#1 NATIONAL BESTSELLERWhen the Second World War broke out, Ralph MacLean chose to escape his troubled life on the Magdalen Islands in eastern Canada and volunteer to serve his country overseas. Meanwhile, in Vancouver, Mitsue Sakamoto saw her family and her stable community torn apart after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.Like many young Canadian soldiers, Ralph was captured by the Japanese army. He would spend the war in prison camps, enduring pestilen...

#1 NATIONAL BESTSELLERWhen the Second World War broke out, Ralph MacLean chose to escape his troubled life on the Magdalen Islands in eastern Canada and volunteer to serve his country overseas. Meanwhile, in Vancouver, Mitsue Sakamoto saw her family and her stable community torn apart after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.Like many young Canadian soldiers, Ralph was captured by the Japanese army. He would spend the war in prison camps, enduring pestilen...

A war from far across the ocean washed up onto our new country’s shore.I wish that I could skip this chapter of the story, darling. Just as you may want to skip parts of your own life story in time. But, you see, one mustn’t do that. You need to know your darkness to know your light.And I can see so much light in you.So I’ll keep going through the dark.Fra...

Mitsue Sakamoto and Ralph MacLean both suffered tremendous loss during WWII: Mitsue as a survivor of a Japanese Canadian internment camp, and Ralph as a prisoner in a Japanese POW camp. In order to rebuild their lives and their families after the war, Ralph and Mitsue must find the grace and generosity necessary to forgive those who have wronged them. Their paths eventually cross in 1968 when Mitsue’s son and Ralph’s daughter begin dating, and Ralph is invited to Mitsue’s home for dinner.

Welcome to your behind-the-scenes pass to CBC's Canada Reads.Kobo’s very own Tracy Nesdoly will guide you through a series of interviews with the authors and panelists of this year’s battle of the books. Join us as we navigate through these eye-opening reads—books that challenge assumptions, dismantle difference, and change how we treat one another. This is the perfect complement to the debates, a way to discover incredible stories and choose your very own champion...

Globe and Mail bestseller, The Boat People is an extraordinary novel about a group of refugees who survive a perilous ocean voyage only to face the threat of deportation amid accusations of terrorismWhen a rusty cargo ship carrying Mahindan and five hundred fellow refugees from Sri Lanka's bloody civil war reaches Vancouver's shores, the young father thinks he and his six-year-old son can finally start a new life. Instead, the group is thrown into...

Winner, 2017 Shaughnessy Cohen Writers' Trust Prize for Political WritingWinner, 2017 RBC Taylor PrizeWinner, 2017 First Nation Communities Read: Young Adult/AdultWinner, 2024 Blue Metropolis First Peoples Prize, for the whole of her workFinalist, 2017 Hilary Weston Writers’ Trust Prize for NonfictionThe groundbreaking and multiple award-winning national bestseller work about systemic racism, education, the failure of the policin...

National Bestseller: An "astute and riveting" novel of a Dutch teenager thrust into the dangers and moral perils of his country's Nazi occupation ( The New York Times).In the summer of 1939, fourteen-year-old Jacob Koopman and his older brother, Edwin, enjoy lives of prosperity and quiet contentment. Many of the residents in their small Dutch town have some connection to the Koopman lightbulb factory, and locals hold the family in high esteem.On days...

A woman finds her true self by reclaiming her family's lost Jewish identity in this "poignant and powerful memoir of family, religion, love, and healing" ( Kirkus ).Growing up in a tight-knit Christian family, Alison Pick went to church regularly. But as a teenager, she discovered a remarkable family secret: her paternal grandparents fled from the Czech Republic at the start of WWII because they were Jewish. Tragically, ot...

Mãn has three mothers: the one who gives birth to her in wartime, the nun who plucks her from a vegetable garden, and her beloved Maman, who becomes a spy to survive. Seeking security for her grown daughter, Maman finds Mãn a husband - a lonely Vietnamese restaurateur who lives in Montreal.Thrown into a new world, Mãn discovers her natural talent as a chef. Gracefully she practices her art, with food as her medium. She creates dishes that are much more than sustenance for the body: ...

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • TODAY SHOW BOOK CLUB PICK • NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY THE WASHINGTON POST AND ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCHFrom the New York Times bestselling author of Loving Frank comes a much-anticipated second novel, which tells the improbable love story of Scottish writer Robert Louis Stevenson and his tempestuous American wife, Fanny.At the age of thirty-five...

Shortlisted for the Scotiabank Giller Prize: With striking originality and precision, Eden Robinson, the author of the classic Monkey Beach and winner of the Writers’ Trust of Canada Fellowship, blends humour with heartbreak in this compelling coming-of-age novel. Everyday teen existence meets indigenous beliefs, crazy family dynamics, and cannibalistic river otters . . . The exciting first novel in her trickster trilogy.Everyone knows a guy like Jared: th...