Rich in stories, the Crowsnest Pass region in the southern Rocky Mountains still bears evidence of its tragedies, and one monumental triumph—a railroad rammed through the pass in 18 months. Hailed as the greatest project in the Dominion, the Crow's Nest Pass Railway was built by men who toiled with horses and primitive tools to carve the way for …

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 …

With unsentimental prose and ironic dialogue, Katie Boland brings to life a variety of characters who all have one thing in common—a need for something more. A literary debut by a refreshing new voice in fiction, the stories in Eat Your Heart Out are about the haunted and heartbroken, about dreamers, losers and love-lost souls. From a sixteen-yea …

Sometimes it’s the little things in life that make all the difference, like chromosomes, sperm, bugs or an endangered seabird that nests in old-growth forests. But, what’s big or what’s little depends entirely on your perspective. Faye Pearson is a three-and-a-half-foot tall female scientist doing entomological research in the tallest trees o …

The latest addition to TouchWood Editions’ Classics West Collection, Klondike Cattle Drive is the colourful tale of a formidable trek undertaken by legendary Cariboo rancher Norman Lee.

In 1898, Lee set out to drive 200 head of cattle from his home in the Chilcotin area of B.C. to the Klondike goldfields—a distance of 1,500 miles. He was gambli …

Adventures on wild waters

In Finlay's River, R. M. Patterson, whose style was described by noted author Bruce Hutchison as a a mixture between Thoreau and Jack London, tells the story of his 1949 trip up this wild river in remote northern British Columbia. Patterson uses his own journey as a framework to recount the adventures of explorers who went …

Life is getting more dismal by the minute in the town of Sultana, Manitoba. Thanks to a dry season that nearly dried up the river, no one wants to camp there anymore. There aren’t enough tourists to keep the local restaurant busy and, if Cody’s best friend’s mom loses her job there, the family will have to move away.

Cody, his best friend, Er …

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 …

"Duncan and Szanto bring their A-game to this daring and complex novel."—Lou Allin, Crime Writers of Canada

Sandro Vasiliadis, a nurse at the Whidbey Island General Hospital, has died of an apparent heroin overdose. When his grieving mother bends over to kiss her son’s corpse at the viewing, she shrieks, “That’s not Sandro!” Convinced tha …

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 …

When his best friend, and advocate for the homeless, Denman Scott asks him to help stop the demolition of the Lucky Strike—a once majestic hotel in Vancouver's Downtown Eastside that is now home to nearly three hundred of the city's least fortunate residents—Cole Blackwater gets more than he bargained for.

Working with Vancouver Sun reporter Nan …

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 …

Bill Gallaher’s bestselling novel The Journey follows a group of three adventurous Overlanders—two young men and one remarkable woman—as they travel west in 1862, from the Manitoba prairies to the goldfields of the Cariboo.

With his gift for storytelling, Gallaher brings this intriguing era to the page as he vividly recounts the overland trek …

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 …

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 …

Children of the Broken Treaty exposes a system of apartheid in Canada that led to the largest youth-driven human rights movement in the country's history. The movement was inspired by Shannen Koostachin, a young Cree girl named by George Stroumboulopoulos as one of "five teenage girls in history who kicked ass." All Shannen wanted was a decent educ …

The return of a classic, with a new introduction by Candace Savage.

Frontier Farewell has been deemed "gracefully written" and "fully and meticulously researched," by Sharon Butala, while Canadian History Magazine called it "a great read that shatters the mythology surrounding the 'taming' of the West." A book every history buff should own, Frontier …

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 …

Rev. Duncan B. Blair (1815-1893) was an excellent linguist, a good poet and a devout man. “As an accurate writer of Gaelic he had no superior,” espoused A. Maclean Sinclair. Blair composed sacred and secular poems, laments and songs and prose, many of which were published in Mac-Talla, the famous Gaelic newspaper published in Sydney, Nova Scoti …

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 …

This stunning collection will break your heart and put it back together again, as Pamela Porter unravels a long-held family secret in a moving personal search for redemption, face to face with the question of her own identity. As she says, “It was this way when Rome was burning, / and was not so different / when dark fires flared / outside the wa …

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 …

Anxiety is the watchword at most school reunions, with side-eye comparisons of greying hair and extra pounds around the belly. Not our Randy Craig. She's more concerned with resolving a 20 year old CanLit scandal and catching a ruthless killer. While helping her best friend Denise organize their 20 year reunion at the University of Alberta, Randy's …

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 …

Orangutan Orphanage is the second in the 4-book Wildlife Rescue series. Each book introduces a species of animal in danger somewhere in the world and profiles a rescue center that helps them. Stunning photos by award-winning wildlife photographer Suzi Eszterhas give readers a rare view of these adorable animals and the high level of care they rece …

Exploring a variety of topics—including health, politics, education, art, literature, media, and film—Aboriginal Canada Revisited draws a portrait of the current political and cultural position of Canada’s Aboriginal peoples. While lauding improvements made in the past decades, the contributors draw attention to the systemic problems that con …

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, …

Patrick Wiseman moved his wife and son back to Newfoundland to start a new Pentecostal church, but when his wife Anne leaves him for a man she meets on Facebook and his son Hab moves in with his girlfriend Natalie—a burgeoning alcoholic with a fiery past—Patrick takes a suicidal leap of faith that brings him face to face with his estranged fath …

