Final Orbit
Regular price $39.00
From the #1 bestselling author and astronaut Chris Hadfield, an edge-of-your-seat thriller set about China's secret role in the 1970s Space Race between the US and the USSR.
Houston, 1975. A new Apollo mission launches into orbit, on course to dock with a Russian Soyuz craft: three NASA astronauts and three cosmonauts, joining to celebrate a new dawn of Soviet-American cooperation. But as NASA Flight Controller Kaz Zemeckis listens in from Earth, a deadly accident changes everything.
Meanwhile, from a remote location in East Asia, the first Chinese spacecraft secretly launches. On board is China’s first astronaut, Fang Guojun, whose mission puts him on a collision course with the Apollo crew. As Kaz races against an enemy on the ground and for answers beyond the sky, the safety of the remaining crew hangs in the balance…
Full of intrigue and real history—including the fascinating story of Professor Tsien Hsue-shen, the “Father of Chinese Rocketry” and founder of China’s space program—Final Orbit accelerates to a thrilling conclusion that captures the beauty and terror of survival 270 miles above Earth, as could only be written by one of the most experienced astronauts alive.
CHRIS HADFIELD is one of the most seasoned and accomplished astronauts in the world. The top graduate of the U.S. Air Force test pilot school in 1988 and U.S. Navy test pilot of the year in 1991, Colonel Hadfield was CAPCOM for twenty-five Shuttle missions and NASA’s Director of Operations in Russia. Hadfield served as Commander of the International Space Station where, while conducting a record-setting number of scientific experiments and overseeing an emergency spacewalk, he gained worldwide acclaim for his breathtaking photographs and educational videos about life in space. His music video, a zero-gravity version of David Bowie's “Space Oddity,” has nearly 50 million views, and his TED Talk on fear has been viewed over 10 million times. He helped create and host the National Geographic miniseries One Strange Rock, with Will Smith, and has a MasterClass on exploration. Chris Hadfield's books, An Astronaut's Guide to Life on Earth, You Are Here and The Darkest Dark, have been bestsellers all around the world, topping the charts for months in his Canadian homeland.
Rupi Kaur Trilogy Boxed Set
Regular price $40.00 Sale price $32.00Available for the first time, #1 New York Times bestselling author, Rupi Kaur, presents a gorgeous boxed set of her books milk and honey and the sun and her flowers.
Global sensation and internationally renowned author rupi kaur’s milk and honey celebrates the challenges and triumphs facing the modern woman. In strikingly personal, yet widely relatable poems accompanied by original illustrations, Kaur challenges the idea that women should be quiet, gentle, and submissive and instead encourages women to be strong, powerful, and proud. Each of the four chapters (“the hurting,” “the loving,” “the breaking,” and “the healing”) serves a different purpose and explores the many kinds of pain and healing of life’s experiences. From breakups to trauma, kaur leads readers through life’s most bitter moments to find their hidden sweetness.
Paired with milk and honey in this exquisite boxed set: the sun and her flowers, a vibrant and transcendent journey about growth and healing. Ancestry and honouring one’s roots. Expatriation and rising up to find a home within yourself. Divided into five chapters and illustrated in kaur’s signature style, the sun and her flowers is a journey of wilting, falling, rooting, rising, and blooming. A celebration of love in all its forms.
Based on a True Story: Not a Memoir by Norm MacDonald
Regular price $13.99Globe and Mail Best Book of the Year
Wild, dangerous, and flat-out unbelievable, here is the incredible #1 bestselling memoir of the Canadian actor, gambler, and raconteur, and one of the greatest stand-up comedians of all time.
A Globe and Mail Best Book of the Year
As this book’s title suggests, Norm Macdonald tells the story of his life—more or less—from his origins on a farm in the backwoods of Ontario and an epically disastrous appearance on Star Search to his account of auditioning for Lorne Michaels and his memorable run as the anchor of Weekend Update on Saturday Night Live—until he was fired because a corporate executive didn’t think he was funny. But Based on a True Story is much more than just a memoir; it’s the hilarious, inspired epic of Norm’s life.
