Books

From the author of If You Happen to Have a Dinosaur comes a funny and sweet cross-country roadtrip adventure with a sassy septuagenarian and her quirky canine.

Feisty Annie Magruder and her dog, Carson, live in British Columbia, Canada, and they're setting out to visit her sister, Elsie, in Newfoundland. In their little rattlebang car, packed with Carson's favorite toy, Squeaky Chicken, and plenty of baloney sandwiches, Annie and Carson hit the road! They travel province by province, taking in each unique landscape and experiencing something special to that particular part of this vast, grand country. For example, they marvel at the beauty of the big, open sky -- and grasshoppers! -- in Saskatchewan and discover the gorgeous red earth and delicious lobster rolls in PEI, before finally being greeted by Elsie -- and a surprise for Carson!

A is for Arctic, B is for Beaver …

Paul Covello’s gloriously bright and detailed board book for the very young highlights Canada’s iconic symbols, souvenirs and events, including the Dogsled, Inuksuk, Loonie, Totem Pole and the Zamboni machine. From the author of the beloved Toronto ABC.

By the end of World War II, Windsor had established itself as one of the greatest industrial cities in the British Commonwealth. The region seemed on an easy path to prosperity. But history took a different turn. Starting with the closure of Ford Plant One in 1953, the city was hit by several unanticipated challenges. How would its residents respond? How would they react to rapid changes that swept North America?

From the Vault, Volume II: 1950-1980 explores what were perhaps the three most important and exciting decades of our history. Revealing how Windsor-Essex County overcame obstacles to achieve later triumphs, the book touches on the region’s baby boom, building craze, auto industry, labour struggles, arts and culture, immigration, Black history, and more.

With a foreword by The Windsor Star’s former photographer and photo editor Bill Bishop, From the Vault, Volume II illustrates the era by featuring over 1,250 iconic images, from the 1954 Centennial celebrations and Queen Elizabeth II’s visit in 1959, through the Bulldogs’ Allan Cup victory in 1963 and Windsor’s reaction to the 1967 Detroit Riot, to the Curling Club Disaster of 1974 and to the assassination of Charlie Brooks in 1977.

As Windsor-Essex’s paper of record for over 150 years, The Windsor Star remains our region’s greatest source of historical photography and eyewitness testimony. Like its predecessor, the national best-selling From the Vault, winner of the inaugural Kulisek Prize, this book—the most authoritative and beautifully produced of its kind—sets a new standard for Canadian excellence in regional history. Documenting landmark events, timeless memories, and unforgettable characters, it is a “must have” for history lovers.

A unique and rare collection of postcards from Essex County, David Newman’s Postcards from Essex County documents the churches, factories, fairgrounds, houses, beaches, trains and cars of old Essex. Over 315 cards have been catalogued into fourteen chapters, including sections on Harrow, Leamington, Kingsville, Maidstone and more. A beautiful gift book in hardcover with full-colour illustrations.

Meet smart, fearless and inspiring women from around the world.

5-Minute Stories for Fearless Girls features women who have pursued their dreams, changed our world, and shown everyone what women can do. From aviation pioneers to leading scientists and gold-medal athletes to princesses, these incredible stories are perfect for bedtimes and on the go!

Celebrate Canadian cocktail history and artistry with A Field Guide to Canadian Cocktails, a collection of over 100 recipes inspired by a bounty of homegrown ingredients and spirits that will appeal to armchair bartenders and professionals alike.

From the Yukon’s Sour Toe Shot to a Prairie Caesar to New Brunswick’s Fiddlehead Martini, each beautifully crafted recipe—comprising updated classics, signature drinks from Canada’s top bartenders and the authors’ own creations—features quintessentially Canadian ingredients and cultural references, blending to create a libatious and entertaining journey from sea to shining sea.

Also featured are syrup and infusion recipes, tips and tricks, technique and equipment guides, as well as travel narratives and recommendations from the authors’ cross-country road trips.

Authors Victoria Walsh and Scott McCallum have dedicated countless hours, not to mention gas mileage, foraging, travelling and experimenting, in order to instill their own brand of northern spirit into the existing cocktail canon, and to add to the proud tradition of ensuring Canadian drinks, history and lore, in all their glory, are served at the global bar. 

Windsor, Ontario: the City of Roses, the Automotive Capital of Canada, South Detroit. Whatever name you know it by, this is a city that has flourished and transformed over the years, growing and changing with its industrial nature. In Windsor: Then & Now, architectural specialist Andrew Foot partners with landscape photographer Ian Virtue to explore the life of this mid-sized, blue-collar town through photographs. By contrasting historic images, stretching from the turn of the century to the modernist 1970s, with photographs of today’s Windsor, we see a cityscape in vivid relief. From the Gothic towers of St. Mary’s Academy, levelled for a suburban neighbourhood, to the vibrant downtown Norwich Block replaced by the skyscraping Chrysler tower, Windsor: Then & Now shows us a city balancing a rich heritage with a taste for the new—a constant flux, shifting and renewing itself with the times.

The latest title in Paul Covello’s winning Canada board-book series features wondrously detailed illustrations for the very young, highlighting some of Canada’s most beloved and iconic creatures. From the author and illustrator of the national bestsellers Canada ABC and Canada 123.

Boost language skills and get ready for reading with hours of fun and discovery!

