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ebooks for Everyone Lists

Browse featured titles from the ebooks for Everyone collection of accessible epubs.

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All Books in this Collection

Songs in the Sea

By: Pheilm Martin

$19.95

Songs in the Sea is an exciting story of a young whale’s journey across an entire ocean alone with only one piece of advice to keep him going: “Follow the north star”.

Oh no! The loud traffic of ships sailing on the ocean sunk under the waves, now Little Whale is confused! With the noise all around him, he has lost track of Mama Whale’s and lost his way song on their migration north. How will he ever find her, and his way home, again? Getting lost is scary. But Little Whale learns that with perseverance and determination, along with remembering the things your mother has told you, you can bravely face any obstacle.

Packed with adventure and colourful marine characters like sea turtles, squids, other whales, Songs in the Sea is a delightful book about bravery, resilience, and the bonds between family, especially mother and child.
Sotto Voce

By: Maureen Hynes

$20.00

Poems that give full attention to a world in shambles, a world in which “mercy is failing.”

Maureen Hynes, in her fifth book of poetry, speaks tenderly yet vehemently about the threatened worlds that concern her. From Toronto, where she lives and walks the city’s afflicted watershed, she turns her attention to the near and far, shifting it from the First Nations’ stolen lands to Syria and the refugee crisis in the Mediterranean; from the deaths of family and friends to the newborns into whose care our endangered planet will pass; and from love’s transient regrets to the sustaining love two women share. Hynes’ is a gaze that grieves quietly, delights humbly, and, in the search for solace, never rests. Each poem in Sotto Voce is a recitative of healing. Hear the music in every word and, despite the damaged environments Hynes gives voice to, be restored.

This is a book that bears witness to the “dynamite stick of injustice,” one that balances fear and hope, misfortune and renewal, calamity and natural beauty. Sotto Voce carries the complexity and seriousness of its themes lightly–it’s important to know when to speak loudly, and when to whisper.
South Away

By: Meaghan Hackinen

$20.95

Shortlisted for the Sixth Annual Rakuten Kobo Emerging Writer Prize – Nonfiction Category!
Shortlisted for Best Trade Non-Fiction at the 2020 Book Publishing Awards!

South Away follows Meaghan Marie Hackinen and her sister in the adventure of a lifetime: bicycling from Terrace, BC down the West Coast to (almost) the tip of the Baja Peninsula. Along the way Hackinen battles with the elements in Vancouver Island’s dense northern forests and frigid Mexican deserts; encounters strange men, suicidal highways and monster trucks; and makes some emergency repairs as ties and spokes succumb to the ravages of the journey. Luckily, the pair meet some good people along the way and glean some insight about the kindness of strangers.

A rare road-trip story with two female leads, this travel memoir also chronicles an inner journey, as the author begins to better understand her relationship with her adventurous (and not-so-adventurous) family. South Away tells an engaging and personable tale, with imaginative and memorable depictions of land and sea along the ever-winding coast.
Spanish Boy, The

By: C.S. Reardon

$19.95

Grief cannot abide a mystery. No one understands that better than the Clarey family of Halifax.

In 1937, the Clareys are a close and loving family until their lives are transformed the night Edie, their wilful daughter and sister, vanishes, leaving no trace, no clue, as to what happened to her.

The lingering questions of her disappearance will ricochet through the succeeding generations of Clareys.

As decades pass and lives unfold, the memories of Edie’s brothers and her parents, are haunted by the spectre of the missing girl. The misery of their grief is entangled with the only comfort they can find: a belief that one day the mystery of Edie’s disappearance will be solved.

Drawn into Edie’s young life, and into her story, are two young men who work at her father’s business: the bookkeeper Raymond Gillis and a stranger named Micah Gessen. The three form a triangle of jealousy and obsession. One of them knows what happened to the Clarey girl.

Just as Edie’s vanishing is a moment of transformation for the Clarey family, so are the times they live in. The story of The Spanish Boy is told against the backdrop of some of the momentous events of the twentieth and earliest part of the twenty-first centuries.
Speechless

By: Anne Simpson

$22.95

A’isha Nasir is a Nigerian teenager who has been charged with adultery and sentenced to death. Sophie MacNeil is an ambitious young Canadian journalist who meets A’isha and writes an impassioned article about her plight. But when the article sets off waves of outrage and violence, Sophie is forced to come to terms with the naivete with which she approached the story. Who can — and should — tell a story?

