Donald Ward’s stories are written in a straight-ahead narrative style that offers conceptual and philosophical underpinnings. Despite this intentional layering, he maintains the kind of economy of description and simplicity of exposition that is perfectly suited to the short story genre. Throughout his stories he likes to explore the human willin …

In his fifth book about language, Howard Richler moves from A to Z with a specifically chosen word for every letter of the alphabet. What especially intrigues him is how words come to mean what they mean, how they lose some meanings and gain others. Always humorous, Richler invites readers into the intimacy of language and allows us to delight in t …

This compelling biography of Doug Hepburn, the weightlifter who won gold for Canada in Stockholm in 1953 and at the British Empire Games in Vancouver in 1954, delivers fascinating, first-hand information about an unusual Vancouver athlete and the sporting world of the 1950s and 1960s. In this plain-spoken and moving biography of a strength legend, …

Seventeen years ago, Isobel was murdered at the tender age of nine. Now she finds herself back in her previous life as a ghost searching for the person responsible for her untimely death. But this time she’s powerful, having the ability to watch over the living, observe them, and sometimes interact with them. Isobel has been paying attention to h …

User Error explodes the myth of computer technology as juggernaut. Multimedia educator Ellen Rose shows that there is no bandwagon, no out-of-control dynamo, no titanic conspiracy to overwhelm us. Instead, there is our own desire to join the fraternity of users, a fraternity that confers legitimacy and power on those who enter the brave new world. …

Employing a sort of leaping or mosaic structure and incorporating e-mails re penis-enlargement, questionable limericks, jokes, graffiti and a photo of a "penis latte," along with personal anecdotes and probes of books and films, Deep Too is a book of non-fiction stories. It is a funny and sometimes biting book about the phenomenon of male strut and …

Whether it’s a middle-aged man travelling to Mexico in search of a troubled sister or a thirty-something restaurant manager trying desperately to hold her life together, this stunning debut collection of interconnected stories unerringly charts the emotional journeys of a wonderful cast of characters, none more charming, interesting or endearing …

Writer Danny Bayle’s life is in shambles. His true love has left him and his grandfather—the last and most important influence in his life—has just passed away. Danny has spent the last few months languishing, unable to write a single word, but at the urging of a friend ventures out into the world in an attempt to jumpstart a new life, befrie …

People often recognize that their drinking is causing problems in their lives long before they are ready to seek help. Knowing that there is a problem can be a good first step to cutting back or quitting drinking, but it can be hard to know what further steps to take to make changes and stick to them.

Saying When presents a step-by-step program to h …

The nature of relationships is skilfully illuminated in this collection of stories by award-winning author Holley Rubinsky. South of Elfrida delves into the lives of those coming face to face with personal truths that require resilience, humour and the ability to change.

With a clear eye for the complexities of the human heart, Rubinsky’s stories …

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 …

Still sassy, Doris Gregory takes the reader back over seventy years to the time when she broke with tradition, first by publicly challenging the University of British Columbia’s discrimination against women, and then by joining the Canadian Women’s Army Corps. Her memoir allows us to travel with her across the Atlantic at the height of the U-bo …

From the colonial era of waterborne transport, through nineteenth-century changes in transportation and communication, to globalization, the history of the Great Lakes Basin has been shaped by the people, goods, and capital crossing and recrossing the U.S.-Canadian border.

During the past three centuries, the region has been buffeted by efforts to …

The short stories in God's Autobio, Rolli’s debut collection, are impossible, quite probable, and everything in between. There’s a story about a man with a ridiculously huge coupon; about an elderly woman who befriends a frenzied robotic chimpanzee; an overzealous, if increasingly masochistic butler; plus twenty-three other surreal, sublime, an …

From the author of the novels Love on the Killing Floor and Dragging the River, Trevor Clark’s new collection of stories covers broad territory, from an addict’s confessions to the corruption of academia, in such diverse locales as Jamaica and the UK. The subtle nuances of knifings, the unforeseen rise of Islamic terrorists, the familial kidnap …

Devin Krukoff’s delicate balancing of hyperbole and psychological realism is the book’s greatest achievement. Flyways is thematically reminiscent of Zsuzsi Gartner’s All the Anxious Girls on Earth, but without the moral didacticism. While Krukoff’s stories share Gartner’s sense of humour, they elicit the reader’s sympathy rather than co …

