David Finch’s highly regarded biography of R.M. Patterson is now available in paperback. The escapades of this great Canadian are brought to life in a story that combines the lure of gold, the thrill of wilderness exploration and comic tales about life on a southern Alberta ranch. With access to Patterson’s diaries, letters and photographs, as …

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 …

On January 20, 2003, at 10:45 a.m., a massive avalanche in the Selkirk Range of British Columbia struck three members of two guided backcountry skiing groups and buried them. After a frantic hour of digging by those still standing, an unthinkable outcome became reality: seven people were dead.

The tragedy made international news, splashing photos of …

A Hockey Hall of Fame defenceman looks back at his life on the ice

From the beginning, the hockey gods looked favourably on Pierre Pilote, a French Canadian lad who went on to become captain of the powerhouse Chicago Blackhawks in the 1960s and one of the greatest defencemen in NHL history. Pilote takes us on a rich and unforgettable journey throug …

In thirteenth century France, a catastrophic fire has destroyed the greatest shrine in Christendom. Out of the ashes of the tragedy, history leaves a shadowy tale of a miracle, of the resurrection of faith, and of reconstruction—the erection of the masterwork of Gothic architecture, the Cathedral at Chartres. At the time of the fire, a powerful v …

Harold Mortimer-Lamb’s name is in the index of almost every book written on the history of Canadian art, yet his place in that world has never been clear. Photographer, writer, painter, promoter—he was a man of many parts and the ideal patron and friend to some of Canada's most famous artists, including A.Y. Jackson, Emily Carr, and Jack Shadbo …

Drinkin’ rye and water with Grandma. Guns in False Creek. Frat boy homies from the North Delta ghetto. Samuel L. Jackson. Phantom Lord & Metallica. A kid who’s got the hots for his mom…

Hunh?

That’s right. It’s all here in this collection of immediate, lean and visceral short fiction from Clint Burnham.

Praise for Airborne Photo:

"A stack of …

Freedom 55? The so-called “Golden Years”? What if you are slowly losing your memories and your motor skills? Or what if you are the devastated witness as your partner struggles with dementia? Lewy Body Disease is a form of dementia second only to Alzheimer’s in numbers, yet many doctors and almost no lay people have ever heard its name. This …

In 1789, Armande, a wet nurse who is known for the mystical qualities of her breast milk, goes missing. Ce´leste, a cunning servant girl who Armande once saved from shame and starvation, sets out to find her. A snuffbox found in the snow, the unexpected arrival of a gentleman and the discovery of the wet nurse’s diary, deepen the mystery. Using …

The Canadian Oxford Dictionary defines hoax as a “humorous or malicious deception,” and hex as “a magic spell.” In Hoaxes and Hexes, Barbara Smith explores these intriguing reflections of human nature, showing our curious desire to believe in the impossible and explain the inexplicable.

Here are tales of swindlers, charlatans and imposters, …

One of the CBC’s Best Books of the Year.

A pregnancy test is taken at a wedding, a bad diagnosis leads a patient to a surprising outlook, and a civic holiday becomes a dystopian nightmare. By turns caustic, tender, and creepily hilarious, Sweet Affliction reveals the frailties, perversions, and resilience of Anna Leventhal’s cast of city-dweller …

Arresting Hope reminds us that prisons are not only places of punishment, marginalization, and trauma, but that they can also be places of hope, blessing even, where people with difficult lived experiences can begin to compose stories full of healing, anticipation, communication, education, connection, and community. The book tells a story about wo …

"The contribution made by the Edmonton libraries to the sanity and support of the citizens cannot be estimated. No Annual Report can gauge things of this sort." -Annual Report of the Edmonton Public Library, 1931 The Edmonton Public Library turns 100 in 2013! Novelist, journalist, and Edmontonian Todd Babiak tells the story of EPL's birth and comin …

Scholar and diplomat Brian L. Evans gives us the first English-language biography of Chester A. Ronning (1894-1984): diplomat, politician, educator, and one of Canada's major public figures. This fascinating story depicts Ronning, the man who received many honours, and deepens readers' knowledge of Canada's post-World War II diplomacy and Canada-Ch …

Nikki van Schyndel is not your typical grizzled survivalist. She is a contemporary, urban young woman who threw off modern comforts to spend nineteen months in a remote rainforest with her housecat and a virtual stranger.

Set in the Broughton Archipelago—a maze of isolated islands near northern Vancouver Island—Becoming Wild is a story of surviv …

Jonas in Frames is [choose one]: A) a series of loosely connected narrative fragments written in poetic prose; B) a maze of postcard stories bursting with literary in-jokes; C) a delicate sequence of prose poems interspersed with narrative interludes; or D) haunted by the ghost of Samuel Beckett.

