Canadian Books

The perfect balance of high-end French pastries and home baking. This elegant, must-have cookbook offers exceptional recipes with exquisite results--perfect for passionate home bakers.

An updated version of the best-selling debut from Giselle Courteau, this beautiful cookbook is packed with stunning recipes with spectacular results. The ideas from this cookbook can be traced back to Giselle's experiences teaching English in Japan in 2007. It was in Tokyo that Giselle, a self-taught baker, first discovered French macarons and became determined to replicate the delicate confections at home. After experimenting with hundreds of different recipes, all in a tiny toaster oven, Giselle finally perfected a macaron recipe that inspired her to open a French Patisserie in Canada in 2009. That macaron recipe is featured in this cookbook and macarons have been (and continue to be) the bestselling item at Duchess Bake Shop since it first opened.
     Macarons aside, Giselle's expertise in all things French patisserie is clear throughout this cookbook. Inside, you'll find standout recipes for Pains au Chocolat, Brioche, and Tartiflette. The cookbook also features contemporary twists on classics including The Duchess, a modern take on the Swedish Princess Cake; Duchess St. Honoré, a combination of two pastries (puff and pâte à choux); and delicious Canadian-inspired pastries such as Farmer's Saskatoon Pie, Butter Tarts, and the Courteau Family Tourtière. This new edition will also include Duchess Bake Shop's famed Buche de Noel, a perfect recipe for the holiday season!
     With ten chapters of approachable recipes that have been tested and re-tested, Giselle's instructions demystify the baking process. This cookbook will inspire readers to bake with confidence using a range of baking equipment, techniques, and ingredients. The book's refined design captures the sophistication and chic decadence of Giselle's beloved bake shop.

Simple, accessible, and direct, this picture book is perfect for kids and parents or teachers to read together, opening the door to conversations about gender stereotypes and everyone's right to be their true selves.
 

Is it okay for boys to cry? Can girls be strong? Should girls and boys be given different toys to play with and different clothes to wear? Should we all feel free to love whoever we choose to love? In this incredibly kid-friendly and easy-to-grasp picture book, author-illustrator Elise Gravel and transgender collaborator Mykaell Blais raise these questions and others relating to gender roles, acceptance, and stereotyping.

With its simple language, colorful illustrations, engaging backmatter that showcases how "appropriate" male and female fashion has changed through history, and even a poster kids can hang on their wall, here is the ideal tool to help in conversations about a multi-layered and important topic.

#1 NATIONAL BESTSELLER
 
“Fascinating, harrowing, courageous, and deeply felt, these explorations of ‘dangerous stories,’ harmful past events, and trials of the soul speak to all who’ve encountered dark waters and have had to navigate them.” —Margaret Atwood via Twitter
 
“Sarah Polley tells us the truth, even when it feels razor sharp—even when it feels dangerous. These brilliant essays urge us, by example, towards the examined life, the life worth living, and give us a jolt of energy to muster the courage and compassion needed to live it.” —Miriam Toews, bestselling author of Women Talking

Named a Most-Anticipated Book of 2022 by Entertainment Weekly, Lit Hub, and AV Club

Oscar-nominated screenwriter, director, and actor Sarah Polley’s Run Towards the Danger explores memory and the dialogue between her past and her present.

These are the most dangerous stories of my life. The ones I have avoided, the ones I haven’t told, the ones that have kept me awake on countless nights. As these stories found echoes in my adult life, and then went another, better way than they did in childhood, they became lighter and easier to carry.

Sarah Polley’s work as an actor, screenwriter, and director is celebrated for its honesty, complexity, and deep humanity. She brings all of those qualities along with her exquisite storytelling chops to these six essays. Each one captures a piece of Polley’s life as she remembers it, while at the same time examining the fallibility of memory, the mutability of reality in the mind, and the possibility of experiencing the past anew, as the person you are now but were not then. As Polley writes, the past and present are in a “reciprocal pressure dance.”
 
Polley contemplates stories from her own life ranging from stage fright to high risk childbirth to endangerment and more. After struggling with the aftermath of a concussion, Polley met a specialist who gave her wholly new advice: to recover from a traumatic injury, she had to retrain her mind to strength by charging towards the very activities that triggered her symptoms. With riveting clarity, she shows the power of applying that same advice to other areas of her life in order to find a path forward, a way through. Rather than live in a protective crouch, she had to run towards the danger.
 
In this extraordinary book, Sarah Polley explores what it is to live in one’s body, in a constant state of becoming, learning, and changing.

___________

SARAH POLLEY is an Academy Award-nominated screenwriter, director, and actor. After making short films, Polley made her feature-length directorial debut with the drama film Away from Her in 2006. Polley received an Oscar nomination for the screenplay, which she adapted from the Alice Munro story “The Bear Came Over the Mountain.” Her other projects include the documentary film Stories We Tell (2012), which won the New York Film Critics Circle prize and the National Board of Review award for best documentary; the miniseries adaptation of Margaret Atwood’s novel Alias Grace (2017); and the romantic comedy Take This Waltz (2011). Polley began her acting career as a child, starring in many productions for film and television

Another knockout domestic suspense novel from the New York Times bestselling author of The Couple Next Door

Nothing ever happens in sleepy little Fairhill, Vermont.