When Elsa and her family move from Iceland to Scotland, she is filled with uncontrollable joy over the new adventure she is about to begin. With her infectious energy and love for the dramatic, Elsa stands out both in her community and within her classroom, but this exuberance also targets her as an outcast. Only through the faith of a new friend a …

In these stories, readers will not find heartwarming sentimentality, but mature literary prose with surprising twists and indeterminate endings, and women of intense substance and spirit. P. J. Worrell understands girls who dream of being wives and mothers in safe cozy homes, then find out that trying hard to secure that life does not necessarily m …

Gold Dust on His Shirt is an evocative telling of the experience of a Scandinavian immigrant family of hard-rock miners at the turn of the century and up to World War II. Based on fascinating historical research, these are tales of arriving in ‘Amerika,’ blasting the Grand Trunk Pacific railway, work in the mines, and domestic life and labour …

Ticknor is the first novel by Sheila Heti, the author of the acclaimed story collection The Middle Stories and, with Misha Glouberman, the essay collection The Chairs are Where the People Go.

George Ticknor is trying to reconcile his own failure with the success of his boyhood friend, the famous American historian William Prescott. Ticknor's life h …

A revised and updated edition of a collection of personal essays that illuminate what life is like for those who live with mental illness, and how it impacts their family members.

More than 4 million Canadians and 57 million Americans suffer from a diagnosable mental illness, and yet there are still considerable stigmas and a great deal of misunders …

With The Barclay Family Theatre, his second collection of short stories, Jack Hodgins introduces us to a cast of characters who transform the everyday world of Vancouver Island into a wondrous world of human warmth and comic energy. There is Barclay Desmond, caught between the ambitions of his mother, who wants him to become a concert pianist, and …

The best books of poetry published in English internationally and in Canada are honoured each year with the $65,000 Griffin Poetry Prize, one of the world's most prestigious and valuable literary awards. Since 2001 this annual prize has acted as a tremendous spur to interest in and recognition of poetry, focusing worldwide attention on the formidab …

On August 22, 1922, near Macroom, County Cork, a single bullet from an unknown gunman killed Michael Collins, the Commander-in-Chief of the Irish Free State Army. The day Collins was buried, businesses across Dublin shut down as thousands lined the streets to pay their respects. And on that day, Michael Lyons, a cooper from the Guinness factory tak …

The Hockey Sweater, the title story in this 20-story collection, has become an enduring classic: a Quebec boy and Habs fan is shipped a Toronto Maple Leafs sweater by mistake. It encapsulates everything you need to understand French and English Canada, told with humour and love. This edition features a new introduction.

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 …

In 2006 “outdoor philosopher” Kate Rawles cycled 4553 miles from Texas to Alaska, following the spine of the Rocky Mountains as closely as possible. Cycling across unforgiving but starkly beautiful landscapes in both the United States and Canada – deserts, high mountain passes, glaciers and eventually down to the sea – she encountered bears …

Provocative, passionate and populist, RMB Manifestos are short and concise non-fiction books of literary, critical, and cultural studies.

The developed world is increasingly obsessed with two things: electronic gadgets and our changing climate. We stand in open-mouthed awe of our technological achievements while dejectedly shrugging our shoulders at …

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 …

Living is a process of continuous transformation: we have been embryos, children, adolescents, thin, fat, sick, better again. And as humans, we are always at odds with at least one part of our bodies. Have we inherited the family nose? Is there nothing to be done for our finicky stomach or our limp hair?

In the Flesh is an intelligent, witty, and pr …

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 …

It’s no secret that Canadians love beer, and in the western provinces, the large number of successful microbreweries continues to prove that distinct beer—high-quality beer—is important to our national pint-lovers. Beer Quest West is for homebrewers and beer aficionados alike: this is your guide to the best of the west.