In its esoteric glimpse into the disassociated, Jonas …

Justine McKeen is back, and she’s on a deadline. With only days left before Earth Day, Justine enlists the help of her classmates to count flower buds, frogs, spiders and ants in their natural habitat as part of an environmental science project. But there’s a species right in her own classroom that she’ll have to tackle first--a class bully. …

Cady has always wanted to be a reporter, like her hero Nellie Bly, so after a fire burns down the orphanage she lives in, she’s ready to leave small-town Ontario and make her mark as a newspaperwoman.

A crumbling newspaper clipping leads her to Orrenstown, Indiana, where her investigation into a long-ago murder earns her a hard lesson in race rela …

Extensively illustrated with Ian McAllister's magnificent photographs, The Salmon Bears explores the delicate balance that exists between the grizzly, black and spirit bears and their natural environment, the last great wilderness along the central coast of British Columbia.

Key to this relationship are the salmon that are born in the rivers each sp …

After the orphanage she lives in is destroyed by fire, Betty, an innocent and trusting teen, takes a job as a maid in Kingston, Ontario. Welcomed into the household of the wealthy Remington clan, Betty makes friends with the staff at the house and soon discovers that her mother had also been a maid there—and that her father is in a nearby jail, c …

The six little ninjas of Dojo Daycare are back and rowdier than ever during a field trip to the farm. From the moment the ninja boys and ninja girls step off their minibus, mayhem ensues.

Farm activities like feeding a pig, milking a cow and plowing a field dissolve into chaos as the master slips into the slop trough, is chased by a bull and then is …

Two-and-a half millennia after it was created, Homer's Odyssey remains one of humanity's most memorable adventure stories. In this re-creation of Homer's classic as a young adult novel, we see the aftermath of the Trojan War through the eyes of Alexi, a fifteen-year-old Trojan boy. Orphaned by the war and enslaved by Odysseus himself, Alexi has a v …

The characters from Susan Musgrave’s A Cargo of Orchids are back in this brilliantly engaging novel. Rainy, the Mexican-American woman, and Frenchy, the African-American, along with Musgrave’s narrator X have returned and convincingly insist their story is not done. Once inmates on death row, now reunited and hanging out at an old house in a BC …

Finaliste de langue française, Essais, des Prix littéraires du Gouverneur général de 2013! http://ggbooks.canadacouncil.ca/fr

Cet ouvrage présente une analyse discursive des récits identitaires albertains développés par rapport aux ressources pétrolières de l'Alberta, au fil de l'histoire moderne de la province. Par le biais des théories …

The cowboy, as perhaps no other figure, has captured the imagination of North Americans for over a century. Before Owen Wister's publication of The Virginian in 1902, the image of the cowboy was essentially that of the dime novel - a rough, violent, one-dimensional drifter, or the stage cowboy variety found in Buffalo Bill Cody's Wild West show. Wi …

At 2:21 am on September 8, 1896, authorities in Nova Scotia killed an innocent man. Peter Wheeler — a "coloured" man accused of murdering a white girl — was strung up with a slipknot noose. The hanging was state-sanctioned but it was a lynching all the same. Now, a re-examination of his case using modern forensic science reveals one of the grea …

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 …

Few writers have Harriet Richards’ understanding of childhood, and fewer still can evoke the never-lost child at the heart of our adult experience. Like her previous, critically-acclaimed books, this new collection is deft, comic, and poignant, but there is malice and tragedy at work in these stories — their gaiety and cool observation counterb …

In these stories, readers will not find heartwarming sentimentality, but mature literary prose with surprising twists and indeterminate endings, and women of intense substance and spirit. P. J. Worrell understands girls who dream of being wives and mothers in safe cozy homes, then find out that trying hard to secure that life does not necessarily m …

Thousands of newcomers are pouring into Alberta from around the globe, bringing unexpected gifts. Many are writers and storytellers.

What pulls them to Canada? What happens to them on the journey? What experiences have they deliberately left behind? What treasures do they bring? How do they describe their emerging sense of place and their creative a …

Jessie lives with her parents on a farm a long way from anywhere. There are no other people for miles around. Often, she is lonely. More than anything, Jessie wants a dog; a friend who will play with her, come running when she calls and sleep with its head on her lap. Her mother and father can’t see any need for a dog on a wheat farm. Besides, th …

A vividly wrought memoir, Last Dance in Shediac is a collection of the author’s personal memories of her mother—celebrated Canadian artist Molly Lamb Bobak—and a tender meditation on life and death.

Molly Lamb Bobak (1922–2014) was the first woman to travel overseas as an official Canadian war artist. She was also the daughter of famous Cana …

Experience all the thrills and suspense of chasing down the world’s highest-profile criminals.