Eric Alford's safe and romantic life on the peaceful Gaspe Coast is shattered by his decision to follow his elder brother John (the Pilgrim and The Chaplain) into the 1914-18 cataclysm of death and destruction known as the "Great War for Civilisation". By his thundering Howitzer, Gunner Alford assaults the Hun through every major Canadian battle of …

To say Shir is unpopular is a understatement. In fact she's less than homely, therefore a target of casual cruelty in high school. Even though she wishes to remain invisible, bullies find ways of tormenting her, viciously. Worse still, she's an outcast in her own family. There are two areas where Shir can overcome her negative self image. One is at …

Shortly after the first referendum on Quebec separation, four people in their forties encounter each other in Ile d’Or, the town where all of them grew up. The novel is about gold and greed and renewal and hope. About people who emerge from a frontier existence into the society of the late twentieth century with the need to discover how their con …

Esa Withrod is a young woman struggling over recent events in her personal life—a failed first relationship and resulting pregnancy—as well as the legacy of her desolate upbringing. Eccentric and enigmatic, Esa’s childhood has prepared her to deal with the world with endurance and resilience, but not with joy. She remains “mystified by kind …

Got to Go has made his home at the Sylvia Hotel for seven years now. And it is the best home a cat could wish for! There was always a comfy lobby chair or a warm windowsill to sleep on and a nice bit of fish from the kitchen. Mister Fisher, the manager, still talks about how the hotel is no place for a cat but Got to Go doesn't worry. Then he sees …

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 …

In this Anansi Digital Publication, James Laxer analyzes the descent of the United States into civil conflict. At a time when American society is roiled by deep divisions over immigration, guns, the role of the state, and the economic crisis, Laxer makes the case that serious conflict is likely to be generated from the right of the American politic …

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 …

Academics have never been Sofie's strong point; shes too busy spending all of her free time with her boyfriend, Paul, the captain of her Surrey high school's soccer team. When her English teacher implements a new program that pairs her with straight-A student Clea, Sofie worries about how Paul will react to her hanging out with the only out lesbian …

In his brilliant third collection, award-winning and critically-acclaimed poet Ken Babstock finds momentary stays against our gathering darknesses in the irrepressible, acrobatic, free play of the mind. Poems of conscience collide with the problems of consciousness, the concrete and the conceptual find equal footing, and formal beauty mixes with im …

Laws of Rest explores a new form, the prose sonnet - an intricate chamber of text enclosed within four quatrains of right-justified prose. In their box-like aesthetics, the poems conjure the weird, meticulous worlds of Joseph Cornell or Edmund Spenser. But anything can happen in these little rooms, in which the overheard conversation of taxi driver …

Nominated for several Dora Awards

When a young scholar finds Eternal Hydra, a long-lost, legendary and encyclopedic novel by an obscure Irish writer, she brings the manuscript to an esteemed publisher, hoping to secure an international audience for the book. But Vivian's obsession with the dead author, who has materialized in her life, is challenged …

Finalist for the 2012 Governor General's Award for Poetry

David McGimpsey's fifth collection of poems takes to new levels the melding of the deeply personal and the culturally popular that drove his acclaimed book Sitcom (nominated for the A. M. Klein Prize for Poetry) – this is confessional poetry as written by a chronic trickster and a committe …

A spun radio dial passing clean through poetry. A stuttering loop of Endgame recorded by Stockhausen, remixed by Kraftwerk. The chatter of minotaurs and metadata. Transmissions from far-off futures or new pasts, recordings from a recoded present topped off with a cherry. Evel Knievel, above it all, mysterious, forever taciturn. Mission Creep comes …

Nicole Brossard's lucid, subversive and innovative work on language has influenced an entire generation of readers and writers. But three of her seminal works of postmodernism and feminism have been lost to us for years. The Blue Books brings them back.

A Book: A novel about a novel; five characters in 'search of a narrative, a narrative in search o …

Shortlisted for the 2008 Griffin Poetry Prize

Shortlisted for the 2007 Governor General's Award for Translation

The heat of summer on an earlobe, a parking meter, the shadow of crabs and pigeons under a cherry tree, an olive, a shoulder blade in the poems of Nicole Brossard these concrete, quotidian things move languorously through the senses to find …

Every day after school, seventeen-year-old Timothy waits at the neighbourhood crosswalk where years earlier his older sister disappeared. Every day he crosses the street with Jim, the elderly crossing guard. It's a ritual Timothy thinks might go on forever, until one day he arrives and Jim is absent. Instead, standing at the crosswalk is a young wo …

Tuft: "A bunch (natural or artificial) of small things, usually soft and flexible, ...fixed or attached at the base." - OED With Tuft, Kim Minkus takes us on flights of poetic fancy into futures where we "observe the green elite" and "iceplants bloom in the monotony of paved paths." We tangle and climb into language and are swept into the lives of …

On a summer visit to Germany, George, a young medical student at Cambridge, meets Anna von Kleist, whose intellectual force, beauty, and self-assurance smite him full in the heart. It is 1936. Hitler is already in power, and a shift has occurred in Germany that Anna, George, and their friend Werner have not fully grasped. Europe is on the cusp of w …

Suzanne Leblanc's The Thought House of Philippa transposes a theory of individuality into a stunningly reflective, sensuous and frank philosophical novel. Setting the chapters in the various rooms of the house Ludwig Wittgenstein designed for his sister in Vienna, Leblanc's novel lays out P.'s intensely emotional and intellectually acute way of see …