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 …

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 …

At age twenty, Leena O'Neil walked away from her old life. Anything to avoid becoming a lawyer like her mother and older sister, Georgia. Three years later, Georgia contacts her, convinced that her husband is trying to kill her rather than divorce her. Reluctantly, Leena agrees to help. But the stakes go up when Georgia's husband, Mark, is murdered …

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 …

Roadtripping documents a decade of road trips through the fiefdom of Alberta. The men and women who make up the Buffalo Gals first set out in July 1999 to experience the unusual and charming roadside attractions of south-central Alberta. Never dreaming that this one-off adventure would turn into an annual event, it’s ten years later and they cont …

How does one go from English villager to wilderness dweller?

Chris Czajkowski was born and raised at the edge of a large village in England, until she abandoned the company of others to roam the countryside in search of the natural world. As a young adult she studied dairy farming and travelled to Uganda to teach at a farm school. Returning to Engla …

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 …

A line of nervous young women got off a ship in Victoria Harbour in 1862 and had to walk the gauntlet between two rows of jostling, eager men. One girl, proposed to on the spot, accepted equally quickly and left town with her new husband. Why did these women leave everything behind in England and come to the west coast? The answers lie in the lusty …

On September 27, 1986, pilot Theresa Bond and five passengers took off on a routine flight from Atlin, BC, in her beloved de Havilland Beaver. The Taku Air passenger list that day included local politician Al Passarell, his wife, and three of Atlin’s most prominent citizens–including larger-than-life Atlin Inn owner Joe Florence. After an uneve …

A wealthy madam who was known from San Francisco to Victoria in the early part of the 20th century, Stella Carroll was glamorous, worldly and determined to succeed. Her bordellos were fashionably decorated and patronized by the affluent and the powerful; she offered the best of everything—fine food and wine, cigars, entertainment and, of course, …

Celia Cantú, a pediatrician in Havana, is trying to live a regular life in today's Cuba. She is engaged to her childhood friend Luis and lives with her 16-year-old niece, Liliana. Celia's life is disrupted when Luis's brother, Joe, returns from Miami flaunting his American ways. Joe's arrival and Liliana's adolescent restlessness force Celia to ex …

The prequel to the wildly popular Ava Lee series.

Young Ava Lee is a forensic accounting who has just opened her own private firm. One of her clients, Hedrick Lo, has been swindled of more than a million dollars by a Chinese importer named Johnny Kung. Desperate, Lo persuades Ava to find and retrieve the monies owed. Ava goes to Hong Kong, where she …

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 …

In the south of France where hatred simmers in the heat, a man seemingly admired, and certainly feared, drops dead at a dinner party. All of the guests fall under suspicion, including Welsh-Canadian professor Cait Morgan. A criminologist who specializes in profiling victims, Cait sets out to solve the murder—and clear her name. Add to this the di …

Transit cop Casey Holland is back investigating crime on Mainland Public Transit buses. Someone is smashing the windows of moving buses on the M6 line, while racial hatred between preteens on the M10 threatens to erupt into all-out war. The murder of Casey's co-worker Jasmine Birch escalates the hostilities, and the staff begins to suspect one anot …

After losing her job and being left by her rock musician husband, Rose Okanese, a single mother of two feisty girls, resolves to claim some self-respect. She decides the fastest way to do that is to run the reserve’s annual marathon, but her training is sidetracked when she must do battle with an ancient demon. With a cast of unusual characters, …

Some people claim they'd like to walk away from their lives -- Shelley A. Leedahl had the nerve to do it. Was it selfishness, or self-preservation?

Drawing upon childhood memories, hikes, road trips, foreign travel, her self-imposed exile to a prairie village, fortuitous meetings with strangers, and her compulsion for starting over, again and again …

Iris Trimble is trying to hold it all together. She may very well fly off the face of the earth if she doesn't hang on to the kitchen counter. At least that's how she feels after her mother, Bernice, a lively, recently widowed fifty-nine-year-old breaks the news that she has Alzheimer's. In an effort to cope with the stress, Iris makes her mother's …

A chilling psychological thriller, Little One is the haunting story of adopted siblings Aaron and Claire—one the definition of normal, the other deeply disturbed and unpredictable—and the strange lives of their neighbours, a man and his mail-order bride.

