No wind was favourable. After spending years navigating the psychological warfare of teenage years and adolescence, when it finally came time to graduate university, Alex De Ciantis was lost. The person he knew himself to be was a distant memory, and all that existed in the mirror was what he believed to be a shell—a broken silhouette of a kid who once had so much joy. As life became tethered to a perpetual string of partying, insecurity, and unfulfilled potential, he craved nothing more than to untangle the web of how he got there, in hopes of discovering a new, uncharted path.

Learn more about The Art of Unbecoming

Canadian Stories: A Teenaged Adventure with Presidents, Drag Queens and Drug Lords

"All of a meter away from me, the former Prime Minister of Canada sighed. He broke eye contact, maybe for the first time in the past half an hour, and looked down. He rubbed his eyes with his thumb and index finger. The Right Honourable Paul Martin looked up at the roof, sighed again, and looked back at me."

From the small town of Ingersoll, Ontario, I found myself in the office of a Prime Minister. I was only 18-years-old, and was interviewing one of the most powerful men in my nation. What had started as an innocent joke, telling a world-record holder I was a reporter in the hopes of hearing more of his life story, had somehow developed into a legitimate enterprise.

From an innocent joke, I befriended drug lords and drag queens, shared tea with astronauts and Olympians, discussed cinema with Academy-Award winning director Norman Jewison and actor Dan Aykroyd, and even Skyped the President of Latvia. All of this wile still a teenager.

"It all started with John Turmel..."

To purchase Canadian Stories, e-mail Cody at cody.groat@gmail.com

Learn more about Cody Groat. His time at Wilfrid Laurier University represents more than just a chapter in his life. The result of his undergraduate years is, quite literally, an entire book.

Few Canadians have served their nation as well and as widely as the Honourable Darcy McKeough. He was elected Member of Provincial Parliament for Chatham–Kent, Ontario, five times between 1963 and 1977. In 1967 he was mockingly dubbed the Duke of Kent by an opposition MPP, a title he has worn as a badge of honour ever since. As Treasurer of Ontario, Minister of Municipal Affairs, and Minister of Energy during his time in office, McKeough fought to achieve budget surpluses long before it was fashionable, created regional governments that brought more efficient services to citizens, and attempted to tame Ontario Hydro.

 Learn more about The Duke of Kent 

Winner of the 2019 Hilary Weston Writers' Trust Prize for Nonfiction

A beautiful and haunting memoir of kinship and culture rediscovered.

Jenny Heijun Wills was born in Korea and adopted as an infant into a white family in small-town Canada. In her late twenties, she reconnected with her first family and returned to Seoul where she spent four months getting to know other adoptees, as well as her Korean mother, father, siblings, and extended family. At the guesthouse for transnational adoptees where she lived, alliances were troubled by violence and fraught with the trauma of separation and of cultural illiteracy. Unsurprisingly, heartbreakingly, Wills found that her nascent relationships with her family were similarly fraught.

Ten years later, Wills sustains close ties with her Korean family. Her Korean parents and her younger sister attended her wedding in Montreal, and that same sister now lives in Canada. Remarkably, meeting Jenny caused her birth parents to reunite after having been estranged since her adoption. Little by little, Jenny Heijun Wills is learning and relearning her stories and those of her biological kin, piecing together a fragmented life into something resembling a whole.

Delving into gender, class, racial, and ethnic complexities, as well as into the complex relationships between Korean women--sisters, mothers and daughters, grandmothers and grandchildren, aunts and nieces--Older Sister. Not Necessarily Related. describes in visceral, lyrical prose the painful ripple effects that follow a child's removal from a family, and the rewards that can flow from both struggle and forgiveness.

Learn more about Older Sister. Not Necessarily Related.

In Conversations with Classic Film Stars, retired journalists James Bawden and Ron Miller present an astonishing collection of rare interviews with the greatest celebrities of Hollywood's golden age. Conducted over the course of more than fifty years, they recount intimate conversations with some of the most famous leading men and women of the era, including Douglas Fairbanks Jr., Joseph Cotten, Cary Grant, Gloria Swanson, Joan Fontaine, Loretta Young, Kirk Douglas, and many more.

Learn more about Conversations with Classic Film Stars

When I was thirteen years old, I found out that I was slowly going blind.

In 1999, I was diagnosed with a degenerative, genetic eye condition called Retinitis Pigmentosa. This condition will leave me mostly, if not completely, blind.

As a teenager who felt I could see fine, going blind felt far away.

Now, at age thirty-two, I have lost the majority of my peripheral vision and going blind feels anything but far away.

If you are going blind and wonder how in the hell you are supposed to cope with this, my story is for you.

If you love someone who is going blind and wish that you knew how to help in some way, my story is for you.

Humour has been my best friend in coping with my vision loss. Through this memoir I plan to express, with sometimes humiliating levels of honesty, what slowly going blind feels like on a day-to-day basis.

My hope is that by parading my shame, anger, frustration and comedic moments publicly, I will get a few laughs and spread some awareness about vision loss.

You may not win friends with salad, but you do win friends with comedy

Learn more about Shadow Boxing and Other Bizarre Adventures of a Blind Girl.

Two months before her wedding, the unthinkable happens. Katie, a busy twenty-six-year-old marketing consultant, becomes paralyzed on the left side of her body from a migraine. Uncertain about her future, including being able to walk down the aisle at her upcoming wedding, the state of her business, or if her body will regain normal function again, Katie learns how to adapt and navigate her new life with the support of her family and friends.
After difficult hardships in the hospital and outpatient care, she learns what it means to be an adventurer in the healthcare system and a true advocate for not only her health but her life.
In A Tale Of A Broken Brain, she shares her raw journey through personal essays and stories from her over six-week stay at the hospital and years of therapy afterwards. With each chapter, she shares her most dark and vulnerable moments and her determination to persevere with every obstacle she is faced, from relearning how to walk, use her hand, walking down the aisle and most of all, heal from devastating circumstances.

Learn more about A Tale of a Broken Brain

Linda Schuyler, co-creator and executive producer of the long-running Degrassi series, shares her personal stories about the grit and determination necessary to make it as a woman entrepreneur in the bourgeoning independent Canadian television industry of the early 1980s.

After surviving a near-fatal car accident in 1968, Linda found her life continuing to veer in unexpected directions, ultimately leading her to use her innate abilities as an educator to become a successful storyteller and businesswoman.

Linda’s deep fondness for teenagers has made her a champion for adolescents. In The Mother of All Degrassi, she shares her strong belief that television is all about the story, and a good story is all about making the political personal. Through anecdotes and introspection — and some great behind-the-scenes stories for Degrassi fans — Linda examines her philosophy to dream big, think small, meet life head-on, and always keep an open heart. 

Learn more about The Mother of All Degrassi

Bruce Cockburn has enthralled audiences with his insightful lyrics and innovative guitar playing for over half a century. Hit songs like "Wondering Where the Lions Are," "If I Had a Rocket Launcher," and "Lovers in a Dangerous Time" are just part of the story. In You Get Bigger as You Go: Bruce Cockburn's Influence and Evolution, musician and writer M.D. Dunn takes the reader on a humorous and obsessive quest to track Cockburn's significant cultural footprint. Interviews with producers, musicians, activists, fans, as well as Bruce's career-long manager, the legendary Bernie Finkelstein, and with the enigmatic Mr. Cockburn himself form the core of this critical assessment and appreciation. In these conversations, Cockburn and friends celebrate a life of music and social engagement.
You Get Bigger as You Go: Bruce Cockburn's Influence and Evolution is the perfect beginner's guide to the music and the artist, and a fun addition to any fan's library. Photographs from archivist Daniel Keebler span decades and show Cockburn in his natural habitat, on stage and in studio.

You Get Bigger as You Go: Bruce Cockburn's Influence and Evolution is available for purchase at Amazon and Indigo

Everyone says a great leader needs EQ, Emotional Intelligence, soft skills, blah, blah, blah. What does that even mean? Where do you start? Where’s the line for that on the P&L? You might think that business is all about facts and figures. You probably prefer it that way. The truth is that as uncertainty and business complexity increases, successful leaders need to embrace soft skills to get the best out of their people in a sustainable manner.

Learn more about Soft Skills Hard Results: A Practical Guide to People Skills for Analytical Leaders

Facilitators exist wherever learning happens. Anyone who works in a community organization, a corporation, a government, or a healthcare environment can end up leading a workshop, running a course, or otherwise facilitating others’ learning. Facilitators can also be consultants or post-secondary instructors who have been hired to lead one course or more. However, many people haven’t been trained in how to facilitate learning effectively.

Design to Engage is a “how to” book that will help you become an effective designer and facilitator of learning events. You will:

• learn about facilitation roles and responsibilities
• discover what good learning experiences look like
• plan for and design effective learning events using practical, straightforward design strategies
• raise your awareness about how to create inclusive, comfortable environments.

