Letters from Canada to the mother of child war guests from Britain are "an extraordinary slice of wartime Canadian life." — J.L. Granatstein

The Second World War had been under way for a year when Marie and John Williamson welcomed two English brothers to join them and their two children in their small house in north Toronto for the duration of th …

Available in English for the first time, Joaquim Amat-Piniella’s searing Catalan novel, K.L. Reich, is a central work of testimonial literature of the Nazi concentration camps. Begun immediately after Amat-Piniella’s liberation in 1945, the book is based on his own four-year internment at Mauthausen.

“When the war is over, remember all this. …

Lexi, a young Mennonite woman from Saskatchewan, comes to work as housekeeper and nanny for a doctor’s family in Waterloo, Ontario, during the Great Depression.

Dr. Gerald Oliver is a handsome philanderer who lives with his neurotic and alcoholic wife, Cammy, and their two children. Lexi soon adapts to modern conveniences, happily wears Cammy’s …

We All Giggled tells the stories of two families that came together when the author’s parents met and married in 1945. The Hüglins had lost most of their fortune in the course of two world wars, and the Wachendorff s had survived the Nazi years despite their Jewish ancestry. The families’ roots are traced back to a vineyard in southern Germany …

Olivia Cockett was twenty-six years old in the summer of 1939 when she responded to an invitation from Mass Observation to “ordinary” individuals to keep a diary of their everyday lives, attitudes, feelings, and social relations. This book is an annotated, unabridged edition of her candid and evocative diary.

Love and War in London: A Woman’s …

Debate still rages on about who invented baseball. But one thing is certain...it was alive and fractious in southwestern Ontario in the summer of 1949. Charlie Hodge, just finishing his last year of high school, has made the Galt Terriers’ roster and will be riding the bench with a star-studded team, many of whom had played with the major leagues …

Becoming My Mother’s Daughter: A Story of Survival and Renewal tells the story of three generations of a Jewish Hungarian family whose fate has been inextricably bound up with the turbulent history of Europe, from the First World War through the Holocaust and the communist takeover after World War II, to the family’s dramatic escape and emmigra …

Winner of the Helen and Stan Vine Jewish Book Award and finalist for the Man Booker Prize

In Far to Go, one of our most accomplished young writers takes us inside the world of an affluent Jewish family in Prague during the lead-up to Hitler's invasion of Czechoslovakia.

In 1939, Pavel and Anneliese Bauer are secular Jews whose lives are turned upside …

Winner, City of Victoria Butler Book Prize
Shortlisted, Ethel Wilson Fiction Prize

A feral girl roams the dense forests of nineteenth-century France, stealing food from remote farmyards and avoiding human contact. Seen on one of her thieving missions in the village of Freyzus, she is chased by suspicious townspeople to the edge of a deep gorge, wher …

Shortlisted, Democracy 250 Atlantic Book Award for Historical Writing

Despite the coming social reforms undertaken at home, the world of the Georgian British Empire was nothing if not class-conscious and leery of outsiders. But Anthony Lockwood, with no known certain record of his parentage and whose first appearance in history is his signing onto t …

Douglas Glover's acclaimed novel The Life and Times of Captain N. is now available in a GLE Library edition. Originally published by McClelland & Stewart, the novel was acclaimed by the most respected critics in Canada and the US, and compelled The Toronto Star's Philip Marchand to call Glover "one of the most important Canadian writers of his gene …

Seduced by Slim's stories of the privations of a cross-country trek that ended in the violence of an historic riot and tales of Depression-era work camps, Edie MacDonald has followed him from mine to mine, where he finds work and she cares for their son, Belly, in the thin shelter of canvas tents. Until now. Edie has left Slim behind, passed out in …

Winner, Dobbie Literary Award, FAW Barbara Ramsden Award, Sydney Morning Herald's Young Novelist Award, and The Australian/Vogel Literary Award

Night Street is the passionate story of a young painter, Clarice Beckett, who defies society's strict conventions and indifferent art critics alike and leads an intense private and professional life. With he …

Dot, whose name reflects her stature, has always had big dreams—but her dreams have to be put on hold while she searches for the truth about her parents. She gets a job as a seamstress at a lakeside resort in rural Ontario and falls hard for Eddie, a charming local boy who is equal parts helpful and distracting as Dot investigates her past. Searc …

In 1770, the slave Esperança Garcia bravely penned a letter to the governor of Piauí state, in Brazil, describing how she and her children were being mistreated and requesting permission to return to the farm where the rest of her family was living.

