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 …

The Tse-loh-ne from the Sekani First Nation were known as “The People at the End of the Rocks.” This small band of people lived and thrived in one of BC’s most challenging and remote areas, 1600 kilometres north of Prince George in the Rocky Mountain Trench. They were isolated and nomadic, and survived by following the seasons, walking hundre …

Jessie lives with her parents on a farm a long way from anywhere. There are no other people for miles around. Often, she is lonely. More than anything, Jessie wants a dog; a friend who will play with her, come running when she calls and sleep with its head on her lap. Her mother and father can’t see any need for a dog on a wheat farm. Besides, th …

Over the past forty years, Canadian literature has found its way to the silver screen with increasing regularity. Beginning with the adaptation of Margaret Laurence’s A Jest of God to the Hollywood film Rachel, Rachel in 1966, Canadian writing would appear to have found a doubly successful life for itself at the movies: from the critically accla …

Les personnes qui ont un problème de santé mentale risquent davantage de connaître des problèmes d’alcoolisme ou de toxicomanie, tout comme les personnes qui présentent des problèmes d’alcoolisme ou de toxicomanie risquent davantage d’avoir un problème de santé mentale. Le guide décrit :
* les symptômes et les causes des troubles c …

A vividly wrought memoir, Last Dance in Shediac is a collection of the author’s personal memories of her mother—celebrated Canadian artist Molly Lamb Bobak—and a tender meditation on life and death.

Molly Lamb Bobak (1922–2014) was the first woman to travel overseas as an official Canadian war artist. She was also the daughter of famous Cana …

Experience all the thrills and suspense of chasing down the world’s highest-profile criminals.

What does it take to catch a criminal? Not just any criminal, but one of the world’s most wanted? In Outlaws, Spies, and Gangsters, Laura Scandiffo chronicles eight of history’s most famous manhunts, from searches for drug dealers to dictators, hacke …

Eighty-year-old Alberto Camelo has searched for love in all the wrong places. Nevertheless, he claims that his experiences have made him the world’s greatest lover. This claim is belied by his ancient neighbour and closest friend Adriana who taunts: “Perhaps you are the greatest lover of last Tuesday.” Despite his claims, Alberto has never ex …

A Mind at Sea is an intimate window into a vanished time when Canada was among the world's great maritime countries. Between 1856 and 1877, Henry Fry was the Lloyd's agent for the St. Lawrence River, east of Montreal. The harbour coves below his home in Quebec were crammed with immense rafts of cut wood, the river's shoreline sprawled with yards wh …

Finalist, Hubert Evans Non-Fiction Prize (BC Book Prizes)

Finalist, City of Vancouver Book Prize

Long listed for CBC Canada Reads 2015

The Door Is Open is a compassionate, reflective, and informative memoir about three-and-a-half years spent volunteering at a skid row drop-in centre in Vancouver’s downtown eastside. In an area most renowned for its …

Bob is on the road. Bob is on the run. But from what, or whom, is she running? Follow Bob as she hops from car to car telling her story to unsuspecting drivers as she tries to put her life in the rear-view mirror. Will she make it to her destination? And what will she find when she gets there? Find out in the critically adored See Bob Run."...the i …

In 1964, Patricia MacKay immigrated to Canada from England in search of the wild-open lands and cowboy culture that captivated her as a child. In the 1960s, the Wild West was still alive and kicking in the Cariboo-Chilcotin, although it had been tamed—a little. Old-time hospitality and helping anyone in need was the acknowledged way of life.

Pat l …

The Deaf House is Joanne Weber’s life story. It illustrates the work and passion of a woman who grew up deaf and became an advocate for the deaf. It is a story of pain, loss and defeat balanced with joy, gain, and victory. Joanne Weber’s creative memoir, shows how deafness can be a brutal oppression of the mind. Her torment of not knowing exact …

It's a great day for Greece when Perseus defeats the dreaded kraken. But victory begins to lose its lustre when the remains of the beast swamp the shores and fishing nets of the Aegean. Now after weeks of kraken cakes, kraken kabobs, kraken fritters, and kraken stew, everybody is getting decidedly sick of kraken - none more so than Chef Pelops.

In …

Haida Gwaii, ancestral home of the Haida First Nation, was once as inaccessible and mysterious as it was beautiful. The tight cluster of islands off British Columbia’s northwest coast remained virtually untouchable for millennia, allowing its people to develop a distinct and exceptional cultural identity that was known and revered across the regi …

The debut poetry collection by the actor, director, and writer James Franco

I’m a nocturnal creature,
And I’m here to cheat time.
You can see time and exhaustion
Taking pay from my face—
In fifty years
My sleep will be death,
I’ll go like the rest,
But I’ll have played
All the games and all the roles.
—from “Nocturnal”

“There’s n …

This Drawn & Quartered Moon makes pre-millennial San Francisco its epicenter, and from there ranges out in time and space. Characters abound. The reader will meet a plagiarist, a Vietnam vet named Othello, a Mafia don, a drug mule en route to jail, Elvis Presley (the poet’s father was his doctor), a “Sculptor of the Lower Fillmore Head Shot,” …

