BC Books From the Mainland/Southwest

Fourteen-year-old Bing-wing Chan must conquer his fear of ghosts as his father?'s gambling debts force him to dig for human bones in a graveyard and then to work as a houseboy in a haunted house. Set in Vancouver's Chinatown, The Bone Collector's Son is a moving study of racism and the struggle of Chinese immigrants at the turn of the century.

In seventeenth-century Rome, connections are everything. But for fifteen-year-old Beppo Ghirlandi, an indentured servant accused of murder, there is no one to turn to. The only person who will help him is the painter from across the Piazza, the madman genius known as Caravaggio—who, unfortunately, has serious troubles of his own. By helping Caravaggio flee, Beppo might just be able to stay alive.

After losing her parents, fourteen-year-old Victoria and her young twin brothers move in with their aunt. But shortly afterward, her aunt’s boyfriend attempts to assault her, and she runs away and learns to survive on the dangerous streets of Paraná, Argentina. Encountering a world of street kids, gangs and drug dealers, Victoria overcomes deprivation and great hardship. With the help of newly-found friends and her single-minded determination to survive, she carves out a new life for herself …

It’s 1976 in South Africa

In the black township of Soweto, Zanele, who also works as a nightclub singer, is plotting against the apartheid government. The police can't know. Her mother and sister can't know. No one can know. On the affluent white side of town, Jack Craven plans to spend the last days of his break before university burning miles on his beat-up Mustang, and crashing other people's parties.

Their chance meeting changes everything. Already a chain of events is in motion; a failed pl …

It’s 1976 in South Africa

In the black township of Soweto, Zanele, who also works as a nightclub singer, is plotting against the apartheid government. The police can't know. Her mother and sister can't know. No one can know. On the affluent white side of town, Jack Craven plans to spend the last days of his break before university burning miles on his beat-up Mustang, and crashing other people's parties.

Their chance meeting changes everything. Already a chain of events is in motion; a failed pl …

Winner of the City of Vancouver Book Award Finalist for the Rogers Writers' Trust Fiction Prize.

Carleigh Baker likes to make light in the dark. Whether plumbing family ties, the end of a marriage, or death itself, she never lets go of the witty, the ironic, and perhaps most notably, the awkward. Despite the title, the resolution in these stories isn't always tragic, but it's often uncomfortable, unexpected, or just plain strange. Character digressions, bad decisions, and misconceptions abound. …

Curious about the previous inhabitants of the lake where her family has spent the summer for over one hundred years, author Shelley O'Callaghan starts researching and writing about the area. But what begins as a personal journey of one woman's relationship to the land and her desire to uncover the history of her family's remote cabin turns into an exploration and questioning of our rights as settlers upon a land that was inhabited long before we came. In her research, O'Callaghan uncovers a hist …

The 1954 British Empire and Commonwealth Games in Vancouver changed both the city and world sport forever. The Games will always be remembered for the "Miracle Mile," the much-anticipated showdown between the first two men to break the four-minute barrier, England's Roger Bannister and Australia's John Landy. But as the press focused the world's attention on Vancouver, and Bannister outpaced Landy in the stretch, fate found an even more dramatic story that seared itself into the memories of all …