Canadian Books

The Ice Chips have time travel down to a science . . . almost. After Ekamjeet “Edge” Singh misses out on their most recent adventure, he convinces his teammates to take another leap through time. But when their magic goes haywire, a hero from the past finds her way onto the Chips’ hometown rink—and leaves behind a very important trophy!

It’s up to the Ice Chips to return the famous award to its rightful home, before all of hockey history changes forever. It won’t be easy, but if they can get the cup back where it belongs, they might just have the chance to win it for themselves.

The fourth title in the beloved and bestselling Ice Chips series, by acclaimed authors Roy MacGregor and Kerry MacGregor and illustrator Kim Smith, features a vibrant and diverse cast of characters and inspiring hockey greats.

An Indie Bestseller!

A laugh-out-loud picture book from bestselling comics creator Kate Beaton about a brave shark girl bent on revenge after a greedy fishing captain messes with her waters - perfect for fans of We Don't Eat Our Classmates .

When Shark Girl is captured by an evil fishing captain's net, she makes a vow. . . for REVENGE!

With the sea witch's help, Shark Girl becomes a human sailor and launches a plan. . . for MUTINY!

But Shark Girl needs the help of her crew mates before she can enact her plan. Will Shark girl SINK. . . or SWIM?

Bestselling creator Kate Beaton has created a subversive and hilarious spin on the classic little mermaid fairytale that will inspire little readers. Sometimes standing up for what's right means you have to show your teeth!

An NAACP Image Award Nominee
A Today Show Read with Jenna Book Club Pick!

From spiritual activist, racial justice educator, and bestselling author Rachel Ricketts comes an inspiring picture book guiding children in heart-centered and mindfulness-based practices in the face of fear, anxiety, and racial injustice.

Hold on to what matters;
to joy
and being free.

When the world gets to be too much, we can always take a moment to look within ourselves for love, support, and healing. This lyrical mindfulness guide filled with an inspiring, positive self-esteem message helps young ones, especially Black and Brown children, feel big feelings and celebrate their whole being.

Includes a special author’s note and guide for caregivers to help little ones get embodied when their feelings get too big to handle.

From 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).

Instant 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.

A lush, enthralling new novel from New York Times bestselling author Susanna Kearsley, set during the reign of James I, in which emissary Andrew Logan must complete a vital mission on behalf of the king—a mission that will threaten not only his own life, but everything he holds dear.

The crown prince is dead, and the court is in turmoil. Only a man of extraordinary gifts can uncover the truth.

1613: King James—sixth of Scotland; first of England; son of Mary, Queen of Scots—has unified both countries under one crown. But the death of his eldest son, Henry, has plunged the nation into mourning, as rumours swirl that the prince was poisoned.

Andrew Logan has heard the rumours, but he’s paid them little heed. As one of the King’s Messengers, he has plenty of secrets to guard, including his own. In these perilous times, when the merest suggestion of witchcraft can lead to torture and hanging, men like Andrew must hide well the fact they were born with the Sight—a gift that allows him to see things others cannot.

And he’ll need all his gifts as he embarks on the perilous trip to capture Sir David Moray—once the prince’s trusted advisor, and now the main suspect in his death—and transport him from Scotland back to England. Andrew must travel with not only his prisoner, but an elderly scribe, sent to keep a written record of the journey, and the scribe’s fiery daughter, Phoebe. With treachery lurking at every turn, Andrew won’t just need to guard his prisoner, but his extraordinary gift, and his heart as well.

Both sweeping and intricate, The King’s Messenger is a spellbinding tale of secrets, love, and honour by a writer at the height of her power.

NATIONAL BESTSELLER • WINNER OF ONE OF THE 2023 LEACOCK MEDAL FOR HUMOUR • A CBC BEST CANADIAN NONFICTION BOOK OF 2022 • SHORTLISTED FOR CANADA READS 2025 

Consummate storyteller and bestselling novelist Wayne Johnston reaches back into his past to bring us a sad, tender, and at times extremely funny memoir of his Newfoundland boyhood.

For six months between 1966 and 1967, Wayne Johnston and his family lived in a wreck of a house across from his grandparents in Goulds, Newfoundland. At seven, Wayne was sickly and skinny, unable to keep food down, plagued with insomnia and a relentless cough that no doctor could diagnose, though they had already removed his ton­sils, adenoids, and appendix. To the neighbours, he was known as “Jennie’s boy,” a backhanded salute to his tiny, ferocious mother, who felt judged for Wayne’s condition at the same time as she worried he might never grow up.

Unable to go to school, Wayne spent his days with his witty, religious, deeply eccentric maternal grand­mother, Lucy. During these six months of Wayne’s childhood, he and Lucy faced two life-or-death crises, the odds against them both.

Jennie’s Boy is Wayne’s tribute to a family and a community that were simultaneously fiercely protective of him and fed up with having to make allowances for him. His boyhood was full of pain, yes, but also tenderness and Newfoundland wit. By that wit, and through love—often expressed in the most unlikely ways—Wayne survived.

