Who’s Who
Natalie Appleton
A is for Appleton
Misfits searching for belonging lie at the heart of Mad Hell-Rush of Days (NeWest Press $25.95), Natalie Appleton’s historical novel set on the untamed plains of 19th-century Saskatchewan. Drawing on meticulous historical research, the novel follows two outsiders as they navigate hardship, friendship and the struggle for acceptance in a frontier community, weaving fictional lives with real historical figures. Natalie Appleton is an award-winning writer, a journalist for Prairie newspapers before turning to fiction and creative nonfiction. Her writing has appeared in The New York Times and other publications and she has won the Room Magazine Creative Non-fiction Contest and Prairie Fire’s Banff Centre Bliss Carman Poetry Contest. 9781774391440
Barry Gough pointing to his new plaque for getting the 2026 George Woodcock Award at VPL’s “Walk of Fame”. Photo credit: Brian Nguyen.
B is for Barry
In Francis Drake and Nova Albion: Elizabethan Voyaging on the Far Side of the World (Harbour $39.95), renowned Victoria-based maritime and naval historian Barry Gough revisits Drake’s 1577–1580 circumnavigation and his 1579 claim to Nova Albion at Drakes Bay, California. Gough sets the voyage against England’s imperial rivalry with Spain and traces how later British navigators, notably James Cook and George Vancouver, carried Britain’s Pacific ambitions northward toward what became British Columbia. Born in 1938, Gough is professor emeritus at Wilfrid Laurier University and the recipient of the 2026 George Woodcock Award for Outstanding Literary Achievement in British Columbia among many other awards throughout his lifetime. 9781998526772
Laurel Corona
C is for Corona
Idris Hall (1906–1996), aka Aloha Wanderwell, was a statuesque explorer and film star raised in North Vancouver, Duncan and Qualicum, who has been dubbed the first woman to travel around the world by car, which she did from 1922–25. She faced a firing squad in Russia; drove across Africa and China; briefly lived with Amazon tribes; shook hands with Mussolini and flirted with Hollywood royalty. Her husband Walter Wanderwell, a WW1 spy, the man behind the car trip adventure, was mysteriously murdered on their yacht. Others have written about Aloha and now Victoria-based Laurel Corona has released her take on the adventuress in the creative non-fiction title, Aloha Wanderwell Takes the Wheel (Sibylline $20). 9798897409426
David J. Dogterom
D is for Dogterom
Kamloops plumber, poet and kidlit aspirant David J. Dogterom has plunged into the murky waterworks of memory, retrieving a set of children’s rhymes misplaced 36 years ago during a move from Lethbridge. They turned up in his late mother’s attic. Dogterom showed them to his nephew, Greg Ferguson, who took a whack at illustrating them. Together, they produced the beguiling My Friends in the Alphabet Zoo (self-published $32.99). Its playful verses introduce young readers to an alphabet’s worth of outlandish animals, while Ferguson’s illustrations give Dogterom’s long-lost menagerie new life. 9798996579808
Elinor Florence
E is for Elinor
Invermere journo and former small-town editor/publisher Elinor Florence returns to the literary spotlight with a reissue of her nationally bestselling 2014 debut, Bird’s Eye View (S&S $26.99). Her other novels include Wildwood (Dundurn, 2018; reissued by S&S, 2026), named one of Kobo’s 100 most popular Canadian books, and Finding Flora (S&S, 2025), a number-one Canadian-fiction bestseller and Heather’s Pick. In Bird’s Eye View, a Saskatchewan farm woman joins the air force during the Second World War and becomes an aerial photographic interpreter. Her ability to read natural and built landscapes identifies enemy bomb targets—but ultimately undermines her patriotic certainty. Florence drew inspiration from her mother’s wartime stories and her own childhood on a former air-force base. 9781668227589
David Levy
F is for Fish
When it comes to fish stories, few trump David Levy. The North Vancouverite fisheries biologist, environmental consultant and lifelong angler has authored more than 100 scientific reports. To these he now adds Swimming Upstream: A Fish Biologist’s Journey (BookBaby $35.07). Swimming is an independently published memoir, engaging the reader with fisheries science, conservation battles, fishing tales and international fieldwork. Notably, Levy the McGill and UBC-educated scientist was, among other things, director of the 2009-2012 Cohen Commission Inquiry into the Decline of Sockeye Salmon in the Fraser River. 9798317812454
Gail Anderson-Dargatz
G is for Gail