In dispatches from a road trip to Las Vegas (part of a plan hatched to regain the fortune he’d lost to sports betting and other vices) with his sidekick and enabler, Adam Eget, Norm recounts the milestone moments, the regrets, the love affairs, the times fortune smiled on his life, and the times it refused to smile. As the clock ticks down, Norm’s debt reaches record heights, and he must find a way to evade the hefty price that’s been placed on his head by one of the most dangerous loan sharks in the country.
As a comedy legend should, Norm peppers these pages with classic jokes and long-mythologized Hollywood stories. This wildly adventurous, totally original, and absurdly funny saga turns the conventional “comic’s memoir” on its head and gives the reader an exclusive pass inside the mad, glorious mind of Norm Macdonald.
“Brilliant . . . Macdonald’s willingness to take risks pays off mightily . . . The best new book I’ve read this year or last.” — Wall Street Journal
“Darkly hilarious.” — Entertainment Weekly
“Norm is brilliant and thoughtful, and there is sensitivity and creative insight in his observations and stories. . . . I seriously f**king love Norm Macdonald. Please buy his book. He probably needs the cash. He’s really bad with money.” — Louis C.K., from the foreword
“Norm is one of my all-time favorites, and this book was such a great read I forgot how lonely I was for a while.” — Amy Schumer
“I always thought Normie’s stand-up was the funniest thing there was. But this book gives it a run for its money.” — Adam Sandler
“Norm is one of the greatest stand-up comics who’s ever worked--a totally original voice. His sense of the ridiculous and his use of juxtaposition in his writing make him a comic’s comic. We all love Norm.” — Roseanne Barr
“Norm Macdonald makes me laugh my ass off. Who is funnier than Norm Macdonald? Nobody.” — Judd Apatow
“Norm only has to grunt to make me laugh. And this book is 256 pages? Sign me up.” — Sophia Amoruso, author of #GIRLBOSS
“Norm is a double threat. His material and timing are both top-notch, which is unheard of. He is one of my favorites, both on- and off-stage.” — Dave Attell
“David Letterman said it best: There is no one funnier than Norm Macdonald.” — Rob Schneider
“Norm Macdonald is an American treasure. No value has been placed on him. He’s a one and only. Can’t wait to read this book.” — Larry King
“Norm Macdonald is one of the great original comic minds of our era: utterly unique in thought, word, and delivery. He provokes me to think about the world as frequently as he makes me laugh at it.” — Ken Tucker
“Hilarious and filled with turns of phrase and hidden beauty like only a collection of Norm Macdonald stories could be.” — Esquire
“A driving, wild and hilarious ramble of a book, what might have happened had Hunter S. Thompson embedded himself in a network studio.” — Washington Post
“Part personal history and part meta riff on celebrity memoirs, the book, it quickly becomes clear, is also just partly true (and all hilarious).” — Vulture
“Disorienting, funny, sometimes stupid, and often wildly beautiful . . . Macdonald is a pretty extraordinary wordsmith, capable of working in an impressive range of styles and genres.” — The Week
“This book is absurd fiction. . . . Scathing and funny.” — New York Times
“Based on a True Story is honest about its various dishonesties. . . . [Macdonald] also flexes his trademark ambling, shaggy-dog storytelling, teasing a crowd-pleasing joke about answering machines that he never actually tells and transcribing his marathon ‘moth joke’ in its lengthy entirety.” — The Globe and Mail
“A book that both isn’t a celebrity memoir and is, arguably, the best celebrity memoir ever written.” — AV Club
The Paris Express
Regular price $23.99#1 NATIONAL BESTSELLER
From the author of Room, The Wonder, and The Pull of the Stars comes a taut and suspenseful historical novel that reimagines an 1895 French railway disaster, an event famously documented in dramatic photographs
The Paris Express is set over a single day, as the morning train travels from the Normandy coast to the capital. Men, women, and children from all over the world take their seats in the passenger cars, which are divided by wealth and status. Among the passengers is an anarchist intent on destruction, a young boy travelling alone, a pregnant woman fleeing her home village for the anonymity of the big city, a medical student who suspects a girl may have a fatal disease, and the railway crew, devoted to the train, to the company, and to each other.
Based on an 1895 catastrophe that was captured in a series of surreal photographs, The Paris Express is a thrilling ride and a literary masterpiece full of the politics, fears, and chaos of an era not unlike our own.