Koala Hospital kicks off the new 4-book Wildlife Rescue series from Owlkids Books. Each book introduces a species of animal in danger somewhere in the world and invites readers inside a rescue center that helps them. Inviting photos by award–winning wildlife photographer Suzi Eszterhas give readers a rare view of the animals and the high level o …

Poetic, witty, and ever so faintly surreal, Sefer delicately explores the legacy of the Holocaust for the postwar generation, a generation for whom a devastating history has grown distant, both temporally and emotionally. The novel’s protagonist, Jan Sefer, is a psychotherapist living in Vienna—someone whose professional life puts him in daily …

Alex was in harmony with the water. He taught himself to swim, and liked working the sea off Prince Edward Island as his fisherman father did, but he always yearned for something more. His brother Reggie despised it all — the water that brought death, the seasickness, and he needed to breathe the air of farms. Reggie yearned for escape. Mercy Col …

In this, the first volume of Difficulty at the Beginning, John Dupre is a student at Raysburg Military Academy, where his best friend Lyle Ledzinski is training him to be a perfect Socratic athlete: “A sound mind in a sound body.”Together they want to experience all of life — athletics, philosophy, beer, the quest for Truth, and most of all, …

One Peace celebrates the "Power of One," and specifically the accomplishments of children from around the globe who have worked to promote world peace. Janet Wilson challenges today's children to strive to make a difference in this beautifully illustrated, fact-filled and fascinating volume of portraits of many "heroes for today."

Canadian Craig Ki …

Toronto boasts one of the most diverse food cultures in the world. Every night, the city comes alive as hundreds of restaurants, bistros, pubs and diners open for hungry patrons. Now, the city's appetite has been further rejuvenated with a veritable food-cart revolution, led by a diverse fleet of mobile gourmet-food options. With carts, trucks and …

Shortlisted for the Sheila A. Egoff Children’s Literature Prize

In a small prairie town like Argue, Saskatchewan, everyone knows everybody else’s business. Everyone knows that the Loney family has been barely hanging on -- the father, George, reduced to drink and despair since the loss of his farm and the death of his wife, Margaret. That the fo …

Understories is an exploration of things visible mostly to the inner eye and memory, things below the surface. The book began as a riff on Mark Strand's brilliant title, "Planet of the Lost Things," and it is an exploration of loss, but also of recovery through memory and language. The first part, "A Perfect Afternoon" follows an unfulfilled romanc …

A child of Mars, Najib has a wanderer’s heart, and ventures to Psyche for work. But he finds factory life on the asteroid intolerable, and escapes to Callisto. When the arrivals officer misspells his name, Najib takes the opportunity to reinvent himself. Najib ends up finding love, but also encounters both sides of Callisto’s underbelly—a cro …

Featuring a preview of Carrie Snyder’s highly anticipated debut novel, Girl Runner.

Anansi Digital brings you Carrie Snyder’s debut collection, Hair Hat, “a potent work of original imagination.” (Edmonton Journal)

In these mysterious and wondrous stories, eleven disparate people — some of them related, some of them neighbours, glancing acqu …

After ten years of marriage, Sue and Jerry would say they know everything about each other. But each harbours a significant secret. When Jerry becomes ill and it’s apparent he’s dying, Sue visits a psychic, Hans, who tells her there is someone like a son in her life. She dismisses this, but at Jerry’s funeral his son turns up—a son Sue didn …

Over the years Trish and Ray have forged a stable family life, despite a rocky beginning almost twenty years earlier — living with their friends on a communal farm that ended badly. Now they are all coming to terms with life in their forties, but Trish has turned angry and insecure. She suddenly finds herself faced with an ailing marriage, a teen …

At twenty-five, kindergarten teacher Priya must accept the loss of her parents in a plane crash. Her grief plunges her into an eating disorder. While her friends recognize that she is crying out for help, Priya denies it all as she strives to make peace with Renita, her father’s sister—a woman who appears chronically depressed. Unbeknownst to P …

John Donlan’s lyric work seeks the connection between lives—not just the life of a coyote and the life of a man, or the peaceful cacophony of a pond in summer and the life of the human listener—but between the life before birth, and the life after. He reveals the wilderness to us moment by moment, while simultaneously driving us back into our …

Paardeberg, South Africa is far from the Canadian prairies. In 1899, best friends from the small town of Portage la Prairie, Will and Mason, sign up with the Winnipeg Rifles” “A” Company to fight in the Second Boer War. Here they meet Robert, the silent anthropologist from Alberta with a mystery he isn—t revealing; Claire, an Australian nur …

Véhicule Press launches its Ricochet Series of vintage mysteries with The Crime on Cotes des Neiges—a hardboiled detective novel set in Montreal originally published in 1951. At the centre of this novel, and two others by David Montrose, is the hard-drinking, hard-working private dick, Russell Teed.

First Edition 1951 back cover:

There were two b …

Selected for The Globe 100 Books in 2013.

A fascinating work of history, biography, cartography, and literary mystery, Mr Selden’s Map of China unlocks the secrets behind a recently discovered map of China like no other of its time.

