Canadian Books

Even hockey legends start with hand-me-downs. A beautifully illustrated true childhood story about hockey great Bobby Orr.

Bobby eats, sleeps and breathes hockey. So when his birthday is coming up, he only wants one thing: new skates. He's seen the exact pair he wants in the shop window: sparkling blades, shiny leather, clean new laces tied in perfect bows. But when Bobby opens his gift, he's dismayed to find hand-me-down skates: scuffed leather, nicked blades, floppy laces.

Once Bobby breaks them in, though, he and the hand-me-down skates become inseparable, and he can't imagine life without them . . . until the brand-new skates come into his life. How can he leave his hand-me-down skates behind?

Log Driver's Waltz illustrator Jennifer Phelan brings this classic story to life with timeless, gorgeous art, and Kara Kootsra's words evoke the joy and dedication that Bobby Orr brought to his favorite sport. A perfect gift for readers and fans big and small, this book is destined to be a classic that is reached for time and time again.

WJB's Book Club Pick for January 2026!

Use code BOOKCLUB to get 20% off at checkout. 

In these nine stories, Elise Levine illuminates the aspirations of women and men (and one sassy millennia-old being) as they sift through the midden of their regrets, friendships, and marriages, and seek fresher ways of inhabiting older selves.

Two young women hitchhike around Europe, a lurid secret between them. A team in space is left reeling after a colleague’s unexpected death. Ambitious brothers take to the skies in an aerostat in 19th-century Paris. Big of You contains stories of real and fantastical life, each with its own distinctive voice and wild vocabulary.

At turns playful, blistering, unabashed, these stories examine the nuanced, kaleidoscopic dimensions of character, of people driven by ambition yet contending with the hauntings of the past. Spanning various settings and time periods, Big of You captures the everyday and the extraordinary in collisions soaring and earthy, exuberant and visceral.

Praise for Big of You

“Playful hilarity on some pages is matched by striking loss on others. Levine is a maestro of pacing and a magpie of mesmeric diction.”
—Literary Review of Canada

“Throughout, the writing is like a Modernist poem . . . filled with startling images, but also half-thoughts and half-sentences, leaving the reader, like the characters, on the tenterhooks of understanding. Fiction that makes artful demands, and in return, offers substantial rewards.”
—Kirkus Reviews

“The stories in Elise Levine’s latest collection, Big of You, are great travellers. They move through time, scene, and setting like water, seamless and fluid, burbling with questions of personal identity and what it takes to change one’s present or put to bed one’s past.”
—Katherine Abbass, The Ex-Puritan

“In Elise Levine’s high-voltage collection, she transports us everywhere from a casino to Europe to outer space. These stories crackle with restlessness, longing, and mischief, as characters peel away layers of identity to glimpse what’s underneath. Fraught, honest and hilarious, Big of You stretches our imaginations and delightfully capsizes our expectations of selfhood, story, and reality.”
—Erika Krouse, author of Save Me, Stranger

“In Big of You, Elise Levine is expert at conveying confusion and dislocation in a magic shorthand that is all hers. Each ingenious sentence blends beauty and sorrow in an intimate voice close to your ear. The writing is whip-smart with heart, it’s nutritious, it’s everything you need.”
—Mark Anthony Jarman, author of Burn Man

“Big of You moves through the contours of grief, the gradients of memory, and the foils of artistic ambition, all in honor of the shattered human heart. These stories are both painfully funny and refreshingly earnest, a feat so striking it feels almost impossible that one writer can have such electrifying breadth. When I read Elise Levine, I lose and find myself anew in her lucid prose. That’s the power of an Elise Levine sentence—she is singular.”
—Alejandro Heredia, author of Loca

Praise for Elise Levine

“Levine uses raw, hallucinatory prose to tell this curious story of a woman becoming undone . . . [Blue Field‘s] visceral wordplay, rough sexuality, and anguished depiction of survivor’s guilt are bound to captivate its audience. A transgressive, gut-wrenching portrayal of grief that asks what it’s like to drown.”
—Kirkus Reviews

“Reading [Blue Field] is a sensation akin to drifting weightlessly beneath the surface of the text . . . dazzling, textured, tightly woven.”
—Music and Literature

“Elise Levine writes with a new and exciting type of lyric rhythm. These are stories with the beating heart of poems.”
—Rion Amilcar Scott, winner of the 2017 PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize for Debut Fiction

“Elise Levine’s startling sentences alternate between serrated sentiment and lyrical reverie, offering readers that rarest commodity—genuine surprise.”
—Jeff Jackson, author of Destroy All Monsters

“Levine addresses questions of identity and the impact of violence as well as addiction, consent, and society’s exploitation of trauma, and does so in gorgeous, surprising, and utterly gripping prose.”
—Elizabeth Hazen, Baltimore Fishbowl

Featuring children’s own words and heart-warming pictures, this is the perfect book for children living in or visiting Ontario!

