Join us for a special event all about the special places in Calgary!

Features interesting and unusual places not found in traditional travel guides• Part of the international 111 Places/111 Shops series with over 650 titles and 3.8 million copies in print worldwide• Appeals to both the local market (more than 1.3 million people call Calgary home) and the tourist market (nearly 7 million people visit Calgary every year!)• Fully illustrated with 111 full-page color photographs• Revised and updated edition111 Places in Calgary That You Must Not Miss takes you on adventures across a city that is full of secrets and surprises. Walk in the footsteps of Calgary's most flamboyant, diamond-covered madam. Pay homage at the grave of the region's first Black cowboy, who became a legendary rancher. And admire an important buffalo hide robe at an Indigenous museum at the southwestern city limits. Learn about the birth of the Caesar – Calgarians know it's neither an emperor nor a salad, but Canada's most beloved cocktail. Discover the magic of Stampede Park when the rodeo is not in town. Beware of a ghostly lady who haunts a historic mansion. And find out if you're brave enough to try a mouthful of prairie oysters. Grab your toque, your sunscreen, and a friend, and go exploring. Calgary's true energy is all around you.

Join us for a mystery book club discussion in-person or click here to register to attend via Zoom. All are welcome!

A wildly charming and fast-paced mystery written with all the panache of the hardboiled classics, Fortune Favors the Dead introduces Pentecost and Parker, an audacious new detective duo for the ages.

“Razor-sharp style, tons of flair, a snappy sense of humor, and all the most satisfying elements of a really good noir novel, plus plenty of original twists of its own.”—Tana French, bestselling author of The Searcher

It's 1942 and Willowjean "Will" Parker is a scrappy circus runaway whose knife-throwing skills have just saved the life of New York's best, and most unorthodox, private investigator, Lillian Pentecost. When the dapper detective summons Will a few days later, she doesn't expect to be offered a life-changing proposition: Lillian's multiple sclerosis means she can't keep up with her old case load alone, so she wants to hire Will to be her right-hand woman. In return, Will is to receive a salary, room and board, and training in Lillian's very particular art of investigation.

Three years later, Will and Lillian are on the Collins case: Abigail Collins was found bludgeoned to death with a crystal ball following a big, boozy Halloween party at her home—her body slumped in the same chair where her steel magnate husband shot himself the year before. With rumors flying that Abigail was bumped off by the vengeful spirit of her husband (who else could have gotten inside the locked room?), the family has tasked the detectives with finding answers where the police have failed.

But that's easier said than done in a case that involves messages from the dead, a seductive spiritualist, and Becca Collins—the beautiful daughter of the deceased, who Will quickly starts falling for. When Will and Becca's relationship dances beyond the professional, Will finds herself in dangerous territory, and discovers she may have become the murderer's next target.

Join us for an LGBTQ+ book club discussion in-person or click here to register to attend via Zoom. All are welcome, even if you haven't read the book!

Longlisted for the Scotiabank Giller Prize

Award-winning novelist Casey Plett (Little Fish) returns with a poignant suite of stories that center transgender women.

Casey Plett's 2018 novel Little Fish won a Lambda Literary Award, the Firecracker Award for Fiction, and the Amazon First Novel Award. Her latest work, A Dream of a Woman, is her first book of short stories since her seminal 2014 collection A Safe Girl to Love. Centering transgender women seeking stable, adult lives, A Dream of a Woman finds quiet truths in prairie high-rises and New York warehouses, in freezing Canadian winters and drizzly Oregon days.

In "Hazel and Christopher," two childhood friends reconnect as adults after one of them has transitioned. In "Perfect Places," a woman grapples with undesirability as she navigates fetish play with a man. In "Couldn't Hear You Talk Anymore," the narrator reflects on her tumultuous life and what might have been as she recalls tender moments with another trans woman.

An ethereal meditation on partnership, sex, addiction, romance, groundedness, and love, the stories in A Dream of a Woman buzz with quiet intensity and the intimate complexities of being human.

Join us for a mystery book club discussion in-person or click here to register to attend via Zoom. All are welcome!

A dead body is one mess she can’t clean up on her own.

Molly Gray is not like everyone else. She struggles with social skills and misreads the intentions of others. Her gran used to interpret the world for her, codifying it into simple rules that Molly could live by.

