Discover BC Stories on the Read Local BC eBookshelf
Books BC has partnered with the BC Libraries Cooperative to launch the Read Local BC eBookshelf—a vibrant collection of homegrown stories now available online to readers across the province. This curated selection features hundreds of ebooks that are either about British Columbia, set in the province, written by BC authors—or all three.
Harbour Publishing is proud to be well represented in this initiative, with a range of titles that reflect the diversity, history, and voices of the West Coast. These ebooks are available through the Libby app with your BC library card.
Explore our many featured titles—now all available at your fingertips!
Highlights include...
Raincoast Chronicles 25: m̓am̓aɫa Goes Fishing by Alan Haig-Brown
In the 25th edition of Raincoast Chronicles, Haig-Brown recounts his formative years as a deckhand in the 1960s and early ’70s on a fishing boat run by the We Wai Kai family he married into as a teenager. The history of commercial fishing and of British Columbia itself, in all its twisting relations with Indigenous peoples, is mirrored in Haig-Brown’s vivid account of life aboard, where “there are no typical days” despite the tightly choreographed tasks and immense local knowledge required by this ever-risky business.
The Last Exile by Sam Wiebe
PI Dave Wakeland reluctantly returns to the streets of Vancouver for his most dangerous case yet. Maggie Zito is being held for murder. The volatile single mother is accused of killing the retired leader of the notorious Exiles motorcycle gang and his wife aboard their million-dollar houseboat. With a mystery witness putting Maggie at the scene, and the Exiles baying for her blood, it’s unlikely she’ll make it to the trial alive. Desperate, Maggie’s lawyer, Shuzhen Chen, calls in a favour to Dave Wakeland: Find evidence of Maggie’s innocence and get her client out of custody. Dave and Shuzhen have to put aside their complicated past to find out why Maggie was framed.
The Curve of Time by M. Wylie Blanchet with an afterword by Edith Iglauer
A beloved Pacific Northwest classic, in an expanded new edition, including maps and previously unpublished photographs. Widowed at just thirty-five, Muriel Wylie Blanchet packed her five young children aboard her twenty-five-foot motor launch Caprice. During the summers of the late 1920s and 1930s, the family explored the coves and islands of British Columbia, falling under the spell of the region’s natural beauty while encountering settlers and hermits, prowling bears and dangerous tide rips. Blanchet—known as Capi— recorded their wonder as they threaded their way between the snowfields, slept under the stars and wandered through Indigenous winter villages left empty in the summer months.
The Carbon Tax Question: Clarifying Canada’s Most Consequential Policy Debate by Thomas F. Pedersen
A timely and insightful exploration of the implementation and impact of British Columbia’s carbon tax, delving into the political and economic considerations behind the tax, and addressing misconceptions. Carbon taxation has become a political, social and economic hot potato in Canada (and beyond) and a major election issue. What is less known is that British Columbia established its own revenue-neutral carbon taxation policy in 2008. The compelling story of how and why has not yet been told. Writing from a Canadian perspective and for a lay audience, climate policy expert Dr. Thomas F. Pedersen highlights the key players and experts involved in the evolution and implementation of British Columbia’s carbon tax policy, as well as how the BC model compares to other carbon-taxation attempts around the world, including a debacle in Australia.
The Best Loved Boat: The Princess Maquinna by Ian Kennedy
Built in 1913, the Canadian Pacific Railway’s ship Princess Maquinna steamed along the rugged west coast of Vancouver Island in summer and winter, calm weather and storms, for over forty years, and has become one of the most beloved boats in BC’s maritime history. Princess Maquinna, sometimes referred to as the “Ugly Princess” but most often “Old Faithful,” transported Indigenous people, settlers, missionaries, loggers, cannery workers, prospectors and travellers of all kinds up and down Vancouver Island’s rugged and dangerous west coast, stopping at up to forty ports of call on her seven-day run. The Princess Maquinna faithfully served as the lifeline for all those who lived on the west coast of Vancouver Island before it became accessible by roads. Because of this strong connection she became the “Best Loved Boat” in BC’s maritime history.
Adventures in Solitude: What Not to Wear to a Nude Potluck and Other Stories from Desolation Sound by Grant Lawrence
Canadian music journalist Grant Lawrence was once a self-proclaimed nerd donning knee braces and coke-bottle glasses. It was his adventures in Desolation Sound that led him to a life in rock ‘n’ roll with The Smugglers. Adventures in Solitude follows not just the life of its author, but the experiences of adventurous Canadians from the past. Readers are transported back to the times when the moody and brooding Captain Vancouver first charted the unforgiving twists and turns of Desolation Sound, First Nations people still paddled out to islands for potlatches and the pioneer families of the coast battled murder and moonshine.
Possessing Meares Island: A Historian's Journey into the Past of Clayoquot Sound by Barry Gough
A fascinating account that links early maritime history, Indigenous land rights, and modern environmental advocacy in the Clayoquot Sound region by award-winning author and historian Barry Gough. Centred on Meares Island, located near Tofino on Vancouver Island’s west coast, Possessing Meares Island weaves a unique history out of the mists of time by connecting eighteenth century Indigenous-colonial trade relations to more recent historical upheavals. Gough invites readers to enter a dramatic epoch of BC’s coastal history and watch the Nuu-chah-nulth nations spearhead the maritime sea otter trade, led by powerful chiefs like Wickaninnish and Maquinna.
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