‘I love Ontario because… ‘

This charming book combines endearing things said by children about Ontario, with gentle illustrations of familiar animals. And from the beautiful lakes to the snowy cities, there is certainly a lot to love!

A wonderful keepsake for residents of Ontario, or souvenir for visitors.

With beautiful pictures and charming words from children - this is the perfect book to read together!

One of the world’s pre-eminent mixologists serves up the theatre, mystery and science behind his signature modern cocktails

Vanilla-and-hickory smoked Manhattan, anyone?

BarChef is a cocktail lounge on Queen Street West in Toronto. Dedicated to the art and science of the cocktail, its beauty lies in the colours and details behind the bar―from apothecary jars filled with bitters and syrups to bell jars and 100-pound blocks of ice. Owner Frankie Solarik holds court in his fedora, chipping ice, talking to patrons (a mix of rockers, hipsters, business people, locals and celebrities) and enjoying his craft thoroughly.

Solarik is a leading figure of the global cocktail renaissance. His book, The Bar Chef, explores the importance of engaging all the senses when creating modernist cocktails. Depth and balance―the ideas behind great wines, and great food and wine pairings―are vital to a magnificent drink. Chapters detail the elements of the set-up, the art and craft of mixology and, of course, include recipes for syrups, infusions, bitters and the cocktails themselves. A chapter for non-alcoholic drinks rounds out the book.

This book is aimed at adventurous mixologists, enthusiasts whowant to hone their skills and taste, and who want to experience something of Solarik’s genius at home. This book is neither comprehensive nor “general.” Rather, it is a carefully curated sampling of Solarik’s creations, featuring recipes that are challenging but achievable, and oh sodelicious.

WJB's Book Club Pick for November 2026!

Use code BOOKCLUB to get 20% off at checkout. 

“[Swan’s writing offers] not only an enjoyable read, but also the chance to think and reflect on the vast complex living entity that is the world.” —Nobel Prize-winner Olga Tokarczuk

Where do we belong if we don’t fit in?

A memoir about what it means to defy expectations as a woman, a mother and an artist, for readers of Joan Didion and Gloria Steinem and listeners of the podcast Wiser than Me

Susan Swan has never fit inside the boxes that other people have made for her—the daughter box, the wife box, the mother box, the femininity box. Instead, throughout her richly lived, independent decades, she has carved her own path and lived with the consequences.

In this revealing and revelatory memoir, Swan shares the key moments of her life. As a child in a small Ontario town, she was defined by her size—attracting ridicule because she was six-foot-two by the age of twelve. She left her marriage to be a single mother and a fiction writer in the edgy, underground art scene of 1970s Toronto. In her forties, she embraced the new freedom of the Aphrodite years. Despite the costs to her relationships, Swan kept searching for the place she fit, living in the literary circles of New York while seeking pleasure and spiritual wisdom in Greece, and culminating in the hard-won experience of true self-acceptance in her seventies.

Swan examines the expectations of women of her generation and beyond using the lens of her then-unusual height as a metaphor for the way women are expected not to take up space in the world. Inspiring and thought-provoking, Big Girls Don’t Cry invites us to re-examine what we’ve been taught to believe about ourselves and ask how it could be different.

From Canada's much-missed, nationally bestselling storyteller, a must-have collection featuring ten never-before-published stories and ten classic favourites, perfect for old fans and Vinyl Cafe newcomers alike.

From the unforgettable Christmas classic “Dave Cooks the Turkey” to the tender tribute to ice-cream-loving, potato-sitting Arthur the dog in “Morte d’Arthur”; from the joys and challenges of marriage in “The Canoe Trip” to the celebration of childhood adventure in “The Waterslide.” 
 
From the beginning of life (the hilarious “Labour Pains”) to the end (the touching “Love Never Ends”) and all the moments—big and small—in between, these stories remind us that there are occasions to celebrate every day.

