. Crackdown asks us to radically reimagine our approach to drug use, and to envisage a system that helps rather than harms.
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Indigenous peoples biography, Indigenous peoples history, General non-fiction
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A stunning narrative from one of the most powerful young writers at work today, and the director of the Oscar®-nominated…
documentary, Sugarcane, We Survived the Night interweaves oral history with hard-hitting journalism and a deeply personal father-son journey into a searing portrait of Indigenous survival, love, and resurgence.&“Julian Brave NoiseCat seamlessly connects true tales of identity and betrayal, love and abandonment, clarity and confusion. We Survived the Night is a whirling, radiant gift to the reader.&” —Louise Erdrich, author of The Night WatchmanJulian Brave NoiseCat&’s childhood was rich with culture and contradictions. When his Secwépemc and St&’at&’imc father, an artist haunted by a turbulent past, abandoned the family, NoiseCat and his non-Native mother were embraced by the urban Native community in Oakland, California, as well as by family on the Canim Lake Indian Reserve in British Columbia. In his father&’s absence, NoiseCat immersed himself in Native history and culture to understand the man he seldom saw—his past, his story, where he came from—and, by extension, himself.Years later, NoiseCat sets out across the continent to correct the erasure, invisibility, and misconceptions surrounding the First Peoples of this land as he develops his voice as a storyteller and artist. Told in the style of a "Coyote Story," a legend about the trickster forefather of NoiseCat&’s people who was revered for his wit and mocked for his tendency to self-destruct, We Survived the Night brings a traditional art form nearly annihilated by colonization back to life on the page. Through a dazzling blend of history and mythology, memoir and reportage, NoiseCat unravels old stories and braids together new ones. He grapples with the erasure of North America's First Peoples and the trauma that cascades across generations, while illuminating the vital Indigenous cultural, environmental, and political movements reshaping the future. He chronicles the historic ascent of the first Native American cabinet secretary in the United States and the first Indigenous sovereign of Canada; probes the colonial origins and limits of racial ideology and Indian identity through the story of the Lumbee Tribe of North Carolina; and hauls the golden eggs of an imperiled fish out of the sea alongside the Tlingit of Sitka, Alaska. This is a rewriting and a restoration—of Native history and, more intimately, of family and self, as NoiseCat seeks to reclaim a culture effaced by colonization and reconcile with a father who left. Virtuosic, compelling, and deeply moving, this is at once an intensely personal journey and a searing portrait of Indigenous survival, love, and resurgence.Drawing from five years of on-the-ground reporting, We Survived the Night paints a profound and unforgettable portrait of contemporary Indigenous life, alongside an intimate and deeply powerful reckoning between a father and a son. A soulful, formally daring, and indelible work from an important new voice.
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Family stories, Serious and literary fiction, Humourous fiction
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WINNER OF THE 2025 ATWOOD GIBSON WRITERS&’ TRUST FICTION PRIZE • WINNER OF THE 2026 GORDON BURN PRIZE • WINNER…
OF THE 2026 ASPEN WORDS LITERARY PRIZE • LONGLISTED FOR THE 2025 BOOKER PRIZE • FINALIST FOR THE 2025 GOVERNOR GENERAL&’S LITERARY AWARD FOR FICTION • FINALIST FOR THE 2026 ETHEL WILSON FICTION PRIZE • LONGLISTED FOR THE 2026 DUBLIN LITERARY AWARD • SHORTLISTED FOR THE 2026 CLIMATE FICTION PRIZE • SHORTLISTED FOR THE 2026 AMAZON CANADA FIRST NOVEL AWARD • Named A Best Book of 2025 by The Globe and Mail • The New Yorker • CBC • Indigo • Publishers Weekly • The Irish Times • The Observer • The Guardian • The Boston Globe A stunning debut novel by a writer who is &“bang-on brilliant&” (Miriam Toews), about a biologist in Ukraine battling to save the country&’s snail species from the brink of extinction on the eve of the Russian invasion. A darkly comic novel exploring survival, love, and the impact of war. &“Funny and smart. This is essential reading.&” —Ann Patchett, bestselling author of Tom Lake &“This novel turns corners and tables. I love works that are smarter than I am, and this is one.&” —Percival Everett, author of National Book Award-winner James &“Pulses with a powerful sense of urgency and relevance to our times.&” —Lara Prescott, author of The Secrets We KeptUkraine, 2022. Yeva is a loner and a maverick scientist who lives out of her mobile lab. She scours the country&’s forests and valleys, trying and failing to breed rare snails, while her relatives urge her to settle down and finally start a family of her own. What they don't know: Yeva already dates plenty of men—not for love, but to fund her work—entertaining Westerners who come to Ukraine on guided romance tours believing they'll find docile brides untainted by feminism and modernity. Nastia and her sister, Solomiya, are also entangled in the booming marriage industry, posing as a hopeful bride and her translator while secretly searching for their missing mother, who vanished after years of fierce activism against the romance tours. Together they embark on the journey of a lifetime across hundreds of miles: three angry women, a truckful of kidnapped bachelors, and Lefty, a last-of-his-kind snail with one final shot at perpetuating his species. But their plans come to a screeching halt when Russia invades. In a stunningly ambitious and achingly raw metafictional spiral, Endling brilliantly balances horror and comedy, drawing on Reva's own experiences as a Ukrainian expat tracking her family's delicate dance of survival behind enemy lines. As fiction and reality collide on the page, Reva probes the hard truths of war: What stories must we tell ourselves to survive? To carry on with the routines of life under military occupation? And for those of us watching from overseas: Can our sense of normalcy and security ever be restored, or have they always been a fragile illusion? Endling is a tour de force from an author who weaves a story of love, loss, humor, and hope that only she can tell.