“Donoghue's talents are at such glorious heights in this novel, the reader feels as though they are on the titular train, bustling next to strangers, staring out the window, and hurtling towards Paris. And it's near impossible to put the book down until it reaches its final destination. Donoghue beautifully crafts a world that captures the vitality and smells and sights of Victorian France, while investigating the different classes who inhabited the same spaces, but lived worlds apart....Donoghue's train is a microcosm of Paris of the times, ready to explode.” — Heather O’Neill, author of The Capital of Dreams
“Captivating! Emma Donoghue writes in rich, luxuriant detail, yet the story moves at a exhilarating clip. The Paris Express brings big questions about human interconnectedness into an edge-of-your-seat historical thriller that I couldn’t put down.”— — Shelby Van Pelt, author of Remarkably Bright Creatures
"Clever, ambitious, and richly researched. A slice of 1890s Paris that makes us see that our modern problems aren’t so modern after all! The Paris Express is a smartly structured novel that ratchets up the pace until it's hurtling along as fast as the doomed train itself." — Alice Winn, author of In Memoriam
“Donoghue establishes an intricate web of human relationships as the narrative speeds toward an unexpected yet plausible finale….Readers ought to jump on board.” — Publishers Weekly (starred review)
“A tension-filled panorama of fin-de-siècle French society.” — New York Times
"Indian" in the Cabinet
Regular price $21.00THE #1 BESTSELLER
FINALIST FOR THE WRITERS' TRUST BALSILLIE PRIZE FOR PUBLIC POLICY
A compelling political memoir of leadership and speaking truth to power by one of the most inspiring women of her generation
Jody Wilson-Raybould was raised to be a leader. Inspired by the example of her grandmother, who persevered throughout her life to keep alive the governing traditions of her people, and raised as the daughter of a hereditary chief and Indigenous leader, Wilson-Raybould always knew she would take on leadership roles and responsibilities. She never anticipated, however, that those roles would lead to a journey from her home community of We Wai Kai in British Columbia to Ottawa as Canada’s first Indigenous Minister of Justice and Attorney General in the Cabinet of then newly elected prime minister, Justin Trudeau.
Wilson-Raybould’s experience in Trudeau’s Cabinet reveals important lessons about how we must continue to strengthen our political institutions and culture, and the changes we must make to meet challenges such as racial justice and climate change. As her initial optimism about the possibilities of enacting change while in Cabinet shifted to struggles over inclusivity, deficiencies of political will, and concerns about adherence to core principles of our democracy, Wilson-Raybould stood on principle and, ultimately, resigned. In standing her personal and professional ground and telling the truth in front of the nation, Wilson-Raybould demonstrated the need for greater independence and less partisanship in how we govern.
“Indian” in the Cabinet: Speaking Truth to Power is the story of why Wilson-Raybould got into federal politics, her experience as an Indigenous leader sitting around the Cabinet table, her proudest achievements, the very public SNC-Lavalin affair, and how she got out and moved forward. Now sitting as an Independent Member in Parliament, Wilson-Raybould believes there is a better way to govern and a better way for politics—one that will make a better country for all.
"A thoughtful and respectful memoir. . . . Wilson-Raybould describes how public policy plays out within an established institutional context, and shares her own powerful personal encounters. . . .This book is Wilson-Raybould’s plea that Canadians not take our institutions for granted, nor allow complacency to lead us into a collective malaise as we face the challenges of the future." — Jury Citation, Writers' Trust Balsillie Prize for Public Policy
“It’s a page-turner — well written and well paced.” — Calgary Herald
"[Wilson-Raybould] holds a mirror up for us and what we see is a nation shocked out of our comfortable pews. . . . It is time to address wounds that cannot be negotiated scar by scar through civil contracts and redefine ourselves in the deep language of holy laws that transcend politics and religion. It is time to do what is right." — The British Columbia Review
"An excellent read." — The Literary Review of Canada
The Cree Word for Love
Regular price $34.99Bestselling author of Birdie, Tracey Lindberg, and renowned artist George Littlechild join together in a stunning collaboration of story and art to explore love in all its forms—romantic, familial, community and kin—in the Cree experience
In The Cree Word for Love, author Tracey Lindberg and artist George Littlechild consider a teaching from an Elder that in their culture, the notion of love as constructed in Western society does not exist. Here, through original fiction and select iconic paintings, Lindberg and Littlechild respond.