100 First Words for Canadian Kids is packed with colourful photographs to help curious kids learn about the world around them. With fun features on food, animals, family, things that go, playtime and hockey, the educator-approved vocabulary is perfect  growing minds!

A 10,000 copy seller in Canada, The Rumrunners offers a photographic history of the regular men and women who smuggled Canadian liquor to the United States during the roaring ’20s. Essential reading for anyone interested in the history of Prohibition.

“I can’t imagine a walk through Windsor’s history with anyone else…A colourful time in Windsor’s history, told by one of our best storytellers.”—Sandra Pupatello, M.P.P. Windsor West

“Prohibition certainly was a colourful era, filled with characters and stories the likes of which we may never see again. If not for Marty Gervais’s research into the phenomenon that was Prohibition, many of these stories would have faded with the memories of their leading players.”—Laryssa Landsale, Walkerville Times Magazine

The final work from Leonard Cohen, Canada's most celebrated poet and an artist whose audience spans generations and whose work is known and loved throughout the world.

The Flame is a stunning collection of Leonard Cohen's last poems, selected and ordered by the author in the final months of his life. Featuring lyrics, prose pieces, and illustrations, the book also contains an extensive selection from Cohen's notebooks, which he kept in poetic form throughout his life, and offers an unprecedentedly intimate look inside the life and mind of a singular artist and thinker.

An enormously powerful final chapter in Cohen's storied literary career, The Flame showcases the full range of Leonard Cohen's lyricism, from the exquisitely transcendent to the darkly funny. By turns devastatingly sad and winningly strange, these are the works of a poet and lyricist who set out to explore our darkest questions and came back wanting, yearning for more.

Visceral and playful, tend reflects the intimate awkwardness of modern life. Hargreaves’ latest collection explores feelings of being distanced from loved ones, physically and emotionally; striving to be better (at chores, at intimacy); and tending to the things that fracture.

These poems are anchored in the body, straining the edges of spaces that bodies and language inhabit: between sealing in and digging out; restlessness and isolation; memory and planning for the future; gaps in texts and reiterations. tend is an immersive work, as validating as it is illuminating.

Praise for tend:

“These poems are an elegant romp through tangled city gardens and teeming waste bins of memory and human consciousness. The domestic realm is a wilderness, a trash heap, a broken string of pearls. All at once, this beautiful book is the milky crystal on the green chain, the broken eggshell in your compost, the lost slipper through a rotten board. tend takes your hand.” —Shannon Bramer, author of Precious Energy

“Clever and controlled, tend grounds you in the gross and astounding musculature of language, and doesn’t skimp on the viscera. The poems in this collection gather and sing to the ways in which we tend to ourselves, to the world, and to others—and how so often these messy, generous acts bleed together. Through rituals, commands, instructions, and advice, Hargreaves expertly engages a variety of tactics and wields a distinct yet collective lyrical voice with a scalpel-like precision. I felt like I lived in the body of every poem, and every poem lived in the specific, chaotic detritus of the world.” —Domenica Martinello, author of All Day I Dream About Sirens

“tend is a master class in poetic restraint. Hargreaves’ brilliance lies in her ability to cleave poems to their core, to ‘strip words/like veins from a leg/or bones from a fish.’ She is ruthless in her delivery—stacks lines together like kindling for a fire, drops a lit match and walks away, leaving the reader to smoulder.” —Adrienne Gruber, author of Q & A

“tend is an apiary of lists buzzing with to-dos that lilt and tilt. Hargreaves skillfully merges a miscellany of terms and quicksilver minutes into a work of persistence. Day-to-day knickknacks slip next to gentle warnings and medical debris. A work full of mettle.” —Christine McNair, author of Charm

“tend is an optimistic and occasionally joyful collection of dark complexities, centred around care, from self-care to gardening, and the ways in which we wish to interact with the wonderfully complex and convoluted worlds of nature, other humans, poems and ourselves. Hargreaves utilizes rhythm throughout the poems assembled here that is quite interesting, allowing a breathless, halting or otherwise propulsive patter to further her poems as much as anything involving language, meaning or purpose.” —rob mclennan, periodicities : a journal of poetry and poetics

Press Coverage:

Most Anticipated: Our Shelf 2022 Fall Poetry Preview —49th Shelf

48 Canadian poetry collections to watch for in fall 2022 —CBC Books

Kate Hargreaves is the author of the poetry collection, Leak, as well as Jammer Star, a roller derby novel for young readers, and Talking Derby, a book of prose vignettes. She holds an MA in English and Creative Writing from the University of Windsor, where she received the Governor General’s Gold Medal in Graduate Studies. Her work has appeared in literary journals across Canada, the US, and the UK. As a book designer for numerous Canadian presses, Hargreaves has received honours from the Alcuin Society for Excellence in Book Design, the CBC Bookie Awards, and the Book Publishers Association of Alberta. She grew up in Amherstburg, Ontario, and lives and works in Windsor.

Featuring children's own words and heart-warming pictures, a special little book about why we love Canada.

A lovely gift book at a pocket-friendly price, created by asking real children why they love Canada and combining their words with illustrations of gorgeous baby animals.

• Partly written in children's own words, this is the perfect gift for little Canadians everywhere!
• Use of children's original words ensures instant parent-child appeal
• Adorable animal illustrations throughout are perfectly targeted at the younger age bracket
• The newest title in the cuddly cute Why I Love… series, illustrated by Daniel Howarth