Based on a traditional Japanese folktale, The Magic Ear is a timeless story of true nobility and the importance of respect for all life, however humble. Recommended reading ages: 4-10

Widely recognized as a classic of northern-exploration literature, A Journey to the Northern Ocean is Samuel Hearne's story of his three-year trek to seek a trade route across the Barrens in the Northwest Territories. Hearne was a superb reporter, from his anguished description of the massacre of helpless Eskimos by his Indian companions to his met …

In the early sixteenth century, the first exploratory ships arrived on the Pacific Coast of North America. These rovers were seeking gold and silver, fur pelts, a safe passage from the Pacific to the Atlantic, and above all, adventure. Though many of the voyagers didn’t survive the dangerous sea crossings or the perils that awaited them on land, …

Walter B. Cheadle’s diary tells his incredible story of travelling with Lord Milton, as they journeyed along the uncharted Yellowhead route in 1862–63. A miraculously successful expedition, the men traversed the continent, making their way from Quebec, through Saskatchewan, Alberta, up the Athabasca River, risking their lives opening the trails …

With sharp, witty reviews of the best spots in town to slake your thirst, Drinking Vancouver: 100+ Great Bars in the City and Beyond is the pocket-sized booze bible for locals and visitors craving a night out on the town. Divided into 11 neighbourhoods, each one with a handy map, visit many of the new, revamped and unique establishments from the he …

The stories in Far Pastures take readers to R.M. Patterson’s homestead in the Peace River country of northern Alberta. To all-night dances that ended as the northern lights faded in the dawn. To escapades on the Fort Nelson, Liard and South Nahanni rivers. And to a ranch in southern Alberta where he raised cattle during the lean years of the 1930 …

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 …

In 2006, the Prime Minister apologized to the Chinese people for the legislated discrimination created by Canada’s head tax laws in the first half of the twentieth century, acknowledging the far-reaching and long-term consequences it has had on their families. A Cowherd in Paradise is the story of one such family.

The book chronicles the remarkabl …

Edmonton’s Loud & Queer Cabaret has been blazing trails and shining a light on Queer arts and culture for twenty years. The showcase has debuted more than three hundred pieces of stunning performance and art from both established and emerging talent alike.

From the Loud & Queer Cabaret archives, here are some of the most memorable pieces, from m …

Standing Together is a powerful expression of women's collective and individual strength. It is a collection of personal stories from women who have suffered the horrors of violence and abuse and have made the hardest decision: to stand up, choose life, take control and walk away from the darkness.

The disturbing, compelling, and inspiring stories i …

The colony of British Columbia, 1863. Boston Jim Milroy, a lone trapper and trader with an eidetic memory and a tragic unreckoned past, has become obsessed with reciprocating a seemingly minor kindness from the loquacious Dora Hume, a settler in the Cowichan Valley of Vancouver Island. Dora's kindness and her life story both haunt Boston Jim, and …

In 1941, a young man imagines thrilling battles and heroic acts when he lies about his age and joins the army. “Assigned to the Winnipeg Grenadiers, part of the Canadian army in Hong Kong, Freddy McKee becomes a prisoner of war six weeks after arriving in Hong Kong.

Five years pass and Freddy finally returns home from the war, but three women—J …

It was supposed to be a homecoming and reunion, but when Anne Tennyson Miller (Tenn to her friends and family) returns to Driftwood Bay with her new friend Una, they find a ghost town. Something has gone terribly wrong in the world. The sea is rising fast, and everyone — almost everyone — has fled to the hills. Danger and treachery lurk on a hi …

Lois Donovan’s new historical fiction, The Journal, begins in 2004 when thirteen-year-old Kami receives a bizarre offer involving a historic house in Edmonton, from her estranged grandfather. A move to Edmonton was definitely not part of Kami’s “best-year-ever” plan, but her mother insists it is an opportunity to reconnect with the father s …

A diminutive cowboy with a full beard and a Texas drawl stands onstage at Expo 86 in Vancouver telling wild and woolly stories of life in the Chilcotin backcountry. The audience is mesmerized by his poetic ballad of an alcoholic dog that rode on the back of his saddle in Anahim Lake. The performer is Luther Corky Williams.

Originally from Texas, Cor …

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 …

In his third book, The Junction, John Schreiber invites us to join him on a journey into the hidden corners of BC’s Cariboo Chilcotin, where he observes and describes a land of mountains and old trails, coyotes and bighorn sheep, Aboriginal folk, homesteaders, ranchers and the stories of long ago.