Speechless is a stunning novel of justice, witness, and courage. In luminous prose, Simpson explores the power of words, our responsibility for them, and the ways they affect others in matters of life and death.
Spirit of a Hundred Thousand Dead Animals

By: Jim Nason

$19.95

Skye Rayburn, a somewhat eccentric but well-respected veterinarian, always had a troubled relationship with her daughter Moira. When Moira is killed in a car accident, Skye has no choice but to take in her two-year-old grandson Duncan. Maybe this time she will “get it right.” Over the years, Skye creates a diary: Life Lessons for Duncan. This diary, a surreal blend of fact and fiction, catalogues human and animal characteristics?their similarities and differences, as well as their complex interdependencies, which she hopes will help Duncan understand his now-homeless father, his mother’s death and her own heartbreaking secrets. As her story unfolds we learn how her life choices have, at times, contradicted her alleged love of c hildren and animals. In the summer of 2011, Skye, now 91, finds herself alone when Duncan is invited to show his art at the Edinburgh Festival. Skye must make peace with what she’s done and Duncan must to come to terms with who he is.
Splinter & Shard

By: Lulu Keating

A smashing debut collection from award-winning filmmaker Lulu KeatingSplinter & Shard is the debut story collection by acclaimed filmmaker-turned-writer Lulu Keating. Vivid and precise, the stories in this collection offer an uncompromising journey into what it means to be human.Keating catches her characters at their pivotal moments of discovery, self-reckoning, and change. A dutiful mother of grown children learns a life-shattering secret about two of her children that upends her life. A macho man in mid-life must reconcile himself to his new role as a cosmetics consultant. A young woman, pregnant and unhappy, travels to the Yukon to bury her husband. An old woman turns away from her family to bond with the convicts of the small jail next door. An orphaned girl stumbles onto an unexpected connection with a stranger.In these stories, flaws and strengths are writ large as characters fumble toward redemption.From flash fiction to deep-dive character studies, Splinter & Shard turns over the rocks of everyday experience to reveal the psychological and philosophical truths underneath. The stories range back and forth in time, from Nova Scotia to the Yukon (with a side trip to Florida), and explore universal themes — loss, infidelity, faith, mortality, and love.
Squawk

By: Megan Gail Coles

$17.95

Annie Runningbird doesn’t have time for the games boys want her to play. She’s aging out of foster care on her next birthday. The system has decided she is an adult, so Annie must make adult decisions. Where will she live? How will she make money? Demanding grown-up choices preoccupy the young girl’s mind as she navigates relationships with boys and men in her company. Does she like Isaac, a cute yet naive boy she met at the mall food court? Can she trust Louis, her older and increasingly overbearing foster care worker? Who can Annie depend on in her ever-shifting world? This intel is important. Because Annie needs to win the very real game she’s playing. She must save herself to save the day.

This daring new play from Newfoundland playwright Megan Gail Coles showcases a bold and refreshing approach to theatre for young audiences. Coles deftly interweaves Canada’s colonial history with online gaming as our Indigenous protagonist struggles to understand and reconcile her past, present and future.
Stat Shot: A Fan’s Guide to Hockey Analytics

By: Rob Vollman

$23.95

With every passing season, statistical analysis is playing an ever-increasing role in how hockey is played and covered. Knowledge of the underlying numbers can help fans stretch their enjoyment of the game. Acting as an invaluable supplement to traditional analysis, Stat Shot: A Fan’s Guide to Hockey Analytics can be used to test the validity of conventional wisdom and to gain insight into what teams are doing behind the scenes — or maybe what they should be doing!

Inspired by Bill James’s Baseball Abstract, Rob Vollman has written a timeless reference of the mainstream applications and limitations of hockey analytics. With over 300 pages of fresh analysis, it includes a guide to the basics, how to place stats into context, how to translate data from one league to another, the most comprehensive glossary of hockey statistics, and more. Whether A Fan’s Guide to Hockey Analytics is used as a primer for today’s new statistics, as a reference for leading edge research and hard-to-find statistical data, or read for its passionate and engaging storytelling, it belongs on every serious fan’s bookshelf. A Fan’s Guide to Hockey Analytics makes advanced stats simple, practical, and fun.
Still Life With June

By: Darren Greer

Cameron Dodds has just turned thirty. A writer, he get his ideas from the lives of others, often borrowing stories from the patients of his workplace, the Salvation Army Treatment Centre. When one of the patients, Darrel Greene, hangs himself, Cameron sees a great opportunity for a story — maybe even a novel. He begins to research Darrel’s past, and decides to visit his sister, June, a grown woman with Down’s Syndrome. As Cameron develops a relationship with June and delves further into Darrel’s past, he makes many discoveries, none of which is more surprising than the one he makes about himself.

