Set on and near the Okanagan Indian Reserve during the summer of ’68, a graceful novel captures the wonders and joys as well as the pains and missteps of sixteen-year-old Lewis Toma. —Trish Bowering reviews Bones of a Giant, by Brian Thomas Isaac (Toronto: Random House Canada, 2025) $35.00 / 9781039011779
“This book is a complete reference book for readers who enjoy the beauty of trees. There is an in-depth index that enables the reader to look up a particular tree and find its story. Alternatively, the book allows you to wander the streets of Greater Victoria and discover all the surprises.” Valerie Green reviews Trees of Victoria: A Wanderer’s Guide, by Collin Varner (Victoria: Heritage House, 2025) $26.95 / 9781772035339
Characterized by “portraits of the hard side of urban life,” “sparse lines and raw subject matter,” and a “steady current of hopelessness and aimlessness,” a novelist’s sophomore volume of poetry seems apropos for uncertain and accelerated times. —Kelly Shepherd reviews After Sunstone, by Dustin Cole (St. Louis: Farthest Heaven, 2025) $15.00 / 9798990692527
“Dombrowski’s passion for nature is evident throughout, making it clear that this book is as much about inspiring families to explore as it is about providing practical information.” Amy Tucker reviews Family Walks and Hikes of Vancouver Island, Volume 2: Nanaimo North to Strathcona Park (Revised Edition) by Theo Dombrowski (Victoria: Rocky Mountain Books, 2025) $22 / 9781771607438
An author’s second book of fiction—a “peculiar and spirited and discombobulating” story—is intense and immersive, but may not charm readers who “expect direct exposition, methodical character development, a navigable timeline, a clear delineation between fiction and reality, and a traditional narrative arc.” —Marcie McCauley reviews Endling, by Maria Reva (Toronto: Knopf Canada, 2025) $36 / 9780735278448
“[T]his is exactly what I want from a Helen Thorpe mystery: wonderful characters both old and new; a crime that’s solved with a combination of mindfulness and smarts; and a beneficial dose of equanimity.” —Trish Bowering reviews Contemplation of a Crime, by Susan Juby (Toronto: HarperCollins Canada, 2025) $24.99 / 9781443469715
“But make no mistake—the incorporation into federal and British Columbia laws of the principles of the UN Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous Peoples and the recent recognition of Haida title and the Heiltsuk establishment of a constitution are not merely rumblings. They and other recent events represent a tectonic shift that will have profound legal and social implications. The results need not be catastrophic, as some might fear, but they will certainly be disruptive.” Richard Butler reviews Indigenous Intellectual Property: An Interrupted Intergenerational Conversation by Val Napoleon, Rebecca Johnson, Richard Overstall and Debra McKenzie (eds.) (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2024) $32.95 / 9781487558222 & Creating Indigenous Property: Power, Rights and Relationships by Angela Cameron, Sari Graben and Val Napoleon (eds.)(Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2020) $45.95 / 9781487523824
“Derksen has the gift of being able to embrace the language of institutions and structures—with their cold terms and semantics—into modes, sometimes personal, sometimes societal comment, that draw engagement, critique, and are accessible.” —Steven Ross Smith reviews Future Works, by Jeff Derksen (Vancouver: Talonbooks, 2025) $18.95 / 9781772016284
“While the detail in these poems can be distressing, the writer has shown in-depth feeling and in-depth writing that cannot be denied, but laid out, shared, even while the narrator is sometimes wildly enraged.” —Cathy Ford reviews allostatic load, by Junie Désil (Vancouver: Talonbooks, 2025) $18.95 / 9781772016062
“At a time when Canadians are cancelling their vacations to the US at a rate never before seen in history, and looking for alternatives, Pacific Palate is the answer. It’s a foodie guidebook for one of the most beautiful places in Canada. It’s an invitation to slow down, sip, savour, appreciate, ask questions, and indulge your curiosity.” Rebecca Coleman reviews Pacific Palate: Food Artisans of Vancouver Island and the Gulf Islands (2nd edition), by Don Genova (Victoria: TouchWood Editions, 2025) $28 / 9781771514262
The wonderstruck child narrator of a striking picture book for youngsters recalls four seasons worth of meals, adventures, and sights—and feels grateful for each and every one. —Brett Josef Grubisic reviews Wôpanâak / Seasons, by Carrie Anne Vanderhoop / illustrated by Mangeshig Pawis-Steckley (Vancouver: Tradewinds Books, 2025) $24.95 / 9781926890418
Cerebral, inventive, challenging, and deeply, well, bookish, the “whole novel glows with similar interplays of similarly repeated words and issues, ones that touch on the most fundamental nature of the human experience—truth and knowledge, beauty (especially of music), love, and, perhaps most fundamentally, happiness.”—Theo Dombrowski reviews The Book of Records, by Madeleine Thien (Toronto: Knopf Canada, 2025) $36.95 / 9781039009561
“I don’t think of myself as an author,” begins acclaimed curator Catherine Clement, “I think of myself as a street historian or community historian first, and the only reason I create books is to solidify those memories, to lock them in for future generations to find.” Trevor Marc Hughes presents an interview segment featuring Vancouver curator and historian Catherine Clement.