Driven by his love of this land, Schreiber wanders …

Britsh Columbia Bizarre is a fascinating and eclectic mix of tales, snippets, historical facts, fancies and misconceptions teased from the history of British Columbia. No one should read this book to obtain a balanced view of the province's history. It ignores the important people and trends that contributed to BC's story, and instead favours the o …

It’s no secret that Canadians love beer, and in the western provinces, the large number of successful microbreweries continues to prove that distinct beer—high-quality beer—is important to our national pint-lovers. Beer Quest West is for homebrewers and beer aficionados alike: this is your guide to the best of the west.

Alberta and British Co …

The Canadian media were the first to bring Master Corporal Paul Franklin's story to the public, and it is only fitting that award-winning journalist Liane Faulder brings the full account of his return from a war zone. The Long Walk Home: Paul Franklin's Journey from Afghanistan documents the recovery of a soldier injured in a 2006 suicide bombing t …

Each of the six stories in Dave Bidini's playful, irreverent new book takes a headlong run at the hockey dressing room, and knocks the door down.

In one story, a chronic minor-leaguer discovers the wonders—and the pitfalls—of the game in Europe, both on and off the ice. In another, an NHLer is tight with his teammate, the league's leading goalsc …

Winnipeg, 1914. Tom Macrae is working on his law degree and enjoying the company of his sweetheart, Ellen. When the call to arms comes, both Tom and Ellen are torn from their secure, settled lives in the prairie city. Tom finds himself hunched in the trenches, amid the mud and horror of the Great War, while Ellen faces an uncertain future in Tom’ …

At once a memoir, a work of philosophy, a story of European immigration to Canada's dark places of the earth, and an exploration of the roots and effects of colonialism, The Wolves At Evelyn: Journeys Through a Dark Century is a stylistic and rhetorical tour de force from one of Canada's master prose stylists.

Dissident communists fleeing 1920s Germ …

This is a history of British Columbia’s island children, told in their voices, from their perspectives. Composed of twenty-two stories, Island Kids is a snapshot of a period and place in time. The topics range from quintessentially coastal experiences, like a day at the beach, to stories that deal with serious issues, such as BC’s history of re …

In this lyrical memoir, Lily Hoy Price writes with moving detail about her childhood and adolescence in a large Chinese Canadian family in the Cariboo country of northern British Columbia. The ninth daughter in a family of 12 children, Lily is an observant child who tucks away every image of life in rugged Quesnel during the 1930s for one unforgett …

With The Age of Water Lilies, Theresa Kishkan has written a beautiful novel that travels from the time of colonial wars to the pacifist movement to 1960s Victoria, and shares a unique and delightful relationship between 70-year-old Flora and 7-year-old Tessa.

When Flora Oakden leaves her English home in 1912 for the fledgling community of Walhachin …

Set partially in Vancouver, partially on a farm in rural Ontario and partially in West Africa, Sweetness from Ashes is a novel about family in its various forms. When Sheila, Jenny and Chris decide to respect a deceased relative’s wishes, and return the ashes to the family farm, the three begin a journey that takes them from their present-day liv …

Grace River is a smelter town in the interior of B.C. where most people who live there are born and bred, and everyone is either employed by AXIS or knows someone who is. Not much ever changes in Grace River. The days begin at Nick’s Diner and end at the Steelworkers bar. When a young environmentalist arrives in town to investigate toxin levels i …

In 1954, when Florence Kaefer was just nineteen, she accepted a job as a teacher at Norway House Indian Residential School of Manitoba. Not fully aware of the difficult conditions the students were enduring, Florence and her fellow teachers nurtured a school full of lonely and homesick young children.

Edward was only five when he was brought to the …

When 25-year-old Jo climbed down the ramp of the freighter Canadian Star to set foot in Vancouver, BC, in the summer of 1967, she’d never heard of log salvaging. But within two and a half years, the immigrant from England would quit her teaching job and join forces with one of the most enigmatic salvagers of the Sunshine Coast. Dick and Jo Hammon …

What happens when a lifelong gardener finally realizes that he must collaborate with Mother Nature rather than work against her in order to achieve his dream of creating the perfect garden? In this delightful and thoughtful narrative journey of horticultural discovery, Bill Terry asks how and even why we garden, and to what end?

These are personal …

David Chaundy-Smart took it as a compliment when his high school vice-principal told him he was wasting his youth by climbing. Here, he tells the story of how he and his brother, Reg, spent the last years of the 1970s fighting suburban boredom to become, in the words of renowned climbing historian Chic Scott, “one of the leading figures in Ontari …

Lila, a talented pianist and wife to Rob, has decided she cannot passively follow a score someone else has written—in her musical career and her marriage. As she struggles in her role as daughter to a mother who is dying of cancer, Lila finds that Kevin, a violinist and Lila’s musical partner, helps to keep her love of music in tune through try …

In a mining town edging the Australian Nullarbor, Gina sits at the bar and devotes herself to the heart of what she’s trying to escape. After finishing a grueling cross-Canada tour, Dana, an alt-rock musician, flees to the Yukon to avoid her band’s rising fame and risks sabotaging it all. In a small West Coast fishing town, a boat-dwelling moth …

Resting on what was left of the bench was something else, lighter in shade than the background, round, about the size of a cabbage. There were two large holes close together, a smaller pair below, then two rows of wedge-shaped objects. The pattern suddenly coalesced: in atavistic and chilling familiarity . . .