First published in 2003, Still Life with June won the 2004 ReLit Award and was nominated for the 2003 Pearson Canada Readers’ Choice Book Award. It was also a finalist for the Ferro-Grumley Award for LGTB Fiction in 2005, and was named a 2003 Best Book of the Year by NOW Magazine.
Still No Word

By: Shannon Webb-Campbell

$16.95

EGALE Canada Human Rights Trust OUT IN PRINT Literary Award Winner! Shannon Webb-Campbell’s Still No Word seeks the appearance of the self in others and the recognition of others within the self. Patient, searching, questioning, and at times heartbreaking—these poems reveal the deep past within the present tense and the interrelations that make our lives somehow both whole and unfinished. And though Webb-Campbell is political at times, this is not politics for the sake of politics: here, it’s a matter of the human heart. Ranging from reflective to angry, from sensual to humourous, her poetry inhabits that mercurial space between the public and the private, making Still No Word a remarkably accomplished debut collection.
Stunt

By: Claudia Dey

$19.95

Nominated for the Amazon.ca First Novel Award

Eugenia Ledoux, nine years old, wakes to a note from her father: ‘gone to save the world. sorry. yours, sheb wooly ledoux. asshole.’ Eugenia is left behind with her mother, the sharp-edged B-movie actress Mink, and her sister, the death-obsessed and hauntingly beautiful Immaculata. When Mink climbs into the family car and vanishes, Eugenia doubles in age overnight, butremains the dark and diminutive creature who earned the nickname ‘Stunt.’

Eugenia devotes herself to finding Sheb. She writes to the man she believes to be Sheb’s father: I.I. Finbar Me The Three, a retired tightrope walker. Waiting for Finbar’s response, she retreats to Toronto Island, where she meets Samuel Station, a barefoot voluptuary, world traveller and ring-maker.

When Finbar does write back, Eugenia wonders if she will find what she is looking for – or something else entirely. Studded with postcards from outer space, twins, levitation, the explosion of a shoulder-pad factory, and some accomplished taxidermy, Stunt is part dirge, part cowboy poetry and part love letter to the wilder corners of Toronto and of ourselves.

“Claudia Dey’s debut novel is like a snowflake, utterly unique, compellingly intricate and sparkle-riven, sharp as broken crystal and just as dazzling. Stunt is daring, poignant, full of abandon and abandonment, wistful and funny. Brilliant.” – Lisa Moore, author of This is How We Love

“Dey’s … prose [is] a wondrous compression of poetry, her carnival of characters drawn in gripping detail, and the riot of fantastical yet gritty imagery all shot through with a keen and relentless sadness. The sheer density of the imagery and vivid characterizations makes you slow down to enjoy every sentence. You want to read this novel carefully; you want to read it again.” – The Globe and Mail

“Stunt is mesmerizing, rewarding, and breathtaking. Dey never lets up.” – Quill & Quire
Subdivided

By: Jay Pitter, John Lorinc

$20.95

How do we build cities where we aren’t just living within the same urban space, but living together?

Greater Toronto is now home to a larger proportion of foreign-born residents than any other major global metropolis. Not surprisingly, city officials rarely miss an opportunity to tout the region’s ethno-cultural neighbourhoods. Yet there’s strong evidence that the GTA is experiencing widening socio-economic disparities that have produced worrisome divisions. We say that ‘diversity is our strength,’ but has a feel-good catchphrase prevented us from confronting the forces that seem to be separating and isolating urban communities?

Through compelling storytelling and analysis, Subdivided’s contributors – a wide range of place-makers, academics, activists and journalists – ask how we can expand city-building processes to tackle issues ranging from transit equity and trust-based policingto holistic mental health, dignified affordable housing and inclusive municipal governance. Ultimately, Subdivided aims to provoke the tough but pressing conversations required to build a truly connected and just city.