Before she wrote her letter, Esperança Garcia lived on a cotton farm run by Jesuit priests, where …

In the winter of 1868 a name Montreal society associated with art, good breeding, and culture became fodder for scandal mongers. The Notman name, synonymous with fine photography, was suddenly making headlines featuring the words "abortion" and "suicide." A dozen years earlier, two brothers fled their native Scotland . They were attracted to Montre …

An amusing collection of lives and stories from the eccentric side of Canada’s history.

A joyous romp through the back pages of Canadian quirkiness, Canadian Folk provides a fresh look at the saints, sinners, oddballs, and outright nutbars who have populated the Canadian landscape.

They were perpetually northbound or south; they were inveterate wa …

2017 Arthur Ellis Award, Best Novel — Shortlisted
Saddlebag preacher Thaddeus Lewis uncovers murder and conspiracy in Northumberland County.

A body is discovered on an isolated island in Rice Lake. Saddlebag preacher Thaddeus Lewis is sent on a desperate hunt for the truth when a woman for whom he feels a guilty attraction stands accused of the m …

History flows swiftly on, and even the formidable family home of Jalna is swept up in its currents in this collection of books 9-12 of the Jalna series. Fortunes rise and crumble as older generations give way to the young, and the reins of tradition strain against the swift rush of progress reshaping the world. Follow the Whiteoak descendants thro …

Perhaps the most classic novels of Mazo de la Roche’s monumental family saga are these four, which were the first books written in the series, though they fall in the middle of her books’ multi-generation narrative. These, including the original novel Jalna, were the books that first established the world of Jalna in the minds of readers and de …

Soldier, spy, politician, bestselling thriller writer, and governor general of Canada — John Buchan was a man of many seasons and talents.

An accomplished Scottish journalist, soldier, head of intelligence, and Member of Parliament, John Buchan (1875-1940) is best known for penning thrillers such as The Thirty-Nine Steps. However, as Canada’s 1 …

The fourth in Delany’s Klondike Mystery series is a madcap romp through the mud of 1898 Dawson City.

Book Four of the Klondike Mystery Series by Vicky Delany!

The year is 1898. The place is Dawson City, Yukon. A man staggers out of the dusk to collapse at the feet of a startled Fiona MacGillivray, shattering the peaceful calm of a warm July night. …

Chronicling the early years of the formidable manor Jalna and the Whiteoak family who inhabit it, this bundle gathers together the first four novels in Mazo de la Roche’s treasured Canadian saga.

Includes

The Building of Jalna

Morning at Jalna

Mary Wakefield

Young Renny

Bartleby the Scrivener meets Catch-22 in this charmingly sardonic tale of love, war and fertilizer.

WINNER OF THE PRIX DES COLLAGIENS

Simon turned his thoughts to her daily. There were few enough
of them, but each one lingered. He imagined their life together.
Sometimes even their children’s lives. Sometimes he set his fantasies in Spain, sometim …

In the tradition of Borges, Nabakov, and Bolaño, The Red Album is a work of fiction that questions historical authenticity and authority. Divided into two parts, the book begins with an edited and footnoted narrative of dubious origins. In the second part, a section of "documents" (including essays, memoirs, a short play and a filmography) shed li …

Born in 1889, Gertrude Harding spent a boistrous childhood on a Welsford, New Brunswick, farm. She travelled to Hawaii to live with her sister, and, when her sister moved to London in 1912, Harding went with her. One day, from the top of a London bus, she saw a parade of women carrying large white posters. Attended by a policeman, they walked in si …

The Last Train is the harrowing true story about young brothers Paul and Oscar Arato and their mother, Lenke, surviving the Nazi occupation during the final years of World War II. Living in the town of Karcag, Hungary, the Aratos felt insulated from the war — even as it raged all around them. Hungary is allied with Germany to protect its citizens …

Shortlisted, Sunburst Award for Excellence in Canadian Literature of the Fantastic
Longlisted, IMPAC Dublin Literary Award

From the acclaimed author of Daniel O'Thunder comes a rollicking, bawdy, and haunting novel about love and redemption, death and resurrection.

The great metropolis of London swaggers with Regency abandon as nineteen-year-old Will …