Teenager romance, summer jobs and awkward café mysteries take center stage in Gail Anderson-Dargatz’s latest hi-lo novel, Tip Jar (Orca $10.95). When sixteen-year-old Emma spots a lone rose left inside her workplace’s tip jar, an innocent shift alongside best friend Robin and new hire Jack turns into a whirlwind of second-guessing, mixed signals and uncomfortable vibes. A Giller Prize finalist and winner of the Ethel Wilson Fiction Prize, the Betty Trask Prize and the VanCity Book Prize, the Shuswap-based author has published over twenty books spanning adult literary fiction, bestselling thrillers and accessible novels for striving teen readers. 9781459844247
Crystal Hurdle
H is for Hurdle
With Billie Eilish starring in Sarah Polley’s forthcoming adaptation of The Bell Jar, Sylvia Plath is returning to popular prominence. Vancouver poet Crystal Hurdle, however, never really left her. In Syl-Lo-Therapy (Guernica $22.95), she pairs the oft-bedevilled author with Nabokov’s troublesome fictional adolescent, Lolita Haze. The two “react, redact, reclaim” their stories through poetry, biography, art, sexuality, fashion, food and bibliotherapy (the use of books to help people work through emotional or psychological difficulties). Syl-Lo-Therapy is also a literary jape: Hurdle commits Plath and Haze to therapy so they can examine and reclaim the narratives imposed upon them. 9781778490422
Roy Innes
I is for Innes
Crime returns to Vancouver’s waterfront in The False Creek Murder: An Inspector Coswell Mystery (NeWest $23.95), the fifth instalment in Roy Innes’s long-running series. In The False Creek Murder, a routine drug bust ends in tragedy when a young constable is killed, pushing Sergeant Janet Bostock into leadership of the narcotics squad. Reunited with RCMP homicide division head Inspector Mark Coswell, the pair must unravel three seemingly unrelated murders. As Coswell navigates shifting alliances and mounting pressure, Innes once again explores the human dimensions of crime through characters praised by Louise Penny as “alive, likable, and flawed.” Now based on Gabriola Island, BC, he balances city life and the outdoors, drawing on his varied interests—from classical music to hunting—to shape the texture and setting of his fiction. 9781774391389
Jillian Roberts. Photo: Joshua Lawrence.
J is for Jillian
Toddlerhood brings boundless discovery and daily lessons, though the journey can often get quite messy. In No Matter What (Orca $10.95), child psychologist and University of Victoria research professor Dr. Jillian Roberts offers a comforting reminder that mistakes and silly shenanigans are simply part of growing up, reassuring little ones that they are unconditionally loved through every mishap. A mother of three and a monthly mental health columnist for The Globe and Mail, Roberts has created bestselling picture book series such as Just Enough and The World Around Us, guiding young readers through foundational life themes and complex social issues. 9781459845275
Marty Kramer. Photo by Jason Payne.
K is for Kramer
He has photos with his arm around Ringo Starr (of The Beatles fame) and holding boots given to him by John Entwistle (bass player for The Who). They are just two of the many famous rock & roll musicians from the 1960s into the 21st century that Richmond-based Marty Kramer worked for as a tour manager and “fixer.” Now 78, Kramer shares his stories in his memoir Road Boss (Mosaic $24.95) written with David Wolinsky. This backstage glimpse into music history includes Frank Sinatra, Roy Orbison, Tina Turna, Neil Young and Kramer’s good buddies, Burton Cummings and Randy Bachman (The Guess Who). 9781771618083
JJ Lee
L is for Lee
Hark to the cherished CBC Radio As It Happens ritual of rebroadcasting Alan “Fireside Al” Maitland’s 1979 reading of Frederick Forsyth’s supernatural aviation story, “The Shepherd,” on its final program before Christmas, past and present. Enter Montreal-raised and New Westminster-based writer, broadcaster and former CBC Radio producer JJ Lee, who re-wraps this Canadian tradition in Shivers: Christmas Ghost Stories to Read Aloud (Tidewater $22.95). The collection showcases a dozen new, broadcast-bred ghost stories, turning radio listeners into fireside readers invited to become storytellers in the comfort of their own homes. 9781990160714
Megan Carey
M is for Megan
When last some of us discussed the moon with our wee folk, the conversation may have ended with “Good Night!” In the age of Artemis flybys, smart telescopes and bedroom glow-globes, our lunar back yard has become, well, domesticated. Enter Fraser Valley writer Megan Carey, who is on a mission to reignite our collective senses of wonder. The result is A Perfect Word to Gift the Moon (Heritage House, $24.95), which chronicles one boy’s search for the “perfect word” of gratitude to our selenic satellite. Carey, a mother of two, may give a certain kid-lit classic a run for its money. 9781772035964
