BC Books for Adults

In celebration of BC Book Day (April 23, 2024) we have chosen some of our favourite BC authors.

Updated April 23, 2024
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Campbell, Nicola I.
Ebook
Peyakow : reclaiming Cree dignity
McLeod, Darrel J.
Paper Book
Mamaskatch, Darrel J. McLeod's 2018 memoir of growing up Cree in Northern Alberta, was a publishing sensation--winning the Governor General's Literary Award for Non-Fiction, shortlisted for many other major prizes and translated into French and German editions. In Peyakow, McLeod...
Return to solitude : more Desolation Sound adventures with the Cougar Lady, Russell the Hermit, the Spaghetti Bandit and others
Lawrence, Grant
Paper Book
The long-awaited sequel to Grant Lawrence's bestselling memoir Adventures in Solitude. It's been over a decade since renowned broadcaster and indie rock musician Grant Lawrence launched his writing career with the award-winning Adventures in Solitude, yet some things never change-...
Mennonite valley girl : a wayward coming of age
Funk, Carla
Paper Book
"In luminous prose that effortlessly portrays the intimate and familiar pangs of growing up, Funk captivates from the get-go, and the '80s nostalgia will hit the spot for those who came of age amid skyscraper bangs, acid-washed jeans, and the ubiquity of teen heartthrob Kirk Cameron. These small...
Tilly : a story of hope and resilience
Gray Smith, Monique
Paper Book
Tilly has always known she's part Lakota on her dad's side. She's grown up with the traditional teachings of her grandma, relishing the life lessons of her beloved mentor. But it isn't until an angry man shouts something on the street that Tilly realizes her mom is Aboriginal too--a Cree woman taken...
Dark roads
Stevens, Chevy
Audiobook
Lampedusa : a novel
Price, Steven
Paper Book
SHORTLISTED FOR THE 2019 SCOTIABANK GILLER PRIZE From the #1 nationally bestselling author of By Gaslight, a novel of exquisite emotional force about love and art in the life of one of the great writers, reminiscent of Colm Tóibín's The Master, or Michael Cunningham's...
One good thing : a living memoir
Farrant, M. A. C.
Paper Book
One Good Thing is a charming collision of memoir with the living, exuberant, and vulnerable natural world. Written in sixty-four short epistolary chapters, M.A.C. Farrant's latest offering represents a search for hope and appeasement in a rapidly changing and often perplexing society....
Framed in fire
Whishaw, Iona
Paper Book
Shortlisted for a 2023 Crime Writers of Canada Award Nominated for a 2023 Left Coast Crime "Lefty" Award An April 2022 Loan Stars Top 10 A shallow grave, a missing person, and near-fatal arson keep Lane, Darling, and the Nelson police on high alert in the latest...
Washington Black
Edugyan, Esi
Paper Book
George Washington Black, or "Wash," an eleven-year-old field slave on a Barbados sugar plantation, is terrified to be chosen by his master's brother as a manservant. To his surprise, the eccentric Christopher Wilde turns out to be a naturalist, explorer, inventor, and abolitionist. Soon Wash is...
The Sasquatch at home : traditional protocols & modern storytelling
Robinson, Eden
Paper Book
In The Sasquatch at Home, Robinson shares an intimate look into the intricacies of family, culture, and place. Robinson's disarming honesty and wry irony shine through her depictions of the trip she and her mother took to Graceland, the potlatch where she and her sister received their Beaver Clan...
Not on my watch : how a renegade whale biologist took on governments and industry to save wild salmon
Morton, Alexandra
Paper Book
In 1989, industrial aquaculture moved into British Columbia, chasing away the whales Alexandra Morton had dedicated her life to studying. Her fisherman neighbours asked her if she would write letters on their behalf to government explaining the damage the farms were doing to the fisheries, and one...
The book of form and emptiness
Ozeki, Ruth
Paper Book
WINNER OF THE WOMEN'S PRIZE FOR FICTION NATIONAL BESTSELLER A brilliantly inventive new novel about loss, growing up, and our relationship with things, by the Booker Prize-finalist author of A Tale for the Time Being One year after the death...
Finding the mother tree : discovering the wisdom of the forest
Simard, S.
