Blog
May Long Weekend Must-Haves
by Alisha
Food & Drink / May 20, 2016
Fire up the grill this May Long Weekend with these must-have BBQ books.
Weber's New American Barbecue
by Jamie Purviance
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Available: 05/03/16
8.68 x 10.92 · 304 pages
9780544715271
CDN $34.99 · pb
Through stories and essays, hundreds of photos, crystal-clear techniques, and 100 exceptional and fool-proof recipes, Weber's New American Barbecue™ celebrates what's happening at the grill today. From chefs creating new classics to everyday backyard heroes melding flavors to pitmasters setting new standards of excellence at competitions, this book explores the delicious evolution of our true American pastime-barbecue.
Meathead
by Meathed Goldwyn
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Available: 05/10/16
8.45 x 10.28 · 400 pages
9780544018464
CDN $50.00 · cl
For succulent results every time, nothing is more crucial than understanding the science behind the interaction of food, fire, heat, and smoke. This is the definitive guide to the concepts, methods, equipment, and accessories of barbecue and grilling. The founder and editor of the world's most popular BBQ and grilling website, AmazingRibs.com, Meathead" Goldwyn applies the latest research to backyard cooking and 118 thoroughly tested recipes.
Grilling with House of Q
by BBQ Brian Misko
Figure 1 Publishing
Available: 02/23/15
8.1 x 9.54 · 192 pages
9781927958100
CDN $24.95 · pb
BBQ Brian has spent more than a decade smoking and grilling foods, competing against other pit masters and learning from some of the best in the business. And not only does he regularly win awards for his barbecue and House of Q BBQ sauces, but he’s now one of the most sought-after teachers around. Why? Because he tells a great story, makes learning fun and easy and freely shares his recipes and his love of good food.
Flavorize
by Ray "Dr BBQ" Lampe
Chronicle Books
Available: 04/21/15
7.38 x 8.3 · 192 pages
9781452125305
CDN $32.95 · cl
In his latest lip-smackin' cookbook, Dr. BBQ shows how to dress up meat, vegetables, and fruits with 120 brand-new recipes for tantalizing marinades, mouthwatering injections, savory brines, flavorful rubs, delectable glazes, and full recipes for what to make with them. Whether folks want to test their talents at the grill or whip up a stove-top dinner, these flavor-enhancing recipes will take every meal to the next level.
26 Rep Picks to Read this Spring
by Brooke
Art & Photography + Fiction + Food & Drink + Graphica + Humour + Picture Books + YA Fiction / May 04, 2016
Looking for something to read this spring? In a reading slump? Let some of the pros help you out with some of their favourite books of the season.
Cheryl Fraser
by Sara Baume
"A man and a dog — a who-rescues-who tale told in a beautiful language over four seasons. An absolute must read."
by Meredith Russo
Dani Farmer
Laurie Martella
Judy Parker
by Cathleen Schine
by David Litchfield
Saffron Beckwith
Karen Beattie
"Toast is not just for breakfast anymore. Try it at lunch, dinner and snacktime too. Have it with savoury or sweet toppings. Move over cake pops and cupcakes, toast is the new, NEW THING! Pistachio Dukkah and Avocado on Rye anyone?"
"Mira is a little girl who lives in the heart of a gray city where she loves to draw in colour. She gives her colourful pictures to her neighbours until one day she meets a painter. The painter invites her to help him create a large picture on a city wall. Soon, everyone in the community joins in to create art on the walls and transform gray into beauty and joy. A truly inspiring picture book about how public art can transform the spirit."
Mark Penney
Ali Hewitt
Lorna MacDonald
"Another perfectly pitched novel from poet Kwame Alexander, winner of the Newbery Medal. Soccer is the game, divorce, bullying and first love are the themes, all written in verse. Booked packs the same powerful emotional punch as his previous novel, The Crossover!"
#PlayTestShare
by Fernanda
Kids / March 10, 2016
Members of the Raincoast team, disguised by Eric Carle Animal Masks, were caught enjoying a quiet moment with To the Moon: The Tallest Coloring Book in the World.
Join us and #PlayTestShare! It’s no secret that Chronicle Books and Laurence King have a wonderful selection of games, activity sets and creative books guaranteed to keep your children engaged and intellectually stimulated. And with spring break around the corner, we thought it would be the perfect time to send our favourites to bloggers and book reviewers across the country to play, test and share with their readers!
Read the reviews and enter to win the Spring Break Giveaway at any one of these participating testers: Kinderlit, Fab Book Reviews, This West Coast Mommy, Yoyomama, Glimpse Reviews, The Pampered Baby, My Little House of Treasures and Frugal Mom Eh! And don’t forget to share and tag your favourites with #PlayTestShare!