Since Gran died a few months ago, twenty-five-year-old Molly has been navigating life’s complexities all by herself. No matter—she throws herself with gusto into her work as a hotel maid. Her unique character, along with her obsessive love of cleaning and proper etiquette, make her an ideal fit for the job. She delights in donning her crisp uniform each morning, stocking her cart with miniature soaps and bottles, and returning guest rooms at the Regency Grand Hotel to a state of perfection.

But Molly’s orderly life is upended the day she enters the suite of the infamous and wealthy Charles Black, only to find it in a state of disarray and Mr. Black himself dead in his bed. Before she knows what’s happening, Molly’s unusual demeanour has the police targeting her as their lead suspect. She quickly finds herself caught in a web of deception, one she has no idea how to untangle. Fortunately for Molly, friends she never knew she had unite with her in a search for clues to what really happened to Mr. Black. But will they be able to find the real killer before it’s too late?

Both a Clue-like, locked-room mystery and a heartwarming journey of the spirit, The Maid explores what it means to be the same as everyone else and yet entirely different—and reveals that all mysteries can be solved through connection to the human heart.

Join us for an evening of reading and discussion with Alberta co-editor and illustrator!

The theme of our anthology is "Home." Be it positive or negative, our homes help create us, and these last few years of distancing, cohorts and quarantines have likely made that even clearer. A home might become a haven as the outside world descends into chaos or it might also feel like a cage. It can be both. A setting can be as much a character as a person. Sometimes we long for places simply for their beauty, but more often we're seeking a reunion with a person, family or community.

We put out a call for stories that were quintessentially Albertan, and of course we got an amazingly diverse response, from slice-of-life to fantastical fiction. While one creator draws love-letter via a run-down of our "World's Largest" sites, another hunts to feed their family. Teresa Wong drew a map of Calgary's Chinatown overlaid with personal family history. Some reminisced over summers' past - the party scene in Edmonton, and the buzz of activity in Okotoks when Pokemon Go was released - while another finds humor, and hope even, in the worst thing imaginable, zombies terrorizing the small town of Byemoor.

The characters within our comics frequently ask themselves just what makes a "good" home. Is it a crashed starship with only a glitchy holographic attendant? Or something even more fantastic, a page of art through which the artist is spontaneously transported - along with her cat - into the vastness of space? Naomi Fong shows us how complex it is navigating new parenthood amidst foreign traditions, values and language. Sam Hester shows how an owl taught her family about their local habitat and helped them keep sane during lockdowns. Great wisdom and encouragement are voiced by the most unlikely protagonists: a leopard gecko named Sponge, a magpie in its flight around a prairie farmyard, and a robot suffering from anxiety.



Given what we've all just gone through as a province (and a planet) we suggested that artists tell you all about their stay-at-home pandemic experiences. James Davidge had to manage cramped classrooms in an ever-evolving pandemic. Shannon M. Reeves describes a walk through a city that felt suddenly unfamiliar, and frightening. Our stories document a curious mix of pathos and optimism. Darryl Sinclair finds peace in the garden, and Mike Hooves shows how a simple gesture can let in so much light.



A porcelain tea kettle laden with meaning, a grey studio that fills with colour as its owner reclaims herself and her space - and also, pure magic…sometimes even dark magic. Hikers on a Scottish mountainside are hunted by an insatiable creature. A woman turns into a table for a hundred years to escape her homophobic family. A bedroom is attacked by the rest of the house.



There are, in fact, a quite few metaphorical houses. We look at one from a giant's eye view, contrast another with its equal in Leipzig, Germany, and explore a hoarder's maze of possessions, searching for meaning, amidst personal tragedy.



Sometimes the most futuristic tales also have valuable everyday insights to impart. Jeff Martin offers up a hockey brawl between mutant-monsters that shows that home is where your teammates are, and Sho Uehara gives us a minority experience explored through the eyes of an extra-terrestrial who asks themselves a question familiar to many: do I stay or do I go now?



We're giving you a little bit of everything. Mountains that loom, penning the protagonists in, and mountains cared for by marmots in unexpected and comical ways. There are cowboys stalked by a deadly predator, and violence committed by cute furry animals. You'll find invisible beings, crises' of self, post-apocalyptic pedal punks, and a pilot crawling from the burning wreckage of a plane crash. These artists dug deep, pondering the idea of what constitutes a ‘real' family, how we find comfort, what ‘normal' looks like, and whether we need that in our lives. Home both inspire and motivate us…



but houses often haunt.

