The Owl's Nest Hootdunnit Mystery Book Club meets on the third Wednesday of each month at 7:00pm. There is no membership fee and drop-ins are always welcome. 

November's pick is The Word is Murder by Anthony Horowitz

About the book:
Anthony Horowitz has delivered yet another twist on the classic crime novel with this contemporary take on Sherlock Holmes. The Word Is Murder is original and suspenseful and a masterful amalgam of homage and parody.

The New York Times–bestselling author of Magpie Murders and Moriarty brilliantly reinvents the classic crime novel once again with this clever mystery starring a fictional version of the author himself as Watson to a modern-day Holmes. Both are investigating a case involving buried secrets, murder and a trail of bloody clues. 

On a bright spring morning, a woman goes into a funeral parlour to plan her own service. Six hours later she is dead, strangled with a crimson curtain cord in her own home.

Enter disgraced police detective Daniel Hawthorne and his partner, the celebrated novelist Anthony Horowitz, curious about the case and looking for new material. But as the case unfolds, Horowitz realizes he’s at the centre of a story he can’t control . . . and that his brilliant partner may be hiding dark and mysterious secrets of his own.

Join us for a Saturday Signing with a local author!

When Cricket McKay and her best friend, Shilo, discover that a cougar has been seen in the town of Waterton, they are thrilled that school closes for a few days as a precaution. The townspeople are worried though. They want the cougar caught and relocated, which could be disastrous for the cougar. Cricket's dad, the national park's warden, is receiving reports of the cougar causing all kinds of trouble around town, but it's the type of trouble it doesn't make sense for a cougar to get into. Then Cricket and Shilo find evidence that another animal may be to blame. With the help of a visiting researcher who is in Waterton studying cougar behavior, Cricket and Shilo must convince the townspeople, and Cricket's dad, that they're after the the wrong animal before it’s too late.

This is the fourth title featuring Cricket and her friends, following Bats in Trouble, Ospreys in Danger and Salamander Rescue.

Join us for an ooey-gooey, anything-but-clean, Saturday Signing with local author and CBC personality!

Search for “clean” in online bookstores, and there are over 8,000
results in the cookbook category; the hashtag #cleaneating has been
used over 43 million times on Instagram (with #eatclean and other
similar terms in the same ballpark)

Dirty Food is a joyful pushback against this amorphous, abstract buzzword and its connection with ideas of purity and
goodness. With recipes like Eton Mess, Sloppy Joes, Dirty Rice and Sticky Buns, Dirty Food contains a wide variety of
dishes that celebrate the pleasure we derive from food, and its ability to bring people together to socialize, comfort and
enjoy each other’s company—when it comes to food, there should be no guilt in pleasure.
Dirty Food is the first in a new series of small format, single subject cookbooks that aims to give home cooks confidence
in the kitchen with versatile, cookable recipes that are useful, unfussy and easily adapted to suit personal tastes and
the seasons.
 

 

Join us for a book launch party!

The Known World has been charted and mapped by ancient kings since the birth of humanity, seperated into kingdoms and countries that are ruled by monarchs and warlords who seized the crowns during the Great Victory of the First Age. Upon each throne sits a different ruler, and in each kingdom, many plot to take these seats for themselves. In the north, a scheme to murder a queen on her coronation day is conceived, while a boy king to the west lives as a slave to a powerful warlord. The southern monarchs hear of a threat from the lips of sailors about an old legend come true, while the eastern king secludes himself from the rest of the world, hiding from a darkness that drives him mad. Through murder and conspiracy, happiness and sorrow, there is one true plight that all must face: the Plight of Steel.

Join us for a presentation on the origin of the CCF/NDP graphic novel!

The turmoil of the Great Depression galvanized Canadians to rise up and fight for improved labour conditions, social equality and universal healthcare. In the frontier city of Calgary, Holly Burnside and Brian Mah get involved with the founding of the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation, the first national party dedicated to the needs of workers and farmers.

