In this jaw-dropping, darkly comedic memoir, a young woman comes of age in a dysfunctional Asian family whose members blamed their woes on ghosts and demons when in fact they should have been on antipsychotic meds.

Mistakes to Run With chronicles the turbulent life of Yasuko Thanh, from early childhood in the closest thing Victoria, BC, has to a slum, to teen years as a sex worker and, finally, to her emergence as an award-winning author. As a child, Thanh embraced evangelical religion, only to rebel against it and her rigid parents, cutting herself, smoking, and shoplifting. At 15, the honour-roll runaway develops a taste for drugs and alcohol. After a stint in jail at 16, feeling utterly abandoned by her family, school, and society, Thanh meets the man who would become her pimp....

When the Second World War broke out, Ralph MacLean chose to escape his troubled life on the Magdalen Islands in eastern Canada and volunteer to serve his country overseas. Meanwhile, in Vancouver, Mitsue Sakamoto saw her family and her stable community torn apart after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.

A powerful and passionate novel, Obasan tells, through the eyes of a child, the moving story of Japanese Canadians during the Second World War. Naomi is a sheltered and beloved five-year-old when Pearl Harbor changes her life. Separated from her mother, she watches bewildered as she and her...

In the late 1970s Ondaatje returned to his native island of Sri Lanka. As he records his journey through the drug-like heat and intoxicating fragrances of that "pendant off the ear of India", Ondaatje simultaneously retraces the baroque mythology of his Dutch-Ceylonese family. An inspired travel narrative and family memoir by an exceptional writer.

If Jenny Lawson was Chinese and wrote a Chinese mother-daughter book and punched Amy Chua in the stomach. As the 800,000+ U.S. fans of Elaine Lui’s site know, her mother, aka The Squawking Chicken, is a huge factor in Elaine’s life. She pulls no punches, especially with her only child...

In Scarborough, a low-income urban neighborhood, three kids struggle to rise above poverty, abuse, and a system that consistently fails them. The adults in their lives either rise to the occasion or fall by the wayside; together, they make up a troubled yet inspired community that refuses to be undone.

The perfect complement to the exquisitely wrought novels Ru and Mãn, Canada Reads winner Kim Thúy returns with Vi, exploring the lives, loves and struggles of Vietnamese refugees as they reinvent themselves in new lands. The daughter of an enterprising mother and a wealthy, spoiled father who...

By the winner of The Journey Prize, and inspired by a real incident, The Boat People is a gripping and morally complex novel about a group of refugees who survive a perilous ocean voyage to reach Canada – only to face the threat of deportation and accusations of terrorism in their new land. ...

A FINALIST FOR THE GOVERNOR GENERAL'S LITERARY AWARD: A transformative and necessary work--as completely unexpected as it is inspired--by the award-winning author of the bestselling novels All My Puny Sorrows and A Complicated Kindness. The sun rises on a quiet June morning in 2009. August Epp...

Cree Indians and best-friends Xavier and Elijah enlist in the Canadian Army in 1915, eager to become heroes. Seasoned hunters, the men become expert snipers, but their horrifying experiences serving in World War I will leave devastating impressions on each man’s life.

Hailed as “one of the finest Canadian novels ever written” by The Globe and Mail, W.O. Mitchell’s Who Has Seen the Wind is a beloved mainstay of Canadian literature. This new, abridged audio edition is read by the author himself. Mitchell’s novel follows Brian O’Connal, a young boy...

More than half a century ago, the naturalist Farley Mowat accepted an assignment to investigate why wolves were killing Arctic caribou. Mowat’s account of the summer he lived in the frozen tundra alone – studying the wolf population and developing a deep affection for these wild creatures (who were no threat to caribou or man) – is today celebrated as a classic of nature writing, at once a tale of remarkable adventure and an indelible record of the myths and magic of wolves.

When Sharon Butala's husband, Peter, died unexpectedly, she found herself with no place to call home. Torn by grief and loss, she fled the ranchlands of southwest Saskatchewan and moved to the city, leaving almost everything behind. A lifetime of possessions was reduced to a few boxes of books, clothes, and keepsakes. But a lifetime of experience went with her, and a limitless well of memory - of personal failures, of a marriage that everybody said would not last but did, of the unbreakable bonds of family.

Not every story has a happy ending. Since her brother's death, eight-year-old Egg Murakami has been living day-to-day on the family ostrich farm near Bittercreek, discovering life to be an ever-perplexing condition. Mama Murakami has curled up inside a bottle, and Papa has exiled himself to the barn with the birds. Big sister Kathy tells stories to Egg so that the world might not seem so awful.

Christophe has been in the New World only a year when his native guides abandon him to flee their Iroquois pursuers. A Huron warrior and elder named Bird soon takes him prisoner, along with a young Iroquois girl, Snow Falls, whose family he has just killed, and holds them captive in his massive village. Champlain's Iron People have only recently begun trading with the Huron, who mistrust them as well as this Crow who has now trespassed onto their land; and her people, of course, have become the Huron's greatest enemy.

Arriving, book one of Corinne Jeffery's Understanding Ursula trilogy, vividly recreates the pioneer world of the Canadian prairies with a multitude of memorable characters. On July 1, 1909, Gustav Werner applies for a homestead grant at the Dominion Lands Office, eager to become the most thriving German Lutheran homesteader in Saskatchewan.

Elizabeth Thatcher is young, pretty, cultured, and educated. But when she journeys west to teach school in the foothills of the Canadian Rockies, she's completely unprepared for the conditions she encounters. Still, she's determined to succeed at the formidable task of fitting in with the locals and shaping the hearts and minds of the schoolchildren in her care.

