ebooks for Everyone Lists

Luminous Ink

Luna and the Heart of the Forest

$19.95

Follow the adventures of Luna and a cast of ghosts and folkloric beings, including a redemption-seeking Viking, a friendly whale, and a murderous bog monster!

Luna is eleven years old and obsessed with adventure. While visiting the island of Newfoundland, Luna finally has a chance to explore a setting as big as her imagination, but her father, a roving journalist and widower, doesn’t want her straying too far. Ignoring his caution, Luna sets off on her own and enters a mysterious forest, where she bests a monster in a battle of wits—and unleashes a creeping darkness that devours her father. Now she must embark on a real quest: to heal the island, the ghosts that haunt it, and the people she cares about most.

Luna and the Heart of the Forest is a dark fantasy brimming with ghosts and folklore immersed in the saltwater of the Canadian Atlantic.

Lyric Sexology Vol. 1

By: Trish Salah

$19.95

Largely written before the current cultural visibility of trans lit, Lyric Sexology Vol. 1 is Salah’s prescient contribution to a canon of self-determined literature that explores transness. In this case, the author sidesteps the “I” in the text and instead draws on archives–sexological, anthropological, psychological, among others–to demonstrate the shifting and shifty nature of our identities, affiliations, and narratives.

This 2017 edition is the first to be published in Canada and features four new poems and a new cover design by Kai Yun Ching and Wai-Yant Li.

Macho Man

By: Jon Finkel

Oooohhh yeahhhh! Macho Man: The Life of Randy Savage is the sensational, definitive biography of the WrestleMania headlining, Spider-Man fighting, Slim Jim snapping, minor league baseball playing American original: Randy Savage. Savage, a WWE wrestling hall of famer, was an A-list celebrity who sat atop the entertainment universe for much of the ’80s and ’90s. His outfits were as flamboyant as anything worn by Liberace, Elton John, or Prince. His charisma surpassed Hulk Hogan’s and is rivaled only by “Stone Cold” Steve Austin and The Rock. His millions of fans are more loyal than followers of any sports team.Macho Man starred in cartoons, was featured on lunchboxes, sold a slew of action figures and toys, was in multiple video games, guest starred on Baywatch, Mad About You, and Walker, Texas Ranger, and made multiple appearances on iconic ’90s talk shows. He supported a myriad of kids’ charities, emceed Christmas events at hospitals for George Steinbrenner, played minor league baseball with Pete Rose, was the Harvard Lampoon’s “Real Man of the Year,” and held his family’s wrestling legacy above all else. With catchphrases and a voice still imitated by millions to this day, and with his GIFs reaching hundreds of millions of views on social media, the Macho Man is a transcendent figure who led an extraordinary life.

Magdaragat

Mahmoud

By: Tara Grammy, Tom Arthur Davis

$16.95

Mahmoud is an exuberant, if overwhelmingly passionate, Iranian engineer-cum-taxi driver who relishes the chance to regale his passengers with his love of Persian culture. Emanuelos, a fabulously gay Spanish perfume salesman, can talk a mile-a-minute about his boyfriend, Behnam. And then there’s Tara, an awkwardly charming Iranian Canadian preteen who just wants to be “normal,” whatever that means. When the three strangers find themselves crossing paths in the busy streets of Toronto, their experiences with racism, sexism, homophobia, homesickness, and everything in between become intertwined in unexpected ways.

Malabarista

By: Garry Ryan

$18.95

Garry Ryan follows up Smoked with his most revelatory Detective Lane adventure yet. Under investigation by the Calgary Police Department, Lane finds himself fighting for his career. Then, when an Eastern European war criminal winds up dead in the city, and his partner Arthur is diagnosed with cancer, Lane must contend with dangerous criminals, broken allegiances, pressure from his superiors, a determined bomber, and the very real fear of losing the person he cares for most of all.

Malignant Metaphor

By: Alanna Mitchell

$27.95

An unprecedented take on cancer and recovery

Winner of the Lane Anderson Award for Science Writing

“Mitchell does a convincing job sorting fact from fiction, diffusing fear, and challenging the manipulative language of fundraisers who aim for pocketbooks rather than intellectual honesty . . . Mitchell’s research is rooted in science, while her writing remains grippingly personal.” — Quill & Quire

Alanna Mitchell explores the facts and myths about cancer in this powerful book, as she recounts her family’s experiences with the disease. When her beloved brother-in-law John is diagnosed with malignant melanoma, Alanna throws herself into the latest clinical research, providing us with a clear description of what scientists know of cancer and its treatments. When John enters the world of alternative treatments, Alanna does, too, looking for the science in untested waters. She comes face to face with the misconceptions we share about cancer, which are rooted in blame and anxiety, and opens the door to new ways of looking at our most-feared illness.