Together they have created and curated this collaboration which travels, season by season, mirroring the four rounds in ceremony, through the themes of the love within a family, ties of kinship, desire for romantic love and connection, strength in the face of loss and violence, and importance of self-love, as well as, crucially, a deeper exploration of the meaning of “all my relations.”
Together, art and story inspire and move readers to recall our responsibilities to our human and more than human relations, to think about the obligation that is love, and to imagine what it could possibly mean to have no Cree word for love. The result is a powerful story about where we find connection, strength, and the many forms of what it means to live lovingly.
Look Ma, No Hands
Regular price $24.95Missing From The Village
Regular price $23.00The Late-Night Witches
Regular price $25.99My First Recipe Book
Regular price $32.00Bush Runner
Regular price $22.95Shortlisted for the 2025 J.W. Dafoe Book Prize • A Globe 100 Best Book of 2024
From the bestselling author of Bush Runner: The Adventures of Pierre Esprit-Radisson
This is the story of the collision of two worlds. In the early 1600s, the Jesuits—the Catholic Church’s most ferocious warriors for Christ—tried to create their own nation on the Great Lakes and turn the Huron (Wendat) Confederacy into a model Jesuit state. At the centre of their campaign was missionary Jean de Brébeuf, a mystic who sought to die a martyr’s death. He lived among a proud people who valued kindness and rights for all, especially women. In the end, Huronia was destroyed. Brébeuf became a Catholic saint, and the Jesuit’s “martyrdom” became one of the founding myths of Canada.
In this first secular biography of Brébeuf, historian Mark Bourrie, bestselling author of Bush Runner: The Adventures of Pierre-Esprit Radisson, recounts the missionary’s fascinating life and tells the tragic story of the remarkable people he lived among. Drawing on the letters and documents of the time—including Brébeuf’s accounts of his bizarre spirituality—and modern studies of the Jesuits, Bourrie shows how Huron leaders tried to navigate this new world and the people struggled to cope as their nation came apart. Riveting, clearly told, and deeply researched, Crosses in the Sky is an essential addition to—and expansion of—Canadian history.
Praise for Crosses in the Sky
“Crosses in the Sky is dramatic and enthralling . . . Bourrie has done more than any other Canadian historian writing for a general audience to disinter the root causes of degenerating settler-Indigenous relations and disrupted Indigenous societies in the 400 years since Brébeuf’s death. And he has done it with attention-grabbing panache.”
—Charlotte Gray, Globe and Mail
“Bourrie’s colloquial writing style and storytelling skill make Crosses in the Sky . . . an interesting and accessible retelling of an important chapter in Canadian history.”
—Kate Jaimet, Canada’s History
“Bourrie’s latest, like its Charles Taylor Prize-winning predecessor, Bush Runner, focuses on the clash between European and Indigenous cultures in 17th-century colonial North America. Here, it’s the events leading to the violent ruin of Huronia, traditional home of the Huron-Wendat people, as they were experienced by the French Jesuit missionary and mystic Jean de Brébeuf.”
—Emily Donaldson, Globe and Mail
“[Mark Bourrie] writes meticulous history in bracing style.”
—National Post
“In 2019, Mark Bourrie published Bush Runner, a biography of the adventurer Pierre-Esprit Radisson that was ‘compelling, authoritative, not a little disturbing—and a significant contribution to the history of 17th-century North America,’ as I wrote at the time. The same can be said about Bourrie’s latest, Crosses in the Sky: Jean de Brébeuf and the Destruction of Huronia . . . In reinterpreting the Jesuit’s martyrdom against the backdrop of Huronia’s destruction, Bourrie presents a revisionist history.”
—Ken McGoogan, Toronto Star
“Canada’s greatest historian has done it for a third time, stripping the carcass of Canadian history and leaving readers horrified, riveted, in shock . . . A triumph.”
—Heather Mallick, Toronto Star
“Gripping stuff, grippingly told.”
—Literary Review of Canada
“Bourrie is fast becoming the dean of Canadian literary non-fiction . . . Bourrie also manages to be panoramic in his historical descriptions of Huronia while concurrently focusing on biographical details of Brébeuf’s missionary work. This treatment of the problematic legacy of both the cleric and his religious order is top drawer.”