Paper Book
NEW YORK TIMES BEST SELLER * From the world's leading forest ecologist who forever changed how people view trees and their connections to one another and to other living things in the forest--a moving, deeply personal journey of discovery "Finding the Mother Tree...
Cold case BC : the stories behind the province's most sensational murder and missing person cases
Lazarus, Eve
Paper Book
Finalist, Bill Duthie Booksellers' Choice Award (BC Book Prizes) In her BC bestseller Cold Case Vancouver, crime historian and reporter Eve Lazarus used investigative skills to shine a light on the city's most baffing unsolved murders. In Cold Case BC, Lazarus casts...
Up the coast : one family's wild life in the forests of British Columbia
Willcock, Kathryn
Paper Book
Kathryn Willcock and her sisters grew up in logging camps on the coast of B.C. in the 1960s when children were set loose to play in the wilderness, women kept rifles next to the wood stove, and loggers risked their lives every single day. The author's tales of grizzly bears, American tourists,...
Following the good river : the life and times of Wa'xaid
Penn, Briony
Paper Book
Based on recorded interviews and journal entries this major biography of Cecil Paul (Wa'xaid) is a resounding and timely saga featuring the trials, tribulations, endurance, forgiveness, and survival of one of North American's more prominent Indigenous leaders. Born in 1931 in the Kitlope,...
Last Winter
Mac, Carrie
Paper Book
#1 NATIONAL BESTSELLER As gripping and unforgettable as Fredrik Backman's Bear Town and Kristin Hannah's The Great Alone, this haunting novel digs into the impact of a fatal avalanche on a small BC mountain town, as seen through the eyes of those who survive the tragedy. ...
Rez rules : my indictment of Canada's and America's systemic racism against Indigenous peoples
Louie, Clarence (Chef)
Paper Book
A common-sense blueprint for what the future of First Nations should look like as told through the fascinating life and legacy of a remarkable leader. In 1984, at the age of twenty-four, Clarence Louie was elected Chief of the Osoyoos Indian Band in the Okanagan Valley. Nineteen...
Astra
Bowers, Cedar
Ebook
What if you could see yourself as others see you? Astra is a beguiling debut novel that reveals the different faces of one woman, as seen through the eyes of ten people over a lifetime. Longlisted for the Scotiabank Giller Prize, shortlisted for the Ethel Wilson Fiction Prize, and named a...
Dancing in gumboots : adventure, love & resilience : women of the Comox Valley
Allison, Lou
Paper Book
After the extraordinary success of Gumboot Girls comes the sequel anthology, Dancing in Gumboots. Having relocated to Comox, Jane encountered a new group of women who traveled to the Comox Valley in the 1970s. Fascinated by their stories, Lou Allison and Jane Wilde return to...
Five little Indians
Good, Michelle
Paper Book
WINNER: Canada Reads 2022 WINNER: Governor General's Literary Award for Fiction WINNER: Amazon First Novel Award WINNER: Kobo Emerging Author Prize  Finalist: Scotiabank Giller Prize Finalist: Atwood Gibson Writers Trust Prize Finalist: BC & Yukon...
Mindful of murder
Juby, Susan
Paper 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...
Greenwood
Christie, Michael
Ebook
NATIONAL BESTSELLER * Winner of the Arthur Ellis Award for Best Crime Novel * Shortlisted for the Ethel Wilson Fiction Prize * Shortlisted for the Roderick Haig-Brown Regional Prize * Longlisted for the 2019 Scotiabank Giller Prize * A Canada Reads 2023 Contender * One of...
Out of the sun : on race and storytelling
Edugyan, Esi
Paper Book
An insightful exploration and moving meditation on identity, art, and belonging from one of the most celebrated writers of the last decade.  What happens when we begin to consider stories at the margins, when we grant them centrality? How does that complicate our certainties about who...
The road narrows as you go
Henderson, Lee
Paper Book
 All Wendy Ashbubble has ever wanted is to draw comics as well as Charles Schultz's Peanuts --and to one day see her creations grace the pages of a major daily newspaper. Growing up in Victoria in the 1970s, Wendy dreams of getting out, getting away ... and getting recognition for her talent....