Beautifully written, Malignant Metaphor is a touching and persuasive book that has the power to change the conversation about cancer. Clear-eyed and compassionate, Mitchell opens the door to new ways of looking at our most-feared illness.

Mallard, Mallard, Moose

By: Lori Doody

$12.95

One day a moose walks into town, and inexplicably, two mallards tag along. The moose wants nothing more than to get rid of those pesky mallards, but they follow him everywhere. He can’t duck them at the harbour?they’re afraid of the seagulls; downtown, the pigeons give them pause. No matter where he goes, those mallards follow. Until, that is, the moose finds the perfect solution?duck, duck, goose.

With vibrant illustrations, and simple, playful language, Doody has created another charming story for young readers and listeners.

Mary’s Wedding

By: Stephen Massicotte

$17.95

On the night before her wedding, Mary dreams of a thunderstorm, during which she unexpectedly meets Charlie sheltering in a barn beside his horse. With innocence and humour, the two discover a charming first love. But the year is 1914, and the world is collapsing into a brutal war. Together, they attempt to hide their love, galloping through the fields for a place and time where the tumultuous uncertainties of battle can’t find them. A play with a heart as big as the skies that serve as its stage, Mary’s Wedding is an epic, unforgettable story of love, hope, and survival.

Matadora

By: Elizabeth Ruth

Set in Spain and Mexico during the 1930s, Matadora tells the story of Luna Caballero Garcia, an impoverished and intrepid servant attempting to make her name in the bullring at a time when it was illegal for a girl to do so. Matadora carries readers from bohemian artistic circles in Mexico City and Andalusia to Norman Bethune’s mobile blood transfusions on the Madrid front.

Against a backdrop of rising fascism and the Spanish Civil War, Elizabeth Ruth has created a powerful and compelling exploration of love, art, and politics, and an intelligent mirror for our times.

Boldly sensual, with a cast of unforgettable characters and a plot that will keep readers on the edge of their seats, Matadora is easily one of the most original books of the year.

Matanzas

By: Garry Ryan

$18.95

His psyche still reeling from having to kill a criminal in the line of duty, Calgary’s Detective Lane flies to Cuba to celebrate the wedding of his beloved niece. While there, though, he finds himself drafted by the local police into investigating the murder of a Canadian tourist.

Upon his return to Calgary, links between this incident and the deaths of local elderly pensioners start to make themselves known, drawing Lane and his partner Nigel Li further into a web of conspiracy, politics and big money.

Garry Ryan’s award-winning, best-selling mystery series continues with all the intrigue, good humour and mochaccinos that fans have come to expect.

Medicine Shows

By: Yvette Nolan

$19.95

Contemporary Indigenous theatre in Canada is only thirty-three years old, if one begins counting from the premiere of Maria Campbell’s Jessica in Saskatoon and the establishment of Native Earth Performing Arts in Toronto. Since those contemporaneous events in 1982, the Canadian community of Indigenous theatre artists has grown and inspired one another.Medicine Shows: Indigenous Performance Culture traces the work of a host of these artists over the past three decades, illuminating the connections, the artistic genealogy, and the development of a contemporary Indigenous theatre practice. Neither a history nor a chronicle,Medicine Shows examines how theatre has been used to make medicine, reconnecting individuals and communities, giving voice to the silenced and disappeared, staging ceremony, and honouring the ancestors.

Melt

By: Heidi Wicks

$22.95

***IPPY AWARDS: BEST REGIONAL FICTION: CANADA-EAST – SILVER***

***THE GLOBE AND MAIL SUMMER’S HOTTEST READS***

Jess is a sensitive creature of habit. Cait is her passionate and impulsive best friend. And in Melt, Heidi Wicks follows the lives of these characters from their teenage years into their late thirties—through drifting desires, fake tans, economic turbulence, kids, grief, job loss, love loss, and personal renewal. Shifting radiantly between the late nineties and the present day, Melt explores the life-sustaining anatomy of friendship and the complex relationships we have with our pasts.