Alberta and British Co …

In this lyrical memoir, Lily Hoy Price writes with moving detail about her childhood and adolescence in a large Chinese Canadian family in the Cariboo country of northern British Columbia. The ninth daughter in a family of 12 children, Lily is an observant child who tucks away every image of life in rugged Quesnel during the 1930s for one unforgett …

At a dinner party, Beth — thirty-six, single, and working as much overtime as she can get her hands on — impulsively announces that she's going to spend a night on Vancouver's mean streets in commiseration of the homeless. Unexpectedly, her hosts' son Mason — nine years old, small for his age, intense, intellectual and so shy he can't speak i …

Ben Dunn has not been trafficking marijuana to his high school students. He has, however, been intimate with one, which is probably why the authorities come looking for him one afternoon. After a night spent in the drunk-tank, Ben commissions his friend’s help in planning a revenge-plot against the fellow teacher he blames for his forced removal …

August 12, 2002 would have marked the 100th birthday of one of Western Canada's most beloved, exemplary, idiosyncratic and admired citizens, the Hon. J.W. Grant MacEwan. A Century of Grant MacEwan: Selected Writings is published to mark the centenary of the author's birth, and showcases the writing achievements of this remarkable man. From his firs …

In a mining town edging the Australian Nullarbor, Gina sits at the bar and devotes herself to the heart of what she’s trying to escape. After finishing a grueling cross-Canada tour, Dana, an alt-rock musician, flees to the Yukon to avoid her band’s rising fame and risks sabotaging it all. In a small West Coast fishing town, a boat-dwelling moth …

Resting on what was left of the bench was something else, lighter in shade than the background, round, about the size of a cabbage. There were two large holes close together, a smaller pair below, then two rows of wedge-shaped objects. The pattern suddenly coalesced: in atavistic and chilling familiarity . . .

In a remote British Columbia lake, an …

Provocative, passionate and populist, RMB Manifestos are short and concise non-fiction books of literary, critical, and cultural studies.

The Columbia River Treaty ratification in 1964 created the largest hydropower project in North America, with additional emphasis on flood protection for the United States. As the treaty approaches its 60th anniver …

The Real Thing is the first official biography of Ian McTaggart Cowan (1910–2010), the “father of Canadian ecology.” Authorized by his family and with the research support and participation of the University of Victoria Libraries, Briony Penn provides an unprecedented and accessible window into the story of this remarkable naturalist. From hi …

It was 1862 and the Cariboo Gold Rush was in full swing. Sophia Cameron, the Beauty of Barkerville, lay dying of typhoid when her husband, John Cariboo Cameron, made one last promise to his fading young wife. The Promise is a compelling story of a great love and an epic struggle to honour a dying wife's final request: to take her body home to easte …

Once available and appreciated only by researchers, these stories remained buried in the British Columbia Archives until 2007. Finally, readers are given a new glimpse into Emily Carr's life with this collection.. Carr began to write these stories in the last two years of her life. She wrote of the project: ... they are too small each to be taken s …

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, …

From the days of the fur trade, one constant thread weaves its way through the tumultuous history of frontier British Columbia, Washington and Oregon—the war over liquor. Between 1840 and 1917, the whisky wars of the west coast were fought by historical heavyweights, including Matthew Baillie Begbie (the “Hanging Judge”) and Wyatt Earp, and a …

Finalist for the 2012 Rogers Writers' Trust Fiction Prize

During the bloodiest single-day battle in American history, Anson Baird, a surgeon for the Union Army, is on the front line tending to the wounded. As the number of casualties rises, a mysterious soldier named John comes to Anson's aid. Deeply affected by the man's selfless actions, Anson soo …

Sean Johnston will leave readers smiling at the acrobatics of his words and techniques in this eagerly anticipated second short story collection after the Relit award winning A Day Does Not Go By. Several stories, such as “We Don’t Celebrate That”, explore the difficulty of survival in an increasingly indifferent political reality, while othe …

With over 100,000 copies of the previous editions sold, Gillean Daffern’s bestselling hiking guides to Kananaskis Country have been completely reformatted, revised and updated. As the pre-eminent expert on the area, the author continues to offer something for every level of foot-traveller, be they novice or experienced hikers, scramblers or backp …

Shortlisted for a 2016 IACP Food Matters Award
Winner of a 2016 Gourmand World Cookbook Award

Imagine going to the supermarket and buying three bags full of food but then dropping one in the parking lot before driving away. With the amount of food we waste, it's like we all do the equivalent of that every single week.

Forty percent of food is wasted …

Brilliant is a collection of short stories set in Abu Dhabi, capital of the United Arab Emirates, a polyglot city where cultures collide and converge, where money -- and sometimes justice -- is no object, where in less than two generations towers have replaced tents. In these stories, a cast of characters -- an Egyptian pastry chef, a Filipina nann …