Join author James Davidge as he discusses the historical and creative forces behind his newest graphic novel, 1st Legion of Utopia.

Join us for a reading and signing of middle grade novel about urban coyotes with special guest  and expert in large carnivore conservation, Dr. Victoria Lucasik.

Two coyote friends must learn how to survive when human development threatens their homes.

Pica and Scruff, two young coyotes, are both born in the heart of a large city. Pica has a loving family and lives on a peaceful golf course. Scruff was orphaned at birth and adopted by a mysterious older coyote named Jagger.

Despite their differences, Pica and Scruff meet and become friends. Their friendship is put to the test, however, when Scruff learns that Pica’s family may have been involved in the death of his own family. The fragile peace is further disrupted when construction begins, demolishing the place where Scruff and Jagger live. And then Scruff discovers that there is a lot he doesn’t know about Jagger, the only parent he’s ever known. Scruff must decide whom to trust in order to survive and find a new place to call home.

Join us for a Saturday Signing!

This is a collection of recipes, drawings, observations from travels, and reflections on food and place ..... not just a cookbook!
Bev Sandalack is a landscape architect and planner, and professor at the University of Calgary. Profoundly inspired by the prairies, she has spent a lot of time trying to see the world - experiencing other cultures, sampling cuisines, drawing + making notes, and cooking.

Join us for a special Sunday Signing!

A compact, comprehensive, and very silly field guide featuring more than 200 of the rudest birds on earth.

Effin' Birds is the most eagerly anticipated new volume in the grand and noble profession of nature writing and bird identification. Sitting proudly alongside Sibley, Kaufman, and Peterson, this book contains more than 150 pages crammed full of classic, monochrome plumage art paired with the delightful but dirty aphorisms (think "I'm going to need more booze to deal with this week") that made the Effin' Birds Twitter feed a household name. Also included in its full, Technicolor glory is John James Audubon's most beautiful work matched with modern life advice. Including never-before-seen birds, insults, and field notes, this guide is a must-have for any effin' fan or birder.

Bring the kids to a fun picture book launch party!

With imaginative text and colourful artwork, Nuptse and Lhotse's latest adventure showcases the history, culture, and environment of the Yukon, Northwest Territories, and Nunavut.

Welcome to the Land of the Midnight Sun!

While waiting for the first snowfall of winter to arrive, Nuptse and Lhotse are excited when they find an unusual snow globe in their home that can change the weather. With the help of Roald, a Polar Explorer Fox, they set off together on an adventure to northern Canada and the Arctic, on a quest to find the great treasure of the north.

As they make their way from the Chilkoot Trail to the North Pole through all the four seasons, the cats will try panning for gold, ride a caribou across the tundra from boreal forest to the Arctic Ocean, and sail among ice floes in the Northwest Passage with the help of an Inuit hunter. With several surprises along the way, the cats learn many fascinating things that make this land and its history unique, from bird migrations and prehistoric animals, to ice blinks and shipwrecks, to permafrost and polar ice caps. Will Nuptse and Lhotse find the great treasure of the north?

The Owl's Nest YA for Adults Book Club is for adults who LOVE  Young Adult fiction! We know you are out there and you're not alone.
Each month we will meet to discuss a compelling YA novel and will explore many genres within the YA category.
This months pick is Little White Lies by Jennifer Lynn Barnes

About the book:
Eighteen-year-old auto mechanic Sawyer Taft did not expect her estranged grandmother to show up at her apartment door and offer her a six-figure contract to participate in debutante season. And she definitely never imagined she would accept. But when she realizes that immersing herself in her grandmother's "society" might mean discovering the answer to the biggest mystery of her life-her father's identity-she signs on the dotted line and braces herself for a year of makeovers, big dresses, bigger egos, and a whole lot of bless your heart. The one thing she doesn't expect to find is friendship, but as she's drawn into a group of debutantes with scandalous, dangerous secrets of their own, Sawyer quickly discovers that her family isn't the only mainstay of high society with skeletons in their closet. There are people in her grandmother's glittering world who are not what they appear, and no one wants Sawyer poking her nose into the past. As she navigates the twisted relationships between her new friends and their powerful parents, Sawyer's search for the truth about her own origins is just the beginning.

