Join us for an evening of reading and discussion with three local authors and their new novels from one of Canada's finest literary presses.

Appreciative Inquiry In Action shares a simple and effective means of  becoming more resilient and free of negativity. It is a non-fiction book that unravels stories reflecting acceptance of the highest and best within challenging circumstances.
Readers may find themselves re-examining their own trials and tribulations while discovering their own gems of gratitude. The book suggests fresh ways of viewing life that could remove blocks to happiness and encourage healthier relationships. Educators may be inspired to introduce Appreciative Inquiry into their teaching practices after reading this book. 
 
 

Dr. Doetzel has been teaching at Mount Royal University since 2006. On her recent "Teaching with Excellence" award, her students stated that she truly loves teaching and cares about her students. She encourages classroom discussion and connects course material to real life situations. Dr. Doetzel draws inspiration by teaching from her mind and heart, and she evokes a strong sense of community in her classroom.
 

Come on down and toss your name in the hat. Bring 5min of reading or just kick back with a glass of wine and mingle with other writers in a safe and supportive environment.

The YA for Adults Book Club is our store book club for adults who love YA fiction. We meet on the first monday of each month at 7:00 pm. There is no membership fee and drop-ins are always welcome.

This month's book: Saints and Misfits by S.K. Ali

About the book:
There are three kinds of people in my world:

1. Saints, those special people moving the world forward. Sometimes you glaze over them. Or, at least, I do. They’re in your face so much, you can’t see them, like how you can’t see your nose.

2. Misfits, people who don’t belong. Like me—the way I don’t fit into Dad’s brand-new family or in the leftover one composed of Mom and my older brother, Mama’s-Boy-Muhammad.

Also, there’s Jeremy and me. Misfits. Because although, alliteratively speaking, Janna and Jeremy sound good together, we don’t go together. Same planet, different worlds.

But sometimes worlds collide and beautiful things happen, right?

3. Monsters. Well, monsters wearing saint masks, like in Flannery O’Connor’s stories.

Like the monster at my mosque.

People think he’s holy, untouchable, but nobody has seen under the mask.

Except me.

Walter J. Phillips was born in Lincolnshire, England, and immigrated to Canada in 1913 at the age of 29, after spending considerable time studying abroad in South Africa and Paris. Today, he is considered one of the most accomplished watercolourist artists Canada has ever produced. In 1941, he became resident artist at the Banff School of Fine Arts, and played a vital role in the development of that institution's visual arts program.

Phillips' career spanned from the early 1900s through the late 1950s, when the increasing frailty of his eyesight caused him to stop painting. Phillips' work has been widely exhibited throughout North American and Great Britain. His topics ranged from the Canadian prairies to the Rocky Mountains.

• "The work of Walter J. Phillips embodies local landscapes and human activities in those landscapes using a vocabulary forged in Japanese woodcut processes….Through the skillful superimposition of many layers of transparent water colours, he created images of great beauty, subtlety and depth."
  — Willock Sax Gallery

This is the fourth volume in Lisa Christensen's highly acclaimed Hiker's Guide to Art of the Canadian Rockies series, which "takes the art off the wall and presents it in the context of the magnificent locations that inspired its creation. "

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.

JOIN US AT OWL'S NEST BOOKS TO CELEBRATE THE BEST THING ABOUT OUR STORE - YOU!

Join us on Monday, February 10th from 6 pm to 9 pm to celebrate our amazing Friends of the Nest at our first Sponsor Party.

THIS EVENT IS FREE FOR SPONSORS!!

Not a sponsor? Tickets are $20.00 online or at the door. Sign up to be a sponsor at the event and your entrance fee will go towards your sponsorship. See our event page HERE to purchase tickets.

Susan and Michael Hare (owners of Owl’s Nest Books) will make a special address at 7:00pm.

Check out our new look and stock up your reading lists - our entire store is 20% off! There will be free perks and light refreshments provided.

Thank you for being a Friend of the Nest!!

Join us for a reading and signing with an Alberta author!