Contents

Introduction – Jay Pitter

Identity and the City: Thinking Through Diversity – Beyhan Farhadi

Doing Immigrant Resettlement Right – Doug Saunders

Wasauksing–Vancouver–Toronto: My Path Home – Rebeka Tabobondung

How We Welcome: Why Canada’s Refugee Resettlement Program Undermines Place-making – Sarah Beamish and Sofia Ijaz

Finding Space for Spirituality – Fatima Syed

Navigating the City with an Invisible Illness: The Story of Dorothy – Denise DaCosta

Culture and Mental Illness – Karen Pitter

Neighbourhood Watch: Racial Profiling and Virtual Gated Communities – Asmaa Malik

Accessing Education: An Immigrant’s Story – Nicholas Davis

Policing and Trust in the Hyper-Diverse City – Nana Yanful

Three Questions about Carding – Idil Burale

An Overburdened Promise: Arts Funding for Social Development – Ian Kamau, Paul Nguyen and Ryan Paterson, with John Lorinc

Designing Dignified Social Housing – Jay Pitter

Walking Through Loss: A Critical Visit to an Old Neighbourhood – Photography by Taha Muharuma

Reconsidering Revitalization: The Case of Regent Park – Jay Pitter in conversation with Sandra Costain

Model Citizens – Andrea Gunraj

A Tale of Two – or Three – Cities: Gentrification and Community Consultations – Mariana Valverde

Mobility in the Divided City – Eric Mann

Toward MoreComplete Communities: Business Out of the Box – Alina Chatterjee

Going Beyond Representation: The Diversity Deficit in Local Government – John Lorinc

Brampton, a.k.a. Browntown – Noreen Ahmed-Ullah

Life in the City In-Between – Shawn Micallef

Conclusion – J. David Hulchanski
subUrban Legends

By: Joan Crate

$16.95

Joan Crate’s much-anticipated third book of poetry is equal parts revision and reverie, offering a mid-life view of childhood influences and expectations that is stirring, startling, and wise. Deliciously invoking the iconic figure of Snow White, subUrban Legends considers what lies beyond youth and the trite promise of “happily ever after,” transporting readers to a land of complexity and nuance from which few cultural officiados report.
Subversive Sonnets

By: Pamela Mordecai

$20.95

These “subversive sonnets” overhaul the traditional sonnet form to address a range of subjects, from the tenderness of love to the terror of rape, punishment, torture, and murder. Mordecai has an unfailing ear for voices, for the music that sings and laughs and laments the stories of family, clan, and tribe. This is Pamela Mordecai’s fifth collection of poetry.
Sukun

By: Kazim Ali

$29.95

The poetry of Kazim Ali “invites us to give ourselves over to the music of language” (Beloit Poetry Journal). Known for its lyrical and expressive language, “crafted with a controlled, delicate quality that never stops questioning, never stops teaching, and never stops astounding,” (American Poet), Ali’s work explores themes of identity, migration, and the intersections of cultural and spiritual traditions.

Sukun (Arabic for stillness or rest, as well as being a diacritic that indicates there is no vowel to pronounce following a consonant) draws from a generous selection from Ali’s six full-length collections. This remarkable volume also includes 25 astonishing new poems and an afterword by the poet. Together, they allow us to trace Ali’s passions and concerns and to take the measure of his art: the close attention to the spiritual and the visceral, and the deep language play that is at once musical and plain spoken.
Suliewey

By: Mi’sel Joe, Sheila O’Neill

$16.95

Award recognition for My Indian

***2022 ATLANTIC BOOK AWARDS: APMA BEST ATLANTIC-PUBLISHED BOOK AWARD – SHORTLIST***

***2022 BMO WINTERSET AWARD – LONGLIST***

***2022-2023 HACKMATACK AWARD: ENGLISH FICTION – SHORTLIST***

***2022 IPPY AWARDS: MULTICULTURAL FICTION: JUV/YA – SILVER***

Suliewey: The Sequel to My Indian continues the story of Mi’kmaw guide Sylvester Joe, whose traditional name is Suliewey, as he seeks out the last remaining Beothuk community.

In My Indian, Sylvester was hired by William Cormack in 1822 to guide him across Newfoundland in search of Beothuk encampments. In fact, he followed the advice of his Elders and guided Cormack away from the Beothuk.