In a remote British Columbia lake, an …

A murder, a tryst, a mysterious child. A Victoria aristocrat who obsesses over her Churchill relatives. A repressive Welsh mother with a royalty fixation. A once-carefree Hesquiat girl from Nootka Sound. A dashing Icelandic philanderer. And quiet, steady Julia Godolphin, trying to rise above it all. The lost novel of Norma Macmillan, the Vancouver …

Roderick L. Haig-Brown welcomes us onto his lush farm for a year of insights and observations. In this eloquently written account, Haig-Brown, his wife Ann and their four children tour us through each season, and teach us the ways in which the Earth governs the events in our lives. Haig-Brown observes salmon, blue grouse, blacktail deer and robins, …

A real fish tale! When "the big one" gets away, Amy figures the day is ruined. Or is it? Set on Canada's west coast, A Morning to Polish and Keep is a story of adventure, family interaction and the lasting comfort of memory.

Beautifully Illustrated by Sheena Lott.

Recommended reading ages: 4-10

The Real Thing is the first official biography of Ian McTaggart Cowan (1910–2010), the “father of Canadian ecology.” Authorized by his family and with the research support and participation of the University of Victoria Libraries, Briony Penn provides an unprecedented and accessible window into the story of this remarkable naturalist. From hi …

It was 1862 and the Cariboo Gold Rush was in full swing. Sophia Cameron, the Beauty of Barkerville, lay dying of typhoid when her husband, John Cariboo Cameron, made one last promise to his fading young wife. The Promise is a compelling story of a great love and an epic struggle to honour a dying wife's final request: to take her body home to easte …

Once available and appreciated only by researchers, these stories remained buried in the British Columbia Archives until 2007. Finally, readers are given a new glimpse into Emily Carr's life with this collection.. Carr began to write these stories in the last two years of her life. She wrote of the project: ... they are too small each to be taken s …

They were nicknamed Snow Eagle, Flying Knight, Bush Angel, Punch, Doc and Wop. They worked in open cockpits and flew through cold, snow and fog without the benefit of radios, maps or weather reports. They flew over the Barrens, frozen lakes, boreal forests and mountain ranges by dead reckoning and line of sight. They landed on makeshift runways, gl …

It is hard to imagine life without fire. Heat, light, food—where would we be without these essentials? Although we do not rely on fire as much today as in times past, nor have as much direct contact with it, fire was often crucial to survival when the stories in this collection were first told. People often told stories about it: what their lives …

Sean Johnston will leave readers smiling at the acrobatics of his words and techniques in this eagerly anticipated second short story collection after the Relit award winning A Day Does Not Go By. Several stories, such as “We Don’t Celebrate That”, explore the difficulty of survival in an increasingly indifferent political reality, while othe …

Motherwild is an unvarnished journey of the struggle to survive on a violent and dangerous yet loving and alive Montreal working-class street. Set over the course of a year beginning in December 1959, Joey Cantell faces the personal confusion of growing up while attempting to navigate a difficult relationship with his quick-witted, strong-willed, a …

Babes in the woods. That’s how Ruth and Cliff Kopas were described by one of many colourful characters the pair encountered on their amazing journey across the Rockies through to British Columbia’s west coast in 1933.

Married on the day they left on their dangerous trek, Ruth and Cliff were eager for adventure, and their courageous spirits and r …

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 …

The wildest, loveliest and least-travelled region of Alberta was R.M. Patterson’s home territory in the 1930s and ’40s. The Buffalo Head ranch was located in the foothills of the majestic Canadian Rockies. With the mountains as a backdrop, this dude ranch hosted visitors from around the world. Patterson bought it from its founder, a wild Italia …

The West Coast has an abundance of produce and natural food resources, and some of the most talented and influential chefs in the world. In this colourful cookbook, British Columbia's top restaurateurs, chefs, and foodies share signature dishes that will inspire cooks everywhere. Meet the province's well-known and up-and-coming culinary stars as th …

New farmers, experienced growers, budding environmentalists, and fans of natural, organic produce alike are sure to love All the Dirt. Filled with beautiful photographs and covering a wide variety of topics, from agrofuels and food sovereignty to practical tips about specific tools, All the Dirt is the must-read how-to book about small-scale organi …