For more than two decades, Stuart McLean entered the hearts and homes of Canadians via The Vinyl Cafe radio show, his many tours across the country, and multiple nationally bestselling books. His charming, humane, and side-splitting stories brought the trials and triumphs of Dave, Morley, Sam, and Stephanie to life, and made their memorable circle of friends, family, and neighbours as real as our own.

This collection is both timely and timeless, a rich celebration of Stuart McLean's inimitable voice, and of the importance of love, community, kindness, and the healing power of laughter.

Esther the fairy is back, to investigate the water cycle! From the award-winning author of The Most Magnificent Thing, 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. This time around, though, she's got her fairy pals Clover and Fig, along with trusty sidekick Albert the bird, to help create a more science-oriented entry for their school's "Magic Fair" -- Pixieville's magical answer to a science fair, which has never gone well for Esther before. When the local pond disappears, Esther realizes this might be the perfect opportunity for a real experiment! It's up to Esther and her fairymates to ask questions, make hypotheses, do research and show their conclusions -- this time, all about the water cycle. But when everyone Esther knows believes that Jack Frost is responsible for ice and that moon sneezes cause evaporation, she'll have to learn that sometimes discovery is its own reward.

Solid, Liquid, Gassy (A Fairy Science Story) is the second book in Ashley Spires' hilarious picture book series about a charming, determined heroine who celebrates the joys of curiosity and wonder.

The unbelievable true story of Canada’s first known spree killer, told by a veteran of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.

In June 1966, Matthew Charles Lamb took his uncle’s shotgun and wandered down Ford Blvd in Windsor, Ontario. At the end of the bloody night, two teenagers lay dead, with multiple others injured after an unprovoked shooting spree. In his investigation into Lamb’s story, Will Toffan pieces together the troubled childhood and history of violence that culminated in the young man’s dubious distinction as Canada’s first known spree killer—at which point the story becomes, the author writes “too strange for fiction.” Travelling from the border city streets, to the courtroom, to the Oak Ridge rehabilitation centre, and finally Rhodesia, Watching the Devil Dance is both a thrilling narrative about a shocking true crime and its bizarre aftermath and an insightful analysis of the 1960s criminal justice system.

WJB's Book Club Pick for September 2026!

Use code BOOKCLUB to get 20% off at checkout. 

An electric examination of women and men, sex and love, self-loathing and twenty-first century loneliness.

Between writing a weekly column for The Hype Report and managing her mood stabilizers, Gloria navigates a series of quasi-relationships while commiserating with her best friend about dating apps and dick pics, married men and questionable boundaries. But when she makes a glib pass at Daryn, a stranger on a subway platform crowded with young anti-immigration protesters, and finds him waiting for her outside her health club a couple of days later, a surprising curiosity leads her not to consider a restraining order, but to talk to him.

Claiming she wants to interview him for an article on the incel movement, Gloria meets Daryn for coffee and soon invites him back to her apartment—where his earnestness and painfully restrained desire inspire her to dominate him sexually. As their physical relationship intensifies, so does their emotional connection, and Gloria can’t shake the sense that she’s headed in a dangerous direction.

An electric examination of sex and love, self-loathing, and twenty-first century loneliness, Self Care is a devastating novel about women and men, what they want and what they say they want, and the violent tension between the two.

Praise for Self Care

“You can always count on Russell Smith for a straightforward technique that hits you in the solar plexus . . . The novel’s title proves piercingly ironic: this is a book about people whose absolute inability to care for themselves is the product of social alienation and a world in which everything—from proscribed gender roles to the ravages of unfettered capitalism—is stacked against them. That the only escape from this cycle of despondency appears to be violent is the ultimate indictment in this bleak, acerbic fable of our benighted time.”
—Steven W. Beattie, That Shakespearean Rag

“Smith’s writing is at its best when he’s skewering the often performative nature of sex, dating, and politics, as well as the solipsistic delusion of 21st-century life. [Self Care is] an uncomfortable, disturbing, and timely examination of relationships between men and women.”
—Kirkus Reviews

“A searing indictment of shallow, self-obsessed online culture and the deep disconnects in society, Canadian writer Smith’s latest examines trauma and tragedy and delves into the difference between performing care and actually caring.”
—Booklist