With eclectic figures and images—from the Grim Reaper and the banshee to ripe fruit, seeds, and soil—a poet cannily examines “our frail human presence,” aging, and death with calm, humour, and wisdom. —Jane Frankish reviews Becoming the Harvest, by Pauline Le Bel (Qualicum Beach: Caitlin Press, 2025) $20 / 9781773861562
“About thirty-five folks milled around two book tables that had been transformed to platforms for food trays. Attendees, both authors and members of the public alike, scanned the titles on the shelves, Canadian authors highlighted with signage. And of course many chatted around the table of honour that featured the finalists’ books themselves.” Trevor Marc Hughes reports from Book Warehouse on Broadway in Vancouver.
“Milk Into Cheese brings cheesemaking to life, with Asher’s passion for teaching and his engaging style. Whether or not one agrees with his approach, these pages offer plenty of fodder for contemplation, especially regarding the politics of cheese, ideas that will hopefully spark discussion.” Trish Bowering reviews Milk Into Cheese: The Foundations of Natural Cheesemaking Using Traditional Concepts, Tools, and Techniques, by David Asher (New York: Chelsea Green Publishing, 2024) $75 / 9781603588874
Seattle-set debut novel features a procrastinating romance author whose DIY cure for the blues involves the lives of strangers she observes. Contact with others, she soon learns, comes with responsibilities. And consequences.
—Jessica Poon reviews Inside Outside, by Faye Arcand (Okanagan Falls: Blue Robin Books, 2024) $19.99 / 9781069029508
“Back Where I Came From, Jaffer and Mouallem’s collection of essays by first- and second-generation Canadian and American writers, offers a view of many of those old countries, providing a smorgasbord of perceptions and images about culture and identity and about what home means to people in places around the planet.” Back Where I Came From: On Culture, Identity and Home by Taslim Jaffer and Omar Mouallem (eds.) (Toronto: Book*Hug Press, 2024) $29.95 / 9781771669177
Poetic voices from coast to coast are gathered in a volume that reflects on our era—an “age of unprecedented environmental crises.” Collectively, their work strives to create room for “dreaming and transformation.” —Mary Ann Moore reviews Speech Dries Here on the Tongue: Poetry on Environmental Collapse and Mental Health, by (eds.) Hollay Ghadery, Rasiqra Revulva, and Amanda Shankland (Guelph: The Porcupine’s Quill, 2025) $20.00 / 9780889844902
“Iron Mike provides an insider’s view of the coaching life aimed at vindicating its author’s brutal winning philosophy and intimidating style. Keenan’s out to settle a few scores, but he also wants us to know that, deep down, he’s a much nicer guy than the tyrant who crashed and burned his way through head coaching gigs in eight different cities before wearing out his NHL welcome.” Daniel Gawthrop reviews Iron Mike: My Life Behind the Bench, by Mike Keenan, with Scott Morrison (Toronto: Random House Canada, 2024) $36.00 / 9780735281851