Set in the world of debutante balls, grand estates and rolling green hills, Little White Lies combines a charming setting, a classic fish-out-of-water story, and the sort of layered mystery only author Jennifer Lynn Barnes can pull off.

Our Wonderful Literary Society, or O.W.L.S, is our store book club for literary readers. We meet on the first Thursday of each month at 7:00 pm. There is not membership fee and drop-ins are always welcome.

This month's book is: The Huntress by Kate Quinn

About this book:

In the aftermath of war, the hunter becomes the hunted…

Bold and fearless, Nina Markova always dreamed of flying. When the Nazis attack the Soviet Union, she risks everything to join the legendary Night Witches, an all-female night bomber regiment wreaking havoc on the invading Germans. When she is stranded behind enemy lines, Nina becomes the prey of a lethal Nazi murderess known as the Huntress, and only Nina’s bravery and cunning will keep her alive.

Transformed by the horrors he witnessed from Omaha Beach to the Nuremberg Trials, British war correspondent Ian Graham has become a Nazi hunter. Yet one target eludes him: a vicious predator known as the Huntress. To find her, the fierce, disciplined investigator joins forces with the only witness to escape the Huntress alive: the brazen, cocksure Nina. But a shared secret could derail their mission unless Ian and Nina force themselves to confront it.

Growing up in post-war Boston, seventeen-year-old Jordan McBride is determined to become a photographer. When her long-widowed father unexpectedly comes homes with a new fiancée, Jordan is thrilled. But there is something disconcerting about the soft-spoken German widow. Certain that danger is lurking, Jordan begins to delve into her new stepmother’s past—only to discover that there are mysteries buried deep in her family . . . secrets that may threaten all Jordan holds dear.

In this immersive, heart-wrenching story, Kate Quinn illuminates the consequences of war on individual lives, and the price we pay to seek justice and truth. 

Join us for a Saturday Signing with a local author!

It’s 1987. Hair is big. Rock ’n’ roll is hard. A killer leaves elaborate scenes in city parks—re-enactments of a dark fantasy driven by ritual. Detective Mahoney is haunted by the word “serial” as he confronts the ghost faces of a past failed case. The bodies stack up. The linkage is undeniable. The clues are bizarre and inconclusive. Drowning in human carnage and pulled into the wild underground of hard rock, Detective Mahoney questions his old-school methods. Does he trust his gut? Does he embrace new hocus pocus profiling? Or does he let the ghost faces drive him to insanity while a killer runs free?

Join us for a Saturday Signing!

Lucy and friends are out on the playground when they spot Ava playing basketball with her cousin Jermaine, a professional player. Jermaine calls the kids over for a lesson on the fundamentals of the game and how to play three-on-three When the kids finish, Jermaine invites them to watch him play in a pro game. Lucy, Ava and friends cheer on Jermaine and his teammates, keeping an eye out on the real court for the skills they learned at the playground. 

Lucy Tries Basketball is the fifth title in the Lucy Tries Sports series, following books about hockey, soccer, short track and luge. The series encourages children to get active and participate in sports and recreation.
Also available in French as Lucy joue au basketball.

The Owl's Nest Hootdunnit Mystery Book Club meets on the third Wednesday of each month at 7:00pm. There is no membership fee and drop-ins are always welcome. 