#PlayTestShare Picks for 2016
ABC Word Play
A hands-on alphabet extravaganza! The letters of the alphabet come to life in this bright, graphic, and delightfully interactive ABC novelty board book that pairs early learning with captivating play. Just punch out the oversize neon letters and assemble the simple words featured on each spread, or spell new words. It's the perfect way to play, spell, and learn, from A to Z!
Flora and Friends Matching Game
From the Caldecott Honor Book Flora and the Flamingo, and the two follow-up books, Flora and the Penguin and Flora and the Peacocks, this classic memory game stars Flora and her feathered friends! Delightful storytelling and artwork from Molly Idle celebrate the joy of friendship, all while building memory, concentration, and matching skills.
Make and Move Animals
12 amazing moving animals to press out, slot together and play! From flapping penguins to swimming turtles, and everything in between, create fantastic moving animal 'parionettes' to play with. Each parionette comes with easy-to-follow assembly instructions, and no scissors or glue required!
Paper Sumo
Japan's centuries-old national sport is the main attraction in this paper-based smackdown where creativity and competition collide. The result? Laughs guaranteed! There is an impressive assortment of 39 characters-from traditional sumo wrestlers to animals to monsters and other eye-catching creatures from Japanese lore.
642 Things to Draw: Young Artist's Edition
The perfect addition to the 642 series, this collection of hilarious, wacky, and imaginative drawing prompts provides endless quirky inspiration for young artists of all experience levels. Whether pondering how to sketch a zombie unicorn or filling the page with a magical field of cupcakes, budding artists will relish the chance to jump-start their artistic engines as they draw, sketch, imagine, and create!
Dog Domino
This game is for two to four players and contains 28 cute and colorful dog dominoes. Have fun matching seven delightful pooches: Chihuaha, Dachshund, Dalmation, Labrador, Poodle, Pug, and Alsation. Get your last domino down first to win the game and become top dog!
Story Box: Create Your Own Fairy Tales
This wonderful game will allow your family to create its own fairy tales. Highly original and with a contemporary twist, this box contains 20 cards, printed on both sides, which can be interchanged, allowing for all kinds of plots. With three alternative endings!
Let's Play
A brilliant new companion book from the creator of PRESS HERE and MIX IT UP! It's only a yellow dot… but what a dot it is! Connecting not only to the mind but also to the heart, this dot expresses an extraordinary sense of humor, fear, joy, and more as it pushes, lurches, wiggles, and slides its way through-and even off!-the pages of this glorious companion to Press Here and Mix It Up!
Press Here Game
Hervé Tullet has reimagined his groundbreaking book in an entirely new dimension. With two levels of play to choose from-so that it's easy enough for a toddler to grasp, but also complex enough to challenge older siblings and adults-this engaging game delivers hours of entertainment for the whole family.
Recess
Recess is the ultimate illustrated guide to the best games of the playground, for inside and outside. This fun and interactive guide includes the rules to over 150 games and variations, including over two dozen international games from schoolyards around the world, plus various tips and strategies not just to play, but also to win!
To the Moon
Climb up to the moon with this amazing fold-out colouring book, the longest in the world! Colour an amazing tower, all the way from your house down on the ground, past dragons, witches, space ports, and flying elephants, to reach the moon at the very top!
OLA Super Conference 2016
by Melissa
Fiction + News + YA Fiction / January 22, 2016
Heading to the Ontario Library Association Super Conference in Toronto next week? Make sure you stop by the Raincoast booth (#417) and meet some of our fantastic Canadian authors! Take a look at the author signing schedule below:
Thursday, January 28:
10:00 AM - 11:00 AM: A.M. Dellamonica
A. M. Dellamonica is the author of Indigo Springs, winner of the Sunburst Award for Canadian Literature of the Fantastic, and its concluding sequel Blue Magic. Her short stories have appeared in a number of fantasy and science fiction magazines, anthologies and on Tor.com.
11:00 AM - 12:00 PM: Marina Cohen
Marina Cohen is the author of several fantasy and horror novels for kids and teens. Her novel, Ghost Ride, was nominated for the 2011 Ontario Library Association Red Maple Award and won Honour Book. Cohen has been teaching in the York Region District School Board since 1995.
1:00 PM - 2:00 PM: Ausma Zehanat Khan
Ausma Zehanat Khan holds a Ph.D. in International Human Rights Law and is a former adjunct law professor. She was Editor-in-Chief of Muslim Girl magazine, the first magazine targeted to young Muslim women. A British-born Canadian, Khan now lives in Colorado with her husband. This is her second novel.