Along with specific recommendations on developing the skills and strategies necessary to be an effective facilitator, you’ll find priceless advice on creating participatory activities to keep learners involved, assessing participants’ learning, gathering feedback about learning experiences, and how to grow your facilitation practice. The more engaging and interactive you make your learning events, the more people will actually learn from them.

Practical, accessible, and jam-packed with tools to support facilitators to create impactful learning experiences, Design to Engage is a revelation and an inspiration.

Learn more about Design to Engage: How to Create and Facilitate a Great Learning Experience for Any Group.

Purposely Profitable: Embedding Sustainability into the DNA of Food Processing and other Businesses provides a proven, step-by-step methodology for integrating sustainability into the strategic plan to develop a strategy that is sustainable and aligned to a greater purpose.

Learn more about Purposely Profitable 

In an age where it is easier than ever to search the internet for financial advice, it is tougher and tougher to work through the clutter and find good advice. Too many people pay little to no attention to their finances and where their money goes. This is something that can destroy people over time and prevent them from achieving goals they want to achieve in life. We work so hard for our money; shouldn’t we make it work just as hard as we do? Sports can provide a unique approach helping explain concepts to people in many different ways. But what about personal finance? Do sports offer relevant lessons in how people can improve their spending? Cover their risks? Invest more wisely? I know that sports can bridge the gap between this abstract financial world and reality. That’s my goal of this book. There are many personal finance books out there but what makes this book unique is its intertwining of the worlds of sport and finance. Explaining things like investing or asset allocation in sports scenarios that make it more interesting and relatable than complicated and boring finance talk. I want to take personal finance topics and concepts and put them into a sports situation that helps explain the topic in a simple way and make it more fun! Because yes, you don’t need to be a financial whiz to have a solid financial picture. Once this book shows you the basics of financial planning through a sports lens, you will be surprised how much of it is common sense! This book will be your playbook to financial success. Time to get off the bench and get in the game. Let the training (or games?) begin!

Learn more about The Game Plan: The Connection Between Sports and Financial Success

To succeed, modern businesses need to learn how to grow from within, without getting lost in the weeds. Creative thinking and innovation is the foundation of any organization. It is what drives new product development, creating brands, creating compelling story telling, creating new lines of business. While we know and understand that innovation is the currency to value creation, many organizations get stuck, they become complacent, and at times they become irrelevant. The Green House Approach and thinking is a mindset shift; a shift to how we approach our thinking within environments challenging current structural norms.

Learn more about The Greenhouse Approach

How can women become effective leaders in large organizations without sacrificing who they are, as women and as mothers? This book answers the question: They should live out the 10 characteristics of today's winning leaders. These characteristics — compassion, honesty, and authenticity, for example — were once seen as feminine weaknesses in the command-and-control corporate world. But today, in an inclusive and connected world, they define the leader who strengthens organizations rather than undermines them.

This book comes from the voices of experience: over 70 women who have participated in The Judy Project, a 16-year-old leadership forum for women leaders who are aiming for the top. In compelling, first-person stories, they talk about ambition, courage, and the hard choices they’ve made to manage personal and professional lives in the real world of business. They tell stories about how they put into action the 10 leadership traits, and they offer sage advice to young people — especially young women — about how they can move up in organizations while remaining true to themselves and to their families.

Learn more about The Collective Wisdom of High Performing Women

Learn to love Mondays because you love what you do, where you do it, and who you do it with. Managers everywhere know the feelings of being overwhelmed, overworked, and underappreciated - like sinking in quicksand. If you find yourself saying "it's just the way it is," we'll show you how to change it. Instead of the usual business book formula, we created a fable that showcases real, applicable skills with real business outcomes. Accomplishing more, making a difference, and creating an amazing team culture is possible for you, regardless of where you are in your company's hierarchy, by changing the way you work, live, and play with those around you. Welcome to the world of loving Mondays!

Learn more about I Love Mondays: Accomplish More, Make a Difference, and Create a Culture Shift

David Chilton's popular The Wealthy Barber is a good starting point for anyone who wants to construct a personal financial plan. Many people are so scared of dealing with their money that they don't do anything at all--only to suffer for it over the long haul. Chilton shows that planning is simple and you don't have be a whiz kid to set yourself on the route to financial security.

"When I finally learned the basics of financial planning, I couldn't believe how straightforward they were. It's just common sense," is the overarching message. The Wealthy Barber takes the form of a novel, though it wouldn't win many awards for plot, setting, or characterization. The narrator, Dave, a 28-year-old school teacher and expectant father, his 30-year-old sister, Cathy, who runs a small business, and his buddy, Tom, who works in a refinery, sit around a barber shop in Sarnia, Ontario, and listen as Ray Miller, the well-to-do barber, teaches them how to get rich. The friends are at the age when most people start thinking about their future stability; among the three of them, they face almost every broad situation that can influence a financial plan. Ray, the Socrates of personal finance, isn't a pin-striped Bay Street wizard. He is a simple, down-to-earth barber dispensing homespun wisdom while he lops a little off the top. Ray's barbershop isn't the place to learn strategies for trading options and commodities. Instead, his advice covers the basics of RRSPs, mutual funds, real estate, insurance, and the like. His first and most important rule is ""pay yourself first."" Take 10 per cent off every pay cheque as it comes in and invest it in safe interest-bearing instruments. Through the magic of compound interest, this 10 per cent will turn into a substantial nest egg over time. This book isn't about how to get rich quick. It's about how to get rich slowly and stay that way. 

Learn more about The Wealthy Barber: The Common Sense Guide to Successful Financial Planning

and 

The Wealthy Barber Returns

100% roller-coaster ride, Blockland succeeds amazingly in both mythologizing and explaining the current state of the cryptocurrency industry… This is the cryptocurrency book for people who are too cool to read cryptocurrency books. – Cointelegraph

As an industry insider and a social scientist by training, Elias Ahonen “gives an even and unbiased view of the space in a manner that is both easily accessible and utterly charming. There is no papering-over of the darker elements of cryptocurrency.”

Learn more about Blockland: 21 Stories of Bitcoin, Blockchain and Cryptocurrency.

People spend more time choosing what they are going to wear in the morning than they do choosing how they will connect with people, how they feel or what they will accomplish. Pre-Paving is consciously choosing how you want to look, live and feel through every part of your day and every part of your life. You might say, ""if only life were so simple."" I say, ""Yes, it is and I will prove it to you!""

Learn more about Paving it Forward: 120 Pre-Paves That Will Put You in the Passing Lane

Is money causing you (or those you love) anxiety? Would it surprise you to learn that 'money worries' rank as the top source of stress for our younger Canadians? Wondering what you should have been taught in school about money?

Help is here! Lessons on Mastering Money is the critically-acclaimed personal finance guide for Canadians in their 20s and 30s.

Experts have weighed in! One calls the book "a 'must-read' for any Canadian under the age of 40" and another states that the book is filled with "tips, tricks and teachings that young Canadians need to launch their lives while making smart, financially savvy decisions."

Written by Fred Masters, a financial literacy expert with three decades of experience as a professional educator, Lessons on Mastering Money is certain to help you take better control of your money. It's the right book at the right time for our young people. As one expert proclaims, "This is the finest personal finance book that I have ever read."

Learn more about Lessons on Mastering Money

Exit is not a Four Letter Word: How to Transition Your Practice Profitably and Proudly (Financial Advisor Edition)

EXIT is NOT a Four Letter Word will change the financial fortunes of advisors who implement a refreshing new exit process. Delivered in an entertaining and informative style, this book provides advisors with the rationale and routine to prepare for the eventual transition of their business to the most qualified successor for the greatest value and assure their legacy.

Since its release in 2016, EXIT is NOT a Four- Letter Word – How to Transition Your Practice Profitably & Proudly (Financial Advisor Edition) has become the “go-to” resource for thousands of professional advisors, as they contemplate their inevitable exit from the practices they have spent so many years building. By following the conversations between Henry, a veteran financial advisor and his coach, readers  become engaged in a disciplined, yet fully personalized process to ensure their legacy, like Henry’s, is the one they want.

Exit is not a Four Letter Word: How to Transition Your Business Profitably and Proudly (Entrepreneur Edition)

EXIT is NOT a Four-Letter Word – How to Transition Your Business Profitably & Proudly (Entrepreneur Edition) builds on the success and structure of its predecessor. In a more concise, yet broadly applicable way, the book continues Henry’s story as he devotes the latter years of his own career as an advisor to coaching his business-owner friends and clients through the development of their personal succession plans. Delivered in the same entertaining and informative style, this book empowers advisors and entrepreneurs with peace of mind and great realization of value for their life’s work.