In 1659, a vast and unusual map of China arrived in the Bodleian Library, Oxford. It was bequeathed by John Selden, a …

Does true love have supernatural power?

Where Did You Sleep Last Night is a love story about a teenage girl who embarks on a relationship with Kurt Cobain.

Evelyn Gray is a sad and lonely sixteen-year-old from Carnation, Washington who is terrorized by her classmates at school. She spends most of her time in her room reading, writing letters to dead …

Selected for The Globe 100 Books in 2013.

A fascinating work of history, biography, cartography, and literary mystery, Mr Selden’s Map of China unlocks the secrets behind a recently discovered map of China like no other of its time.

In 1659, a vast and unusual map of China arrived in the Bodleian Library, Oxford. It was bequeathed by John Selden, a …

In this Anansi Digital Publication, James Laxer takes the pulse of America from the vantage point of Southern California at a time when the United States is riven with debates about immigration, guns, and how to tackle the economic crisis.

From his perch in a little cottage in wealthy La Jolla on the outskirts of San Diego, Laxer talked to local peo …

Zanna is a rebellious pre-teen city girl with a fondness for tattoos and bad boys. But after her last rebellion-a strawberry tattoo on her ankle-her mother leaves for France without her. Zanna is forced to spend the summer with her twin brother, Martin, and their glaciologist father in the mountainous region of Last Chance Pass. There Zanna takes i …

Brian Lembeck – ‘Pulpy’ – takes life slow and steady. He likes his office job, and he likes his gentle, figurine-collecting boss, Al. He even likes the bitter receptionist, though he’s the only one who does. He likes his wife, Midge, too, and their ice-dancing lessons. Midge works as a candle-party hostess – she quit her office job when …

'Like all my favourite art, these paintings bring out that covetous feeling – I want to wear them, dance to them, show them off as an example of how life feels to me: dirty, dumb, terrifying, spiritual and so funny.' – Miranda July

'In a time of ironic detachment, Margaux Williamson is a painter of extreme candour, but the violence of her vision …

Night is falling, and so is the snow. As the blizzard buries the ground, it uncovers the resentments, hopes, and aches of a small town in northeastern Arkansas, where, like in any Southern small town, there are unwanted pregnancies to agonize over, surgeries to be paid for and love to be made. Julie's two daughters have just run off to Hollywood to …

Theatre doesn’t have much relevance anymore. Or so acclaimed playwright Darren O’Donnell tells us. The dynamics of unplanned social interaction, he says, are far more compelling than any play he could produce. So his latest show, A Suicide-Site Guide to the City, isn’t really a show; it’s an interactive chitchat about memory, depression, an …

Isabel Norris has never left the ice. Her father was a hockey legend who died before she was born, and her grandparents have raised her in his skates.

When Iz leaves her grandmother behind to play for the Winnipeg University Scarlets, she struggles to fit in on this team of hard-hitting, tough-talking women with a penchant for buffets, beer bongs an …

David spends his days as an underworked copy writer for an ad agency and his nights lost in old war movies, fantasizing about his strange teenage cousin and revisiting his father's suicide.

His dreary life is upended when he finds himself at the mysterious Chaos Farm, a lavish wilderness retreat populated by those seeking to right their lives' imbal …

"I have tried to make a sketch or a model in several dimensions of the potency of Arendt’s idea of invisibility, the necessary inconspicuousness of thinking and reading, and the ambivalently joyous and knotted agency to be found there. Just beneath the surface of the phonemes, a gendered name rhythmically explodes into a founding variousness. And …

Winner of the Sheila A. Egoff Children’s Literature Prize and the TD CCBC Canadian Children's Literature Award

Kip is spending the summer with his grandmother and his five eccentric girl cousins, including Emily, who thinks she's a dog. Gran's house is about to be demolished, so anything goes, whether it's drawing maps on the walls or sawing off t …

Winner of the 2014 Margaret Laurence Award for Fiction at the Manitoba Book Prizes!
Finalist for Best Book Cover / Jacket Design at the 2014 Alberta Book Design Awards!

Edith Stoker's father is building a wall in their backyard. A very, very high wall--a brick bulwark in his obsessive war against their hated neighbour Edward Black.

It is 1969, and fa …

Pelops” troubles began when his father chopped him into stewing meat and served him to the gods for tea. Although he's been remade, and gifted with a talent for the culinary arts, there are downsides--namely a missing shoulder and sea god with an infatuation. Poseidon's nice enough, but he just won?t take no for an answer. Not only that, a wealth …

During the past two decades, postcolonial studies has proven to be one of the fastest growing fields of critical inquiry. Postcolonialism has established itself as an important specialist field within literature disciplines, and it has strong resonances across other disciplines (history, sociology, anthropology, geography, cultural studies) and is …

Winner, Best Atlantic Published Book Award
Shortlisted, Canadian Regional Design Award

met-a-mor-pho-sis: a complete change of form, structure, or substance, as transformation by magic or witchcraft.

In May of 1896, a young magician from New York City joined the cast of the Marco Magic Company and embarked on a summer-long tour of eastern Canada, inc …