Arboreality
Campbell, Rebecca
Paper Book
A professor in pandemic isolation rescues books from the flooded and collapsing McPherson Library. A man plants fireweed on the hillside of his depopulated Vancouver Island suburb. An aspiring luthier poaches the last ancient Sitka spruce to make a violin for a child prodigy. Campbell's astonishing...
Namwayut : we are all one : a pathway to reconciliation
Joseph, Robert
Paper Book
BC and Yukon Book Prizes, Winner of the Bill Duthie Booksellers? Choice Award, 2023 We all share a common humanity. No matter how long or difficult the path ahead, we are all one. Reconciliation belongs to everyone. In this profound book, Chief Robert Joseph,...
All the Bears Sing: Stories
Macy, Harold
Paper Book
Harold Macy's story collection highlights the particular magic of the West Coast, reflecting on how we both shape--and are shaped by--the land we inhabit. Whether he's chronicling fallen old-growth monarchs sprawled on a steep slope up-coast, the brassy orchestra of trumpeter swans,...
A Meditation on Murder: A Novel
Juby, Susan
Paper Book
Butler-detective Helen Thorpe returns to help a wannabe influencer get her life in order--and solve the murders of her fellow content creators--in this hilarious sequel to Mindful of Murder by bestselling author Susan Juby  When Buddhist butler Helen Thorpe is loaned out to help...
Fine: Poems
Rader, Matt
Charting the porous borderlands of the self and the social through a year of cataclysm, Matt Rader conjures a vision of the present from a deep future. The follow-up to Ghosthawk, Fine is set largely in the Kelowna area of the Okanagan Valley, BC, over the period of June 2021-June 2022....
Ocean Drive: A Novel
Wiebe, Sam
White Riot: The 1907 Anti-Asian Riots in Vancouver
Tsang, Henry
Paper Book
WINNER, Dr. Edgar Wickberg Book Prize for the Best Book on Chinese Canadian History (Chinese Canadian Historical Society of BC); FINALIST, Bill Duthie Booksellers' Choice Prize and City of Vancouver Book Prize Essays and photographs that document the anti-Asian riots of 1907 in...
A Complex Coast: A Kayak Journey from Vancouver Island to Alaska
Norwell, David
Paper Book
A soul-searching personal account of a young man's 1,700-kilometre kayak journey from Victoria, BC, to Gustavas, Alaska, illustrated with whimsical watercolour maps and illustrations of local flora, fauna, and landscapes. In 2014, twenty-four-year-old geography student David Norwell set...
Tracking giants : big trees, tiny triumphs, and misadventures in the forest
Lewis, Amanda (Editor)
Paper Book
"I learned, I laughed, I sighed, I swooned. What an absolutely delightful romp through the forest."--Kate Harris, author of Lands of Lost Borders "Intimate, open-hearted. . . A personal introduction to one of the most profoundly alive places on earth."--John...
Fire Weather: The Making of a Beast
Vaillant, John
Paper Book
PULITZER PRIZE FINALIST * A NEW YORK TIMES TOP TEN BOOK OF THE YEAR * FINALIST FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARD IN NONFICTION * A stunning account of a colossal wildfire and a panoramic exploration of the rapidly changing relationship between fire and humankind from the...
The Wild Horses of the Chilcotin: Their History and Future
McCrory, Wayne
Paper Book
The Chilcotin's wild horses are romantic and beautiful, but they are also controversial: they are seen by government policy as intruders competing for range land with native species and domestic cattle and, as a result, they have been subject to culls and are not officially protected. ...
In the Belly of the Sphinx: A Novel
Buday, Grant
Grant Buday's new novel is an eccentric coming-of-age story that captures the late-Victorian fascination with ancient Egypt, auras, and the afterlife. Smart, stubborn, and forthright Pearl Greyland-Smith is nine years old when we first meet her, in 1882. She lives with her...
Fake it so real
Sanford Blades, Susan
Paper Book
Fake It So Real takes on the fallout from a punk-rock lifestyle--the future of "no future"--and its effect on the subsequent generations of one family. In June of 1983, Gwen, a gnarly Nancy Spungen look-alike, meets Damian, the enigmatic leader of a punk band. Seven years and two unplanned...

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