During the second half of the 19th century, thousands of Chinese men arrived on the west coast of North America, seeking to escape poverty and make their fortunes in the goldfields or working on the railroads. Among them was 36-year-old Yip Sang, a native of Guangdong province in southeast China, who arrived in Vancouver in 1881 after failing to strike it rich in California. His luck was about to change. Through perseverance, hard work and an eye for opportunity, the enterprising Yip Sang ...

There is no saga in Canadian history as full of hardship, catastrophe and mystery as the search for the Northwest Passage. Since the 15th century, the ice-choked Arctic waterway has been sought and travelled by daring men seeking profit, glory or a chance to test themselves against the merciless North. Frances Hern takes us aboard ships with the explorers whose names are memorialized on modern maps of northern Canada: Martin Frobisher, daring privateer in the service of Elizabeth I; Henry ...

A stunning memoir of an intercultural marriage gone wrongWhen Susan, a shy Midwesterner in love with Chinese culture, started graduate school in Hong Kong, she quickly fell for Cai, the Chinese man of her dreams. As they exchanged vows, Susan thought she'd stumbled into an exotic fairy tale, until she realized Cai—and his culture—where not what she thought.In her riveting memoir, Susan recounts her struggle to be the perfect traditional "Chinese" wife to he...

Phoebe’s Way is the story of a Saint John Ambulance therapy dog whose unsentimental lessons on aging propel this powerful work of fiction from author Pamela Ditchoff. Phoebe’s cross is carried throughout the rooms of Mersey House, a nursing home in Safe Harbour, Nova Scotia. Each chapter represents a station of the journey and an insight into the emotional weight born by the residents and those who care for them. Layered with symbolism in the precise and poetic language of Phoebe, this poi...

In this true story, Armande Martel, a young nun from Quebec, is arrested by the Germans in 1940 during a stay at her religious order’s mother house in Brittany. She spends the war years in a German concentration camp. After her return to Canada, she leaves the Church, finds the love of her life in Montreal, and adopts Lise Dion.Growing up, Lise is familiar with only a few facts of her mother’s past. It’s when she clears her mother’s small apartment after her death that Lise Dion di...

This novel probes the reckless impulses behind an extramarital affair, from an author who is “an heir to Updike and Cheever” (Robert Wiersema, author of Bedtime Story and Before I Wake)Ronnie is a hairdresser who has tried to become a better person to please her fiancé — healthier, well behaved, free of her old bad habits like smoking cigarettes, eating red meat, and indulging in the occasional line of cocaine. As the wedding date approaches — and...

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • The international sensation and blockbuster Hollywood rom com. • "A Pride and Prejudice-like send-up about an heir bringing his Chinese-American girlfriend home to meet his ancestor-obsessed family.” —People“Deliciously decadent.... This 48-karat beach read is crazy fun.” —Entertainment WeeklyWhen New Yorker Rachel Chu agrees to spend the summer in Singapore with her boyfrie...

**#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • The “mercilessly entertaining” (Vanity Fair) instant classic “about the nature of identity and the terrible secrets that can survive and thrive in even the most intimate relationships” (Lev Grossman, Time “One of the Best Books of the Decade”)—now featuring never-before-published deleted scenesONE OF TIME'S 100 BEST MYSTERY AND THRILLER BOOKS OF ALL TIME, ONE OF CNN'S MOST INFLUENTIAL BOOKS OF THE DECADE, AND ONE ...

**From the bestselling author of The Ascent of Money and The Square and the Tower“A dazzling history of Western ideas.”—The Economist“Mr. Ferguson tells his story with characteristic verve and an eye for the felicitous phrase.” —Wall Street Journal“[W]ritten with vitality and verve . . . a tour de force.” —Boston Globe**Western civilization’s rise to global dominance is the single most important historical phenome...

Revealing a little-known part of North American history, this lively guide tells the fascinating tale of the settlement of the St. Lawrence Valley. It also tells of the Montreal and Quebec-based explorers and traders who traveled, mapped, and inhabited a very large part of North America, and "embrothered the peoples" they met, as Jack Kerouac wrote.Connecting everyday life to the events that emerged as historical turning points in the life of a people, this book sheds new light on Quebec's...

A heart-warming story of a woman who devoted her life to helping others. This is the memoir of Joan, who started nursing in the 1940s and whose experiences took her into the Yorkshire mining pits and through the tumult of the 1984-85 miners’ strike.Joan Hart always knew what she wanted to do with her life. Born in South Yorkshire in 1932, she started her nursing training when she was 16, the youngest age girls could do so at the time. She continued working after she married and her...

When Sir John Franklin disappeared in the Arctic in the 1840s, the British Admiralty launched the largest rescue mission in its history. Among the search vessels was HMS Investigator, which left England in 1850 under the command of Captain Robert McClure. While the ambitious McClure never found Franklin, he and his crew did discover the fabled Northwest Passage.Like Franklin’s ships, though, Investigator disappeared in the most remote, bleak and unknown place on E...