In this sequel, having parted ways with Cormack at St. George’s Bay, Sylvester decides to go out on his own in search of the winter camp of the last of the remaining Beothuk.

Written as fiction by two Mi’kmaw authors, Suliewey: The Sequel to My Indian supports Mi’kmaw oral history of friendly relationships with the Beothuk.

The novel reclaims the settler narrative that the Beothuk and the Mi’kmaq of Newfoundland were enemies and represents an existing kinship between the Mi’kmaq and the Beothuk.

Rich in oral history, the descriptions of traditional ceremonies and sacred medicines, the use of Mi’kmaw language, and the teachings of two-spirit place readers on the land and embed them in the strong relationships described throughout the book.
Superfoods, Silkworms, and Spandex

By: Joe Schwarcz

In this new collection of bite-size pop science essays, bestselling author, chemistry professor, and radio broadcaster Dr. Joe Schwarcz shows that you can find science virtually anywhere you look. And the closer you look, the more fascinating it becomes. In this volume, we look through our magnifying glass at maraschino cherries, frizzy hair, duct tape, pickle juice, yellow school buses, aphrodisiacs, dental implants, and bull testes. If those don’t tickle your fancy, how about aconite murders, shot towers, book smells, Swarovski crystals, French wines, bees, or head transplants? You can also learn about the scientific escapades of James Bond, California’s confusing Proposition 65, the problems with oxygen on Mars, Valentine’s Meat Juice, the benefits of pasteurization, the pros and cons of red light therapy, the controversy swirling around perfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), why English cucumbers are wrapped in plastic, and how probiotics may have seeded Hitler’s downfall. Superfoods, Silkworms, and Spandex answers all your burning questions about the science of everyday life, like:why “superfood” is a marketing term, not a scientific one;why plastic wrap is sometimes the environmental choice;why supplements to reduce inflammation may just reduce your bank account;how maraschino cherries went from a luxury good to a cheap sundae topper;what’s behind “old book smell”;how margarine became a hot item for bootleggers;why duct tape is useful, but not on ducts; andhow onstage accidents led to fireproof fabrics.
Suzanne

By: Anais Barbeau-Lavalette

$20.95

SHORTLISTED FOR CBC CANADA READS 2019

WINNER OF THE BEST TRANSLATED BOOK AWARD

Eighty-five years of art and history through the eyes of a woman who fled her family – as re-imagined by her granddaughter.

Anaïs Barbeau-Lavalette never knew her mother’s mother. Curious to understand why her grandmother, Suzanne, a sometime painter and poet associated with Les Automatistes, a movement of dissident artists that included Paul-Émile Borduas, abandoned her husband and young family, Barbeau-Lavalette hired a private detective to piece together Suzanne’s life.

Suzanne, winner of the Prix des libraires du Québec and a bestseller in French, is a fictionalized account of Suzanne’s life over eighty-five years, from Montreal to New York to Brussels, from lover to lover, through an abortion, alcoholism, Buddhism, and an asylum. It takes readers through the Great Depression, Québec’s Quiet Revolution, women’s liberation, and the American civil rights movement, offering a portrait of a volatile, fascinating woman on the margins of history. And it’s a granddaughter’s search for a past for herself, for understanding and forgiveness.

‘It’s about a nameless despair, an unbearable sadness. But it’s also a reflection on what it means to be a mother, and an artist. Most of all, it’s a magnificent novel.’– Les Méconnus
Swallows Uncaged, The

By: Elizabeth McLean

$21.95

Ambitious, emotionally resonant stories about the lives of women and girls in Vietnam over the past thousand years.

In The Swallows Uncaged, Elizabeth McLean paints a sweeping yet intimate panorama of Vietnam in the style of a Vietnamese eight-panel screen: eight narratives that each capture a moment in time and yet speak to one another. Interweaving historical and fictional characters over ten centuries, the stories portray the passions and turmoils of successive generations of the Nguyen clan’s wives and daughters, and of their men.

When the men go away, to war or to advance their fortune, the women stay behind (not always idly or chastely). They dutifully pass down their ancestors’ traditions to their daughters and granddaughters, but also recast the iron rules to gratify their ambitions and desires. At their humble posts by the hearth, they defy authority, scheme to improve their lot, and love zestfully and wickedly.

Meticulously researched and beautifully crafted, these stories form a triumphant debut from an author with a superb gift for storytelling.