—Winnipeg Free Press
“Crosses in the Sky paints a detailed and nuanced portrait of that destruction, enriching our modern understanding of a time and people who have been stereotyped or simply ignored for too long.”
—Ottawa Review of Books
“In Crosses, the first secular biography of Brébeuf, Bourrie takes the accepted Sunday school version and ‘humanizes’ it. Here, the Jesuits aren’t quite so noble, the Hurons are not so pure, and the Iroquois are no longer one-dimensional villains . . . This is a ripping yarn in the classic sense, with plenty of action—epic canoe voyages, battles, and of course, martyrdom—and it marks Bourrie’s second foray into the early history of the French in Canada.”
—Ian Coutts, Zoomer
“Crosses in the Sky provides a detailed account of the giant-framed missionary who walked among the Hurons . . . This patron saint of Canada has long been given plenty of attention by Jesuits, whether for his missionary spirit or for his extreme suffering. It is good to see his legend now given serious historical treatment.”
—Michael Taube, Washington Examiner
“[A] fascinating and engrossing tale . . . a meticulously researched book . . . It told me, on nearly every page, something I did not know about the history of this province, of the lives lived here in the 17th century.”
—Edith Cody-Rice, Millstone News
“Bourrie looks at how such early encounters between French colonists and missionaries and Indigenous Peoples continue to resonate in those same relationships.”
—Quill & Quire
DK Super World: Canada
Regular price $12.50Moon Road
Regular price $26.001, 2, 3, Do The Dinosaur
Regular price $19.95Stomp your feet, swish your tail and get ready to do the dinosaur! Join in and do the dance moves in this hilarious new rhyming dinosaur story from the bestselling author of the Goodnight Spaceman series, with illustrations from award-winning illustrator, Rosalind Beardshaw.
Chomp, chomp, chomp! Let's do the dinosaur!
One, two, three and everybody ROOOAR!
Follow toddler Tom as he teaches you and all his friends exactly how to be a dinosaur. There's a rumble in the jungle and Tom calls on all his friends to copy him as they chomp, slash, swish and roar together. But when they stumble across a huge hill, they're in for a big, toothy surprise!
Little ones will love doing the actions and joining in with the fun, interactive story. Michelle Robinson's energetic rhyming text and Rosalind Beardshaw's cheerful, bright illustrations make this a joy to read aloud with toddlers.
We Used to Live Here
Regular price $34.99From an author “destined to become a titan of the macabre and unsettling” (Erin A. Craig, #1 New York Times bestselling author), a haunting debut—soon to be a Netflix original movie—about two homeowners whose lives are turned upside down when the house’s previous residents unexpectedly visit.
As a young, queer couple who flip houses, Charlie and Eve can’t believe the killer deal they’ve just gotten on an old house in a picturesque neighborhood. As they’re working in the house one day, there’s a knock on the door. A man stands there with his family, claiming to have lived there years before and asking if it would be alright if he showed his kids around. People pleaser to a fault, Eve lets them in.
As soon as the strangers enter their home, inexplicable things start happening, including the family’s youngest child going missing and a ghostly presence materializing in the basement. Even more weird, the family can’t seem to take the hint that their visit should be over. And when Charlie suddenly vanishes, Eve slowly loses her grip on reality. Something is terribly wrong with the house and with the visiting family—or is Eve just imagining things?
This unputdownable and spine-tingling novel “is like quicksand: the further you delve into its pages, the more immobilized you become by a spiral of terror. We Used to Live Here will haunt you even after you have finished it” (Agustina Bazterrica, author of Tender Is the Flesh).
Wood, Fire & Smoke
Regular price $40.00On Book Banning
Regular price $21.95The freedom to read is under attack.
From the destruction of libraries in ancient Rome to today’s state-sponsored efforts to suppress LGBTQ+ literature, book bans arise from the impulse toward social control. In a survey of legal cases, literary controversies, and philosophical arguments, Ira Wells illustrates the historical opposition to the freedom to read and argues that today’s conservatives and progressives alike are warping our children’s relationship with literature and teaching them that the solution to opposing viewpoints is outright expurgation. At a moment in which our democratic institutions are buckling under the stress of polarization, On Book Banning is both rallying cry and guide to resistance for those who will always insist upon reading for themselves.