A collection of 21 poems and short stories (fiction & nonfiction) by a talented group of writers from the UK, US, Australia, Canada and India. Thoughtfully selected work, some are tragic, some full-on, some comic, some bizarre and some of course erotic. An eclectic mix that we hope will surprise you.

​

IT'S BACK!

The rowdy, disreputable, adults-only Valentine’s Day romp you don’t want to miss. Don your red riding cloak and indulge in a literary jaunt through the woods featuring wolfish readings, poison apple cocktails, Goldilocks goodies, and prizes fit to blow your house down. This year, our theme is a twisted take on folklore with spellbinding storytellers and our cursed collective providing interim entertainment and indecency.

7pm @ cSpace King Edward, Treehouse, 4th Floor
1721, 29th Ave SW, Calgary, AB

Our Twisted Line-Up

Alex Benarzi * Robert Bose * Bree Carney * Sarah L. Johnson * Ashton Noone * Tyler Perry

AND...you don't want to miss a Special One-Night-Only Edition of the Enchanted Forest's favourite talk show, MIRROR, MIRROR ON THE WALL with the one, the only, Dr. Phil (Yes, That one) & Dr. Robin Ph.D, MD, FACS, Esq.

Join us for an enchanting episode where we will once and for all find out "who IS the fairest in the land"...maybe.

Join us for a Saturday Signing!

The Chickadee Way: Griffith Woods to Zoo Station

is a 205 km Calgary long distance walk that begins in Griffith Woods and meanders through over 50 communities before finishing at Zoo Station. The route is divided into 19 walks or sections of reasonable length that start and finish at CTrain Stations or near bus stops. The route connects environmental reserves, parks, historic communities, riverbank paths, ponds and wetlands, coulees or ravines and escarpments. The Chickadee Way: Griffith Woods to Zoo Station is a unique way to explore the city.

Retired elementary school physical education teacher David Peyto has authored three books about walking in Calgary. He and his wife Linda live in Calgary.

Hootdunnit is Owl's Nest Book's Club for those who love mysteries. We meets at the store on the third Wednesday of each month at 7:00 pm. There is no membership fee and drop-ins are always welcome. 

This month's book: Dreadfulwater by Thomas King

About this book:

Thumps DreadfulWater is a Cherokee ex-cop trying to make a living as a photographer in the small town of Chinook, somewhere in the northwestern United States. But he doesn’t count on snapping shots of a dead body languishing in a newly completed luxury condo resort built by the local Indian band. It’s a mystery that Thumps can’t help getting involved in, especially when he realizes the number one suspect is Stick Merchant, anti-condo protester and wayward son of Claire Merchant, head of the tribal council and DreadfulWater’s sometimes lover. Smart and savvy, blessed with a killer dry wit and a penchant for self-deprecating humour, DreadfulWater just can’t manage to shed his California cop skin. Before long, he is deeply entangled in the mystery and has his work cut out for him.

A novel that will appeal to mystery fans as well as Thomas King’s loyal audience, DreadfulWater Shows Up is a catchy, clever read.

Join us for a local author book launch!

All Isaac Barrow wants is to be left alone to pursue his supernatural research and tinker with his inventions. But when you’re the only technomancer openly practicing the craft in 1880s Halifax, trouble has a way of finding you. When a routine mechanical service call reveals the grisly handiwork of the Nightshade Cabal – an underground cult of necromancers – Barrow finds himself in a race against time to put a stop to the Cabal’s depredations before they can kill anyone else and turn them into... office machinery?

Then there’s the mystery of Emily Skye, a missing teenager with strange abilities of her own. Believing her disappearance to be connected to the Nightshade Cabal, Barrow agrees to help track down the missing girl. But even if he can find her, will Miss Skye aid him in his struggle against the Cabal? Or might she turn out to be the deadliest threat of all?

The YA for Adults Book Club is our store book club for adults who love YA fiction. We meet on the first monday of each month at 7:00 pm. There is no membership fee and drop-ins are always welcome.