“A perverse, bleak, often hilarious Romeo-and-Juliet tale for our cultural moment. Smith renders the self-obsessed urban landscape with absolute precision.”
—Mark Kingwell, author of Question Authority: A Polemic About Trust in Five Meditations

“A gripping, unforgettable story about a young journalist and her secret incel lover that explodes the fairy tale of the frog prince. It had me sitting on the edge of my seat.”
—Susan Swan, author of Big Girls Don’t Cry

“A millennial tragedy that is also smart, funny, and mercifully free of piety and exculpation. Self Care is a book and an attitude adjustment that CanLit could really use.”
—Timothy Taylor, author of The Rule of Stephens

“With Self Care, Smith writes with the exacting and intimate observation for which he is known and loved, offering an unflinching play-by-play of protagonist Gloria’s murky interiority as she navigates an insidious but intimate relationship with incel Daryn. Think sharp psychological realism of Kristen Roupenian’s “Cat Person” or Graham and Thorne’s Adolescence. Smith’s ability to bravely take readers to the very edge of tenderness in the face of danger leaves one with something more profound than a lesson and more encompassing than a fact. Self Care is a story as hard to look at as it is well-observed. It haunted me and I couldn’t put it down.”
—Aley Waterman, author of Mudflowers

“Consumed this jewel of a novel in a single sitting . . . Upsetting and hilarious by turns, it is a sort of updated comedy of manners, really, about a wellness blogger who dominates an incel. By one of Canada’s closest social observers.”
—Stephen Marche, author of On Writing and Failure

Praise for Russell Smith

“For me at least, Canada’s most fascinating writer, the author whose new books and stories I most eagerly anticipate, whose fiction I approach with a hopeful curiosity.”
—Jeet Heer

“Russell Smith is one of the best stylists of my generation. His prose is exact, surprising, and written by a man with a fine ear.”
—Andre Alexis, author of Fifteen Dogs

“Smith writes some of the most luminous prose in Canadian fiction . . . He mines and refines the best of what has come before on the way to making it his own.”
—Montreal Gazette 

“[Confidence is] a poisonously funny portrait of the so-hip-it-hurts fashion, food, and bar scene.”
—Maclean’s

“Smith . . . is a gifted anthropologist of the urbane. Those gifts are on full display throughout Confidence.”
—Globe and Mail

World-renowned cartoonist Seth returns with three new ghost stories for 2024.

When a group of tourists visits the deserted island of Podolo, one wants to rescue a feral cat they find there, and the others reluctantly agree. Unfortunately, the rescue proves more difficult than they expect—and they soon discover they’re not alone on Podolo.

Praise for Christmas Ghost Stories

Note: Special Edition Hardcover features:

A stunning collectible edition of Emily St John Mandel’s global phenomenon Station Eleven. This edition features:

• gorgeous sprayed edges
• an illustration of the Mandelverse
• beautiful endpapers featuring original art of the Dr. Eleven comic
• A Sea of Tranquility story
• ribbon bookmark

New York Times and Globe and Mail bestseller • Winner of the Arthur C. Clarke Award and the Toronto Book Award • Finalist for a National Book Award, the PEN/Faulkner Award, the Sunburst Award and CBC Canada Reads • Longlisted for the Baileys Prize and for the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction • An acclaimed TV series

One snowy night, a famous Hollywood actor dies onstage during a production of King Lear. Hours later, the world as we know it begins to dissolve. Moving back and forth in time—from the actor’s early days as a film star to fifteen years in the future, when a theatre troupe known as the Travelling Symphony roams the wasteland of what remains—this suspenseful, elegiac, spellbinding novel charts the strange twists of fate that connect five people: the actor, the man who tried to save him, the actor’s first wife, his oldest friend and a young actress with the Travelling Symphony caught in the crosshairs of a dangerous self-proclaimed prophet. Sometimes terrifying, sometimes tender, Station Eleven tells a story about the relationships that sustain us, the ephemeral nature of fame and the beauty of the world as we know it.

Team Canada is facing the United States in a must-win game at the Vancouver Olympics. The score is 2-1 for Canada, and then disaster strikes—with only 24 seconds left in the game, the US scores. The game is tied and goes into overtime. The team that scores the next goal will win the Olympic gold medal. Seven minutes into overtime, Sidney Crosby gets the puck and shoots . . .

Ideal for young hockey fans and future stars, this level-2 I Can Read book is perfect for children learning to sound out words and sentences.