Fiction Books

Twelve years after the lights go out . . .
An epic journey to a forgotten homeland

The hotly anticipated sequel to the bestselling novel Moon of the Crusted Snow

In the years since a mysterious cataclysm caused a permanent blackout that toppled infrastructure and thrust the world into anarchy, Evan Whitesky has led his community in remote northern Canada off the rez and into the bush, where they’ve been rekindling their Anishinaabe traditions, isolated from the outside world. As new generations are born, and others come of age in a world after everything, Evan’s people are stronger than ever. But resources around their new settlement are drying up, and elders warn that they cannot stay indefinitely.

Evan and his teenaged daughter, Nangohns, are chosen to lead a scouting party on a months-long trip down to their traditional home on the shores of Lake Huron—to seek new beginnings, and discover what kind of life—and what danger—still exists in the lands to the south.

Waubgeshig Rice’s exhilarating return to the world first explored in Moon of the Crusted Snow is a brooding story of survival, resilience, Indigenous identity, and rebirth.

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Tsering Yangzom Lama holds a BA in creative writing and international relations from the University of British Columbia, and an MFA from Columbia University. Born and raised in Nepal, Tsering has lived in Toronto, New York City, and Vancouver, where she now resides. We Measure the Earth with Our Bodies is her first novel. 

National Bestseller

Winner of the 2019 OLA Forest of Reading Evergreen Award

Shortlisted for the 2019 John W. Campbell Memorial Award

Shortlisted for the 2019/20 First Nation Communities READ Indigenous Literature Award

2020 Burlington Library Selection; 2020 Hamilton Reads One Book One Community Selection; 2020 Region of Waterloo One Book One Community Selection; 2019 Ontario Library Association Ontario Together We Read Program Selection; 2019 Women’s National Book Association’s Great Group Reads; 2019 Amnesty International Book Club Pick

January 2020 Reddit r/bookclub pick of the month

“This slow-burning thriller is also a powerful story of survival and will leave readers breathless.” — Publishers Weekly

“Rice seamlessly injects Anishinaabe language into the dialogue and creates a beautiful rendering of the natural world … This title will appeal to fans of literary science-fiction akin to Cormac McCarthy as well as to readers looking for a fresh voice in indigenous fiction.” — Booklist

A daring post-apocalyptic novel from a powerful rising literary voice

With winter looming, a small northern Anishinaabe community goes dark. Cut off, people become passive and confused. Panic builds as the food supply dwindles. While the band council and a pocket of community members struggle to maintain order, an unexpected visitor arrives, escaping the crumbling society to the south. Soon after, others follow.

The community leadership loses its grip on power as the visitors manipulate the tired and hungry to take control of the reserve. Tensions rise and, as the months pass, so does the death toll due to sickness and despair. Frustrated by the building chaos, a group of young friends and their families turn to the land and Anishinaabe tradition in hopes of helping their community thrive again. Guided through the chaos by an unlikely leader named Evan Whitesky, they endeavor to restore order while grappling with a grave decision.

Blending action and allegory, Moon of the Crusted Snow upends our expectations. Out of catastrophe comes resilience. And as one society collapses, another is reborn.

Waubgeshig Rice is an author and journalist from Wasauksing First Nation on Georgian Bay. His first short story collection, Midnight Sweatlodge, was inspired by his experiences growing up in an Anishinaabe community and won an Independent Publishers Book Award in 2012. His debut novel, Legacy, followed in 2014, with a French translation published in 2017. His latest novel,

Moon of the Crusted Snow, became a national bestseller and received widespread critical acclaim, including the Evergreen Award in 2019. His short stories and essays have been published in numerous anthologies.

His journalism experience began in 1996 as an exchange student in northern Germany, writing articles about being an Indigenous youth in a foreign country for newspapers back in Canada. He graduated from Ryerson University’s journalism program in 2002. He spent most of his journalism career with the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation as a video journalist, web writer, producer and radio host. In 2014, he received the Anishinabek Nation’s Debwewin Citation for excellence in First Nation Storytelling. His final role with CBC was host of Up North, the afternoon radio program for northern Ontario. He left daily journalism in 2020 to focus on his literary career.