What does it take to catch a criminal? Not just any criminal, but one of the world’s most wanted? In Outlaws, Spies, and Gangsters, Laura Scandiffo chronicles eight of history’s most famous manhunts, from searches for drug dealers to dictators, hacke …

Eighty-year-old Alberto Camelo has searched for love in all the wrong places. Nevertheless, he claims that his experiences have made him the world’s greatest lover. This claim is belied by his ancient neighbour and closest friend Adriana who taunts: “Perhaps you are the greatest lover of last Tuesday.” Despite his claims, Alberto has never ex …

Finalist, Hubert Evans Non-Fiction Prize (BC Book Prizes)

Finalist, City of Vancouver Book Prize

Long listed for CBC Canada Reads 2015

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 …

Bob is on the road. Bob is on the run. But from what, or whom, is she running? Follow Bob as she hops from car to car telling her story to unsuspecting drivers as she tries to put her life in the rear-view mirror. Will she make it to her destination? And what will she find when she gets there? Find out in the critically adored See Bob Run."...the i …

The Deaf House is Joanne Weber’s life story. It illustrates the work and passion of a woman who grew up deaf and became an advocate for the deaf. It is a story of pain, loss and defeat balanced with joy, gain, and victory. Joanne Weber’s creative memoir, shows how deafness can be a brutal oppression of the mind. Her torment of not knowing exact …

One Peace celebrates the "Power of One," and specifically the accomplishments of children from around the globe who have worked to promote world peace. Janet Wilson challenges today's children to strive to make a difference in this beautifully illustrated, fact-filled and fascinating volume of portraits of many "heroes for today."

Canadian Craig Ki …

Toronto boasts one of the most diverse food cultures in the world. Every night, the city comes alive as hundreds of restaurants, bistros, pubs and diners open for hungry patrons. Now, the city's appetite has been further rejuvenated with a veritable food-cart revolution, led by a diverse fleet of mobile gourmet-food options. With carts, trucks and …

Understories is an exploration of things visible mostly to the inner eye and memory, things below the surface. The book began as a riff on Mark Strand's brilliant title, "Planet of the Lost Things," and it is an exploration of loss, but also of recovery through memory and language. The first part, "A Perfect Afternoon" follows an unfulfilled romanc …

Featuring a preview of Carrie Snyder’s highly anticipated debut novel, Girl Runner.

Anansi Digital brings you Carrie Snyder’s debut collection, Hair Hat, “a potent work of original imagination.” (Edmonton Journal)

In these mysterious and wondrous stories, eleven disparate people — some of them related, some of them neighbours, glancing acqu …

Paardeberg, South Africa is far from the Canadian prairies. In 1899, best friends from the small town of Portage la Prairie, Will and Mason, sign up with the Winnipeg Rifles” “A” Company to fight in the Second Boer War. Here they meet Robert, the silent anthropologist from Alberta with a mystery he isn—t revealing; Claire, an Australian nur …

Does true love have supernatural power?

Where Did You Sleep Last Night is a love story about a teenage girl who embarks on a relationship with Kurt Cobain.

Evelyn Gray is a sad and lonely sixteen-year-old from Carnation, Washington who is terrorized by her classmates at school. She spends most of her time in her room reading, writing letters to dead …

Night is falling, and so is the snow. As the blizzard buries the ground, it uncovers the resentments, hopes, and aches of a small town in northeastern Arkansas, where, like in any Southern small town, there are unwanted pregnancies to agonize over, surgeries to be paid for and love to be made. Julie's two daughters have just run off to Hollywood to …

The history of Kitchener is unique among cities in southern Ontario. Although Kitchener shares so much of the character of the region today, its past was considerably different. Until 1916, Kitchener was Berlin, “Canada’s German capital.” Over two-thirds of the residents were of German origin; many retained strong traces of that past. These b …

In June of 1962, the Canadian Pacific Railway announced a proposal to redevelop part of its reserved land in the heart of downtown Calgary. In an effort to bolster its waning revenues and to redefine its urban presence, the CPR proposed a multimillion dollar development project that included retail, office, and convention facilities, along with a m …

“So I have always walked alleys alone, with my monster face, listening through a wall for the words that might cultivate me, that are contained within the homes of ex-lovers, the ones who caught a glimpse and ran away.”

In the neon-slick streets of Thea Bowering’s imagination, monster girls and femme flâneurs roam, anthropologist’s eyes on …

Peigan elders Joe and Josephine Crowshoe belonged to a generation still bright with the traditional knowledge and deep memories of their grandparents. They lived under a paternalistic government system that denied them their language, culture, and religion. They reclaimed their heritage and shared it with the larger community receiving honours for …

While working to restore an historic theatre in a seedy part of the city, a graduate student named Anthea searches to find her best friend, lost to the rhetoric of an itinerant street mystic. Almost a century earlier, Liam, a tenth-rate tenor, visits the same theatre while eking out a career on the dying Vaudeville circuits of the day. In both eras …

Unfitting Stories: Narrative Approaches to Disease, Disability, and Trauma illustrates how stories about ill health and suffering have been produced and received from a variety of perspectives. Bringing together the work of Canadian researchers, health professionals, and people with lived experiences of disease, disability, or trauma, it addresses …