In Other People’s Children, wealthy young power couple Ben and Ilana hire Sati, a live-in …

Trained as a nurse and midwife, Elizabeth Evans never wanted to help set up the fledgling town of Aspen Coulee, Alberta, but travels there with her father when he agrees to become the town doctor. Housekeeper at the Evans’ house, Ann Montgomery hoped to keep all her San Francisco secrets locked in her ancient wedding chest.

It is 1907, and the Can …

TouchWood Editions is proud to introduce the first female sleuth in our selection of mystery novels. Author Gwendolyn Southin uniquely blends the charm of gumshoe techniques with the fresh perspective of a developing female detective. The Margaret Spencer Mysteries offer action and suspense, with a human subtext.

At age fifty, Margaret Spencer's emp …

For well over a century, the bright seas of the Sunshine Coast have been attracting visitors to the waterfront resorts, fishing lodges and beaches that rest between Howe Sound and the spectacular Princess Louisa Inlet. These coastal hotspots and communities were settled by a few courageous and daring pioneers whose names are still familiar today: …

In this breathtaking collection of poems, Pamela Porter invokes the twin mysteries of love and loss to illumine the heart burdened by grief, yet comforted and renewed by the beauty of the natural world. In the long poem “Atonement,” Porter takes us into a human drama, rich with astonishments: “There was no snow, but you could say the snow bur …

Frances Barkley was just eighteen when she became the first European woman to set foot on the west coast of North America. After a sheltered upbringing in England, Frances found herself boarding the Imperial Eagle in 1786 to set sail on an adventurous, round-the-world voyage with her husband, Captain Charles William Barkley.

With great wisdom and wi …

Journey into the fashionable art world of 1960s Vancouver as Margaret Spencer and Nat Southby return in Death as a Fine Art, the fifth book in the Margaret Spencer mystery series. The owner of the Silver Unicorn Art Gallery is dead, and Southby and Spencer, Private Investigators are back at work in search of the killer. With plenty of suspects and …

The second book in the Cait Morgan Mysteries brings overindulgent foodie and criminologist Cait Morgan to the vineyards of British Columbia’s Okanagan Valley.

A world-famous vintner is dead. And when a heartfelt plea to look into the matter is paired with an exclusive gourmet event in BC’s stunning wine country, Cait Morgan cannot resist. She is …

In this much-anticipated second volume in the Extraordinary Women Anthology series, Diana French follows up on Gumption and Grit with more stories of the women who have contributed, or who are still contributing, to the vibrant mosaic that is the Cariboo Chilcotin. The area has more than its share of remarkable women, from educators to rodeo stars, …

Inspector Aliette Nouvelle's romantic life is in tatters. This sad fact becomes a heavy distraction as she goes back and forth from France to Switzerland, trying to determine who killed a Basel art gallery security guard found at a gay gathering spot on the French bank of the Rhine. A damaged painting of a shoemaker found near the body motivates th …

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 …

In a literary collection unlike any other, Thistledown Press brings together short fiction by women and about women. Readers interested in women’s perspectives will be drawn in by unique takes on the female experience provided in these ten short stories by Canadian women writers. Fiercely independent career women, sisters who butt heads, children …

Metaphysical Licks, a hybrid prose-poem/novella riffing on the lives and works of Austrian poet Georg Trakl and his sister, Grete, is the restless new work by writer and translator Gregoire Pam Dick [a.k.a. Mina Pam Dick, Jake Pam Dick et al., author of Delinquent (Futurepoem, 2009)]. With a mix of high and low, tragic and comic, abstract and concr …

In Finding My Talk, fourteen aboriginal women who attend residential schools, or were affected by them, reflect on their experiences.