December's pick is Mistletoe Murder by P.D. James

 P. D. James's understanding of human nature illuminates each of these four stories, making them ideal reading for the darkest days of the year. Each treats the reader to her masterfully atmospheric storytelling, a mystery to be solved, and enjoyable puzzles to keep the reader guessing. With wry humour, she pays tribute to her English crime-writing forebears, delighting in the secrets that lurk beneath the surface at enforced family gatherings and in old country houses--from the title story about a strained family reunion on Christmas Eve, to another about an illicit affair that ends in murder, and two cases that introduce James's poet-detective Adam Dalgliesh as a young detective sergeant.

Our Wonderful Literary Society, or O.W.L.S, is our store book club for literary readers. We meet on the first Thursday of each month at 7:00 pm. There is not membership fee and drop-ins are always welcome.

This month's book: Our Lady of the Lost and Found by Diane Schoemperlen

About the book:

One Monday morning in April, a middle-aged writer walks into her living room to water the plants and finds a woman standing beside her potted fig tree. Dressed in a navy blue trench coat and white Nikes, the woman introduces herself as "Mary. Mother of God.... You know. Mary." Instead of a golden robe or a crown, she arrives bearing a practical wheeled suitcase. Weary after two thousand years of adoration and petition, Mary is looking for a little R & R. She's asked in for lunch, and decides to stay a week. As the story of their visit unfolds, so does the story of Mary-one of the most complex and powerful female figures of our time-and her changing image in culture, art, history, as well as the thousands of recorded sightings that have placed her everywhere from a privet hedge to the dented bumper of a Camaro.

As this Everywoman and Mary become friends, their conversations, both profound and intimate, touch upon Mary's significance and enduring relevance. Told with humor and grace, Our Lady of the Lost and Found is an absorbing tour through Mary's history and a thoughtful meditation on spirituality, our need for faith, and our desire to believe in something larger than ourselves.

Join us for a local author book launch party!

A timely and heartfelt collection of essays inspired by the #MeToo movement, edited by acclaimed young adult and middle-grade author Janet Gurtler. Featuring Beth Revis, Mackenzi Lee, Ellen Hopkins, Saundra Mitchell, Jennifer Brown, Cheryl Rainfield and many more.

When #MeToo went viral, Janet Gurtler was among the millions of people who began to reflect on her past experiences. Things she had reluctantly accepted—male classmates groping her at recess, harassment at work—came back to her in startling clarity. She needed teens to know what she had not: that no young person should be subject to sexual assault, or made to feel unsafe, less than or degraded.

You Too? was born out of that need. By turns thoughtful and explosive, these personal stories encompass a wide range of experiences and will resonate with every reader who has wondered, “Why is this happening to me?” or secretly felt that their own mistreatment or abuse is somehow their fault—it’s not. Candid and empowering, You Too? is written for teens, but also an essential resource for the adults in their lives—an urgent, compassionate call to listen and create change.

Our Wonderful Literary Society, or O.W.L.S, is our store book club for literary readers. We meet on the first Thursday of each month at 7:00 pm. There is not membership fee and drop-ins are always welcome.

This month's book is: The Hazards of Time Travel by Joyce Carol Oates


About this book:

Time travel” — and its hazards—are made literal in this astonishing new novel in which a recklessly idealistic girl dares to test the perimeters of her tightly controlled (future) world and is punished by being sent back in time to a region of North America — “Wainscotia, Wisconsin”—that existed eighty years before.  Cast adrift in time in this idyllic Midwestern town she is set upon a course of “rehabilitation”—but cannot resist falling in love with a fellow exile and questioning the constrains of the Wainscotia world with results that are both devastating and liberating.

Arresting and visionary, Hazards of Time Travel  is both a novel of harrowing discovery and an exquisitely wrought love story that may be Joyce Carol Oates’s most unexpected novel so far.

Our Wonderful Literary Society, or O.W.L.S, is our store book club for literary readers. We meet on the first Thursday of each month at 7:00 pm. There is not membership fee and drop-ins are always welcome.

This month's book: The Brotherhood of Book Hunters by Raphael Jerusalmy

About this book: 


The Da Vinci Code meets Stephen Greenblatt's The Swerve in this erudite adventure story set at the dawn of the printed book about the outlaw poet François Villon and the power of words to change the world.

