“Here, Haye’s drug of choice is speed, and not the illicit kind, for his clear-eyed aim is to track the fastest trains in history and to look to those that are coming in the future.” —Ron Verzuh reviews Quest for Speed: A History of Trains from Rocket to Bullet and Beyond, by Derek Hayes (Madeira Park, BC: Douglas & McIntyre, 2024) $44.95 / 978177162379
“George went back to post secondary school at the University of Lethbridge with the goal to becoming a high school history teacher. With every history course she made the point of viewing the narrative through an Aboriginal lens.” Sage Birchwater reviews ALHA DISNII – My Truth: Words from a Wet’suwet’en Woman by Corinne George (Calgary: Medicine Wheel Publishing, 2024) $19.99 / 9781778540417
“If you’ve grown weary of heterosexual couples… [and] like the idea of a Sapphic romance involving literate characters,” then this dark fantasy will keep you enthralled. —Jessica Poon reviews Serpentine Valentine, by Giana Darling (BC: Giana Darling Publishing, 2024) $24.95 / 9781774440469
A brooding hero gives a centuries-spanning novel gravity, but too many characters “create a pacing that is reminiscent of old ‘monster of the week’ television, à la Scooby Doo, or Doctor Who, without the levity that makes these shows so digestible.” —Zoe McKenna reviews The Mona Lisa Sacrifice, by Peter Darbyshire (Hamilton: Wolsak & Wynn, 2024) $24.00 / 9781998408054
“Consider the evocative words of the book’s subtitle: ‘A Year Inside the Life of a Chronic Adventurer.’ The three key words? ‘inside,’ ‘life,’ and ‘chronic.’ Why? As much as this is the account of three long expeditions, it is also a frank and supercharged self-portrait. Holding back is not something Wolf does. On the contrary.” Theo Dombrowski reviews Two Springs, One Summer: a year inside the life of a chronic adventurer, by Frank Wolf (Victoria: Rocky Mountain Books, 2024) $28 / 9781771606844
Touching on drinking rates, the booze industry, and the addicted brain, the guide is also a tool for those worried about their own consumption rate (or that of someone close to them). —Daniel Gawthrop reviews You Don’t Have to Quit: 20 Science-Backed Strategies to Help Your Loved One Drink Less, by Maureen Palmer (with Michael Pond) (Vancouver: Page Two, 2024) $21.95 / 9781774584668
“Most readers are likely to experience the whole narrative sequence, not as a life arc, but, rather, a scrapbook of incidents, many wonderfully ‘insane’.”—Theo Dombrowski reviews Have Bassoon, Will Travel: Memoir of an Adventurous Life in Music, by George Zukerman (Vancouver: Ronsdale Press, 2024) 24.95 / 9781553807131
“This book not only helps readers better understand our pre-colonial past and neo-colonial present, it also reminds us that people were tougher back then.” Howard Macdonald Stewart reviews The HBC Brigades: Culture, conflict and perilous journeys of the fur trade by Nancy Marguerite Anderson (Vancouver: Ronsdale Press, 2024) $24.95 / 9781553807018
Debut novelist’s tale brings together two women and two centuries in a satisfying book that “sparkles with excitement, history, and the agency of women.” —Valerie Green reviews The Champagne Letters, by Kate MacIntosh (Toronto: Gallery Books, 2024) $36.99 / 9781668061886
“Amos connects Hughes’ reflective style of painting to his personal association with place in a way that illuminates man, art, and location to the reader.” Matthew Downey reviews two books by Robert Amos: E.J. Hughes Paints Vancouver Island, new edition (Victoria: Touchwood Editions, 2024) $30 / 9781771514248 & E.J. Hughes: Life at the Lake (Victoria: Touchwood Editions, 2023) $25 / 9781771514194
The selection of 50 poems highlights “sites of feeling,” which is to say “sites of inquiry, resistance, resilience, regret, provocation, play, grief, desire, glee.” —Mary Ann Moore reviews Best Canadian Poetry 2025, selected by Aislinn Hunter (Windsor: Biblioasis, 2024) $23.95 / 9781771966320
“I was wrong about her. Shields is among our best novelists. She is also in the forefront of women writers who have shown us that we’ve been a lesser reading nation for not recognizing the many works produced by women writers.” Ron Verzuh reviews The Canadian Shields: Stories and Essays by Carol Shields, edited by Nora Foster Stovel (Winnipeg: University of Manitoba Press, 2024) $29.95 / 9781772840827
Debut volume of poetry exhibits “a clarity of intent and style fully mature and confident in its own power.” —Cathy Ford reviews Boundary Territory, by Renée Harper (Surrey: Now or Never Publishing, 2024) $19.95 / 9781989689776
“The north island looks and feels now a lot like the south island did fifty years ago: primary industries, gravel roads and boys with big toys. Over that summer I worked my way back down through Vancouver Island, one census unit at a time. But the north end was where I stayed the longest, and the area I enjoyed most.” Michael McGovern writes “North Island nosecount,” a memoir of his time doing the 2006 Census for the communities surrounding Port Hardy and Port McNeill, from his book “Waltz Beats at 3/4 Time” (Victoria: Pro&McGo Publishers, 2023)
Set in an apartment building that is “like a big hug,” The Secret Office is aimed at Grade Three readers, “but its appeal transcends easy age categorization.” —Ginny Ratsoy reviews The Secret Office,
by Sara Cassidy (illustrated by Alyssa Hutchings) (Victoria: Orca Book Publishers, 2024) $8.95 / 9781459839465
Attractive and handcrafted, a trio of chapbooks also showcase poets with unique gifts for observation and reflection. —Heidi Greco reviews Warp and Weft, by Carla Stein (Chilliwack: Tigerpetal Press, 2024) $15.00 / 9780995863972), Future Tense, by Lauren Peat (London: Baseline Press, 2024) $15.00 / 9781998521005), a tangle of words, by Yvonne Adalian, Mavis Beggs, Elektra Harris, Natalie Hryciuk, barb snyder, and B. Violet [self-published, 2024]
“Eager to explore the tale during the centenary of B.C.’s joining Confederation, their objectives were to ‘separate fact from fiction in Pitt Lake’s lost-creek gold-mine story.’ The authors write: ‘What we discovered instead was a fabulous collection of fabrication, mistruths, and wilful embellishments, all construed into an astonishing tale.'” Daniel Gawthrop reviews Slumach’s Gold: In Search of a Legend—and a Curse by Brian Antonson, Mary Trainer, and Rick Antonson (Victoria: Heritage House, 2024) $32.95/ 9781772035186
“For the reader, it’s the enjoyment of a thousand experiences and observations unexpectedly articulated, and that’s the thing about this novel. Every sentence.” —Caitlin Hicks reviews Chandelier, by David O’Meara (Madeira Park: Harbour Publishing, 2024) $22.95 / 9780889714762
“Henry Miller said that Blaise Cendrars was the man Ernest Hemingway wanted to be.” Jim Christy writes an essay to introduce A Dangerous Life, Vol. 1: True tales from the life and times of Blaise Cendrars, the world’s greatest vagabond by David J. MacKinnon (translation), Blaise Cendrars
(Gananoque, ON: Guernica Editions, 2024)
$24.95 / 9781771839228
“[A]ctually, strictly speaking, the weather says nothing, even as its increasing excesses implicitly critique the ruinous choices we make as a country and across the globe.” —Carellin Brooks reviews The Weather Says, by Catherine Owen (Spokane: Carbonation Press, 2024) $20.00 / 9781304231015