Blunder, Wonder, Thunder: Powering your Practice to New Heights

In Blunder, Wonder, Thunder: Powering your Practice to New Heights, coach and counselor George Hartman explores the life cycle of a financial advisory practice through the Blunder, Wonder and Thunder stages and traces the processes advisors should implement to build a successful and enduring practice. Using case studies and coaching sessions based on the experiences of 6,000 advisors he has counseled, George translates the theoretical into the practical; with the addition of Action Plans at the end of each chapter, he provides a step–by-step guide to a booming business. Whether advisors are setting out to build their practices or nearing the end of their journeys and planning their exits, this book provides an entertaining yet practical road map. Every advisor who reads this book will come away with a renewed sense of urgency to be the best he or she can be —and will know just how to attain that goal. George is the author of acclaimed best sellers Risk is a Four ‐Letter Word and Risk is Still a Four-Letter Word. He also writes a monthly column for industry newspaper Investment Executive on the subject of practice development for financial advisors, and is a featured columnist for the Hong Kong Journal of Financial Planning.

Learn more about Exit is not a Four Letter Word & other titles

Our world needs more superheroes. And Don't Forget Your Cape! is about inspiring people to achieve greatness, and about building more successful organizations. Hugh MacPhie combines his experience as an advisor to leaders and their teams with his experience as a dad, to make management and leadership theories simple. As we follow the life lessons of Jackson and John MacPhie and their preschool pals, we find that a lot of what we learn around the snack room table also applies around the boardroom table. From change leadership to risk management to building a corporate culture, many of today's most important business concepts come alive in this book through stories, case studies and examples of management theory. But more than anything else, this is a call to excellence. It is a reminder that at one time, each of us believed that we could be a superhero. And we still can.

Learn more about Don't Forget Your Cape! What Preschoolers Teach Us About Leadership and Life.

Bitcoin. You’ve heard of it, you’ve seen it in the news, but what is it? And how can this new technology help with fundraising? Since the creation of Bitcoin—the first modern cryptocurrency—the value of all cryptocurrencies has grown from nothing to over a trillion dollars, creating a new generation of philanthropists. In this easy to understand, step-by-step guide, fundraisers and cryptocurrency experts Jason Shim and Anne Connelly explain just what Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies are, how they’re transforming the non-profit sector, and how you and your organization can set up a donation program to engage donors today!

Learn more about Bitcoin and the Future of Fundraising: A Beginner’s Guide to Cryptocurrency Donations

Your scientific business is (actually) life-changing. So why aren't enough people paying attention? In Scientist to CEO, Jennifer Andrews offers a refreshing take on marketing for complex businesses that are notoriously difficult to explain - let alone market and sell. Andrews shares relatable stories from real scientist CEOs who wanted to do marketing right but lacked the knowledge, systems, and tools to do it. Readers will gain practical tips, along with an easily digestible, realistically implemented 5-step marketing process that works for STEM businesses of all stages. Scientist to CEO is for any business owner, leader, manager, or other technical professional running or aspiring to lead a business. Above all, readers will learn that science is complicated, but marketing it doesn’t have to be.

Learn more about Scientist to CEO: A Marketing Handbook to Help STEM Professionals Grow a Thriving Business

Deep learning is one of today’s hottest fields. This approach to machine learning is achieving breakthrough results in some of today’s highest profile applications, in organizations ranging from Google to Tesla, Facebook to Apple. Thousands of technical professionals and students want to start leveraging its power, but previous books on deep learning have often been non-intuitive, inaccessible, and dry. In Deep Learning Illustrated, three world-class instructors and practitioners present a uniquely visual, intuitive, and accessible high-level introduction to the techniques and applications of deep learning. Packed with vibrant, full-color illustrations, it abstracts away much of the complexity of building deep learning models, making the field more fun to learn, and accessible to a far wider audience.

Learn more about Deep Learning Illustrated.

What transforms a group of housewives and grandmothers into silent killers? How do people make smart decisions ninety-nine percent of the time and still fail? How did the Holocaust create one of the biggest explosions of creativity in human history? Why is an unconventional theory of crime so good at explaining suicide?

Unperfect is a book about problems, how we approach them, and why solving them in today’s world is not as simple as it seems. It documents the prolific, underappreciated work of the problem solvers all around us. Whether you want to break through a specific obstacle in your own life or learn proven strategies for success from all walks of life, Unperfect is your blueprint. The best solutions often lie in the places we least expect them.

In Unperfect, we encounter seldom-explored problem solving principles from an urban planner who’s mapped every crowd disaster in the world, an aircraft seat designer turning our understanding of space upside-down, and a birth control warrior who gave sixty-seven thousand speeches. You don’t need to tackle your problems alone. Let Unperfect be your guide.

Learn more about Unperfect: Innovators, Trendsetters, and the Art of Problem Solving

"Quiet Determination" is the (not-so-fictional) story of young man who incidentally discovers the secret mindset to success in life, through his weekly piano lessons. In the development of his mindset for success our hero learns about such subjects as:
•Why dreams fail
•Sustained Accountability...the foundation of all success
•Why People Avoid Personal Accountability
•How to make hard decisions easily
•Accepting challenge
•Personal power
•Success is only a mental game
•Creativity
•What World Leaders Say About Sacrifice
•Coaching in the Work Place
•Music and Success: How are these 2 elements connected?
•Nutrition: Carbohydrates friend or foe ?
•7 Tools to Stimulate Your Imagination
•Building baby’s brain through music
•Deliberate Practice... what is this ?
•Does music really make you smarter?
•Musical Intervention for health
•Susceptibility to the Negative Influence of Other People
•Dale Carnegie’s view on success
•Neuro-linguistic programming (NLP)
•Fear of Failure: What are the Causes
•Recognizing The Positive And Negative Influences
•On Your Life
•A Tribute to Our Coaches: The talent whisperers
•Coaching Styles
•The Science behind Adult Education
•Examining our 7 Intelligences?
•What Condolezza Rice ( the 66th Secretary of State, U.S.A.) & Steven Harper(The 22nd Prime Minister of Canada) have in common

Learn more about Quiet Determination

In his best-selling book, Make Big Happen, Mark Moses identifies four critical questions every business leader should explore on their journey to business and life success. Learn how to Ask and Answer these questions the right way.

Learn more about Make Big Happen

Studies show that most business owners want to give back to their community and more than 60 percent of consumers prefer to buy from socially responsible companies. People want to be part of the change and really make a difference. Readers will learn to navigate this new world built on doing social good. They'll get the hang of social enterprise and how to leverage social impact so they can reap the benefits in their business and community. Includes useful forms and resources.

Learn more about The Giveback Economy: Social Responsibility Practices for Business and Nonprofit

After studying many sales methodologies and being thoroughly bamboozled by most of them I thought “there must be a better way to sell. One that is sound, effective and is easy to learn and apply.” That way is The Conversational Sales Method. In Sell More by Selling Less you will learn to master it. Within its’ pages you will find everyday language, engaging visuals, stories and examples that teach you all you need to know about leveraging value in a powerful way toward converting buyers into customers. Be prepared however, this is not your typical sales book. If you enjoy complexity, buzzwords, acronyms and having to learn a whole new sales language this book is not for you! Sell More by Selling Less is an engaging, easy to follow guide to The Conversational Sales Method. It will teach you how to stop selling your products and services and instead, sell the value they bring. Doing so will have you improving your sales results quickly.

 Learn more about Sell More by Selling Less

Rich is a State of Mind examines the basics of financial planning through the eyes of a slightly dysfunctional American family. It traces the last 13 months in the life of Richard Jarvis - moderately eccentric, financially savvy, and wanting to connect with his family in a way he never has before. As you follow the conversations and discoveries of Richard, John, Joyce and James you will explore the world of financial planning and determine what is really important to help you achieve your dreams and goals.

Learn more about Rich is a State of Mind 

In Pay What It's Worth, Tara Joyce provides you with an elegant framework for understanding how not setting prices can be a viable strategy for your small business, and guides you in consciously exploring your relationship to money, to other people, and to exchanging value.

Learn more about Pay What It's Worth.

Tara Joyce is also the author of Cross my Heart: Strange Adventures in Vancouver.

Caterpillars Chrys and Coco are best friends - until Chrys becomes a beautiful butterfly and Coco becomes a brown moth. But when Chrys gets into trouble and her fellow butterflies all fly away, she realizes the importance of staying true to friends, no matter what. Featuring enchanting artwork by illustrator Derrick Chow, Chrys and Coco is a heartwarming tale of friendship and diversity that will delight kids of all ages.

