Books

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!

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!

Shortlisted for the 2017 OLSN Northern Lit Award

The acclaimed author of The Orenda gives us a powerful and poignant look into the last moments of Charlie Wenjack, a residential school runaway trying to find his way home.

An Ojibwe boy runs away from a North Ontario Indian School, not realizing just how far away home is. Along the way he's followed by Manitous, spirits of the forest who comment on his plight, cajoling, taunting, and ultimately offering him a type of comfort on his difficult journey back to the place he was so brutally removed from.

Written by Scotiabank Giller Prize–winning author Joseph Boyden and beautifully illustrated by acclaimed artist Kent Monkman, Wenjack is a powerful and poignant look into the world of a residential school runaway trying to find his way home.

Praise for Wenjack

“A profoundly sensitive writer with the eye of a painter and a heart as big as the country about which he writes.” —Frederick Barton

“Boyden is such a fine writer, evoking his characters’ emotions in a touching and understandable way.” —Toronto Star

“Boyden continues the difficult conversation of reconciliation by allowing us a glimpse into the frightened mind of a child who only knows that home is where he should be—and that Cecilia Jeffrey Indian Residential School is not it.” —Maclean’s

“Joseph Boyden has written Wenjack, a novella that deftly suffuses Chanie’s tragedy with traditional Aboriginal beliefs. . . . This is a world of transformations where owls can turn into mice, and fish give themselves voluntarily to fishermen—a world in which all beings are interconnected through the ceaseless interplay of life and death. . . . At the end of the novella, Boyden shows Chanie in the afterlife dancing and feasting with the animals. The image, meant to convey an ecological and spiritual truth, does little to redeem his final, terrible hours on the tracks.” —Maclean’s

“Chanie Wenjack was just 12 when his body was found beside the railroad tracks just days after he ran away from his residential school in Kenora, Ont. Now, 50 years later, the young Ojibwe boy is being remembered in . . . this magical novella, the chapters alternating between Chanie’s journey and the spirit animals who document his quest—and wait to receive him when he passes over to their sphere.” —Toronto Star

“It should be required reading.” —CTV News 

WJB Book Club Pick for November 2023

Join us (and the author, Ainslie Hogarth!) Thursday November 30th at Craftheads, 6:00pm

This new edition of the wildly popular cocktail book features revised and updated texts and a bold new cover.

Sixty of the world’s coolest and most influential women are the inspiration for this refreshing and fun collection of drink recipes that are sure to bring extra zest to your cocktail shaker. 

Free the Tipple pays tribute to a brilliant range of diverse women from the 20th century to today who have made waves in entertainment, the arts, politics, fashion, literature, sports, and science, including Frida Kahlo, Rihanna, Serena Williams, Virginia Woolf, Yoko Ono, Zaha Hadid, Marlene Dietrich, Zadie Smith, and more.

Each double-page spread features a recipe crafted to reflect its namesake’s personality, style, or legacy. This ranges from The Gloria Steinem, which uses a complex liquor with a radical twist, to The Beyoncé, made, of course, with lemonade. The cocktails are simple to make, kitchen-tested, and incorporate easy-to-find ingredients. Snappy, informative biographies, illustrated with vibrant portraits, offer revealing insights into the women’s lives.

This highly original guide to delicious beverages is a perfect gift for those in your life who encourage and inspire you.

More cocktails, more shooters, more fun bar lingo, more astounding facts and reasons to celebrate—Mulligan’s Bar Guide is back with over 450 recipes.

A bestseller—over 200,000 copies sold—this well-priced and handy guide is Canada’s favourite drink bible. Now completely updated and expanded, the 25th anniversary edition of Mulligan’s Bar Guide features

• More than 100 new drink recipes, including cocktails and shooters (a Canadian invention)
• Instructions on how to layer a drink properly
• Bar tricks, astounding facts and helpful features like avoiding a hangover and enjoying a good cigar
• A detailed guide to selecting and creating garnishes

Mulligan’s Bar Guide is the perfect bar accessory from Canada’s first name in bartending.

