TouchWood Editions is proud to introduce the first female sleuth in our selection of mystery novels. Author Gwendolyn Southin uniquely blends the charm of gumshoe techniques with the fresh perspective of a developing female detective. The Margaret Spencer Mysteries offer action and suspense, with a human subtext.

Back in Vancouver, Maggie and Nat b …

Traversing the historic trails of the Rockies today is done in much the same manner as it was two centuries ago—primarily on foot with heavy packs, with little better defence against mosquitoes or the elements. Although accurate maps are available, and modern technology such as global positioning systems stand as a bulwark to a complete wildernes …

Brought into the media spotlight by her great-niece Pamela Anderson, Auntie Vie burst onto the scene as Pamela’s biggest supporter on “Dancing with the Stars.” Unexpectedly, Auntie Vie’s distinctive balance of earned wisdom and chic glamour quickly charmed the media and viewers of all ages. Her door suddenly stormed by cameras and reporters …

Winner of the 2015 City of Victoria Butler Book Prize
A Globe and Mail top 100 pick for 2014
Winner of a 2015 Independent Publisher Book Award Bronze Medal

Twelve short stories that examine what happens in the lives of characters who discover shocking truths about the people they thought they knew best.

Whether set in a cottage or a Montreal market, …

In this breathtaking collection of poems, Pamela Porter invokes the twin mysteries of love and loss to illumine the heart burdened by grief, yet comforted and renewed by the beauty of the natural world. In the long poem “Atonement,” Porter takes us into a human drama, rich with astonishments: “There was no snow, but you could say the snow bur …

It was the summer of ’43 on a Cariboo ranch. He was 12 and had to become a man. If you were a man, you could become a cowboy. Join the author on this nostalgic look back on the joys, frustrations and observations of growing up and discovering where he belongs.

Excerpt from Eldon Lee's foreword: “This book by Alan Fry is probably the best book ev …

Beyond Beauty is the story of a remarkable journey that Bill Terry and his wife, Rosemary, undertook when they joined a party of Dutch and British alpine plant hunters intent on botanizing on the roof of the world. The expedition travelled in a convoy of eight jeeps over roads that were rarely paved and occasionally terrifying. They crossed fifteen …

Beginning in 1946, Elizabeth Hawley worked for Fortune magazine as a researcher. Shortly thereafter, she left both her job and the United States itself to travel the world, and thus began her lifelong attraction to the exotic and remote sovereign state of Nepal. In the years that followed, she began reporting on the political and cultural events ta …

Silas Pearson is looking for answers. It's been more than three years since his wife, Penelope de Silva, disappeared while working on a conservation project in Utah's red rock wilderness. Law enforcement authorities have given up hope of finding the adventurous Penelope alive. And some suggest that she may not have vanished into the desert at all, …

Journey into the fashionable art world of 1960s Vancouver as Margaret Spencer and Nat Southby return in Death as a Fine Art, the fifth book in the Margaret Spencer mystery series. The owner of the Silver Unicorn Art Gallery is dead, and Southby and Spencer, Private Investigators are back at work in search of the killer. With plenty of suspects and …

Elora Dixon is a vibrant, middle-aged lawyer and disability-rights activist who has never walked a step in her life. A neuromuscular disease left her with a curved spine and a reliance on around-the-clock care. Nonetheless, she is an inexorable force when chance pits her against the notorious Julian Summer, who is in town promoting his internationa …

Jayne Seagrave—author of the bestselling Camping British Columbia and Yukon—is back with a book that only an avid camper with children could write. Camping with Kids in the West: BC and Alberta’s Best Family Campgrounds is the definitive guide for parents who want to introduce their children to the wonders of nature and create family memories …

Travel has become the world’s favourite pastime, and this collection of stories and essays is sure to fuel your wanderlust. Let renowned Canadian writers including Susan Musgrave, Stephen Henighan, and Pauline Holdstock transport you to the relaxing beaches of the Caribbean islands, the lush forests of South America, the busy streets of Asia, and …

In a literary collection unlike any other, Thistledown Press brings together short fiction by women and about women. Readers interested in women’s perspectives will be drawn in by unique takes on the female experience provided in these ten short stories by Canadian women writers. Fiercely independent career women, sisters who butt heads, children …

Helping to promote healing in Aboriginal people with addiction and mental health issues requires specialized knowledge and unique skills. Health, social service and justice workers must first have a grasp of history and the emotional legacy that today’s generation of Aboriginal people carry. They must also be prepared to blend Aboriginal and West …

Metaphysical Licks, a hybrid prose-poem/novella riffing on the lives and works of Austrian poet Georg Trakl and his sister, Grete, is the restless new work by writer and translator Gregoire Pam Dick [a.k.a. Mina Pam Dick, Jake Pam Dick et al., author of Delinquent (Futurepoem, 2009)]. With a mix of high and low, tragic and comic, abstract and concr …