 

Join us for a Saturday Signing with local picture book author!

William, Oliver, and Henry have come up with another outstanding idea: to launch a space train into outer space. 

In this dazzling cosmic adventure, three brothers use their special gifts to retrieve a lost flying saucer on a strange planet light years away.


How will they defeat the army of purple bossmasters on Planet Electra?


Will they make it back to Earth safe and sound?


Inspired by the local author's train-obsessed nephews, Train of the Cosmos is a story about showing bravery in the face of danger and working together to face new challenges. 


Train of the Cosmos is the sequel to Train of the Skies and is recommended for ages 0-9. 

Join us for a book launch party with local author!

The Chaos Portal is a source of strange, dark power that sits deep within a cave on the edge of a remote town. It is guarded by an elite group of stalwart protectors who have been tasked with preventing the portal’s power from spilling over into the outside world. Cordelia, a young woman from the town, whose parents mysteriously disappeared into the portal while providing supplies to the guardians one day, befriends the youngest of the guardians, a man named Dormholt. Over time, he becomes a mentor to her, training her in combat and teaching her the ways of the world. However, one day she goes to visit Dormholt, only to find him and other guardians missing and the portal growing in size and power. Not only that, but the people in her town also seem to have completely forgotten that the portal ever existed. With time running out, she sets off on a journey to find Dormholt and the other guardians before the malevolent powers within the portal engulf her town and the rest of the world . . . forever.

Join us for an evening of Afro-Cuban poetry with local author.
 

They arrived five centuries ago and have made this land, sky, and oceans their own. They have lived in the shadow of mystery, at the corners of every road, at the turn of disappointments, behind the doors of many houses.

 

Intolerance cannot resist their mighty fury of words.   Advising humans not to lose hope in times of crisis is their mission. To deny them would be to reject a substantial part of my identity. They are and will be: My black gods.

Join us for a Saturday Signing with Alberta author!

"Some peoples call you misisahk. It means horsefly. You fly with the horses . . . you're small, with a big bite."

Raised on a ranch in Saskatchewan's rugged Thickwood Hills, where the prairie transitions to forest, Willomena Swift, home from playing for the Rockford Peaches of the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League, finds a precious foal killed by a rogue stallion.

The stallion's owner, once Willo's baseball coach, now chairs the committee heading up the new cooperative pasture-a pasture that is set to swallow her family lease, where she grew up, learned to love and understand horses, and dreamed of returning to raise them.

Facing numerous challenges with both the stallion and his owner, Willo remembers her past years playing professional baseball as she struggles to realize her dreams in the present.

Amid romance and tragedy, Willo must find a way to stand on her own and assert her rightful place in her beloved Thickwood.

Join us for a mystery book club discussion in-person or click here to register to attend via Zoom. All are welcome!

“Intellectually stimulating and viscerally exciting, The Darwin Affair is breathtaking from start to stop.” —The Wall Street Journal
 A Barnes & Noble Discover Pick * A Wall Street Journal Best Mystery Book of the Year * A Reader’s Digest Best Summer Book * A Forbes.com Best Historical Novel of the Summer

Get ready for one of the most inventive and entertaining novels of 2019—an edge-of-your-seat Victorian-era thriller, where the controversial publication On the Origin of Species sets off a string of unspeakable crimes.

London, June 1860: When an assassination attempt is made on Queen Victoria, and a petty thief is gruesomely murdered moments later—and only a block away—Chief Detective Inspector Charles Field quickly surmises that the crimes are connected. Was Victoria really the assassin’s target? Or were both crimes part of an even more sinister plot?

Field’s investigation soon exposes a shocking conspiracy: the publication of Charles Darwin’s controversial On the Origin of Species has set off a string of terrible crimes—murder, arson, kidnapping. Witnesses describe a shadowy figure with lifeless, coal-black eyes. As the investigation takes Field from the dangerous alleyways of London to the hallowed halls of Oxford, the list of possible conspirators grows, and the body count escalates. And as he edges closer to the dastardly madman called the Chorister, he uncovers dark secrets that were meant to remain forever hidden.