Socially awkward Charlotte-Louise Andrews, fifteen and naive, is the only child of a single mother who puts booze before her daughter. Desperate for acceptance, Charlotte-Louise latches on to an unruly, street smart teen who guides her through various sordid inner city adventures, and later introduces her to Joaquin Lomax. Sharp minded, twenty-year-old Joaquin seduces the emotionally scarred Charlotte-Louise with attention, gifts, his good looks and nice guy exterior. Charlotte-Louise is in over her head before she realizes she's hooked up with a brutal, ingenious drug dealer. In this startling three-year account of Charlotte-Louise's life, wrapped in a candid Blatino family saga, she becomes helplessly entangled in Joaquin's fast, illicit world - a world of sex, crime, and deception ... until she turns the tables.

I just started jotting down my thoughts again. I watched each one take on a different form. I decided to make another poetry book. This is far from the end. The plan is to constantly let my thoughts roam on paper.

In Miel Moreland's heartfelt young adult debut, It Goes Like This, four queer teens realize that sometimes you have to risk hitting repeat on heartbreak. Eva, Celeste, Gina, and Steph used to think their friendship was unbreakable. After all, they've been though a lot together, including the astronomical rise of Moonlight Overthrow, the world-famous queer pop band they formed in middle school, never expecting to headline anything bigger than the county fair. But after a sudden falling out leads to the dissolution of the teens' band, their friendship, and Eva and Celeste's starry-eyed romance, nothing is the same. Gina and Celeste step further into the spotlight, Steph disappears completely, and Eva, heartbroken, takes refuge as a songwriter and secret online fangirl...of her own band. That is, until a storm devastates their hometown, bringing the four ex-best-friends back together. As they prepare for one last show, they'll discover whether growing up always means growing apart. "It Goes Like This was everything my music nerd heart needed AND wanted. Lyrical and heart-wrenching...beautiful representation, sweetest longing and the pop-star romance of my dreams; Swifties will swoon happily with this story tattooed on their hearts." —Erin Hahn, author of You'd Be Mine and More Than Maybe

What I Want to Tell Goes Like This is an intensely original first short story collection from acclaimed poet Matt Rader. The last story, "All This Was a Long Time Ago," is the 2014 winner of the Jack Hodgins Founders' Award for fiction from The Malahat Review, and other offerings from the collection have appeared in Event, The New Quarterly, Grain, Joyland, Forget Magazine and the Rusty Toque. Rader's command of tension is masterful in these dark, off-kilter stories that are largely set in the context of the working/labour class in and around the Comox Valley on Vancouver Island, BC. They alternate between exploring the history of severe labour struggles in the area over a century ago, and the present-day experiences of people sliding through transitional, ambiguous moments in their relationships and sexuality. The juxtaposition of the two time periods seems to hint at the echoes of the harsh, violent legacy of the earlier age and its power struggles that continue to resonate in contemporary life. In What I Want to Tell Goes Like This, we are witness to the controversial shooting death of infamous union activist Albert "Ginger" Goodwin by a police constable in 1918; to the squalor of tent cities erected on the Royston Bay mudflats during the Great Vancouver Coal Strike of 1912-14; to two boys’ experimentation with sexual violence at the end of a secluded logging road; and to clarity and companionship found in a small cabin by the sea as a son cares for his dying father—a rough man who abandoned him when he was eight. In Rader's artful tales of grit and mystery, danger never feels far away.

Johnny Boo and Squiggle come across a giant pencil! Is it magical? Whatever it is, when Johnny Boo draws with it, his drawings come to life. Before you know it, they're off on another adventure, filled with tigers, ice cream monsters, and truly unbelievable hairstyles. Celebrate the power of creativity - the Johnny Boo way!

This heartwarming picture book reassures children that a parent’s love never lets go—based on the poignant lyrics of JJ Heller’s beloved lullaby “Hand to Hold.” “May the living light inside you be the compass as you go / May you always know you have my hand to hold.” With delightful illustrations and an engaging rhyme scheme, this book offers the promise of security and love every child’s heart longs to know. From skipping stones and counting stars to climbing trees and telling stories, every moment is wrapped snugly in the certain warmth of a parent’s presence and God’s blessing. With poignancy and joy, this bedtime read captures the unconditional love parents want their children to know but so often fail to express amid the chaos of daily life.

Vashti believes that she cannot draw, but her art teacher's encouragement leads her to change her mind and she goes on to encourage another student who feels the same as she had.