In Sarah Robert’s debut collection Wax Boats, a rural island community comes to life in action-packed, evocative tales. Cougar ladies fight the BC wilderness and the inevitable extinction of their peaceful island lives. An expectant mother turns to Native traditions to guide her through a safe delivery. A Boy Scout troupe rescues their own leader …

When Olivia loses control at her fiftieth birthday party, her four best friends decide to intervene once and for all, much to the irritation of Olivia and her lover, Norma. But is she the only one battling a demon? Or do each of these women face an addiction of one kind or another? Five @ Fifty is a raw and darkly comedic portrayal of turning fifty …

Anzel, a widow in her sixties, lives quietly on her small farm with her ninety-eight-year-old grandfather, a Carrier elder from Northern BC. Grandpère and Anzel pass the time playing fierce cribbage games, cutting firewood and tending the vegetable garden.

As the days pass Grandpère tells Anzel his life story, sharing heartbreaking memories: the d …

Following the metaphysical and epistemological threads that have led to our modern conception of the body as a machine, the book explores views of the body in the history of philosophy. Its central thesis is that the Cartesian paradigm, which has dominated the modern conception of the body (including the development and practice of medicine), offe …

Dubbed "the Wayne Gretzky of women's hockey," Angela James became the most dominant female player on the planet from the early 1980s through the mid 1990s. Her rise to hockey stardom, however, was a true long shot. During a difficult childhood plagued by near poverty and familial chaos, hockey was James's escape. Talent and determination eventually …

About one million years ago, when Homo Erectus decided to walk on two legs, he must have sensed that things would never be the same for him again - -that he could kiss his old ape habits goodbye. No more swinging from tree branch to tree branch, no more throwing his feces around. He would have also been the first to admit that he wasn't quite ready …

This beautifully written story, loosely inspired by Hans Christian Andersen’s fairy tale “Thumbelina,” was created in response to the gorgeous award-winning art of Nasrin Khosravi.

Author Uma Krishnaswami’s sensitive and poetic tale opens when Lina, a tiny girl no bigger than a thumb, is found in a flower by her mother. Because she is so tin …

Theatre as we know it started in Manitoba almost a century and a half ago. During that time it has produced some shining moments, some unforgettable characters, and some great stories: how two visionaries, Tom Hendry and John Hirsch, convinced Manitoba to embrace a theatre centre that became a model for the rest of the world, how Prairie Theatre Ex …

In poignant and insightful interviews, Anrénee Englander presents the voices of ten pregnant teens as they discuss their experiences and choices around motherhood, adoption and abortion. First published to critical acclaim in 1997, this new edition contains the original interviews as well as d material including a resources section. Presenting dif …

There's a deadly August heatwave and Inspector Aliette Nouvelle is looking forward to her upcoming vacation. She's been working hard, without much reward. Denied promotion to the coveted Commissaire's post -- which seemed practically guaranteed before the dubious Jacques Normand affair -- she now finds herself working under the new acting Commissai …

A courageous and timely novel, Tears of Mehndi explores the rich, complex and often heartbreaking lives of a tight-knit community in Vancouver’s Little India. Through the perspectives of several women whose lives intertwine over a generation, Raminder Sidhu deftly exposes the shrouded violence within the Indo-Canadian community, a difficult and o …

Following the success of First Invaders (Ronsdale, 2004), Alan Twigg turns his attention to First Nations writers, unearthing more than 300 books by more than 170 mostly unheralded British Columbia aboriginal authors. Taking the reader from residential schools to art galleries, this lively and unprecedented panorama of British Columbia includes tra …

Pearl Serein is the most desired woman in town. Her lovers are the city's leading men. She breaks up marriages, and after she dumps her lovers, their careers go down the tubes. Celebrity gossip scribe Tommi Bonneau chronicles Pearl's every romantic move in the morning paper, Le Cri du Matin. And he is relentless in serving his story, keeping the id …

Imagine you're given the startling news that your body is only capable of having six more orgasms. "It's either buck up or fuck up," decides Mel in "Six Degrees of Altered Sensation," adding this new restraint to the perplexity of single life with progressive Multiple Sclerosis. In "Flickering," Francis becomes a pyromaniac in order to give her gro …

Not Done Yet opens a window on one woman's journey through breast cancer treatment, recovery, recurrence, and beyond. When she found a lump in her breast in December 2005, Laurie Kingston was thirty-eight, with an active life, a family, and a demanding job. A diagnosis of breast cancer was nowhere on her radar screen. But when that diagnosis was co …