He currently lives in Sudbury, Ontario with his wife and two sons, where he’s working on the sequel to Moon of the Crusted Snow.

A poignant and incandescent debut that explores the bonds of community and what it really means to change

Chinelo—or Nelo, as her best friend, Kate, calls her—is all about her neighbourhood, Ginger East. She loves its chill vibe, its ride-or-die sense of community and the memories she has of growing up there. Ginger East isn’t what it used to be, though. After a deadly incident at the local arcade, most of Nelo’s friends, except for Kate, have moved away. But as long as the two girls have each other, Nelo’s good.

Then Kate’s parents’ corner store is vandalized, leaving Nelo shaken to her core. The police and the media are quick to point fingers, and soon more of the outside world descends upon Ginger East with promises to “fix the neighbourhood.” Suddenly, Nelo finds herself in the middle of a drama that is unfolding on a national scale.

Worse yet, Kate has begun acting strange. She’s pushing Nelo away at the exact time they need each other most. Nelo’s entire world is morphing into something she hates, and she must figure out how to get things back on track or risk losing everything—and everyone—she loves. 

Now a Netflix Original Series!

In the tradition of The Road and The Stand, Eisner Award-nominated writer-artist Jeff Lemire (THE NOBODY, Essex County) presents a bold new postapocalyptic vision of the fate of humankind, the values of innocence, and the unexpected friendships that can emerge in even the darkest of places with SWEET TOOTH BOOK ONE.
 
Seven years ago, the Affliction raged like a forest fire, killing billions. The only children born since are part of a new breed of human-animal hybrids. Gus is one of these children: a boy with a sweet soul, a sweeter tooth—and the features of a deer.
 
But kids like Gus have a price on their heads. When vicious hunters descend on his isolated forest home, a mysterious and violent man called Jepperd rescues Gus. The hulking drifter promises to lead Gus to the Preserve, a fabled safe haven for hybrid children.
 
As the two cross this dangerous new American frontier, will Jepperd corrupt the boy he’s nicknamed “Sweet Tooth,” or will Gus’ heart change Jepperd?
 
Collects SWEET TOOTH #1-12, as well as character sketches, cover sketches, and an introduction by celebrated actor Michael Sheen (Masters of Sex, Frost/Nixon).

A delightfully modern look at what happens for a young woman when tradition, dating, and independence collide, from acclaimed author Sonya Lalli.

Adulting shouldn't be this hard. Especially in your thirties. Having been pressured by her tight-knit community to get married at a young age to her first serious boyfriend, Anu Desai is now on her own again and feels like she is starting from the beginning. 

But Anu doesn't have time to start over. Telling her parents that she was separating from her husband was the hardest thing she's ever done—and she's still dealing with the fallout. She has her young daughter to support and when she invests all of her savings into running her own yoga studio, the feelings of irresponsibility send Anu reeling. She'll be forced to look inside herself to learn what she truly wants.

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Sonya Lalli is a romance and women’s fiction author of Punjabi and Bengali heritage. Her books have been featured in Entertainment Weekly, NPR, Washington Post, Glamour and more. She lives in Vancouver with her husband.…

A treasure trove of new poems by one of our most sought-after poets: poems that range from descriptions of the Detroit of her childhood to her current life on Cape Cod, from deep appreciations of the natural world to elegies for lost friends and relationships, from a vision of her Jewish heritage to a hard-hitting take on today’s political ironies.

A video gamer’s championship aspirations are dashed when his parents send him to Camp Reset, where electronics are forbidden and you're forced to socialize, eat healthy, and spend time outside. Gamerville is a timely and vulnerable exploration of the importance of human connection and what it means to run in a pack, brought to you by award-winning author Johnnie Christmas.