Learn more about Chrys and Coco

In the fall of 1934, a team of Black athletes earned the opportunity to compete for a major baseball championship. More than a decade before Jackie Robinson broke baseball's colour barrier, this team blazed a trail for others to follow. This beautifully illustrated children's book tells the true tale of the Chatham Coloured All-Stars, as they rose from a bunch of barnstormers to provincial champions. Children and parents alike will appreciate the cadence of the story, and will find multiple opportunities to discuss issues of racism, intolerance, and ignorance. "Hard Road to Victory: The Story of the Chatham All-Stars" will find a home in the classroom as well. Educators will be able to use the book as a jumping-off point in discussing historical events as well as current issues. Enjoy this true story of overcoming societal hurdles that still persist today.

Learn more about Hard Road to Victory: The Chatham All-Stars Story.

E.K. Johnston had several jobs and one vocation before she became a published writer. If she’s learned anything, it’s that things turn out weird sometimes, and there’s not a lot you can do about it. Well, that and how to muscle through awkward fanfic because it’s about a pairing she likes.

Her books range from contemporary fantasy (The Story of Owen, Prairie Fire), to fairy-tale reimaginings (A Thousand Nights, Spindle), from hopeful sci-fi to quiet epic fantasy (That Inevitable Victorian Thing, The Afterward), and from small town Ontario (Exit, Pursued By A Bear), to a galaxy far, far away (Star Wars: Ahsoka, Queen’s Shadow, Queen’s Peril). She has no plans to rein anything in.

Learn more about the books written by E.K. Johnston

Writing Fiction: A Guide for Pre-Teens is a compact introduction to writing stories and novels designed for young writers. Topics include the following:

• Starting a story
• Describing the setting
• Writing dialogue
• Planning a story
• Writers’ block
• Describing characters
• Revising and editing
• Plus over 50 writing prompts to inspire new stories.

Written writer-to-writer,  Writing Fiction: A Guide for Pre-Teens contains story planners, examples, and the information young writers need to help them create the stories they want to write. 

Learn more about Writing Fiction

A delightful ABC adventure which shows that moms can do any job - and so can you! Join a mother-daughter duo (and their kitty!) as they travel through the alphabet, exploring twenty-six different careers. With a fun, rhyming text and vibrant illustrations, this book is ideal for reading to children and teaching them not only the basics of the alphabet but also about the big, exciting world out there!

Learn more about This is a Job for Mommy

You and Me 

You and Me is a picture book appropriate for grades JK-Grade 2-3. The theme is one of diversity and inclusion. It is filled with colourful images illustrating children of different ethnic backgrounds doing life in various ways.

Learn more about You and Me 

Grounded Novel with Activity Book

Have you ever been grounded? If so, it may have been because you did something that your parents or teacher were not pleased about. Maybe you’ve been grounded for something that you didn’t do – that wasn’t your fault. If so, you can understand how the children in this story feel. It’s summer holidays, and it looks as if another boring summer is about to happen – nothing that’s fun is allowed because of the polio scare. But to make matters worse, polio strikes again but this time at home as the characters in the story find out. Grounded is about kids and relationships. It’s about disappointments and learning how to accept things you have no say in – things that just happen, and you have to deal with them whether you like it or not.

Learn more about Grounded

When Ebon Black turns 16 years of age, he will inherit his deceased father's fortune, which will make him The Richest Of Them All. The current holder of that title, Malachite Vert, is determined that Ebon should not live to see that birthday, and hatches a plan to get rid of him. He also happens to be Ebon's stepfather. Ebon survives the attempt on his life, but loses his memory in the process. He awakens to find that he's been rescued by seven young women known as Dryads, the Keepers of the Trees. They are Joc, Weepy, Cranky, Glitzy, Nerdy, Needy and Pam. In this new twist on a classic tale, it's a race against the clock as Ebon and the seven Dryads must work together to get Ebon his memory back, teach him the ways of the woods, and return him home in time to claim his rightful place in society. Ebon Black and the Seven Dryads is suitable for readers young and less-young. It includes an unforgettable cast of characters, some unexpected turns, and a moral for a modern age.

Learn more about Ebon Black and the Seven Dryads

Mary Berg--winner of MasterChef Canada and star of Mary's Kitchen Crush--shares her most delicious, stress-free recipes, grand enough for special celebrations and easy enough for a regular Tuesday night.

Everyone knows that a good party always ends up in the kitchen, whether you're grabbing a drink, tasting a dish, or just chatting with the host and other guests. That's because the kitchen is the heart of every home, big or small. But sometimes entertaining (even casually) can feel daunting or overwhelming, with all the planning, shopping, cooking, and clean up. Enter Mary Berg . . .

Learn more about Kitchen Party

Learn to prepare healthy, portion-controlled meals for the week with this easy-to-follow cookbook that saves time and can help you lose weight.

Learn more about The Everything Healthy Meal Prep Cookbook

Follow Tina on Instagram for your Healthy Meal Prep inspiration

As a professional chef, international fitness athlete and busy entrepreneur, I know how hard it is to try to stick to a diet and balance all that life has to offer.

This isn't a recipe or cookbook; it's the ultimate survival guide to dieting! 

These are a collection of the tips and tricks that I have learned and created over the years and use in my daily life and now you can too.

No more excuses, no more falling off your diet! 

How To Survive A Diet is a collection of tips and tricks I use everyday to help me  Eat Good - Look Good - Live Great and I am sharing them with you!

Learn more about How To Survive A Diet

The seedy underworld of drugs and violence has infiltrated Lakewood High, and seventeen-year-old Jesse Decruz becomes their unlikely hero. The product of a broken home, Jesse suffers severe abuse at the hands of his alcoholic father, and this changes him forever. Now fuelled by a desire to make a difference and stop the ­cycle of violence in his community, Jesse will do whatever it takes to restore order to his school and his life—even if it means forging an alliance with the man who has abused him.

Set in the 1980s in the gritty government projects of Toronto’s Regent Park, Sunrise at Dusk is a story about the victory of good over evil and having faith that the sun can rise even as darkness falls.

Learn more about Sunrise at Dusk.

When a young man's world is turned upside down, some things become clear and others blurred. Jacob Schitz's plain life in Florida quickly erupts into a series of drastic events as he navigates young adulthood and a bleak future. When the biker gang, The Panteras, enters his life as a third obstacle, he will begin to truly understand himself and the violent world of underground crime as their paths become intertwined.

Learn more about Intertwined: A Biker's Tale.

Kill Shakespeare

Hamlet is banished from Denmark, still grieving the death of his father. After pirates attack his ship, he washes ashore on the mysterious land of Illyria. There, he is discovered by Richard III and Lady MacBeth, who offers the Dane an impossible bargain: track down and kill an evil wizard the to retrieve a source of power that Lady MacBeth can use to bring Hamlet’s father back from the dead.

The name of that wizard? William Shakespeare.  

Hamlet embarks on the quest, only to discover that Richard may not be what he seems, and that the Prodigals, a group of rebels led by a young woman named Juliet (working alongside Othello, Falstaff and others), might be freedom fighters. Hamlet quickly finds himself in the midst of a battle where his decision to kill or not to kill Shakespeare will determine not only the future of Illyria but of all of existence. 

Combining action, fantasy, violence, romance, lust, magic, double-crossing and cross-dressing, it’s a whole new way of looking at Shakespeare and his characters.

Assassin's Creed

Based on the popular game series, this graphic novel follows a fresh inductee into the modern-day Assassin Brotherhood - as they uncover a conspiracy in their DNA that stretches back hundreds of years!

The Death of Nancy Drew

Teen detectives Frank and Joe Hardy have investigated many crimes in their lives, but nothing that hits this close to home. Their best friend died mysteriously after taking down a major crime organization. They must put together the clues to uncover the truth about this shocking crime, but the clues lead them to a stunningly unexpected direction!

Learn more about Anthony Del Col's publications.

Chantry Island was motivated by the 1975 movie Jaws, directed by Stephen Spielberg. The seeds that were planted in my mind over forty years ago burst into life in July 2019 under the most unlikely of circumstances. There are three parts to the story, all of which are linked by the great white shark. The setting is the Atlantic Seaboard of the United States.

In Part One, Jeff Robinson, who has just completed his last year at Roslin University, is driving to his summer lifeguard job at Carleton Place, which is close to the town of Brighton. He offers a ride to Stacey Murray, a beautiful young woman and the receptionist at the Clarendon Resort, which is also near Brighton. They bond very quickly, and on a quiet Sunday morning while swimming to Chantry Island, Stacey is attacked and killed by a great white shark. Sam Miller (the part-time lighthouse keeper) is the only witness to her horrific death.

In Part Two, Doctor Paul Reynolds marries Maureen Stapleton, an English secondary teacher. During an ill-fated sailing venture along the coast, their sailboat, called the Windhover, becomes stranded just outside Brighton's harbor due to a lack of wind. Because they need gasoline for their small engine, Paul decides to row the dinghy to the pier and walk the short distance to Smitty's Garage. When he stops to rest near the Brighton lighthouse, the same great white shark that killed Stacey Murray explodes into the dinghy. Paul's body was never found. In the inquest that follows, the reader will learn more about sharks than most people do in their lifetime.

