National Network for Equitable Library Service

Longtime fisherman and Sointula resident Jon Taylor dishes up hilarious yarns from his life off northern Vancouver Island. Capturing the "rough but reasonable" freedom of Malcolm Island, Taylor recounts the bizarre but enticing lifestyle of a fisherman and his remote community—"haywire tightwads" for skippers, rotten fish in the hold that become "three thousand humpies in a warm, pink soup," and the kind of integrity you don't often see.

Received Honourable Mention for the 2019 Lieutenant Governor's Medal for Historical Writing. Telegraph Cove, one of Vancouver Island's most visited tourist destinations, has humble origins as a one-shack telegraph station, established a century ago. The community grew, first with a salmon saltery and sawmill—then with new industries developed by the ingenuity of the Cove's inhabitants. From the 1920s, Irish, Chinese, Japanese, German, Danish, Italian, and English community members—along with other old and new Canadians—were neighbours in a place accessible only by boat.

A completely satirical yet oddly practical guide to surviving and thriving in Canada's westernmost province. So you've arrived in British Columbia. Perhaps you're just passing through; perhaps you want to stay a while. You may even be contemplating making British Columbia your home. What you need is a well-researched, clearly written, and comprehensive guide to living and even prospering in Canada's westernmost province. This isn't it.

When the first edition of Raincoast Chronicles was produced by a couple of novice publishers in the unlikely location of Pender Harbour in 1972, it boldly announced that it was going "to put BC character on the record." Printed in sepia ink and decorated with the rococo flourishes characteristic of that extravagant era, the unclassifiable journal-cum-serial-book about life on the BC coast struck a nerve and in time became something very close to what it set out to be—a touchstone of British Columbia identity.

Gangsters, movie stars, strippers, corruption, murder: the story of Vancouver's oldest and most venerated nightclub, the legendary Penthouse.

No matter where people live on the BC coast, says Howard White, they have certain shared experiences: frustration with rain and ferries, familiarity with gumboots, bumbershoots, seagull droppings and barnacles in the wrong places. But each little community clings to its own sense of uniqueness and considers itself the true West Coast. As a case in point, White offers fifty funny sketches of life as he has come to know it in sixty-odd years of living along that hundred-mile stretch of monsoon-prone shoreline—ironically known as the Sunshine Coast.

The captivating story of Mary John (who passed away in 2004), a pioneering Carrier Native whose life on the Stoney Creek reserve in central BC is a capsule history of First Nations life from a unique woman's perspective. A mother of twelve, Mary endured much tragedy and heartbreak—the pangs of racism, poverty, and the deaths of six children—but lived her life with extraordinary grace and courage. Years after her death, she continues to be a positive role model for Aboriginals across Canada. In 1997 she received the Order of Canada.

Shortlisted for the Best Translated Book Award - Longlisted for the Believer Book Award - Longlisted for the Warwick Prize for Women in Translation - A Los Angeles Times Bestseller. The English-language debut of an exciting young voice in international fiction, selling 660,000 copies in Japan alone, Convenience Store Woman is a bewitching portrayal of contemporary Japan through the eyes of a single woman who fits into the rigidity of its work culture only too well.

Finalist for the 2021 National Book Award for Nonfiction - Winner of the 2022 Asian/Pacific American Award in Literature - A TIME and NPR Best Book of the Year in 2021. This evocative memoir of food and family history is "somehow both mouthwatering and heartbreaking... [and] a potent personal history" (Shelf Awareness). Grace M. Cho grew up as the daughter of a white American merchant marine and the Korean bar hostess he met abroad.

Olivia Atwater returns to the world of Half a Soul with "a sharp and beautiful gothic romance" (Alix E. Harrow). Dive into The Witchwood Knot, and enjoy a dark faerie tale set in a magical version of Victorian England. The faeries of Witchwood Manor have stolen its young lord. His governess intends to steal him back. Victorian governess Winifred Hall knows a con when she sees one. When her bratty young charge transforms overnight into a perfectly behaved block of wood, she soon realises that the real boy has been abducted by the Fair Folk.