Nichelle Schulz
N is for Nichelle
Worldbuilding. You can go macro—Frank Herbert’s Dune, George R.R. Martin’s A Game of Thrones—or, in the case of Cariboo author Nichelle Schulz, small-town micro. In Death + Comedy (A Sad Girl Publication $20), the second volume in her Douglas Mountain mystery series, residents reside in one another’s armpits, their intimacy redolent with questions about reinvention, professional legitimacy, loneliness, trust and the high cost of living. An SFU Writer’s Studio graduate and former film projectionist, Schulz writes mystery, horror and speculative fiction with dark humour and an unmistakably Canadian accent. 9781069133922
Ruth Ozeki
O is for Ozeki
Raised in Connecticut by a Japanese mother and American father, dual Canadian-American citizen Ruth Ozeki divides her time among Cortes Island, New York City and western Massachusetts. A novelist, filmmaker, Zen Buddhist priest and Smith College professor emerita, Ozeki has published her first short story collection, The Typing Lady and Other Fictions (Penguin Canada $38), and it is a hoot. Mixing realism, satire, metafiction, autofiction and the surreal, its eleven stories explore ambition, desire, ageing, memory and lives not lived. Writing—and its tools, from typewriters and letters to disappearing ink—provides a shared motif. The laughs come courtesy of characters such as an online-snooping grandmother and a dead Beat poet who possesses a publishing assistant. 9780735249813
Pippa Scott
P is for Pippa
The literary world is awash with woeful tales of British boys sliced, diced and otherwise mangled by the public-school system. Girls, not so much. Vancouver-based writer, singer and award-winning documentary photographer Pippa Scott strives to rebalance the ledger with Paper Girls Burn: A Borderline Personality Disorder Memoir (Caitlin $26). Born in Canada but schooled in the U.K., Scott chronicles the years before her borderline personality disorder diagnosis and her search for love, understanding and identity. Her story takes in a rigid British boarding school, a London rock star, Broadway training, Hollywood film offices and Vancouver’s drag world. 9781773861944
Christine Quintana
Q is for Quintana
Set in a Mexican resort, the lives of Sarah, a cynical Canadian wedding guest, and Adriana, a perfectionist hotel floor manager, intersect in unexpected ways in Christine Quintana’s latest play, Espejos: Clean (Playwrights Canada Press $19.99). Sarah’s pessimism and Adriana’s quest for order mask deeper anxieties, which come to light as their parallel realities collide. Through poignant and often humorous monologues, the bilingual play delves into themes of female strength, solidarity, and the struggles each woman faces in navigating her world. Speaking directly to the audience, their stories reveal both contrasts and commonalities, magnifying their shared pain and resilience. The play was adapted and translated into Spanish by Paula Zelaya-Cervantes. 9780369104588
Richard Kelly Kemick
R is for Richard
Rejecting the conventions of traditional memoir, Decadence (Biblioasis $24.95) sees Richard Kelly Kemick assemble an “accidental memoir” through a series of essays on subjects as varied as volleyball, dogs, municipal landfills, Christmas villages and love. Blending wit, vulnerability and philosophical reflection, the collection reveals a life shaped less by grand narratives than by the ordinary moments that give modern existence meaning. Richard Kelly Kemick is an award-winning poet, journalist and fiction writer. 9781771967136
Jeff Chiba Stearns
S is for Stearns
The actor, George Takei of Star Trek fame, famously travelled from the barbed wire of an American wartime prison camp to the stars aboard the starship Enterprise, later chronicling his family’s incarceration in the graphic memoir They Called Us Enemy (Top Shelf Productions, 2019). Kelowna-born animator, documentarian, writer, illustrator and publisher Jeff Chiba Stearns brings that history home in Ojiichan’s Dragon (Meditating Bunny Studio/Sandhill Marketing $34.99). Set in a remote BC internment camp during the Second World War, his full-colour graphic novel entwines the forced displacement of Japanese Canadians with a soaring element of fantasy. Stearns is an Emmy-nominated, Webby-winning filmmaker and founder of Meditating Bunny Studio. 9781775234388
Tessa Barbosa
T is for Tessa
Frankenstein meets anti-colonial fantasy in Isle of Teeth (Simon & Schuster $19.99), Tessa Barbosa’s second young adult novel. Set in a world where empire, magic and death collide, the story follows a mixed-heritage soldier and a revenant struggling to survive as their fates become entwined under the watch of Lady Death. Inspired by Frankenstein and These Violent Delights, the novel explores identity, resistance and what it means to be labelled a monster. Filipina Canadian author Tessa Barbosa lives in Vancouver, where she writes fantasy fiction alongside her work in software documentation. 9781668217184