In Part Three, the manuscript focuses upon the fishing trawler Southern Cross and its new owner Charlie Roach. Catching fewer fish compels him and his close friend Chase Givens to fish much farther from shore. The massive shark becomes tangled in their net. Charlie is unsuccessful in his attempt to kill it. As the years pass, he becomes stricken with pancreatic cancer and asks his son Jacob to push him in his wheelchair to the baseball outfield. They talk about the afterlife and reconciliation. Jacob gives the eulogy for his father. The town of Brighton experiences rapid development and is never the same.

The Prologue assumes great importance, because it reunites the reader with Jeff Robinson. It will leave a significant impression.

The story takes place along the Carolina coastline of the Atlantic Seaboard.

Learn more about Chantry Island.

The Demonhuntress is a series that tells the story of a haunted young woman who roams this world… and beyond. Through historical ages. Into other-worldly dimensions.

As she is introduced in volume one, Karavalitz, she falls into a marvellous world of horrors. A dreamlike world. A nightmare.

Welcome. Enter and stay forever.

Learn more about The Demonhuntress

Burlington

When Mae moves to an affluent suburb with her family for the life she's always wanted, she finds herself slipping into a world of odd dinner parties, secrets, lies, and rumours of suicide. And then a mother goes missing.

Last Summer at the Lake House

Sisters Alex, Sam and Jess are called back to the family lake house in Summerville after the death of their beloved father, only to learn that he was hiding a devastating secret. 

A poignant and heartfelt tale of sisterhood and marriage, Last Summer at the Lake House is out in October 2023 from Storm Publishing.

Learn more about Heather Dixon's publications.

A visceral portrait of life at a crossroads,The Orenda opens with a brutal massacre and the kidnapping of the young Iroquois Snow Falls, a spirited girl with a special gift. Her captor, Bird, is an elder and one of the Huron Nation's great warriors and statesmen. It has been years since the murder of his family and yet they are never far from his mind. In Snow Falls, Bird recognizes the ghost of his lost daughter and sees the girl possesses powerful magic that will be useful to him on the troubled road ahead. Bird’s people have battled the Iroquois for as long as he can remember, but both tribes now face a new, more dangerous threat from afar.

Learn more about The Orenda

Champions

Since 1881, we've been colonizing another planet. Now this team must save both worlds. 

Defense Command

Reminiscences of the Martian War

His Majesty's New World

Since 1881, Britain and the United States have been colonizing another planet. 

The Equations Novels

Humanity is coming home, but the earth has new protectors. They're too good to be true... and their fleet is more powerful than ours...

Learn more about Kenneth Tam's science fiction series

Kenneth Tam is also the author of That Wolfdog Lifestyle at Yamnuska Wolfdog Sanctuary.

Between Worlds

A century-old diary could change everything for Juliana. Fourteen-year-old Juliana and her parents move across the country to care for an ailing grandfather. Cut off from her friends and overwhelmed by the sea of family members she hardly knows, Juliana escapes one night to her grandfather's basement. There, hidden among old books and boxes, she discovers a glimmer of hope: a diary full of sketches from a teenager who lived long ago.

Deep down, Juliana knows that the stories contained in the drawings can help her get through this move. But the only person who knows these stories is her grandfather, and Alzheimer’s is locking away his memories with each passing day.

Between Worlds is Lori Wolf-Heffner’s contemporary/historical series that follows two teen girls as they come of age a century apart. Start your journey today with books readers are calling “uplifting,” “a worthwhile read,” and “a series that readers of all ages can enjoy.”

Learn more about Between Worlds

Love on Belmont

Love on Belmont is my sweet romance series set in Belmont Village, Kitchener, Ontario, Canada.

Across the tracks and up a set of cement stairs from my grandmother’s home was Belmont Village, a quaint shopping strip with restaurants, a drug store, a convenience store, and several small businesses. My grandmother, who lived in the Belmont neighbourhood, always bought her lottery tickets at the convenience store and often took me and my sister there to buy us a sugary treat.

I have lots of fond memories of the area, but little did I know my future family was waiting for me…

Learn more about Love on Belmont

Lindy Sutton has her hands full. In between having her clown act clobbered by pint-sized critics, keeping a group of sex-crazed octogenarians from starting brawls in the raciest bar in town, and trying to keep her crazy Aunt Pip from being tossed out of Laughing Pines retirement home, she still has to contend with her son’s garish band bus parked in her driveway. Could things get any worse? Yup! Margaret Quaid, the social worker at Laughing Pines is found dead of an apparent overdose and the drop dead handsome detective on the case, thinks she stole the drugs from the retirement home and was pretty active in the world of wife swapping to boot. Lindy’s temper soars, along with her long dormant hormones, as she sets out to clear Margaret’s name, find the murderer and make the sexy detective eat crow. Aided and abetted by the aging but flamboyant Chappy Lowton, her eccentric and sarcastic sister, her best friend Patty, and that hoard of sex-crazed geriatrics, Lindy wades into the world of swingers only to find that there are plenty of people with a motive to kill the social worker.

Learn more about Dying for Sex

Following a slight misfire with a prank (on a cop, involving herself as the dead body), Jaeda finds herself confined to a small room, with only a TV as company. Relaxing will help her regenerate her mostly missing body, but that's entirely too boring for her liking. Besides, she has better things to do with her time, like becoming a model. But when her guardian and keeper vanishes, Jaeda has to move quickly to avoid capture and save herself, her guardian, and her new human pets. Regenerating will simply have to wait.

Learn more about Hellmaw: Eye of Glass

Cafe Conversations

Coffee shops are where truths are shared, and relationships are built, or sometimes broken. Take a seat in this busy café. Enjoy a cup of coffee and eavesdrop on the drama unfolding around you. Those young people at the next table are on a blind date; the business meeting over there is going awry, and the three old ladies sitting by the window are scheming again.Café Conversations is Reidel's second short story collection. Like her debut book, "We Drank Wine and Other Stories," these linked stories focus on authentic dialogue and rich character development to entertain and engage readers. Her characters will make you laugh out loud while also touching your heart.

We Drank Wine and other stories

This is a comical collection of linked stories about four women who face life’s challenges and battle to keep shame at bay. Parenting issues include biting toddlers, adolescent pyromaniacs and entitled brides. One husband disappears with embezzled funds while another rethinks his gender orientation, and throughout it all the friends support each other while drinking wine.The collection includes the award winning stories “Adopt-A-Pet”, where a young couple’s desire to gain social status goes awry, and “Viking Cruise” in which senior citizens seeking the perfect vacation are abused by Viking warriors. 

Learn more about Cafe Conversations & We Drank Wine.

Set in and around the fictional village of Haddon Junction in Norfolk County, circa 1959, in the tobacco heartland of Southwestern Ontario, this is a coming-of-age story, a love story ~ a story of loves gained, loves lost, and loves unconditional. It is the story of Mick Neilson, the Summer Garden, and a song. 

Book 1 – ‘The Summer Garden and the Song – The Circle of Life', was published July 2016.

Book 2 – ‘The Summer Garden and the Song – Harvest', was published November 2016.

The expected release date of Book 3 – ‘The Summer Garden and the Song – On the Threshold of a Dream', is early 2021.

It is anticipated that Book 3 will be the last book of the novel.

Learn more about The Summer Garden and the Song 

It's 1890 and a body has been found in a wooded area near a swamp in Princeton, Ontario. Reggie, convicted of the crime, sits in his jail cell writing his memoirs. In his writing, he shares memories of his youth, his family and insight to the crime of which he was convicted. Biography and fiction are mixed, delivering the story of Reginald Birchall, an English gentleman who traveled to Canada with his wife in the winter of 1890. Birchall, though, made some bad choices. The story begins in England and ends in Canada with his execution in Woodstock, Ontario. "Call me Reggie. I know you want to, but you're not sure how to address me. That's alright. I'm used to hesitation, the quivering of the hand, the perspiration on the brow. You will like me; I know you will. You might even grow to love me".

Learn more about Reggie

24 Hours in Paris

After calling off her engagement, Mira escapes on an all-expense paid business trip to Paris. Despite the delicious food and flowing wine, she can’t forget the ache of leaving her fiancé behind or the fact that she’s just blown up her personal life. And messing up simply isn’t Mira.

She’s used to being in control. Meticulously planning. But now she’s at the mercy of the travel gods, and they are not acting in her favor. Subways are missed. Trains don’t run. Flights are overbooked. And by the time she arrives at the airport to go home, there are no new flights to NYC until the next day. The worst part? She’s now stuck in Paris for twenty-four hours with her arrogant and insufferable co-worker Jake whose constant flirting and annoying optimism is more than she can handle.