LONGLISTED FOR CANADA READS 2025

“Etta and Otto and Russell and James is incredibly moving, beautifully written and luminous with wisdom. It is a book that restores one's faith in life even as it deepens its mystery. Wonderful!” —Chris Cleave, #1 New York Times Bestselling Author of Little Bee

“I've gone. I've never seen the water, so I've gone there. I will try to remember to come back.”

Etta's greatest unfulfilled wish, living in the rolling farmland of Saskatchewan, is to see the sea. And so, at the age of eighty-two she gets up very early one morning, takes a rifle, some chocolate, and her best boots, and begins walking the 2,000 miles to water.

Meanwhile her husband Otto waits patiently at home, left only with his memories. Their neighbour Russell remembers too, but differently—and he still loves Etta as much as he did more than fifty years ago, before she married Otto.

Etta and Otto and Russell and James is a love story that spans fifty years, three lives, two continents and an ocean. It is a story of love and joy, pain and passion, memory and forgetting—and one incredible journey.

<head><meta charset="UTF-8" /></head>This much-anticipated, game-changing special edition of Canada's premier annual fiction anthology celebrates the country's best emerging Black writers.

For over thirty years, The Journey Prize Stories has consistently introduced readers to the next generation of great Canadian writers. The 33rd edition of Canada's most prestigious annual fiction anthology proudly continues this tradition by celebrating the best emerging Black writers in the country, as selected by a jury comprising internationally acclaimed, award-winning writers David Chariandy, Esi Edugyan, and Canisia Lubrin.

An eagle-eyed mother and a hungry child contend with the aftereffects of an unusual multi-course meal. Both the debts of the past and the promise of the future hover over two siblings as they debate what to do with an unexpected windfall. A pesky but beloved baboon looms large in the memory of a daughter whose family has been forced to move to a new town. Unclear boundaries and cheerful hypocrisy dominate a woman’s whirlwind romance with a photographer. A schoolgirl contends with complicated emotions as she awaits the return of her long-absent mother. News of a hunter’s death reverberates throughout his family, travelling across oceans and phonelines to trouble his cousin’s already-shaky relationship. An office worker joins a lost grandmother on an unexpected pilgrimage. After years away, a woman journeys back to Jamaica—and back to the sister who refused to leave with her—stirring up insecurities, laughter, and wounds unhealed by time. All the instructions in the world cannot protect a family from the impacts of grief. The only Black girls in school experiment with what it means to be a lady when you’re not yet a woman.

*#1 NATIONAL BESTSELLER
*Winner, Kobo Emerging Writer Prize Nonfiction
*Winner, Indigenous Voices Awards
*Winner, High Plains Book Awards
*Finalist, CBC Canada Reads
*A Globe and Mail Book of the Year
*An Indigo Book of the Year
*A CBC Best Canadian Nonfiction Book of the Year

In this extraordinary and inspiring debut memoir, Jesse Thistle, once a high school dropout and now a rising Indigenous scholar, chronicles his life on the streets and how he overcame trauma and addiction to discover the truth about who he is.

If I can just make it to the next minute...then I might have a chance to live; I might have a chance to be something more than just a struggling crackhead.

From the Ashes is a remarkable memoir about hope and resilience, and a revelatory look into the life of a Métis-Cree man who refused to give up.

Abandoned by his parents as a toddler, Jesse Thistle briefly found himself in the foster-care system with his two brothers, cut off from all they had known. Eventually the children landed in the home of their paternal grandparents, whose tough-love attitudes quickly resulted in conflicts. Throughout it all, the ghost of Jesse’s drug-addicted father haunted the halls of the house and the memories of every family member. Struggling with all that had happened, Jesse succumbed to a self-destructive cycle of drug and alcohol addiction and petty crime, spending more than a decade on and off the streets, often homeless. Finally, he realized he would die unless he turned his life around.

In this heartwarming and heart-wrenching memoir, Jesse Thistle writes honestly and fearlessly about his painful past, the abuse he endured, and how he uncovered the truth about his parents. Through sheer perseverance and education—and newfound love—he found his way back into the circle of his Indigenous culture and family.

An eloquent exploration of the impact of prejudice and racism, From the Ashes is, in the end, about how love and support can help us find happiness despite the odds.

Carol is tired of listening to her bossy toad hat -- until a pigeon carries it away! This delightful picture book from Ooko creator Esmé Shapiro is a quirky and funny fable about overcoming self-doubt and finding your inner voice.

In the big city, people wear all kinds of hats. Not everyone wears a toad as a hat, but some people do . . . and some of those toad hats can be VERY bossy! Carol has always followed the orders of her demanding toad hat at the expense of her own inner voice. But when her toad hat is plucked away by a pigeon, how will Carol know what to do? After spending so long being told what to eat and do and paint, Carol's not sure what SHE wants, and nothing feels quite right. Feeling lost, she creates a new hat -- a toad made out of pickles and eggs -- to help guide her. Even though her new pickle-toad doesn't make a sound, Carol can hear it loud and clear! But when a pigeon takes away THAT hat too, Carol begins to understand that there is a big, booming voice that lives inside herself . . . and that it's well worth listening to!

For any reader who's doubted their own voice and talents, or felt like a bossy friend or family member is always drowning them out, Carol and the Pickle-Toad is an inspiring invitation to listen to your own heart and stand on your own two feet -- even better if you're wearing very tall boots.