Stephen Reid has grown old in prison and seen more than his share of its solitude, its vicious cycles, and its subculture relationships. He has participated in the economics of contraband, the incredible escapes, the intimacies of torture, the miscarriages of justice, and witnessed the innocent souls whose childhood destinies doomed them to prison …

In the 1870s, a teenage thief from New York, in search of his show business mother, gets collared by a keen-eyed cop from Canada’s newly created national police force — the North West Mounted Police. Following the encounter, he unwillingly finds himself hired on, with a cantankerous wagon master, to accompany the Mounties on their 1874 expediti …

Runaway teen Annabel, nicknamed Ghost, doesn’t speak. Her interaction with her world is limited to how well she can convey her wants and feelings to others, and how intuitive others are in interpreting her expressions and gestures. Confused by her mother’s addictions, and the loss of the guidance of her grandmother, Ghost is driven to the road …

The stories in Sandy Bonny’s collection take place in settings from the Arctic Circle to Alberta’s badlands, and from the waters of the Georgia Straight to the grasslands of the prairies, and the characters that we meet in these places will be oddly familiar or perhaps familiarly odd. There are children who live in the magical territory between …

A primitive story of transgression and transformation weaves its way through the centuries and cultures into the lives and conflicts and personal dramas of our own time. Seán Virgo traces its journey and the guises it takes on, reinventing itself as fable, fairy tale, ghost story, and fantasy — spellbinding entertainments that engage all the sam …

Part intellectual mystery and part spiritual adventure, A Year at River Mountain tells the story of an aging actor from Vancouver who has immersed himself in monastic life inChina and is now examining his past as an actor, husband,and father. As his Western consciousness grapples with Taoist philosophies and acupressure techniques, he assesses his …

Following tragic events, from which Julie O’Dale believes she and her husband, Ian, will never recover, Julie buys into Ian’s dream to give up their comfortable city lives and retreat to the Chilcotin area of British Columbia. Along with a team of draft horses, four cow ponies, and the range cattle, which are included in the purchase of the rem …

Arrow through the Axes concludes the “Odyssey of a Slave” trilogy that began with the Red Maple–nominated Torn from Troy, retelling Homer’s Odyssey. The slave Alexi, now free of his Greek captors, infiltrates the Greek strongholds of the Bronze Age in search of his sister. In so doing he participates in the stories of Orestes, son of Agamem …

Twelve-year-old Jolene is determined to find independence from her brother, Michael, during a family trip to research the Halifax explosion of 1917 for her father's Museum of Disasters. When her grandfather finds a time crease into the past, Jolene discovers a new friend and the importance of family and loyalty in a world torn apart by World War I. …

This historical time-travel novel, for children ten and up, is the third volume in Cathy Beveridge's ongoing series on Canadian disasters. Once again we meet Jolene and her twin brother Michael, this time in an RV on the shores of the Great Lakes, where her father and grandfather are conducting research into the Great Storm of 1913. When Grandpa di …

The Reddening Path is the story of Paméla who, adopted as an infant by Hannah & Fern, a Toronto lesbian couple, travels to Guatamala to search for her birth mother. Her quest uncovers a tangle of political and romantic intrigue as Paméla discovers her Mayan heritage and learns about the complexities of life in Guatemala. Resonating throughout is …

Marjorie Chan's gripping narrative intertwines the past and the present, transporting the reader between Irene and a small group of unlikely heroes caught in the invasion. Scrambling to create a refuge from the horror, the band's struggle to survive binds them in a promise that will span the ages of time, while Irene struggles to reveal the truth d …

Lately Cathy, a middle-aged comedian, has found very little to laugh about. Everything seems either tragic or frustrating, especially her eighteen-year marriage to Peter, a doctor at a local community clinic. Their list of complaints about one another grows day by day, and their teenage daughter is rarely anything but a handful. Despite a once soli …

From the shore of Ko Phi Phi in Thailand to a suburb in Utah to a mysterious Kafkaesque hole in the ground, carried away on the crest of a wave gives us brief glimpses into the lives of a sphinx-like escort, a grieving father, a conflicted priest, brothers of legend, a felonious housewife, an accountant of time, an orphaned boy, a radio shock jock …

Siblings Josh and Jennifer are coping with the loss of their father, who disappeared in a float plane accident on Christmas Eve one year ago. While Josh scours the Internet for proof that his father is still alive, Jennifer rebels against his denial and their mother Marcia's efforts to return the family to normalcy. When Marcia insists that Josh an …

After suffering a crippling injury during a tour of Afghanistan, Michael has returned home to a Canadian veteran's care facility. The last thing he wanted was to spend his time with a twelve-year-old girl, but Halley, a spirited, physically disabled Pathfinder, is eager to earn her volunteer badge. The pair is at odds from the start, but they find …