This month's book: Grasshopper Jungle by Andrew Smith

About the book:

 In the small town of Ealing, Iowa, Austin and his best friend, Robby, have accidentally unleashed an unstoppable army. An army of horny, hungry, six-foot-tall praying mantises that only want to do two things.

This is the truth. This is history.
It’s the end of the world. And nobody knows anything about it.
You know what I mean.

Funny, intense, complex, and brave, Grasshopper Jungle brilliantly weaves together everything from testicle-dissolving genetically modified corn to the struggles of recession-era, small-town America in this groundbreaking coming-of-age stunner.

 

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.

Hootdunnit is Owl's Nest Book's Club for those who love mysteries. We meets at the store on the third Wednesday of each month at 7:00 pm. There is no membership fee and drop-ins are always welcome. 

This month's book: Jewels of Paradise by Donna Leon

About this book:

Internationally praised for her Commissario Guido Brunetti series, Donna Leon’s first standalone novel features a widely different but equally compelling sleuth, Caterina Pellegrini. Caterina is a native Venetian, and like so many of them, she’s had to leave home to pursue her career. With a doctorate in baroque opera from Vienna, she lands in Manchester, England. Manchester, however, is no Venice. When Caterina gets word of a position back home, she jumps at the opportunity.

The job is an unusual one. After nearly three centuries, two locked trunks, believed to contain the papers of Agostino Steffani, a baroque composer have been discovered. Deeply-connected in religious and political circles, the composer died childless; now two Venetians, descendants of his cousins, each claim inheritance. Caterina’s job is to examine any papers found in the trunks to discover Steffani’s “testamentary disposition” of the composer. But when her research takes her in unexpected directions she begins to wonder just what secrets these trunks may hold. From a masterful writer,The Jewels of Paradise is a superb novel, a gripping tale of intrigue, music, history and greed.

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

The YA for Adults Book Club is our store book club for adults who love YA fiction. We meet on the first monday of each month at 7:00 pm. There is no membership fee and drop-ins are always welcome.

This month's book: Darius the Great is not Okay by Adib Khorram

About the book:

 Darius Kellner speaks better Klingon than Farsi, and he knows more about Hobbit social cues than Persian ones. He’s a Fractional Persian—half, his mom’s side—and his first-ever trip to Iran is about to change his life.
 
Darius has never really fit in at home, and he’s sure things are going to be the same in Iran. His clinical depression doesn’t exactly help matters, and trying to explain his medication to his grandparents only makes things harder. Then Darius meets Sohrab, the boy next door, and everything changes. Soon, they’re spending their days together, playing soccer, eating faludeh, and talking for hours on a secret rooftop overlooking the city’s skyline. Sohrab calls him Darioush—the original Persian version of his name—and Darius has never felt more like himself than he does now that he’s Darioush to Sohrab.
 
Adib Khorram’s brilliant debut is for anyone who’s ever felt not good enough—then met a friend who makes them feel so much better than okay.

Hootdunnit is Owl's Nest Book's Club for those who love mysteries. We meets at the store on the third Wednesday of each month at 7:00 pm. There is no membership fee and drop-ins are always welcome. 

This month's book: Jade Dragon Mountain by Elsa Hart

About this book:

On the mountainous border of China and Tibet in 1708, a detective must learn what a killer already knows: that empires' rise and fall on the strength of the stories they tell.

Li Du was an imperial librarian. Now, he is an exile. Arriving in Dayan, the last Chinese town before the Tibetan border, he is surprised to find it teeming with travelers, soldiers, and merchants. All have come for a spectacle unprecedented in this remote province: an eclipse of the sun commanded by the Emperor himself.

When a Jesuit astronomer is found murdered in the home of the local magistrate, blame is hastily placed on Tibetan bandits. But Li Du suspects this was no random killing. Everyone has secrets: the ambitious magistrate, the powerful consort, the bitter servant, the irreproachable secretary, the East India Company merchant, the nervous missionary, and the traveling storyteller who can't keep his own story straight.