Max Lightning is howling at the moon—he’s finally qualified for Gamerville, a championship where players compete to be top dog in the multiplayer video game Lone Wolf of Calamity Bay. But his dreams of domination are doomed when his parents send him to Camp Reset. Gone are the long nights of downing energy drinks and getting copious amounts of screen time. They've been replaced with fresh air and group activities under the hot sun—a shock to the system for a lone wolf like Max. Can Max escape Camp Reset and level up at Gamerville, or has he finally played his last match?

Praise for SWIM TEAM:

Coretta Scott King Illustrator Honor

National Book Award Longlist

Kirkus Best Book of the Year

Eisner Award Best Publication for Kids Nominee

Harvey Award Best Children’s or Young Adult Book Nominee

"Combines wonderful characters and history to create a story that will make you want to dive right in!" —Jerry Craft, author of the Newbery Award–winning New Kid

“A revelation! You’ll root for Swim Team—the water is just right.” —John Jennings, New York Times bestselling and Eisner Award–winning creator

“Swim Team is a beautiful story about trying new things. Johnnie Christmas is a fantastic storyteller and artist.” —Kazu Kibuishi, author of the Amulet series

“Full of charm, heart, and pulse-pounding races. A winner!” —Gene Luen Yang, author of American Born Chinese and Dragon Hoops

Stephen Leacock Memorial Medal for Humour

About the Book

Meet Helen Thorpe. She’s smart, preternaturally calm, deeply insightful and a freshly trained butler. On the day she is supposed to start her career as an unusually equanimous domestic professional serving one of the wealthiest families in the world, she is called back to a spiritual retreat where she used to work, the Yatra Institute, on one of British Columbia’s gulf islands. The owner of the lodge, Helen’s former employer Edna, has died while on a three-month silent self-retreat, leaving Helen instructions to settle her affairs.

But Edna’s will is more detailed than most, and getting things in order means Helen must run the retreat for a select group to determine which of Edna’s relatives will inherit the institute. Helen’s classmates, newly minted butlers themselves, decide they can’t let her go it alone and arrive to help Helen pull things off. After all, is there anything three butlers can’t handle? As Helen carries out the will’s instructions, she begins to think that someone had reason to want Edna dead. A reluctantly suspicious investigator, Helen and her band of butlers find themselves caught up in the mystery.

Critical Praise

“No one but Susan Juby would come up with the concept of a Buddhist butler detective, then execute it so beautifully. This novel has all the whimsical characters and charm we’ve come to know and love from Juby, but this time wrapped in a murder/mystery. I want to say it's reminiscent of #1 Ladies’ Detective Agency or The Thursday Murder Club, yet it is so entirely unique; a perfect novel to curl up with in front of a fire with a cozy blanket and a mug of tea. I hope this is the first in a long series."
— Susin Nielsen, Bestselling author and creator of Family Law on Global TV

”Take one newly graduated domestic professional, a holistic retreat on an isolated island, a murdered mentor and a group of fractious suspects and you have the makings of this comedic mystery from the lauded author of the hilarious Republic of Dirt.”  — Canadian Living

“A cast of wonderfully quirky characters and plenty of humour round out this truly original mystery.” — The Belleville Intelligencer

“Readers will find her new book to be an intriguing mystery that makes you think, makes you laugh, and may even make you want to go to Hollyhock to soak up the ambience and study mindful meditation.”  — The BC Review

Galdorwide is a sprawling, magical kingdom, home to a host of mythical creatures. It is also a kingdom in grave danger. The king has been murdered, and his daughter, Bella, stands to inherit the throne. But the king has other ideas. His ghost is haunting Galdorwide with a secret purpose, one which threatens to destroy the fragile peace of the land.

The Galdorians, meanwhile, are racing to uncover the dead king's evil plot. Along the way, they battle trolls and vampires while investigating mysterious events which point to a conspiracy to unleash a deadly force. The children of Galdorwide struggle to harness newly discovered magical powers in a bid to help save Galdorwide, but their parents have bigger problems. Who can they trust? Who is on their side, and who is secretly allied with the king? Their journey is a perilous one - will they win the race against time to save Galdorwide?