Udayana Lugo
U is for Udayana
Richmond-based illustrator, Udayana Lugo is self-taught. She worked as a designer (jewelry, auto parts, furniture and interiors) and then discovered children’s books, which became her passion. Previous books Lugo has illustrated with Orca Book Publishers include Jungle Cat (2023), Pink is for Everybody (2023), When You Meet a Dragon (2024) and No Huddles for Heloise (2025). Lugo has now illustrated Gotcha Day (Orca, 2026) for ages 3 to 5 by Deborah Kerbel, the story of a stray dog on its path to being adopted into its “fur-ever home.” Not knowing its birthday, the family celebrates “Gotcha Day,” which is when a pet is adopted. 9781459839663
Vi Hughes
V is for Vi
We all love an aardvark, and kidlit does not lack for them, from Marc Brown’s Arthur to Kes Gray and Jim Field’s Oi Aardvark! What does this one bring to the table? In Along Came an Aardvark (Plumleaf $22.95), illustrated by Lydia Ramsey, the beast is less hero than hook. Lonely Sam O. Dictionary swaps Miss Muffet’s spider for an unfamiliar animal, and suddenly children want his definitions. North Shore writer Vi Hughes draws on work as a classroom teacher, elementary-school principal and reading instructor to argue that fact and nonsense belong at the same story time. 9781997872016
Wendy Proverbs
W is for Wendy
Letti in Progress (Wandering Fox $14.95) illustrated by Alyssa Koski, follows eleven-year-old Letti, an adopted Indigenous girl who begins to question her identity after a racist incident at school leads her to search for information about her birth family and cultural roots. With the support of her adoptive parents and school counsellor, she travels north to Kaska Dena territory, where she begins to reconnect with her ancestry and understand her place within both her past and present. Wendy Proverbs is an award-winning Indigenous author of Kaska Dena descent whose writing focuses on identity, adoption and Indigenous history and holds degrees in anthropology from the University of Victoria while also working as a community liaison supporting Indigenous education and cultural connection. 9781772035940
Mary Fox
X is for Fox
Renowned potter Mary Fox shares her knowledge of glazing in Developing Glazes: Low-Fire Reduction and Oxidation (Harbour Publishing $44.95), a guide that encourages ceramic artists to experiment with confidence. Rather than relying on ready-made glazes, Fox invites potters to explore the use of minerals and clay slips, offering step-by-step instructions and techniques for low-temperature firing. All royalties are donated to the endowment fund for the Legacy Project, which supports the careers of emerging potters through apprenticeships, residencies, studio space and a library of instructional videos. A self-taught exploratory potter, Fox moved with her family to British Columbia in 1966. She has worked exclusively as an artist since then, developing an international reputation for her sculptural ceramic vessels. In Developing Glazes, she extends this mentorship to readers, blending her creative philosophy with practical techniques to help others discover joy and freedom in the glazing process. 9781998526253
Monica Yuzak
Y is for Yuzak
Her first love, travel, carried Monica Yuzak far beyond her childhood in a small northern Saskatchewan town and into a life shaped by movement, medicine and motherhood. Yuzak traces her journey from newly minted doctor and young mother to a woman living and working across Papua New Guinea, the Northwest Territories and New Zealand, always chasing experience and perspective in Never Still (Tellwell $19.99). When her daughter became a teenager, Yuzak kept a promise to settle in Vancouver, discovering that restlessness can evolve into a deeper way of seeing—one rooted as much in attention as in geography. Part memoir, part reflection on belonging, Never Still captures a life defined by curiosity, courage and continual motion. 9781779620644
Zoe Dickinson
Z is for Zoe
Poet, Zoe Dickinson lives in Victoria where she manages Russell Books and is the Artistic Director emerita of the Planet Earth Poetry Reading Series. This lived experience is reflected in her debut full-length poetry book, Staff Picks for Invertebrates (Guernica $22.95). Dickinson’s nature imagery and bookstore tales creates a world where the divisions between bookstores, books, staff and sentient beings falls away to create, as her publisher blurbs, “the same family” that dwells “in the same fragile, radiant world.” This love letter to bookstores and the Earth mingles humour and compassion. 9781778490286