Praise for On Book Banning
“Though book banning is usually associated with repressive or conservative mindsets—ancient Rome, or Florida moms—even classic texts have fallen prey of late to a ‘censorship consensus’ enforced by liberal-minded gatekeepers. In the latest in Biblioasis’s continuing Field Notes series, Wells seeks to define the controversial practice and explore its effects.”
—Globe and Mail
“A concise, exquisite, and tidy inquiry into our common desire to protect against the other. Wells serves up a masterful and provocative treatise about the nature of free speech and the power of the written word.”
—Winnipeg Free Press
“Both important and urgent [and] its value enduring . . . I can only hope that it will find its way to libraries across the land.”
—The Miramichi Reader
“Timely and relevant, balanced and engaging.”
—Marcie McCauley, Buried In Print
“What emerges in this deceptively slim and powerful volume is the voice of a devoted reader—On Book Banning is a testament to the life-altering power of books and ideas.”
—Quill & Quire (starred review)
“A thoughtful, conversationally written reflection on why banning books damages the fabric of social belonging.”
—Kirkus Reviews
“Beneath the elegant prose of this small volume lies a vast urgency and passion about language, books, and human consciousness. The hot-button political debates—about freedom of thought and the value of open access, and the depredations of governments and activists to control both—are set against a background of deep yearning for connection between minds. Wells has given us a wise and powerful example of that very thing.”
—Mark Kingwell, author of Question Authority: A Polemic about Trust in Five Meditations
“In this impressive book, Ira Wells provides an insightful and engaging discussion of the renewed embrace of censorship by both progressives and traditionalists and what it can mean for the possibility of building a more socially just and democratic society today. On Book Banning is a gem that I cannot recommend highly enough.”
—James L. Turk, Director, Centre for Free Expression, Toronto Metropolitan University
“Wells does a good job of illustrating how the new censorship consensus has brought left and right together in a push to suppress or eliminate voices and volumes they deem dangerous, immoral, or otherwise unsavoury . . . These self-appointed protectors of morality and intellectual curiosity on both sides of the political spectrum have eroded the liberal ideal of free expression and ushered in a new era of censorship by another name. By calling it out for what it is, Wells does a valuable service.”
—Steven W. Beattie, That Shakespearean Rag
We Could Be Rats
Regular price $24.99Instant Bestseller
A moving story about two very different sisters, and a love letter to childhood, growing up, and the power of imagination—from the bestselling author of Everyone in This Room Will Someday Be Dead and Interesting Facts About Space.
Sigrid hates working at the Dollar Pal but having always resisted the idea of growing up into the trappings of adulthood, she did not graduate high school, preferring to roam the streets of her small town with her best friend Greta, the only person in the world who ever understood her. Her older sister Margit is baffled and frustrated by Sigrid’s inability to conform to the expectations of polite society.
But Sigrid’s detachment veils a deeper turmoil and sensitivity. She’s haunted by the pains of her past—from pretending her parents were swamp monsters when they shook the floorboards with their violent arguments to grappling with losing Greta’s friendship to the opioid epidemic ravaging their town. As Margit sets out to understand Sigrid and the secrets she has hidden, both sisters, in their own time and way, discover that reigniting their shared childhood imagination is the only way forward.
What unfolds is an unforgettable story of two sisters finding their way back to each other, and a celebration of that transcendent, unshakable bond.
Fantastic Cities
Regular price $25.95This unique coloring book features immersive aerial views of real cities from around the world alongside gorgeously illustrated, Inception-like architectural mandalas. Artist Steve McDonald's beautifully rendered and detailed line work offers bird's-eye perspectives of visually arresting global locales from New York, London, and Paris to Istanbul, Tokyo, and Melbourne, Rio, Amsterdam, and many more. The adult coloring book's distinctive large square format offers absorbingly complex vistas to color, the crisp white pages are conducive to a range of artistic applications, and a middle margin keeps all the artwork fully colorable. Complementing the cityscapes are a selection of mind-bending labyrinthine architectural illustrations for still deeper meditative coloring adventures and imaginative flights of fancy.
Waiting For The Long Night Moon | Stories
Regular price $24.99