The stories in Night Watch, a new collection from Susan Zettell, delve deep into dark waters. Zettell looks unflinchingly at life's bountiful sorrows: the loss felt by abandoned children, the sudden intrusion of sickness or death, the fierce love suffered by the mother of a troubled child, the journey away from home and the shining, difficult path …

Last Airlift is the true story of the last Canadian airlift operation that left Saigon and arrived in Toronto on April 13, 1975. Son Thi Anh Tuyet was one of 57 babies and children on that flight. Based on personal interviews and enhanced with archive photos, Tuyet's story of the Siagon orphanage and her flight to Canada is an emotional and suspens …

It's spring in Toronto and the Hollywood movie crews are back. This is where art meets commerce full force. Instant communities are created, like summer camps for adults, with the cast and crews working long hours and always under pressure. Over the six weeks of production, the cast and crew lives, loves, hates, wins and loses together on and off t …

The days of which Denise Roig writes in A Quiet Night and a Perfect End are filled with Chinese-cooking lessons, wedding preparations, and day trips to the Laurentian mountains. They're peopled by fundamentalist fishermen, mothers, daughters, fathers and sons, the kind of people who seek quiet nights and perfect ends to the turmoil of their long da …

In Sarah Robert’s debut collection Wax Boats, a rural island community comes to life in action-packed, evocative tales. Cougar ladies fight the BC wilderness and the inevitable extinction of their peaceful island lives. An expectant mother turns to Native traditions to guide her through a safe delivery. A Boy Scout troupe rescues their own leader …

The names Cook and Quadra ring a bell for most of us, as do Bering and Vancouver, but how much do we know about the Greek-born navigator, Juan de Fuca or the Machiavelli of the maritime fur trade, John Meares? British Columbia's earliest authors and explorers are skilfully introduced, for the first time collectively, by Alan Twigg. This is a compel …

Jack Hodgins‘ first book, published originally in 1976, is once again in print — in a new edition. Winner of the Eaton's Book Prize and nominated for the Governor General's Award, Spit Delaney's Island, a collection of short stories, put Vancouver Island on the map as a Canadian literary locale and set Hodgins off on his literary career. Hodgin …

One year has passed since Roan, Alandra, and the children escaped from the Brothers. Now, in the haven they call Newlight, Alandra has begun traveling the Dreamfield with the children, exploring their potential. But when the children mysteriously fall into life-threatening comas, Roan and Lumpy set off to find a cure. The remedy may lie in the hand …

Following the metaphysical and epistemological threads that have led to our modern conception of the body as a machine, the book explores views of the body in the history of philosophy. Its central thesis is that the Cartesian paradigm, which has dominated the modern conception of the body (including the development and practice of medicine), offe …

Seventeen-year-old Emily's world crumbles when her boyfriend dumps her and when she thinks her life can’t possibly get any worse, a series of secrets are revealed that threaten to tear her beloved family apart. Emily feels like she has no one to turn to, until an unexpected friendship blossoms with a troubled classmate named Leo. Sometimes despon …

Dubbed "the Wayne Gretzky of women's hockey," Angela James became the most dominant female player on the planet from the early 1980s through the mid 1990s. Her rise to hockey stardom, however, was a true long shot. During a difficult childhood plagued by near poverty and familial chaos, hockey was James's escape. Talent and determination eventually …

This beautifully written story, loosely inspired by Hans Christian Andersen’s fairy tale “Thumbelina,” was created in response to the gorgeous award-winning art of Nasrin Khosravi.

Author Uma Krishnaswami’s sensitive and poetic tale opens when Lina, a tiny girl no bigger than a thumb, is found in a flower by her mother. Because she is so tin …

A small-town Bill Clinton look-alike agonizes over whether to accept a tempting offer from the CIA; an obese young woman finds love in a prairie cafe; a lonely child encounters a supernatural being; a teenage girl struggles with a sexual predator as she hitchhikes on the autobahn; a newly divorced man tries to return his adopted children; two broth …

The extraordinary story of Michael Smith, a man who rose from humble beginnings in Blackpool, England, to become a revolutionary gene researcher, philanthropist and Nobel Prize winner. A professor at the University of British Columbia, Smith dedicated his talent and energy to science research, and later launched the university's internationally reg …

Canada's foremost literary critic looks at the politics of irony in modern writing and explains how it relates to imperial history, how it impacts upon personal memories, how it speaks from the margin, and how it indirectly teaches us to resist presumptuous authority. Funny, informed and emotionally engaging, Grandchild of Empire, an extension of t …

She had been running, stumbling, walking for sixteen hours. It seemed that every muscle was screaming in pain. She did not even stop to check the new wound. When she reached the top of the hill, she stopped abruptly, trembling at an unexpected sight.

Clusters of tents and groups of men around campfires were silhouetted against the sky.

In Acts of Cou …

Two unlikely worlds collide in Sheila Peters's first novel, The Taste of Ashes, a story of redemption and the resilience of the human spirit, even at its most frail and vulnerable.