The teenagers get their kicks telling ghost stories in the old graveyard. The parents trust their kids will arrive home safe from school. Everyone knows everyone. Curtains rarely twitch. Front doors are left unlocked.

But this morning all of that will change.

Because Diana Brewer isn't lying safely in her bed where she belongs. Instead she lies in a hayfield, circled by vultures, discovered by a local farmer.

How quickly a girl becomes a ghost. How quickly a town of friendly, familiar faces becomes a town of suspects, a place of fear and paranoia.

Someone in Fairhill did this. Everyone wants answers.

And one innocent question could be deadly.

____________________________

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

The newest edition to the popular Why I Love series!

Why do children love hockey? Because they're part of a team. Because they love to cheer. Because they love to skate-and score goals! There are so many reasons. A wonderful new book featuring all-new illustrations that are sure to light up the faces of young fans.

French edition.

The creator of the best-selling Canada ABC presents a vibrantly illustrated, classically inspired alphabet primer that pairs each letter with everyday objects, from apples and balls to eggs and flowers.

USA Today bestselling author Jenny Holiday concludes her beloved royal Christmas series with an unforgettable romance about a confident American woman and the strait-laced royal advisor who falls hopelessly in love with her.

Matteo Benz has spent his life serving at the pleasure of the Eldovian crown. His work is his life and his life, well...he doesn’t have much of one. When he is tasked to aid a management consultant who has been flown in to help straighten out the king’s affairs, he is instantly disturbed by her brash American manner—as well by an inconvenient attraction to the brainy beauty.

Cara Delaney is in Eldovia to help clean up the king’s financial affairs, but soon finds herself at odds with the very proper Mr. Benz. As intrigued by his good looks as she is annoyed by his dedication to tradition for its own sake, she slowly begins to see the real man behind the royal throne.

As they work together to return Eldovia to its former glory during the country’s magical Christmas season, Matteo discovers he is falling hopelessly in love with the unconventional American. But a man who has devoted his life to tradition doesn’t change easily. Can he become the man Cara needs, or will their love be another sacrifice to the crown?

Critical Praise

"Witty banter and sizzling love scenes played out against the backdrop of a dazzling winter wonderland make Holiday’s latest sparkle. Series fans are sure to be charmed." — Publishers Weekly

"With So This Is Christmas, Holiday delivers a holiday delight full of banter and wintry magic." — Popsugar

"Fans of Holiday’s A Princess for Christmas series will enjoy being whisked back to Eldovia in this latest. The book stands on its own, with appearances by characters from earlier installments." — Library Journal

"It is refreshing to see two successful people admiring each other’s competence in Holiday's slowly evolving, gentle romance." — Booklist

"Holiday’s knack for writing witty banter is on full display here, with Dani and Max's escalating text messages and phone conversations showing a deepening friendship between them... This slow-burn romance will appeal to readers who enjoy the friends-to-lovers trope. The novel carefully builds trust and a deepening emotional attachment between Dani and Max." — Kirkus Reviews on Duke, Actually

"Holiday’s follow-up to A Princess for Christmas hits all the right notes as the heir to a dukedom discovers love during the holidays...Holiday cleverly draws parallels to Love, Actually throughout this witty, emotionally charged holiday tale. Readers will delight in the strong heroine seeking love on her own terms." — Publishers Weekly on Duke, Actually

"RITA-nominated Holiday follows A Princess for Christmas with another splendidly entertaining romance that offers just the right dash of holiday cheer and delectably droll wit." — Booklist on Duke, Actually

“A Princess for Christmas is a confection of a holiday plot with more steam than a perfect cup of hot cocoa. Given her surname, Holiday was virtually obligated to write a book like this—and she delivers with a sexy, sugary delight full of her signature delectable banter.” — Entertainment Weekly

“A modern fairy tale that’s perfect for reading with a warm cup of cocoa.” — USA Today Yes Shopper on A Princess for Christmas

A new deluxe edition of the international bestseller by Heather O’Neill, the Giller-shortlisted author of Daydreams of Angels and The Girl Who Was Saturday Night, featuring an original foreword from the author, to celebrate the tenth anniversary of the coming-of-age story that People describes as “a vivid portrait of life on skid row.”

Baby, all of thirteen years old, is lost in the gangly, coltish moment between childhood and the strange pulls and temptations of the adult world. Her mother is dead; her father Jules is always on the lookout for his next score. Baby knows that “chocolate milk” is Jules’ slang for heroin and sees a lot more of that in her house than the real article. But she takes vivid delight in the scrappy bits of happiness and beauty that find their way to her, and moves through the threat of the streets as if she’s been choreographed in a dance.