But as they spend the next twenty-four hours in Paris, exploring the city in all its beauty, Mira realizes that she and Jake have more in common than they thought, and he may turn out to be the best thing she discovers in the City of Love.

24 Hours in Italy

Two years have passed since Mira and Jake missed their flight and spent a magical 24 hours together in Paris. Sparks flew. Romance bloomed. But life got in the way. When they’re reunited for another whirlwind adventure, will they connect in the same way?

Mira’s living her best life, having started a new chapter by taking a leave from her high pressure corporate position to spend time in Italy. Surrounded by amazing scenery, fantastic food and wine, and endearing locals, her life is nearly perfect―except for the thoughts of what might've been with Jake.

While Jake’s career has never been better, the move to California has been less than perfect. Still, he’s got high hopes that seeing Mira at their friends’ destination wedding can right past wrongs. Except travel has never been his strong suit, and his reunion with Mira is punctuated by another, more recent heartbreak.

When the pair collide again on the gorgeous Amalfi coast, the spark they felt in Paris is reignited, but their quest for a happy ending will surely be as rocky as the Italian coastline.

Learn more about Romi Moondi's publications.

Stefano Caruso always does things the right way. With a grandfather who was forced to flee the venal Sicilian mafia and start life anew in America, Stefano now heads the corporation his father and grandfather built. Handsome and successful, he's on top of the world...until one day he has an unexpected visitor and gets shocking news. Stefano is being cheated and lied to, and the company his family built from the ground up is in mortal jeopardy. That's when Benito Cuggi, the face of the modern-day mafia, comes into his life. Cuggi appears to live by a strict code of morals that the laws of Western society cannot enforce. Loyalty and trust are rewarded, while betrayal is punished. Now Stefano faces a difficult choice. Can he ally himself with what he's been taught to hate and fear? Or should he let what generations of his family built be stolen out from under him?

Learn more about The Don of Siracusa

Haunted by the loss of their parents in a tragic car crash years before, three women now harbour dark secrets from one another - secrets which threaten to tear the remains of their family apart. Samantha, fearing that coming out to her older sisters would mean losing them altogether, fights the spectre of something even deeper, which has now begun to push its way to the surface. Julie, attempting to conceal her renewed battle with cancer, worries that her sisters will learn the truth that ended her marriage. And Emily, a gifted student who dropped out of college to raise her younger siblings, wrestles with perhaps the biggest secret of all. She knows what really happened the night their parents died. As the sisters gather for Thanksgiving, and the fifteenth anniversary of that horrible night looms, long-hidden secrets threaten to spill out into the open. The women must face their fears and learn that their greatest strength lies in their love for one another, even as tragedy lurks nearby, waiting to strike a second time.

Carving The Light is a story about love, loss, and the redemptive power of forgiveness. It depicts the strength, humour, and heartache of characters who are fully realized, while demonstrating the lengths to which some people will go to protect the ones they love from a difficult truth.

Learn more about Carving The Light

Ithaca

Ithaca is the story of how sudden change comes into a slow life. For 39 years, Daisy Turner has been a professor's wife, typing his notes and helping out. The centerpiece of her life is a weekly open house-a dinner party that always features soup. And then, one day, her husband drops dead. Daisy has nothing to hold onto-except, perhaps, the soup. Then, suddenly, Daisy finds herself entangled with a man whose wife is disabled, mothering a young environmental activist farmer, and swept into the controversy about fracking that has begun to concern their small Ivy League town. What happens when a quiet, almost sedimentary life meets the high-pressure forces of a small town? How does one rebuild after life as you know it is suddenly turned upside down-or is fracked?

Learn more about Ithaca

Seeker of Stars

As a boy, Melchior is fascinated by stars but has rigid obligations to apprentice with his rug-making father. When his life is radically changed, he is propelled onto a new path full of danger and glory in pursuit of a special star. The journey leads Melchior to reflect on life and death, dreams and duty, and to find unusual reconciliation within his family and with the God he never knew he sought. Destined to become a classic, Seeker of Stars offers a fresh retelling of the story of the magi, and will appeal to people of all ages and faiths.

Learn more about Seeker of Stars

Tom Thomas, a CRA special investigator, is assigned the case of an individual who been been taken to court for failure to file tax returns. The individual filed four years of returns with made up numbers, including substantial losses. Tom becomes determined to get this miscreant. A the investigation proceeds, Tom discovers a house full of fine art and collectibles, and when diamonds and a false passport are discovered, his pursuit becomes single minded.

Fans of crime procedurals will enjoy the real-life sleuthing behind this type of tax evasion and the courtroom antics as opposing lawyers try to win their case for and against an unrepentant tax resister.

Learn more about The Case of the Golden Helmet

Alison Sanders shares the story of her grandmother, Bonita Hodgins, and mother, Estelle Wishart, who were leaders of the early Girl Guide movement in Canada between 1920 and 1954.

Learn more about Bonita & Estelle by contacting Sanders at asanders@sentex.net

Confessions of a Fairy's Daughter: Growing Up with a Gay Dad

A moving memoir about growing up with a gay father in the 1980s, and a tribute to the power of truth, humour, acceptance and familial love. Alison Wearing led a largely carefree childhood until she learned, at the age of 12, that her family was a little more complex than she had realized. Sure her father had always been unusual compared to the other dads in the neighbourhood: he loved to bake croissants, wear silk pyjamas around the house, and skip down the street singing songs from Gilbert and Sullivan operettas. But when he came out of the closet in the 1970s, when homosexuality was still a cardinal taboo, it was a shock to everyone in the quiet community of Peterborough, Ontario—especially to his wife and three children.

Learn more about Confessions of a Fairy's Daughter

 
Moments of Glad Grace: A Memoir

Moments of Glad Grace is a moving and witty memoir about a daughter’s evolving relationship with her aging father, the small moments we share, and the hunt for roots and belonging. The story begins as a trip from Canada to Ireland in search of genealogical data and documents. Being 80 and in the early stages of Parkinson’s disease, Joe invites his daughter Alison to come along as his research assistant, which might have worked very well had she any interest ― any at all ― in genealogy. Very quickly, the father-daughter pilgrimage becomes more comical than fruitful, more of a bittersweet adventure than a studious mission. And rather than rigorous genealogy, their explorations move into the realm of family and forgiveness, the primal search for identity and belonging, and questions about responsibility to our ancestors and the extent to which we are shaped by the people who came before us. Though continually bursting with humor, Moments of Glad Grace is a story about identity, history, and ultimately becomes a song of appreciation for the precious and limited time we have with our parents.

Learn more about Moments of Glad Grace 

A gift from the Creator – that is where it all began. The game of lacrosse has been a central element of many Indigenous cultures for centuries, but once non-Indigenous players entered the sport, it became a site of appropriation – then reclamation – of Indigenous identities. Focusing on the history of lacrosse in Indigenous communities from the 1860s to the 1990s, The Creator’s Game explores Indigenous-non-Indigenous relations and Indigenous identity formation. While the game was being stripped of its cultural and ceremonial significance and being appropriated to construct a new identity for the nation-state of Canada, it was also being used by Indigenous peoples for multiple ends: to resist residential school experiences; initiate pan-Indigenous political mobilization; and articulate Indigenous sovereignty and nationhood on the world stage.

Learn more about The Creators Game

Pain. Getting ripped off. Watching your potential wither on the vine due to contractual disputes that arise when people view you as their property. More pain. For the upper echelon of professional athletes in mixed martial arts, life can resemble the nightmare, described by Colonel Kurtz in Apocalypse Now, of a snail traversing the edge of a razorblade. Pound for Pound traces five legends—Georges St-Pierre, BJ Penn, Anderson Silva, Maurício Rua and Fedor Emelianenko—through their humble origins, baptism by blood and fire, and rise to the pinnacle of MMA, where the sword of Damocles constantly threatens. On the surface, we’re conditioned to see these fighters as mere sports entertainers. We consume pay-per-views just as a diner patron drops quarters in a jukebox. Fighters’ lives, however, are often more complex—and disturbing—than what event previews or color commentary portray.

Learn more about Pound for Pound

Bones and Bodies is a highly accessible account of the establishment of the scientific discipline of biological anthropology. Alan G Morris takes us back over the past century of anthropological discovery in South Africa and uncovers the stories of individual scientists and researchers who played a significant role in shaping perceptions of how peoples of southern Africa, both ancient and modern, came to be viewed and categorized both in the public imagination and the scientific literature.

Morris reveals how much of the earlier anthropological studies were tainted with the tarred brush of race science. He evaluates the works of famous anthropologists and archaeologists such as Raymond Dart, Thomas Dreyer, Matthew Drennan and Robert Broom, and demonstrates through a wide array of sources how they described their fossil discoveries through the prism of racist interpretation.