Isabel Lee's early life in rural BC was forever changed by a brief but powerful love affair with a young Oblate priest. Now a recovering alcoholic, Isabel struggles to pu …

Following the success of First Invaders (Ronsdale, 2004), Alan Twigg turns his attention to First Nations writers, unearthing more than 300 books by more than 170 mostly unheralded British Columbia aboriginal authors. Taking the reader from residential schools to art galleries, this lively and unprecedented panorama of British Columbia includes tra …

Imagine you're given the startling news that your body is only capable of having six more orgasms. "It's either buck up or fuck up," decides Mel in "Six Degrees of Altered Sensation," adding this new restraint to the perplexity of single life with progressive Multiple Sclerosis. In "Flickering," Francis becomes a pyromaniac in order to give her gro …

Holy Days of Obligation is a collection of short stories which weaves together the family history of a working-class Catholic family. Set in industrial Ontario, the stories are narrated by Bertie, who is the oldest of nine children. Bertie uneasily straddles two worlds: that of her parents, Frank and Elizabeth, who have too many children and not en …

Canada's ceramists, tapestry weavers, and other craft artists are recognized amongst the world's finest artisans. Craft Perception and Practice celebrates the excellence of Canadian crafts by bringing together twenty-four essays and critical commentaries by sixteen independent critics and curators, professional artists, art historians, and studio a …

The brilliant new collection from Michael Crummey, bestselling author of Galore.

Michael Crummey’s first collection in a decade has something for everyone: Love and marriage and airport grief; how not to get laid in a Newfoundland mining town; total immersion baptism; the grand machinery of decay; migrant music and invisible crowns and mortifying …

A movement in the sonata form traditionally comprises thee sections -- exposition, development and recapitulation -- which explore two themes according to set key relationships. In the 1920s dancer/choreographer Martha Graham and her musical collaborator Louis Horst developed a modern dance structure based on the sonata form and the inevitable chan …

The Light Through the Trees is a remarkable and deeply wise reflection on land, farming, a sense of place, connecting with nature and what it means to live on this earth. As a third-generation farmer, the author’s roots go deep into the land but her work also captures her thoughts on such current issues as the environment, environmental identity …

In this humourous and refreshing collection of short stories, David Thompson reveals the charm and grit of life in the Yukon. Talking at the Woodpile is a masterful blend of fact and fiction, history and the contemporary and intriguing stories that begin as long as 10,000 years ago. An unsuspecting miner discovers a frozen carcass while digging fo …

Jean Coulthard demonstrated that a Canadian woman could be a successful professional composer, whose music was, and still is, played extensively in concert halls across Canada and internationally. Through her seven-decade career she composed in every genre of traditional classical music: opera, symphonies, concerti, chamber music, keyboard, voice, …

Parallel Rivers is a collection of stories that were coaxed into existence from Kenyon’s interest in seeing what fiction might learn from film, particularly the German, French, Italian, and Japanese cinema of the 70s. While Kenyon’s fictions are often immersed in postmodern sensibilities, adding the rituals and techniques and experiments of fil …

Welcome to Poplar Grove, a farming community with three generations of Dutch-Canadians. Life in the New World has not become less complicated as the decades have passed, and now, a set of dying customs is about to collide with the ways of a new generation.

The balance is shifting between people comfortable holding hymnals and cleaning cows’ teats …

Established in 1967, the Ghost River Wilderness Area, located along the eastern slopes of the Rocky Mountains in southern Alberta, is one of only three provincially designated wilderness areas in the province. As such, it is supposed to have the strictest form of government protection available in Canada, with development, motorized transportation …

Yax is too young to accompany his father on a trading expedition and must stay at home with his mother and his younger sister. Disappointed, he goes off to practise his spear-throwing. When he loses his spear, he thinks he is old enough to go into the forest to look for it, even though he has been warned about the dangers that await children who wa …

Through the filter of the human condition, Strange Bedfellows – a new anthology from Thistledown Press – examines relationships at every stage, in stories and essays filled with humour, grace, and occasionally complete irreverence. The difficulties common to romantic relationships are brought to the forefront in this collection about courtship, …

With careful research and imagination, author Linda Goyette has created a collection of 25 stories based on the true stories of named children of the past and present.

Too often the youngest Canadians are erased from our historical memory. Rocky Mountain Kids provides firstperson creative non-fiction narratives from the region's children, many of wh …

The selections in this survey of the narrative and lyric poets of Confederation and the later nineteenth century have been chosen to remind readers of the distances and diversities involved as Canadians struggled toward nationhood. Along with essays on Sangster and Mair, the first poets consciously writing of the Canadian scene and the Canadian ide …

Victoria’s Chinatown is Canada’s oldest Chinese neighbourhood and has a lineage unbroken since 1858. With large-format colour photos and photocollages, Robert Amos and Kileasa Wong take you behind the doors of the 29 private clubs that make up the Chinese Consolidated Benevolent Association, where you’ll see the gilded altars, antique art an …