Beyond the sloping roofs and festival banners, Li Du can see the mountain pass that will take him out of China forever. He must choose whether to leave and embrace his exile, or to stay and investigate a murder that the town of Dayan seems all too willing to forget.

The YA for Adults Book Club is our store book club for adults who love YA fiction. We meet on the first monday of each month at 7:00 pm. There is no membership fee and drop-ins are always welcome.

This month's book: Under the Radar by Judith Clark

About the book: 

One more year. That’s all Gunnar has to wait until graduation. More importantly, it’s one more year until he’ll feel safe to come out.

Gunnar has kept his sexuality a secret — only his twin sister knows he’s gay. Coming out now would make him the target of homophobic bullies at his school. But a year is a long time, especially when life starts moving at its own pace, and Gunnar meets guys he wants to date.

Set in rural Alberta, Under the Radar is the uplifting story of a teen who dreams of a life in which he can be himself.

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.

Hootdunnit is Owl's Nest Book's Club for those who love mysteries. We meets at the store on the third Wednesday of each month at 7:00 pm. There is no membership fee and drop-ins are always welcome. 

This month's book: Last Bus to Woodstock by Colin Dexter

About this book:

'Do you think I'm wasting your time, Lewis?'

Lewis was nobody's fool and was a man of some honesty and integrity.

'Yes, sir.'

An engaging smile crept across Morse's mouth. He thought they could get on well together...'

The death of Sylvia Kaye figured dramatically in Thursday afternoon's edition of the Oxford Mail.

By Friday evening Inspector Morse had informed the nation that the police were looking for a dangerous man - facing charges of wilful murder, sexual assault and rape.

But as the obvious leads fade into twilight and darkness, Morse becomes more and more convinced that passion holds the key...

The YA for Adults Book Club is our store book club for adults who love YA fiction. We meet on the first monday of each month at 7:00 pm. There is no membership fee and drop-ins are always welcome.

This month's book: Sleight by Jennifer Sommersby

About the book: 

The greatest treasure, a most dangerous magic.

Growing up in the Cinzio Traveling Players Company, Genevieve Flannery is accustomed to a life most teenagers could never imagine: daily workouts of extravagant acrobatics; wild animals for pets; and her mother, Delia, whose mind has always been tortured by visions—but whose love Geni never questions. In a world of performers who mystify and amaze on a daily basis, Delia’s ghostly hallucinations never seemed all that strange . . . until the evening Geni and her mother are performing an aerial routine they’ve done hundreds of times, and Delia falls to her death.

That night, a dark curtain in Geni’s life opens. Everything has changed.

As they reel from the tragedy, the Cinzio Players are also grappling with the circus’s new owner: a generous, mysterious man whose connection to the circus—Geni suspects—has a dark history. And with the discovery of an otherworldly inheritance and her perilous mission to protect it, Geni is suddenly stumbling into a new reality of her own, her life interrupted daily by the terrors only Delia used to see. As the visions around her grow stronger, and her magical legacy becomes even more menacing, Geni is not sure who she should trust or love. Worst of all, she’s starting to question whether she can trust her own mind.

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.

Hootdunnit is Owl's Nest Book's Club for those who love mysteries. We meets at the store on the third Wednesday of each month at 7:00 pm. There is no membership fee and drop-ins are always welcome. 

This month's book: The Blackhouse (Lewis Trilogy #1) by Peter May

About this book:

Every step toward solving the case brings Scottish detective Fin Macleod closer to a dangerous confrontation with the dark events of the past that shaped--and nearly destroyed--his life.

When a grisly murder occurs on the Isle of Lewis that bears similarities to a brutal killing on mainland Scotland, Edinburgh detective and native of the Isle of Lewis Fin Macleod is dispatched to the Outer Hebrides to investigate, embarking at the same time on a voyage into his own troubled past.


As Fin reconnects with the people and places of his tortured childhood, the desolate but beautiful island and its ancient customs assert their grip on his psyche.