Morris also shows how modern anthropology tried to rid itself of the stigma of these early racist accounts. In the 1960s and 1970s, Ronald Singer and Phillip Tobias introduced modern methods into the discipline that disputed much of what the public believed about race and human evolution.

In an age in which the authority of experts and empirical science is increasingly being questioned, this book shows the battle facing modern anthropology to acknowledge its racial past but also how its study of human variation remains an important field of enquiry at institutions of higher learning.

Learn more about Bones and Bodies: How South African Scientists Studied Race 

An intimate account of everyday life in Somaliland, explored through an ever-evolving musical genre of love songs.

At first listen, both music and talk about love are conspicuously absent from Somaliland’s public soundscapes. The lingering effects of war, the contested place of music in Islam, and gendered norms of emotional expression limit opportunities for making music and sharing personal feelings. But while Christina J. Woolner was researching peacebuilding in Somaliland’s capital, Hargeysa, she kept hearing snippets of songs. Almost all of these, she learned, were about love. In these songs, poets, musicians, and singers collaborate to give voice to personal love aspirations and often painful experiences of love-suffering. Once in circulation, the intimate and heartfelt voices of love songs provide rare and deeply therapeutic opportunities for dareen-wadaag (feeling-sharing). In a region of political instability, these songs also work to powerfully unite listeners on the basis of shared vulnerability, transcending social and political divisions and opening space for a different kind of politics.

Taking us from 1950s recordings preserved on dusty cassettes to new releases on YouTube and live performances at Somaliland’s first postwar music venue—where the author herself eventually takes the stage—Woolner offers an account of love songs in motion that reveals the capacity of music to connect people and feelings across time and space, creating new possibilities for relating to oneself and others.

Learn more about Love Songs in Motion: Voicing Intimacy in Somaliland.

This book stemmed from recognition of the lack of understanding of Tra­ditional healing and Indigenous people in mainstream Canadian culture. Its intention is to share Traditional healing knowledge in a good way with an audience as a beginning effort to bridge the large cultural divide between Indigenous and non-Indigenous people. The writer is Indigenous and conducted a culturally congruent examination toward better understanding a cultural phenomenon. This cultural phenomenon is Traditional healing. While this book has also been about personal growth and understanding the self, it began and remains about the growth and development of Indigenous knowl­edge.

Learn more about INDIGENOUS HEALING: Voices of Elders and Healers

Since European settlers first began to arrive on the shores of Turtle Island over 500 years ago, Indigenous people in "Canada" have been and continue to be the targets of: sexual violence and rape; physical, cultural and spiritual genocide; systemic and state violence; and, violent victimization. In this book, we explore Indigenous people and societies in the pre-, early-, and post contact eras. We will learn about the various forms of violence in which Indigenous people have been and continue to be the targets of. For example, violent victimization and the pandemic of missing and murdered Indigenous people of all genders. We will also explore other areas in which Indigenous people have become victim to: over-representation in the criminal justice system and the homelessness population; poor quality of life in First Nations communities across Canada; high rates of fire-related deaths on-reserve; problematic education; high incidents of Indigenous people involved in gangs; over-representation of Indigenous children in care; and, high suicide rates. This book is not intended to be an encyclopedia of all Indigenous issues but is merely scratching the surface. The author encourages readers to independently explore more deeply, the issues facing Indigenous people in Canada, today.

Learn more about Annihilate. Assimilate. Appropriate.: The Systemic Genocide of Indigenous People in Canada

Challenging the easy assumption that the maps we use are totally objective and reliable, this book exposes both the innate mathematical distortions and the cultural biases that skew their message. Distortions, uncritically accepted as truth, gain power.  The author makes the point that first we shape our maps, then they shape us. They affect global political and commercial choices and our worldwide cultural connections. In short, they present a risk-filled view of the world as they strangely mingle fact and misinformation.

The book also provides lesson plans for teachers in classroom settings as well as ideas for leader’s informal gatherings. These are provided by James Taylor and benefit from his wide experience as an educator. 

“Ward Kaiser’s book us easily accessible both to the general reader and the specialized geographer and provides a detailed introduction to global mapping and the impact maps have on the human global perspective.”   -- Dr. Edmund Preis, Department of Global Studies, Wilfrid Laurier University

“After a stimulating conversation with Ward Kaiser I got his book, and my wife and I read it together. Not only did it hold our attention, it opened new vistas of the mind. Highly recommended.” -- Dr. George Rupp, then President of Columbia University, later President and CEO of the International Rescue Committee.

Learn more about How Maps Change Things, A conversation about the maps we choose and the world we want.

"One of Canada's best emerging poets, Andy Lee brings glad tidings; the stylistic achievement in this sample of twenty-two poems bodes well for the future of Canadian Letters and for the literate world in which humanity is re-invented." - Dr. Tom Gannon Hamilton

Love Is a Side Effect of Life is the debut poetry collection from Andy Lee, award-winning writer, poet, lyricist, musician and member of the Writers Guild of Canada. Andy has incanted his poems at the International Festival of Authors, the Nuyorican Poets Café in New York City, down under in Australia and on the playa of the Black Rock Desert, among other places. His poetry has appeared in Event and Vallum magazines and was shortlisted for the latter's 2017 Chapbook Award.

Learn more about Love Is a Side Effect of Life

In this beautiful book of poems, Gail M. Murray invites the reader to join her as she explores life and landscape. Her reflections about the people and places most cherished in her life draw the reader into her world. Murray is a widely-published free-lance writer who lives in Toronto and enjoys hosting friends in her perennial garden. Her love of travel seeps into her work.

To purchase Reflections & Reveries, please visit the Amazon ordering page. 

"Murray is an acute observer of nature, of social convention, of life. Won over by beauty and the lure of words, her style remains captivatingly simple. Simplicity goes beyond semantics, it enters the poems sinews, takes hold of them and returns in fresh, brief stanzas; a happy reminder of Emily Dickinson. Murray toys with the senses. Her poems are soft and inviting, intimate and provocative, sweetly delivered poetry “on the wings of angels.” —Professor Miguel Angel Iglesias, Forge of Words, In a Fragile Moment: Landscape of Canadian Poetry

"Gail M. Murray explores the worlds of nature, travel and love with the heart of a romantic and the skill of a wordsmith." —Bonnie Thomson, Another Cup of Hot Apple Cider

"In this wonderful book of poems, Gail creates with her gentle, evocative brush, strokes that flow with ease across the pages. In her lines, sensual adventures unfold for the observer. She invites the reader along ancient mornings and evenings to wander cobblestone walkways and flower-laden verandas, while stray cats meow on steps once traveled by centuries of peasants and foreign languages." —Patrick Meade, Wooden Bridges and Other Realms and Lemon Pies

Dance with Fear Live in the Light is Author, Glenn Marais' first collection of poetry. Glenn is an award winning musician with a Juno Nomination and a Socan Number One award. Glenn has been a songwriter for over 30 years and a writer most of his life. This collection is a culmination of his life experiences and feelings and thoughts on the world. Glenn is a believer in big dreams and challenges and this book is a lifelong dream come true. This quote speaks volumes for his philosophy on life and approach to his work."Always reach for the furthest horizon, through uncharted waters. That's where the magic awaits."Chapter Five of the book shares the journey and insights Glenn has accumulated working with Indigenous Youth in the Northern Ontario. He has worked in the north since 2006 with national charity DAREarts and with Artscan Circle from 2017-2020. His passion for building lasting relationships and partnerships with communties and their youth is a life long passion for Glenn. This book is just the beginning for Glenn and he is already hard at work on his next book.

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The political, media and business elites of Toronto, Ottawa and Montreal ran this country for almost its entire history. But in the last few years, they have lost their power, and most of them still do not realize it’s gone. The Laurentian Consensus, a name John Ibbitson coined for the dusty liberal elite, has been replaced by a new, powerful coalition based in the West and supported by immigrant voters in Ontario. So what happened? Great global migrations have washed over Canada. Most people are unaware that the keystone economic and political drivers of this country are now Western Canada and the immigrants from China, India, and other Asian countries who increasingly are turning Ontario into a Pacific-oriented province. Those in politics and business have greatly underestimated how conservative these newcomers are, and how conservative they are making our country. Canada, with an ever-evolving and growing economy and a constantly changing demographic base, has become divorced from the traditions of its past and is moving in an entirely new direction. In The Big Shift, John Ibbitson and Darrell Bricker argue that one of the world’s most consensual countries is polarizing, with the west versus the east, suburban versus urban, immigrants versus old school, coffee drinkers versus consumers of energy drinks. The winners—in politics, in business, in life—will figure out where the people are and go there too.

