Like entering the home of an old friend, Return to Holly Cottage is a second collection of stories from the beloved 1878 stone farmhouse, otherwise known as “the house that hugs you.” Located in Canada’s southern Georgian Bay near the famous Bruce Trail, Holly Cottage was a beloved country Bed & Breakfast frequented by fascinating guests and surrounded by quirky neighbours.Some guests were looking for love, others for a bit of peace and quiet. One particularly memorable Italian-spe...

Cottage Daze celebrates life at the cottage where the cottage is the main character, and family, friends, pets, and fellow cottagers are the supporting cast. Whether writing about cottage routine ("First Ski," "Of Mice and Men," "Cottage Guests"), cottage tasks ("Splitting Wood," "Boat Launch"), nature ("A Gathering of Loons," "The Sting," "Autumn Spell"), cottage fun ("The Cottage Duel"), or cottage touchstones ("Start the Day," "Bonfire," "The Perfect Storm"), the stories are to...

Reflections on country life on Canada's eastern coast: "Gentle humor and prose as clear and lilting as the song of the hermit thrush at dusk." —Deborah Carr, author of Sanctuary: The Story of Naturalist Mary MajkaSara Jewell has lived at eighteen different addresses—but there was one that remained constant: Pugwash Point Road in rural Nova Scotia. She was nine years old the first time her family vacationed in the small fishing village about an hour from th...

As its title implies, In the Beginning There Was Chaos follows John and Elly Patterson as they tackle the everyday joys and sorrows--and surprises and frustrations and challenges--that arise when raising a young family. In her second For Better or For Worse treasury, Lynn Johnston takes readers back to the 1980s, when Elly leaves her column for a job at the library. As Elly chases her professional goals, she struggles with spending less time at home. Meanwhile, John provi...

Since its debut in 1979, For Better or For Worse has touched comic strip readers as few cartoons ever do. Lynn Johnston's eye for detail and her uncanny sense of what real parents and children struggle with daily are a big part of her success. The comic strip now appears in 1,550 papers in the U.S. and Canada. Read by people of all ages, the award-winning For Better or For Worse deals honestly with both the light-hearted and the serious, and to many readers, the Patterson...

Hamilton Spectator columnist Paul Benedetti’s essays paint a wonderfully funny portrait of family life today.Paul Benedetti has a good job, a great family, and successful neighbours — but that doesn’t stop him from using it all as grist for a series of funny, real, and touching essays about a world he can’t quite navigate.Benedetti misses his son, who is travelling in Europe, misplaces his groceries, and forgets to pick up his daughter at school. H...

Everyone needs things to look forward to: big things and small things, on good days and on bad days, whether we actively create delight for ourselves or simply allow it to enter our lives.In these pages, beloved author and illustrator Sophie Blackall has gathered a collection of joys for all of us—reminders that every day the sun comes up and new babies are born. She includes suggestions that you bake muffins for a friend, or draw a face on an egg and put it in the...

In this award-winning, true-life tale for gardeners, nature-lovers, and dreamers of all ages, Little Farm in the Foothills follows a midlife couple’s pursuit of the “new” Great American Dream—living closer to the land—as Susan and her husband John start growing their own organic food, living more simply, and transforming an old clearcut into a little homestead.For the fifty-somethings, figuring out how to raise food on their logging slash-covered property seemed like a mod...

Anything boys can do, girls can do better.The hysterical, cheeky, female counterpart to the smash hit 211 Things a Bright Boy Can Do.If you’ve ever wanted to walk on stilts, make sloe gin, ride an ostrich, or forecast the weather like your grandmother used to, this is the book you’ve been waiting for.This surprisingly handy and delightfully amusing guide includes instructions for:EVERYDAY SURVIVAL SKILLS:How ...

Longlisted, 20188 Leacock Medal for HumourA hilarious collection of Jack Knox's best-loved humour columns.In this side-splitting follow-up to the bestseller Hard Knox: Musings from the Edge of Canada, Jack Knox presents his best writing, marking his twenty-year anniversary as a humour columnist at the Victoria Times Colonist, the newspaper that made him a household name. Revisiting his most—and least!—popular colu...

A sudden love affair with fragrance leads to sensual awakening, self-transformation, and an unexpected homecomingAt thirty-six—earnest, bookish, terminally shopping averse—Alyssa Harad thinks she knows herself. Then one day she stumbles on a perfume review blog and, surprised by her seduction by such a girly extravagance, she reads in secret. But one trip to the mall and several dozen perfume samples later, she is happily obsessed with the seductive underworld of scent and the bril...

Bestselling author of The Spoon Stealer brings more of her sharp Cape Breton wit to the follow-up non-fiction collection to Leacock–longlisted Are You Kidding Me?! I Kid You Not! is a follow-up to bestselling author Lesley Crewe's first hit column-and-essay collection, Are You Kidding Me?! Here Lesley is hilarious and insightful as ever, giving us her take on everything from hockey to wildlife to the ache of missing our ancestors in ninety essays. She shares details of her proposal for the...