WINNER: Canada Reads 2022

WINNER: Governor General’s Literary Award for Fiction

WINNER: Amazon First Novel Awards

WINNER: Kobo Emerging Author Prize 

Finalist: Scotiabank Giller Prize

Finalist: Atwood Gibson Writers Trust Prize

Finalist: BC & Yukon Book Prize

Shortlist: Indigenous Voices Awards

Finalist: Kobo Emerging Author Prize

National Bestseller; A Globe and Mail Top 100 Book of the Year; A CBC Best Book of the Year; An Apple Best Book of the Year; A Kobo Best Book of the Year; An Indigo Best Book of the Year

Taken from their families when they are very small and sent to a remote, church-run residential school, Kenny, Lucy, Clara, Howie and Maisie are barely out of childhood when they are finally released after years of detention.

Alone and without any skills, support or families, the teens find their way to the seedy and foreign world of Downtown Eastside Vancouver, where they cling together, striving to find a place of safety and belonging in a world that doesn’t want them. The paths of the five friends cross and crisscross over the decades as they struggle to overcome, or at least forget, the trauma they endured during their years at the Mission.

Fuelled by rage and furious with God, Clara finds her way into the dangerous, highly charged world of the American Indian Movement. Maisie internalizes her pain and continually places herself in dangerous situations. Famous for his daring escapes from the school, Kenny can’t stop running and moves restlessly from job to job—through fishing grounds, orchards and logging camps—trying to outrun his memories and his addiction. Lucy finds peace in motherhood and nurtures a secret compulsive disorder as she waits for Kenny to return to the life they once hoped to share together. After almost beating one of his tormentors to death, Howie serves time in prison, then tries once again to re-enter society and begin life anew.

With compassion and insight, Five Little Indians chronicles the desperate quest of these residential school survivors to come to terms with their past and, ultimately, find a way forward. 

The Canadian border city facing Detroit was not always simply “Windsor, Ontario”—it was a patchwork of multiple communities that amalgamated into Windsor throughout the 20th Century. In Five Days Walking Five Towns, fabled local raconteur Marty Gervais puts on his boots and takes the reader on a street-by-street walking tour through Riverside, Ford City, Walkerville, Windsor, and Sandwich—weaving together his own memories with the booms and busts of his eclectic, storied city. Along the way, tales of Indigenous curses, rum-running, union-busting, and murderous ministers abound.

With intimate, conversational prose and an acute eye for lore that time forgot, Marty Gervais has created a work not just for Ontario history buffs but for anybody who cares about the evolution of cities and the strange, beautiful people who inhabit them.

Praise for Five Days Walking Five Towns

“Windsor like we’ve never seen it”—Nino Ricci, author of Where She Has Gone

“Gervais does not tire, and never fails to amuse.”—Patrick Brode, author of Border Cities Powerhouse

WJB Book Club Pick for February 2025!

Use code BOOKCLUB to get 20% off the cover price at checkout.

Come discuss the book at the store at 6pm on February 27th!

Brimming with heart and heat, Rules for Second Chances explores the hardest relationship question of all: can true love happen twice...with the same person?

Liz Lewis has tried everything to be what people want. But she’s always been labeled different from everyone else in the boisterous world of wilderness expeditions—that is, if anyone notices her at all. Her marriage to popular adventure guide Tobin Renner-Lewis is a sinkhole of toxic positivity where she’s the only one saying no. In a mountain resort town built around excitement, introverted Liz gets…spreadsheets.

When she gets mistaken for a server at her own thirtieth birthday party and her last line of communication with Tobin finally snaps, Liz vows to stop playing a minor character in her own life. The (incredibly well-researched and scientific) plan? A crash course in confidence…via improv comedy class.

The catch? She’s terrible at it, and the only person willing to practice with her is a certain extroverted wilderness guide who seems dead set on saving their marriage one bonkers improv scenario at a time. But as Liz and Tobin get closer (...again), she’s forced to confront all the reasons they didn’t work the first time, along with her growing suspicion that there might be more to her social awkwardness than anyone realized. Liz has just eight weeks to learn improv’s most important lesson—"yes, and"—or she’ll have to choose between the love she always wanted and the dreams that got away.

The award-winning author of The Most Magnificent Thing introduces the value of science and inquiry to young readers with humor and heart. For fans of Ada Twist, Scientist and Hidden Figures.