Micro Miracle

By: Amy Boyes

$19.95

Micro Miracle is the moving account of a first-time mother whose expectations of childbirth and parenting are dramatically altered when she gives birth sixteen weeks prematurely to Madeline. Weighing just over a pound, with eyes fused shut, and thin, fragile skin, Madeline could fit in a hand, but she’s too ill to be touched. Unflinchingly honest, Micro Miracle is a true story of a medical triumph.

Mischief in High Places

By: Ted Rowe

$22.95

Mischief in High Places examines the spectacular career and personal life of the man who, in 1919, first became elected prime minister of Newfoundland.

The political successes of Sir Richard Squires’ career are overshadowed by a legacy of scandal and deceit that paved the way for Newfoundland’s loss of democracy in 1933.

Perhaps best known for slipping out of the Colonial Building during the 1932 riot, Squires had survived three corruption-ridden terms in office in the final decades of responsible government while living a high-flying lifestyle with his wife, Helena.

Modern and Normal

By: Karen Solie

$17.00

Evade your eye. Try to see as others do
what is desired or refused. What went wrong.
Or right, then wrong. Objectively, what hangs.
Pull yourself together. Years are neither kind
nor cruel. You drag on. The girl is gone.
Consider that it might be time to call in
a professional. Blood is fearless, runs
to meet a touch, indiscriminate, remembering
the first time it fell in love with the world, unaware
that now you are alone.

From “Mirror”

In Modern and Normal, Karen Solie takes her on-the-road fascination with being between places to a new level, exploring conceptual and perceptual states of in-betweenness – for example, between what is perceived and what is actually there, or between and among the patterns the world repeats from the cell to the structure of the universe — to find points of intersection. Solie finds a middle ground between the discourses of the hard sciences and the intuitive, a realm of weird overlap wherein lie questions of probability, fate, determinism, chance, luck, and faith. She writes about fractals and physics, but also about bar bands, broken hearts, and the trappings of desire. Some splendid landscape poems celebrate nature while mourning the way in which it’s often exploited and used. Once again Karen Solie offers readers her lovely dexterity and skill in poems which entertain as they move.

Mondegreen Riffs

By: Angeline Schellenberg

$24.95

In her third full-length collection, acclaimed poet Angeline Schellenberg takes a ?long, loving look at the real? (to borrow theologian Walter Burghardt?s phrase). With her ear formed by Ignatian spirituality, her body sensitized by neurodivergence and trauma, Schellenberg listens to the world with humour, reverence, and above all, empathy.

Weaving the sights and sounds we perceive with the questions we dare to ask, Mondegreen Riffs explores the intersection of sensation, meaning, and wonder. This groundbreaking collection intertwines three series: prose poetry on the social history of colour; poems impersonating musical instruments; and lyrical answers to odd online inquiries such as ?If I eat myself, would I become twice as big or disappear completely?? Schellenberg invites us to embrace a holy uncertainty, and in doing so to ?mishear the most beautiful things.?

Monkey Ranch

By: Julie Bruck

$19.00

Comic and sober by turns, these poems ask us what is sufficient, what will suffice?

… a mandrill, a middle-aged woman, a shattered Baghdad neighbourhood, a long marriage, even a spoon, grapple with this unanswerable conundrum — sometimes with rage, or plain persistence, sometimes with the furious joy of a dog who gets to ride with his head through a truck’s passenger window. Julie Bruck’s third book of poetry is a brilliant and unusual blend of pathos and play, of deep seriousness and wildly veering humour. Though Bruck “does not stammer when it’s time to speak up,” and “will not blink when it’s time to stare directly at the uncomfortable,” as Cornelius Eady says in his blurb for the book, “in Monkey Ranch she celebrates more than she sighs, and she smartly avoids the shallow trap of mere indignation by infusing her lines with bright, nimble turns, the small, yet indelible detail. Bruck sees everything we do; she just seems to see it wiser. Her poems sing and roil with everything complicated and joyous we human monkeys are.”

Moon of the Crusted Snow

By: Waubgeshig Rice

$22.95

2023 Canada Reads Longlist Selection

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.

Browse by Category

All Books in this Collection

Luminous Ink

Luna and the Heart of the Forest

Lyric Sexology Vol. 1

Macho Man

Magdaragat

Mahmoud

Malabarista

Malignant Metaphor

Mallard, Mallard, Moose

Mary’s Wedding

Matadora

Matanzas

Medicine Shows

Melt

Micro Miracle

Mischief in High Places

Modern and Normal

Mondegreen Riffs

Monkey Ranch

Moon of the Crusted Snow