François Villon, the world's first poet of modernity, was born in Paris in 1431. He was arrested and condemned to death by hanging in 1462 and exonerated in 1463. Shortly after his release from prison, as far as history is concerned, he disappeared forever. 

In Raphaël Jerusalmy's thrilling novel, to ensure his release, Villon has accepted a shady deal offered by the Bishop of Paris at the behest of Louis XI. All Villon has to do to earn his freedom is to convince a printer and bookseller to move from Mayence to Paris, telling him that by doing so he'll be better able to circulate progressive ideas that aren't approved of in Rome. Not surprisingly, Villon's task becomes more complicated that it first seemed. With this riveting tale of plotsand counterplots involving secret organizations in Jerusalem, intrigue in France, and brigands in Italy, Raphaël Jerusalmy leaves readers with their hearts racing and their imaginations stirred.The Brotherhood of Book Hunters is an irresistible read for lovers of books, adventure, and fine writing.

Our Wonderful Literary Society, or O.W.L.S, is our store book club for literary readers. We meet on the first Thursday of each month at 7:00 pm. There is not membership fee and drop-ins are always welcome.

This month's book: The Boat People by Sharon Bala

About this book:

When the rusty cargo ship carrying Mahindan and five hundred fellow refugees reaches the shores of British Columbia, the young father is overcome with relief: he and his six-year-old son can finally put Sri Lanka’s bloody civil war behind them and begin new lives. Instead, the group is thrown into prison, with government officials and news headlines speculating that hidden among the “boat people” are members of a terrorist militia. As suspicion swirls and interrogation mounts, Mahindan fears the desperate actions he took to survive and escape Sri Lanka now jeopardize his and his son’s chances for asylum. 
            Told through the alternating perspectives of Mahindan; his lawyer Priya, who reluctantly represents the migrants; and Grace, a third-generation Japanese-Canadian adjudicator who must decide Mahindan’s fate, The Boat People is a high-stakes novel that offers a deeply compassionate lens through which to view the current refugee crisis. Inspired by real events, with vivid scenes that move between the eerie beauty of northern Sri Lanka and combative refugee hearings in Vancouver, where life and death decisions are made, Sharon Bala’s stunning debut is an unforgettable and necessary story for our times

Our Wonderful Literary Society, or O.W.L.S, is our store book club for literary readers. We meet on the first Thursday of each month at 7:00 pm. There is not membership fee and drop-ins are always welcome.

This month's book: Bridge of Clay by Marcus Zusak

About this book:

The breathtaking story of five brothers who bring each other up in a world run by their own rules. As the Dunbar boys love and fight and learn to reckon with the adult world, they discover the moving secret behind their father’s disappearance.

At the center of the Dunbar family is Clay, a boy who will build a bridge—for his family, for his past, for greatness, for his sins, for a miracle.

The question is, how far is Clay willing to go? And how much can he overcome?
 
Written in powerfully inventive language and bursting with heart, BRIDGE OF CLAY is signature Zusak.

Our Wonderful Literary Society, or O.W.L.S, is our store book club for literary readers. We meet on the first Thursday of each month at 7:00 pm. There is not membership fee and drop-ins are always welcome.

This month's book is Son of a Trickster by Eden Robinson


About this book:


 Meet Jared Martin: sixteen-year-old pot cookie dealer, smoker, drinker and son with the scariest mom ever. But Jared's the pot dealer with a heart of gold--really. Compassionate, caring, and nurturing by nature, Jared's determined to help hold his family together--whether that means supporting his dad's new family with the proceeds from his baking or caring for his elderly neighbours. But when it comes to being cared and loved, Jared knows he can't rely on his family. His only source of love and support was his flatulent pit bull Baby, but she's dead. And then there's the talking ravens and the black outs and his grandmother's perpetual suspicion that he is not human, but the son of a trickster.