Esther the fairy doesn't believe in magic. But fairies are all about magic, despite Esther's best efforts to reveal the science of their world. No matter how she and her bird, Albert, explain that rainbows are refracted light rather than a path to gold, or that mist is water evaporating rather than an evil omen, or the importance of the scientific method, her fairymates would rather just do magic. So when the other fairies' solution to helping a dying tree is to do a mystical moonlight dance, Esther decides to take it upon herself to resuscitate the tree . . . with the scientific method, some hypothesizing, a few experiments and the heady conclusion that trees need sunlight to live! But while Esther manages to save the tree, she can't quite change the minds of her misguided fairymates . . . or can she?

Fairy Science, the first in a hilarious new picture book series, introduces a charming, determined heroine as she learns about the world and celebrates the joys of curiosity and exploring science.

____________________________

Shari Lapena is the internationally bestselling author of the thrillers The Couple Next Door, A Stranger in the House, An Unwanted Guest, Someone We Know, The End of Her, and Not a Happy Family, which have all been New York Times and The Sunday Times (London) bestsellers. Her books have been sold in thirty-eight territories around the world. She lives in Toronto

WJB's Book Club Pick for June 2025!

Use code BOOKCLUB for 20% off the list price.

INSTANT NATIONAL BESTSELLER

The author of New York Times bestseller and Reese’s Book Club pick Lucky returns with a spellbinding story of rock ’n’ roll and star-crossed love—about grunge-era musician Jane Pyre’s journey to find out what really happened to her husband and partner in music, who abruptly disappeared years earlier.

He was the troubled face of rock ’n’ roll…until he suddenly disappeared without a trace.

Jane Pyre was once half of the famous rock n’ roll duo, the Lightning Bottles. Years later, she’s perhaps the most hated—and least understood—woman in music. She was never as popular with fans as her bandmate (and soulmate), Elijah Hart—even if Jane was the one who wrote the songs that catapulted the Lightning Bottles to instant, dizzying fame, first in the Seattle grunge scene, then around the world.

But ever since Elijah disappeared five years earlier and the band’s meteoric rise to fame came crashing down, the public hatred of Jane has taken on new levels, and all she wants to do is retreat. What she doesn’t anticipate is the bombshell that awaits her at her new home in the German countryside: the sullen teenaged girl next door—a Lightning Bottles superfan—who claims to have proof that not only is Elijah still alive, he’s also been leaving secret messages for Jane. And they need to find them right away.

A cross-continent road trip about two misunderstood outsiders brought together by their shared love of music, The Lightning Bottles is both a love letter to the 90s and a searing portrait of the cost of fame.

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.

Ford City was a town steeped in the history of the auto industry. Companies including Ford, E.M.F., Studebaker, Chalmers and Chrysler all called Ford City their home of Canadian operations. But it was more than just an industrial town. It was a rumrunning hub, a communist hotbed, and a thriving cultural centre for the people of the Border Cities. From the town’s inception, through amalgamation, to the revitalization of the Ford plant in the 1990s, Ford City is the story of the industrial heart of Windsor.

PRAISE FOR HERB COLLING

“Colling rebuts the curious notion that Canadian history, even when told in relation to major U.S. events, is not compelling or important.”—Quill & Quire

BESTSELLING BOARD BOOK: TURN SIMPLE FOODS INTO BEAUTIFUL BOARDS WITH MORE THAN 100 EASY RECIPES AND IDEAS

Sharing food on boards is the perfect way to entertain family and friends. With minimum effort and maximum impact you can casually host in style, while focusing on spending time together, rather than being stuck in the kitchen. No cooking skills are required to make these boards (and you!) shine! In On Boards, food stylist Lisa Bolton has put together 50 ideas for instantly approachable boards, all with effortless entertaining in mind, as well as 52 recipes for delectable savory and sweet additions like Beet Hummus, Bourbon Bacon Jam, Mashed Potato Dip and Chocolate Salami. The boards can be pulled together in very little time, and each includes presentation and styling tips to impress your guests. Any assortment of food can be pulled into a beautiful board, so you will be able transform whatever is in your fridge and pantry when unexpected guests arrive! With chapters on Everyday Boards, Holiday & Special Occasion Boards, Seasonal Boards and Around the World Boards, you will find inspiration for every gathering. Whether you are looking for a breakfast or brunch board; a board for Christmas Day, Superbowl Sunday or New Year's Eve; a huge celebration or a cozy date night for two, it is included in this collection of gorgeously curated boards. On Boards is the gift people give again and again--perfect for those who love to entertain, but not the stress that goes with it!