Although a few missteps are in evidence, a Vancouver Island author’s debut novel—set near Tofino in 1968—introduces a “worthy mystery with a captivating setting.” —Valerie Green reviews Fake Out, A Long Beach Mystery, by Faye Bayko (Victoria: Tellwell Publishing, 2025) $26.99 / 9781779624789
“…Mather devotes the majority of the book to recounting the lives of the inhabitants of the house. This is both haunting and compelling. While all the families had ‘privileged lives’ based on their economic and social standing, they were subject to the joys and sorrows of ordinary living. Adriana A. Davies reviews Coldstream Lake House: A storied landmark of the Okanagan, by Ken Mather (Surrey: Hancock House, 2024) $24.95 / 9780888397690
“Adam Jones’s book can help each of us in reaching a principled position, in articulating it, and in understanding why others might rationally have arrived at and articulated a different view.” Richard Butler reviews Genocide: A Comprehensive Introduction (4th ed.), by Adam Jones (New York: Routledge, 2024) $61.99 / 9781032028101
A Griffin Prize winner, a Vancouver poet’s translation of a preeminent Mexican poet’s work is “a rich, complex, and challenging book” that proposes a “wall of poetry” against the insistent iniquities of the world. —Gary Geddes reviews Self-Portrait in the Zone of Silence, by Homero Aridjis (translated by George McWhirter) (New York: New Directions, 2023) $28.95 / 9780811231732
“In a collection that dives again and again into the motivations behind actions that sometimes seem incomprehensible, the author gives us a deeply meaningful way to get lost.” —Ryan Frawley reviews Born of the Storm, by Don McLellan (Vancouver: Page Count Press, 2025) $20.00 / 9781777361617
“300 Mason Jars: Preserving History is a book to be treasured. Beautifully presented in colour, the delightful poems and contents of the mason jars can be savoured and preserved for years to come.” Valerie Green reviews 300 Mason Jars: Preserving History, by Joanne Thomson (Victoria: Heritage House, 2024) $34.95 / 9781772935162
In an established writer’s first novel, new information affects a parent’s grief; it’s fiction that suggests “the uncomfortable, murky place that we sometimes inhabit in the midst of change can be a fine place to rest, and begin again.”
—Trish Bowering reviews Blue Hours, by Alison Acheson (Calgary: Freehand Books, 2025) $24.95 / 9781990601897
“The gift of a small community is that everyone knows everyone; it’s also a bit of a curse. In Gaston’s hands, it’s mostly a gift as closeness seems to create a sense of balance.” —Candace Fertile reviews Tunnel Island, by Bill Gaston (Saskatoon: Thistledown Press, 2025) $24.95 / 9781771872683
“The Stories That Shape Us is a gift for readers at any stage of historical or personal exploration. It speaks to the quiet strength of every family story and the importance of listening before it’s too late. It urges us to view immigration as a policy and a lived reality. Moreover, it reminds us that history is not just something that happens—it is something we carry.” Amy Tucker reviews Lost Legacies: Learning from Ancestral Stories for Inspiration and Policy-Making Today, by Margaret V. Ostrowski (Montreal West: DC Books, 2024) $21.95 / 9781927599624
“The newspapers of our day seem to be in disarray, crumbling from lack of readers and funding. Struggling to continue while the government attempts to step in and help. There is always apprehension when a powerful organization steps in offering financial assistance since news organizations know there is usually a caveat.” Jeffrey Stychin reviews Tomorrow’s News: How to Fix Canada’s Media, by Marc Edge (Vancouver: New Star Books, 2024) $21 / 9781554202140
“It is a tremendously rare short story collection where I could honestly say that I loved all of them equally—I daresay, it is a phenomenon that has never stricken me, and this collection is no exception.”—Jessica Poon reviews Devouring Tomorrow: Fiction from the Future of Food, edited by Jeff Dupuis and A.G. Pasquella (Toronto: Dundurn Press, 2025) $24.99 / 9781459754980
“This book offers a whole new adventure for naturalists, botanists and all those who love the natural world, luring all of us into the outdoors, to check out the plant relationships reflected in the different sections, to see those plants we are familiar with as parts of a larger complex, and to get to know the smaller, perhaps previously overlooked species that have now been introduced to us in such intriguing ways.” Nancy J. Turner reviews Native Plants of British Columbia’s Coastal Dry Belt: A Photographic Guide by Hans Roemer and Mary Sanseverino (Madeira Park: Harbour Publishing, 2025)
$29.95 / 9781998526000
Shot through with brooding darkness and gothic motifs, a volume features stories that “leave the sense that people’s lives, ordinary people’s lives, can have troubling undercurrents weaving through their very humanity.” —Theo Dombrowski reviews Graveyard Shift at the Lemonade Stand, by Tim Bowling (Calgary: Freehand Press, 2025) $22.95 / 9781990601866
“The more we are immersed in the life, activism, and writings of Tommy Douglas and Milton Acorn, the more we will be walked into a unique Canadian synthesis of faith, literature, and politics that has still much to commend it.” Ron Dart contributes an essay on the work of the late poet and storyteller, Milton Acorn.
“As a child of immigrants, novelist and memoirist Yasuko Thanh asks the question: What is home?” Trevor Marc Hughes presents an interview segment with Yasuko Thanh.
“Many might think of Rodger Touchie as the publisher at Heritage House based in Victoria, but he is also a published history writer. Some of his titles include Bear Child: The Life and Times of Jerry Potts, Edward S. Curtis: Above the Medicine Line, and Vancouver Island: Portrait of a Past…” Trevor Marc Hughes presents an interview segment with publisher, and writer of BC history titles, Rodger Touchie.
A missing father sparks a discomfiting family reunion in a novel that presents “an authentic, timely, and moving account of the Asian immigrant experience through a distinctly British Columbian lens—one that should resonate long after reading it.” —Daniel Gawthrop reviews The Tiger and the Cosmonaut, by Eddy Boudel Tan (Toronto: Viking Canada, 2025) $26.95 / 9780735248557
Reprint series showcases an author who’s sure to satisfy if a “reader is looking for a complex psychological read that explores the murkiness of the justice system, friendship, and, well, life in general.” —Ginny Ratsoy reviews The Suspect: Murder in a Small Town, by L.R. Wright (New York: Felony and Mayhem Press, 2024) $26.95 / 9781631943164
“Messamore doesn’t predict such potential outcomes. Her job, and she does it well, is to reveal the historical facts about early 20th-century elections. But we may be seeing parallels to our political past in the run-up to our April 28 federal election. Will Mark Carney be Mackenzie King and Pierre Poilievre Arthur Meighan?” Ron Verzuh reviews Times of Transformation: The 1921 Canadian General Election, by Barbara J. Messamore (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2025) $19.56 / 9780774870597
“Blanchet’s writing epitomises the provincial stereotype as the home of aspirant eccentrics, philosophically ponderous lumberjacks, and hopeless romantics seeking to carve out a small, domesticated presence in the dense rainforest. Blanchet’s representation of British Columbia, in which urban settlement is an exception to the cultural status quo, still resonates today…” Matthew Downey reviews The Curve of Time: New, Expanded Edition, by M. Wylie Blanchet (Madeira Park: Harbour Publishing, 2024) $19.95 / 9781990776786