The moment Mark meets David his world is thrown off balance. Who could have predicted finding love in a furniture store, or finding it with an unemployed lifeguard? But despite their immediate connection, Mark isn’t sure if David is gay. Mark isn’t even sure if Mark is gay. As he falls deeper in love, Mark works desperately to make David nothin …

David, a successful novelist with writer's block, has received some devastating news he's kept to himself. Lucy, his housekeeper of twenty-eight years, has her own secret that she's afraid to admit. As Lucy is getting ready to end her shift, David invites her to stay and have a drink, curious about the woman who's been tending to his house all thes …

Being a teenager is hard, especially if you're questioning your sexuality and growing up in rural Ontario in the mid '90s. Add to that a temperamental, homophobic father and a tenacious love for Madonna, and it's almost unbearable. Despite it all, Luke loves working on the family farm, and at least he has the support of a group of local outsiders w …

This book collects some of Judith Thompson’s earlier, hard-to-find plays, including White Biting Dog, a poetic black comedy about a divorced lawyer who prepares to kill himself by jumping off the Bloor Street Viaduct—until he encounters a small dog who sets him on a different path; I Am Yours, a harrowing story about a group of characters on th …

Finally, after 58 years The Body on Mount Royal is back in print, starring hard-drinking private dick, Russell Teed.

From the back cover of the 1953 edition:

Take a brutally beaten body, a lonely spot on Montreal’s famous mountain, and a bu

The Alchemist’s Daughter will pull you from whatever you are supposed to be doing into Sidonie’s fortunes, and hold you there cover to cover.Marked by high adventure, and delicious language, Kernaghan’s use of real historical figures like Dr. John Dee, Lady Mary Herbert, Sir Philip Sidney and William Shakespeare, blended with original fiction …

Using colourful and detailed case material, Street-Level Democracy introduces a new method of researching everyday politics. It is a wide-ranging book that traces the conflicts between global power and local action. People in farming communities, town mosques, city markets, and fishing communities suffer the effects of wrenching change, but live fa …

Jake is celebrating his tenth birthday. That’s a remarkable feat, because at birth he was given only three years to live. Miriam Edelson is his mother, a dedicated fighter for Jake and families in similar situations. Edelson poses some tough questions: How do parents cope with a child who has special needs? Are we failing, as a society, to care f …

Based on years of practical experience in small towns, Carrel argues for municipal autonomy—for turning what are now “colonies” of the federal and provincial orders of government into independent, mature, and fully democratic entities. For Carrel, the citizen is the sole legitimate source of political power, and the best tool for citizen empo …

Join beloved storyteller Anny Scoones as she sets out to discover the quaint and quirky charms of Victoria, BC. Not just a book of facts, Hometown is a gentle stroll through a diverse region with a fascinating and layered history. Observe, pause, ponder, and have what Anny likes to call “a little think” on the various characteristics and person …

Nombre de Canadiens savent que les organismes du gouvernement s’adonnent à de la surveillance de masse en utilisant les données téléphoniques et électroniques. Néanmoins, peu d’entre eux sont réellement conscients de l’influence réelle que cette surveillance a sur presque tous les aspects de leur vie quotidienne. Aujourd’hui, nous n …

Rachel, a young Jewish woman from a small town in Russia, has made an incredible journey. Forced to leave her homeland because of the anti-Semitic violence that killed her father, she made her way across land and sea to find refuge in Shanghai, China where she not only survived but managed to establish herself as a newspaper writer — no easy task …

Sisters Jennifer and Sarah were once part of a happy, stable family, but their idyllic life comes to an abrupt halt with the death of their mother. Unable to cope with his grief and the needs of his two young daughters, their father finds comfort in alcohol, gets fired from his job, and loses his grip on his family.

As twelve-year-old Jennifer appro …

In this unusual Holocaust memoir, Rhodea Shandler gives a woman's view of life under the Nazis in Holland. She begins by describing her early life in a closely knit Jewish family in northern Holland. There was anti-Semitism, she explains, but it was of a low level, and the Jews with their strong ties to community managed to live relatively normal l …

The Allies claimed victory at the end of the Second World War, but the United States' invention of the atomic bomb and its replication by the Soviet Union posed new dangers for all nations. This book examines what Canada's Cold War Army did to prepare for nuclear war — and why and how it did it. Although the war never materialized, officers, scie …

During the “long sixties,” baby boomers raised on democratic postwar ideals demanded a more egalitarian society for all. While a few became vocal leaders at universities across Canada, nearly 90% of Canada's young people went straight to work after high school. There, they brought the anti-authoritarian spirit of the youth revolt to the labour …

Black Teeth is a compelling collection of linked stories that explore growing up in Winnipeg's famously multicultural North End through its 1960s Golden Age and beyond, examining the strange dual legacy of that experience. While urban ethnic mixes and immigrant populations shift over time and place, every city has its foreign part, that transition …

In the 1960s, for at least a brief moment, Montreal became what seemed an unlikely centre of Black Power and the Caribbean left. In October 1968 the Congress of Black Writers at McGill University brought together well-known Black thinkers and activists from Canada, the United States, Africa, and the Caribbean—people like C.L.R. James, Stokely Car …

“What we must see,” Martin Luther King once insisted, “is that a riot is the language of the unheard.” In this new era of global protest and popular revolt, Languages of the Unheard draws on King’s insight to address a timely and controversial topic: the ethics and politics of militant resistance.