In his much-anticipated follow-up to The Crown Ain't Worth Much, poet, essayist, biographer, and music critic Hanif Abdurraqib has written a book of poems about how one rebuilds oneself after a heartbreak, the kind that renders them a different version of themselves than the one they knew. It's a book about a mother's death, and admitting that Michael Jordan pushed off, about forgiveness, and how none of the author's black friends wanted to listen to "Don't Stop Believin'". It's about wrestling with histories, personal and shared.

True power is living the realization that you are your own healer, hero, and leader. Inward is a collection of poetry, quotes, and prose that explores the movement from self-love to unconditional love, the power of letting go, and the wisdom that comes when we truly try to know ourselves. It serves as a reminder to the listener that healing, transformation, and freedom are possible.

After living in the city of Orphalese for 12 years, a prophet is about to board a ship which will carry him home. He is stopped by a seeress and the people of the city, who ask him for his insights into life. The book is divided into chapters dealing with love, marriage, children, giving, eating and drinking, work, joy and sorrow, houses, clothes, buying and selling, crime and punishment, laws, freedom, reason and passion, pain, self-knowledge, teaching, friendship, talking, time, good and evil, prayer, pleasure, beauty, religion, and death.

Beautiful and brutally honest, Mary Lambert's poetry is a beacon to anyone who's ever been knocked down - and picked themselves up again. In verse that deals with sexual assault, mental illness, and body acceptance, Ms. Lambert emerges as an important new voice in poetry, providing strength and resilience even in the darkest of times.

A dazzling full-length collection of verse from one of the leading poets of our time. Over the past two decades, jessica Care moore has become a cultural force as a poet, performer, publisher, activist, and critic. Reflecting her transcendent electric voice, this searing poetry collection is...

Playwright, poet, and novelist Ntozake Shange originally composed for colored girls who have considered suicide/when the rainbow is enuf in as a mesmerizingly original choreopoem. The New York Post called it "rich with the author's special voice: by turns bitter, funny, ironic, and savage; fiercely honest and personal." Now a new audiobook, it chronicles the interconnected lives of a group of women facing shatteringly difficult issues, and evokes the indomitable power of enduring hope and joy.

“An intense snapshot of the chain reaction caused by pulling a trigger.” —Booklist (starred review) “Astonishing.” —Kirkus Reviews (starred review) “A tour de force.” —Publishers Weekly (starred review) A Newbery Honor Book A Coretta Scott King Honor Book A Printz Honor Book A...

This dazzling Christmas poem by Maya Angelou is powerful and inspiring for people of all faiths. In this beautiful, deeply moving poem, Maya Angelou inspires us to embrace the peace and promise of Christmas, so that hope and love can once again light up our holidays and the world. “Angels and...

This revised and expanded edition of The Essential Rumi includes a new introduction by Coleman Barks and more than 80 never-before-published poems. Through his lyrical translations, Coleman Barks has been instrumental in bringing this exquisite literature to a remarkably wide range of listeners, making the ecstatic, spiritual poetry of 13th-century Sufi mystic Rumi more popular than ever.

On April 11, 1931, Virginia Woolf ended her entry in A Writer's Diary with the words "too much and not the mood." She was describing how tired she was of correcting her own writing, of the "cramming in and the cutting out" to please other readers, wondering if she had anything at all that was truly worth saying. The character of that sentiment, the attitude of it, inspired Durga Chew-Bose to write and collect her own work. The result is a lyrical and piercingly insightful collection of essays and her own brand of essay-meets-prose poetry about identity and culture.

What elevates teaching my mother how to give birth, what gives the poems their disturbing brilliance, is Warsan Shire's ability to give simple, beautiful eloquence to the veiled world where sensuality lives in the dominant narrative of Islam; reclaiming the more nuanced truths of earlier times -...

“A debut poetry collection showcasing both a fierce and tender new voice.”—Booklist “Elegant and playful . . . The poet invents new forms and updates classic ones.”—Elle “[Fatimah] Asghar interrogates divisions along lines of nationality, age, and gender, illuminating the forces...

The brilliant, fearless, deeply flawed Nora Watts—introduced in the ""utterly compelling"" (Jeffery Deaver) atmospheric thriller The Lost Ones—finds deadly trouble as she searches for the truth about her late father in this immersive thriller that moves from the hazy Canadian Pacific...

Longlisted for the 2018 Scotiabank Giller Prize Shortlisted for the 2019 Amazon First Novel Award Shortlisted for the 2019 Kobo Emerging Writer Prize Winner of the 2019 Indigenous Voices Award for Published Prose in English Winner of the 2018 Alcuin Society Awards for Excellence in Book Design...

One of AudioFile’s Best Audiobooks of 2019! “Adorable, joyous.” —BuzzFeed “I’m head-over-heels for this charming, funny, romantic, life-affirming book.” —Becky Albertalli, New York Times bestselling author of Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda and Leah on the Offbeat The...

“Fans of Menon’s frothy, contemporary rom-coms will be excited for this venture into new territory.” —Booklist “[A] dreamy, sassy confection of a romance…Funny, extravagant, and satisfying.” —Shelf Awareness From the New York Times bestselling author of When Dimple Met Rishi...

In this jaw-dropping, darkly comedic memoir, a young woman comes of age in a dysfunctional Asian family whose members blamed their woes on ghosts and demons when in fact they should have been on antipsychotic meds.

Part manifesto, part memoir, This Wound Is a World is an invitation to “cut a hole in the sky / to world inside”. Belcourt issues a call to turn to love and sex to understand how Indigenous peoples shoulder their sadness and pain without giving up on the future. His poems upset genre and play with form, scavenging for a decolonial kind of heaven where “everyone is at least a little gay”.