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Paul Heinbecker has a compelling vision for the future of Canadian foreign policy and argues that Canada still has a role to play in the rehabilitation of global governance.

Has Canada lost its place in the world? Are we destined for a future as a middle power, denied a seat at the "grown-ups table"? Some would argue yes, that decades of neglect and inattention have rendered Canadian foreign policy ineffective at best and non-existent at worst.

Paul Heinbecker disagrees. The golden days of Lester B. Pearson may be long gone, he contends (and perhaps they weren’t quite as "golden" as we’d all like to remember), but Canada still has a part to play.

In Getting Back in the Game, Heinbecker presents his compelling vision for the future of Canadian foreign policy, a future in which Canada can work both with the United Nations and apart from it; in which our government can take a stand and effect change on issues of the day from climate change to the Middle East; in which this country has a key role to play in the rehabilitation of global governance.

Learn more about Getting Back in the Game: A Foreign Policy Handbook for Canada.

The apostle Paul's first letter to Timothy is an urgent warning against a form of false teaching that was finding its way into the church community of Ephesus. Latin translations of Paul's letter from the 4th and 16th centuries suggest that he was concerned about women exercising "dominion" or "authority" over men in the church. Many of today's English translations of the Bible have been strongly influenced by this Latin tradition.

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Decodes the mystery of God. This book intends to awaken us to who we really are. It combines the best of Buddhism, Christianity, Zen, and other teachings to remind us of our divinity and our Oneness. In the process we discover God.

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Each week readers of Tuesday Thoughts: A LinkedIn Newsletter are Called to Action on the issues of the day by Danielle S. Russell, CAE. This companion reader is part compilation, part workbook, and all inspiration to take small actions to make big impact in your life and community.

Read all 150+ pages in order, start on a specific date, or jump around to the topics and issues that most speak to you today. Answer the call to action.

Join the weekly Tuesday Thoughts Community: Subscribe on LinkedIn

Learn more and to purchase your own copy.

How to Tame the Tumbles pushes the literature and practice of mindfulness to a new frontier where parents and children, together, can find an avenue to self-compassion. This concise and engaging book of 14 chapters will guide parents and children towards a new appreciation as to how they can deal with the "tumbles" that inevitably arise from time to time. The book also includes helpful exercises and resource materials to "tame the tumbles."

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Body Positive: A Guide to Loving Your Body is the number one resource for young adult women who desire to redefine and understand true beauty.

Focusing on correct body image, self-improvement, thinspiration, mental health, bullying, sexual harassment, and more, Body Positive is packed with introspective questions and inspiring, un-retouched photographs that display the bodies of real, everyday women Body Positive is a helpful, informative and inspirational guide that will help any girl transcend society’s standards.

Learn more about Body Positive: A Guide to Loving Your Body.

Realizing there is no such thing as a universal plan for everyone, Find Your Stride offers an unconventional approach to fitness and a digestible amalgamation of the latest research in nutrition, exercise science, and psychology to give you the simple tools to transform your body and mind. The book offers pragmatic advice on how to craft individualized, sustainable training and nutrition plans to see real, palpable changes in your physique—build lean muscle mass, lose body fat, and stick with it over the long haul.

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Write Every Day: a journal for building your Daily Writing Habit 

The best way to reach your writing goals is to write every day. Research now says that it takes an average of 66 days to create a habit. Sixty-six days is a long time, but this journal is here to make sure you don't have to build your writing habit alone. Filled with daily writing prompts (and even a few images for those who like to color their way to creativity), this journal has been designed to help you develop your daily writing habit with 66 days of inspiration and encouragement. At http://wrightingwords.com, people write this about Heather’s writing prompts: Hi! I just wanted to say that these are the most helpful prompts I’ve ever read! They don’t tell you what to write about just things to spark ideas and it’s fantastic. I sincerely hope you write more soon! I’ve been having writer’s block and this helped a lot. I don’t know what I would do without this website.

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Journal Every Day: Inspiration & Prompts to build your Daily Journaling Habit

Journaling gives you the opportunity to vent, express gratitude, work through a problem, record a moment with family or friends that you want to keep forever, organize a day, describe a journey, express an emotion, log accomplishments, reflect, dream, plan, … and more. Experts have shown that daily journal writing benefits many aspects of your life, but the “daily” part is often where the problem lies. And research now says that it takes an average of 66 days to create a habit. Yikes! This book is here to help your build your daily journaling habit with 66 days of journal prompts (plus extras if the day’s choice doesn’t inspire you), inspirational quotes, and coloring pages to help clear your thoughts and relax a little. There are even some creative writing prompts for those days when you’d much rather write someone else’s story than your own. I hope you reap the benefits of your daily journaling habit and form a life-long love of chronicling your life in ink and paper.

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Once upon a time, Heike was one of those capable and organized people who envisioned her own happily ever after. But when her brother and husband died eighteen months apart, both far too young, it hit her hard. On good days, she would find herself staring blankly into an abyss, and on bad days, being vertical was a big accomplishment. It took years to come to terms with her loss and begin to piece together her new normal. This book documents the idiosyncrasies and mindboggling behaviour that accompany grief. It is the poignant portrayal of one woman learning to accept that grief is not something to move on from, but something that must become part of her story. At times angry, sad, raw, and painful, Heike shows us that grief can also be funny, edgy, and weirdly liberating. Anyone who is grieving will recognize themselves in her writing and find solace in not being alone. As bizarre as grief can be, it is normal, and there is hope.

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Held Back by Nothing is possibly one of the greatest inspirational books ever written to help parents of children with a disability. The story and the message is timeless. It is based on the life of his youngest son born with cerebral palsy. The book offers tips and real life situations to help give parents hope that; like his son, they can be okay as they make their journey through childhood to becoming young adults. The thesis of the book is never allowing anyone to define what their child can do, or what is in their future.

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The authoritative guide to fitness training for the Olympic sport of curling, written by a 2010 Olympic Gold Medalist and former world champion.

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At age 39, Kerrie Lee Brown, magazine editor and mom of two, ignored some serious warning signs and had a heart attack. She was not your typical cardiac patient either: physically fit, non-smoker, and no immediate family known to have heart disease. Kerrie’s huge wake-up call changed her perspective on what she was doing and how she was doing it. Her real-life story delves into the harsh reality that women today are simply trying to do too much!

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Life is stressful as f*ck. But it doesn’t have to be. It’s no wonder you can’t calm down: your to-do list is as long as your arm, your bank balance keeps dropping, you feel guilty for not calling your parents more often and there always seems to be a big deadline to meet at work. You need a serious breather—but you can barely find time to shower, let alone to exercise or meditate. In Let That Sh*t Go, Kate Petriw and Nina Purewal share the wisdom they’ve gained though decades of practising and teaching others to find peace of mind no matter how busy they are. Learn to put your life in perspective, take each day one step at a time and steal moments of calm amid the chaos. And remember: it’s not worth holding onto that sh*t.

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You Should Have Asked. The Art of Powerful Conversation 

After speaking with you, do people feel interesting, important and appreciated? Do you make them feel exciting, intriguing and thought provoking? Do people respect, admire, value and like you? Reading this book will ensure they do. Since the history of time, a person’s ability to connect with others has been the number one factor to getting the dream job, landing the loving relationship and attracting adventure. The more powerful your conversations, the more powerful your life. People are constantly influencing your destiny and the more powerful your conversations are with them, the more powerful your life will be.

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The Madness of My Mind. Building a Road Less Travelled 

​Would you believe a story about having to give a stool sample could inspire you to worry less?  Have you ever wondered how many people would show up at your funeral?  Do you know what it’s like to want to punch someone in the face?  Join Stuart Knight on a personal ten-year journey as he shares insights, failures and epiphanies with thousands of strangers from around the world with his weekly blog entitled The Madness of My Mind.  Get ready to devour pure honesty as he shares real life stories that will make you squirm, gasp and roll out of your seat with laughter. Above everything, this book will make you want to become a better person.

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A celebration of the unsung heroes behind the game, including first-hand stories from moms of the NHL’s biggest stars

Hockey Moms laces together the stories of NHL hockey moms like Kelly McDavid and Ema Matthews with those of mothers who never expected their children to set foot on the ice. With insight, warmth, honesty and humour, more than thirty hockey moms share their own journeys as they figure out how to juggle trips to the rink with raising a family, building their own backyard rinks, finding ways to pay for new gear and dealing with the sometimes-heartbreaking setbacks faced along the way.

We learn first-hand, through personal examples, that there are different pathways that lead our children where they want to go. Often, it’s mothers who carry the emotional burden of helping kids navigate their path.

Hockey Moms features untold stories of the highs and the lows, the challenges and the triumphs, from the women who are the heart of the game. A perfect gift for the more than 600,000 hockey moms in Canada.

Learn more about Hockey Moms; The Heart of the Game