Using vivid examples from the history of m …

Historian Michael Dawson digs deep into the written and pictorial record to reveal how the RCMP, since its inception, has constructed and zealously guarded its public image. Drawing on previously untapped sources, Dawson documents how consultants and entrepreneurs deliberately transformed and modernized the traditional symbolism of the Mountie. His …

Life Experience Coolant is a collection of four long poems informed by artistic isolation, directionless reading, and the avoidance mechanisms that make poetry simultaneously possible and impossible at our current cultural velocity. Using methodologies of textual appropriation, collage, rehistoricization and self-sufficent rhetoricality, Life Exper …

The value of Theseus is as much about its pedigree as the writing itself. The collaboration for this new book began in the autumn of 1966. bpNichol and Wayne Clifford had worked together early in their literary careers; in fact, Clifford had been the editor of Nichol's first trade book, published with Coach House Press. To begin, Nichol had also wa …

Finalist for a 2014 Alberta Literary Award

Between 1870 and 1970, 26 million Italians left their homeland and travelled to places like Canada, Australia and the United States, in search of work. Many of them never returned to Italy. Against this historic backdrop comes the story of Rosina, a Calabrian matriarch, who worked as a midwife in an area wh …

Over the last 50 years, the struggles to achieve equity in sport have become central to the feminist mission. This book contains an inspiring collection of stories from the women on the front lines: athletes, coaches, educators, and activists for women's sport, who have done so much to foster change. Many of the women profiled here reflect on their …

This book will appeal to anyone who wants to understand the unique culture and spirituality of the fast-growing Pacific Northwest, which includes British Columbia, Washington and Oregon. Envied by people around the world, Cascadia, as it is known, is remarkable for its famed mountains, evergreens, eagles, beaches and livable cities. Most people, ho …

Women on Ice is the first book to focus upon the vibrant world of women's ice hockey in western Canada during the First World War and through the 1920s. The Vancouver Amazons were one of the most important teams during this perod. Their championship laurels and their association with hockey's famous Patrick brothers distinguish the Amazons from oth …

This bilingual edition is the first English translation of Aquin's ground-breaking novella. Alone in exotic Naples, an impassioned François anticipates the arrival of girlfriend Hélène. Uncertainty and impatience warp his waiting into an obsessive mélange of recollection and speculation. His interior monologue threads its way through a diso …

Tragic Links is award-winning author Cathy Beveridge's fourth young adult novel focusing on Canadian disasters. This time Jolene and her family find themselves in Quebec where Jolene's father is conducting research for his Museum of Disasters. When Jolene finds a time crease, she discovers Montreal in the 1920s. Back there at the church, Jolene sai …

In this fascinating historical novel, twelve-year-old Jolene travels back in time to the year 1903 and finds herself in the coal mining town of Frank on the eve of Canada's deadliest rockslide. Disguised as a boy, Jolene must face the wrath of an impatient teacher, challenge her ability as a gymnast, and disentangle herself from an embarrassing lov …

In this lavishly produced hardcover volume, Plaskett has created an autobiography as colourful as his finest paintings. Plaskett begins with his early family life in New Westminster, BC, relates his encounter with abstract expressionism under Hans Hofmann, and then discusses the development of his mature style. Included are an introduction by the l …

MxT, or ‘Memory x Time,’ is one of the formulas acclaimed poet Sina Queyras posits as a way to measure grief. These poems mourn the dead by turning memories over and over like an old coin, by invoking other poets, by appropriating the language of technology, of instruction, of diagram, of electrical engineering, and of elegy itself. Devastating …

Tessa, Damon, and Keegan share the same band class and the same passion: their pets. When Tessa loses her beloved dog Joey, the event challenges and transforms not only the three children, but the adults in their lives as well.

Heartwarming and humorous, Kindness sensitively captures the reality of children's feelings as they navigate the small and …

Sparking a series of further revelations, the sudden reappearance of David exposes suppressed emotions and desires in everyone and the family must renegotiate their relationships with each other and, ultimately, redefine their family. In sharp, non-stop dialogue, Brad Fraser brings each of his characters to life with a depth, humour, and emotion th …

It’s 1914. Sixteen year old Sophie Pritchard, orphaned two years earlier by the sinking of the SS Titanic, is about to begin a new life in the unfamiliar world of British India. For Sophie, still devastated by her parents’ death, India proves a dangerously unsettling environment. Are her terrifying experiences in Kali’s temple and the Park St …