★ Migrant

By Maxine Trottier; Isabelle Arsenault, illus.

From prolific Newfoundland author Maxine Trottier comes a moving story about some of the people who contribute to our country’s mosaic. In sophisticated, poetic language, Trottier describes the plight of young Anna, a girl whose ... Read More »

March 16, 2011 | Filed under: Picture Books

Banjo of Destiny

By Cary Fagan

The banjo suffers from a stultifying reputation. Instead of imagining the spirit of an instrument that was once played by slaves who yearned to be free, we tend to associate it with redneck mountain men ... Read More »

March 7, 2011

Patriot Hearts: Inside the Olympics That Changed a Country

By John Furlong with Gary Mason

Arriving exactly one year after the 2010 Olympics, this memoir by John Furlong, the former chief of the Vancouver Olympic Committee, is partly about the author’s journey from Ireland to Canada, and from an obscure ... Read More »

February 28, 2011 | Filed under: Sports, Health & Self-help

One Story, One Song

By Richard Wagamese

“Hopelessness is isotropic,” writes Richard Wagamese in his new collection of personal essays, “the view in every direction is the same. That’s the nut of it. It’s hard to change when everything you see looks ... Read More »

February 22, 2011 | Filed under: Native Peoples

Bride of New France

By Suzanne Desrochers

In the 17th century, hundreds of girls and women were sent from France – often against their will – to populate the New World. But little is known of these filles du roi, as they ... Read More »

February 17, 2011 | Filed under: Fiction: Novels

★ The Beggar’s Garden

By Michael Christie

Michael Christie’s debut collection of nine linked stories is dazzling. Drawing on his experience working in a homeless shelter in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside, Christie explores the intense humanity of people living on the margins of ... Read More »

February 7, 2011 | Filed under: Fiction: Short

Crescent Star

By Nicholas Maes

The latest novel from Toronto author and professor Nicholas Maes is a story of good and evil played out in shades of grey, offering readers something weightier than the average young adult fare. The theme ... Read More »

January 31, 2011

An Open Door in the Landscape

By Elisabeth Harvor

Gerald Lampert Memorial Award–winning poet and novelist Elisabeth Harvor’s third poetry collection could be loosely described as a book of coming of age poems. Much of it parses childhood for moments of suddenly earned wisdom ... Read More »

January 25, 2011 | Filed under: Poetry

Blood, Sweat and Tears

By David Clayton-Thomas

As the former frontman for the Canadian rock band Blood, Sweat & Tears, David Clayton-Thomas is no stranger to the spotlight. He has been inducted into the Canadian Music Hall of Fame and been given ... Read More »

January 25, 2011 | Filed under: Art, Music & Pop Culture

Where We Might Have Been

By Don Coles

Where We Might Have Been is Don Coles’s 10th collection of poetry. It follows the 2000 collection Kurgan, which won the Trillium Book Award, and marks the climax of a singular reign as one of ... Read More »