Soon, though, a hazard emerges that is bigger than even her hard-won survival skills can handle. Alphonse, the local pimp, has his eye on her for his new girl; he wants her body and soul—and what the johns don’t take he covets for himself. At the same time, a tender and naively passionate friendship unfolds with a boy from her class at school, who has no notion of the dark claims on her—which even her father, lost on the nod, cannot totally ignore. Jules consigns her to a stint in juvie hall, and for the moment this perceived betrayal preserves Baby from terrible harm—but after that, her salvation has to be her own invention.

Channeling the artlessly affecting voice of her thirteen-year-old heroine with extraordinary accuracy and power, Heather O’Neill’s heartbreaking and wholly original debut novel blew readers away when it was first published ten years ago. Now in a new deluxe package it is sure to capture its next decade of readers as Baby picks her pathway along the edge of the abyss to arrive at a place of redemption, and of love.

Critical Praise

“A vivid portrait of life on skid row.” - People

“A nuanced, endearing coming-of-age novel you won’t want to miss.” - Quill & Quire (Canada)

“Vivid and poignant.... A deeply moving and troubling novel.” - Independent (London)

“A beautiful book, all the more remarkable because its harrowing tale is (virtuosically) told without a trace of self-pity or bathos. There are phrases in here that will make you laugh out loud, and others that will stop your heart. A definite triumph.” - David Rakoff, author of Love, Dishonor, Marry, Die, Cherish, Perish

“O’Neill is a tragicomedienne par excellence…. You will not want to miss this tender depiction of some very mean streets.” - Montreal Review of Books

“A poignant tale…. O’Neill brings the setting to life.” - OK!, five stars

“O’Neill somehow infuses her troubling story with a kind of heartbreaking innocence…. She is a wonderful stylist and the voice she has created for Baby is original and altogether captivating.” - Booklist

“A winsome debut novel.” - Kirkus

“Baby’s precocious introspection feels pitch perfect.... Tear-jerkingly effective.” - Publishers Weekly

“Dreamy prose.... Baby’s unique voice and the glimmer of hope provided by her intelligence and imaginative spirit live on in the mind long after you have closed the book.” - Waterstones Books Quarterly (London)

“A disturbing, heartbreaking novel… redeemed by a powerful voice, vivid characters and gritty realism. This is a stunning book from a first-time author.” - RebelHousewife.com

Two classic characters, two classic stories, bound together in a new, timeless edition. Anne of Green Gables and The Story Girl bring to vivid life a young orphan girl and a captivating storyteller who both live on Canada's Prince Edward Island.

Anne of Green Gables, introduces a skinny, red-haired, and freckled orphan girl who is mistakenly sent to live with elderly siblings on the north shore of Canada's Prince Edward Island. The Cuthberts had asked to adopt a young boy who could help with the family farm, but Anne Shirley arrived from the orphanage instead, and soon brings joy, imagination, and lots of talking to the close-knit farming community.

The Story Girl tells the story of a group of cousins and friends with Sara Stanley at the center of their group, whose gift for storytelling and enchanting tales of adventure, romance, and suspense spark all sorts of contests and capers. The self-proclaimed favorite of all her books, many believe The Story Girl may be about the author herself.

Lucy Maud Montgomery (November 30, 1874 – April 24, 1942), was a Canadian author best known for her series of novels beginning with Anne of Green Gables, which was an immediate success. The first novel was followed by a series of sequels with Anne as the central character. Montgomery went on to publish 20 novels as well as 500 short stories and poems. She was born on Prince Edward Island, Canada.

From the bestselling author of The Lonely Hearts Hotel, a spellbinding story about two young women whose friendship is so intense it not only threatens to destroy them, it changes the course of history

Marie Antoine is the charismatic, spoiled daughter of a sugar baron. At age twelve, with her pile of blond curls and unparalleled sense of whimsy, she's the leader of all the children in the Golden Mile, the affluent strip of nineteenth-century Montreal where powerful families live. Until one day in 1873, when Sadie Arnett, dark-haired, sly and brilliant, moves to the neighbourhood.

Marie and Sadie are immediately inseparable. United by their passion and intensity, they attract and repel each other in ways that set them both on fire. Marie, with her bubbly charm, sees all the pleasure of the world, whereas Sadie's obsession with darkness is all-consuming. Soon, their childlike games take on the thrill of danger and then become deadly.

Forced to separate, the girls spend their teenage years engaging in acts of alternating innocence and depravity, until a singular event unites them once more, with devastating effects. After Marie inherits her father's sugar empire and Sadie disappears into the city's gritty underworld, the working class begins to foment a revolution. Each woman will play an unexpected role in the events that upend their city—the only question is whether they will find each other once more.

From the beloved Giller Prize-shortlisted author who writes “like a sort of demented angel with an uncanny knack for metaphor" (Toronto Star), When We Lost Our Heads is a page-turning novel that explores gender and power, sex and desire, class and status, and the terrifying strength of the human heart when it can't let someone go.

From the author of the beloved and bestselling Canada ABC and Canada 123 comes this wonderful addition to the Canada board book series. Come explore some of the many special sports, games, activities and festivals that are a special part of how we love to have fun!