2:00 PM - 3:00 PM: Jess Keating
As an author and zoologist, Jess Keating has tickled a shark, lost a staring contest against an octopus, and been a victim to the dreaded paper cut. She lives in Ontario, Canada, where she spends most of her time writing books for adventurous and funny kids. Her first fiction novel, How to Outrun a Crocodile When Your Shoes Are Untied, received a Starred Review from Kirkus and has been nominated for a Red Maple Award. Visit her online at jesskeating.com.
Friday, January 29:
10:00 AM - 11:00 AM: Catherine Lo and Laurie Elizabeth Flynn
Inspired by 12 years working with at-risk teenagers as a teacher in a behavior support program, Catherine Lo is the author of How It Ends. She lives in Mississauga, Ontario with her family.
A former journalist and model, Laurie Elizabeth Flynn has travelled the world and enjoys writing contemporary fiction. She lives in London, Ontario with her husband. Firsts is her debut novel.
11:00 AM - 12:00 PM: Courtney Summers
Courtney Summers is the author of seven young adult novels including Fall for Anything, Some Girls Are, and Cracked Up to Be. She lives and writes in southern Ontario, where she divides her time between a piano, a camera, and a word-processing program when she's not planning for the impending zombie apocalypse.
Chronicle Books to Distribute Hardie Grant Books in North America
by Melissa
News / January 15, 2016
January 15, 2016
San Francisco, CA - San Francisco-based publisher Chronicle Books LLC announced today that it has entered into an agreement to distribute Hardie Grant Books in North America.
Founded in 1997 in Melbourne, and now publishing from both London and Australia, Hardie Grant Books is a leading publisher of illustrated books in a number of categories including food and drink, design and interiors, humor and advice. They count amongst their internationally bestselling authors Greg and Lucy Malouf, Megan Hess, Domonique Bertolucci, Kit Kemp and the Green Kitchen blog authors David Frenkiel and Luise Vindahl.
Hardie Grant Books now joins Quadrille Publishing, also part of Hardie Grant Publishing Group, which has just enjoyed its first season with Chronicle Books.
Chronicle Books and its Canadian distributor Raincoast Books will be responsible for selling approximately 40 titles a season, starting with the Fall 2016 season.
Hardie Grant Publishing will hire a marketing and publicity executive to work on both Quadrille and Hardie Grant Books situated at the Chronicle Books office in San Francisco.
"Hardie Grant is a market leader in English language illustrated book publishing,” says Jack Jensen, President of Chronicle Books. "After a longstanding partnership working with Hardie Grant to distribute our products in Australia, we are thrilled that we can now bring their future lists to the North American market."
“We are delighted that Chronicle Books will now extend its sales expertise to both our imprints Hardie Grant and Quadrille, and we look forward to working closely with them,” says Julie Pinkham, HGP’s Group Managing Director.
Congratulations to The Revenant
by Brooke
January 12, 2016
The Revenant swept Sunday's Golden Globes, taking home awards for Best Director (Alejandro G. Inarritu), Best Actor Drama (Leonardo DiCaprio), and Best Picture Drama.
Make sure you're not the last to read the novel that started it all. Michael Punke's The Revenant is available at bookstores now!
Raincoast to Distribute Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Trade Publishing Effective January 1, 2016
by Alisha
News / December 17, 2015
December 17, 2015
VANCOUVER - Raincoast Books will take over Canadian distribution of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Trade Publishing titles, effective January 1, 2016.Raincoast will handle sales, marketing and logistics for HMH trade titles to all Canadian customers.
ISBN prefixes include:
Raincoast will also distribute Larousse in Canada on behalf of HMH, with the exception of Larousse bilingual editions, which we cannot supply to Québec. ISBN prefix: 978-2-0357.
Raincoast will accept returns on all HMH Trade titles, including HMH distribution titles, effective January 1, 2016.
Please contact your local sales representative for more information or .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address).
Our Top 30 Book Covers of 2015
by Brooke
Fiction + Food & Drink + History + Kids / December 10, 2015
Take a look at some of our favourite cover designs from the last year!
The Girl With the Nine Wigs
by Sophie van der Stap
St. Martin's Press
The Man Who Couldn't Stop
by David Adam
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
A Manual for Cleaning Women
by Lucia Berlin
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
All That Followed
by Gabriel Urza
Henry Holt & Co
The Sellout
by Paul Beatty
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Withces of America
by Alex Mar
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Gamelife
by Michael W. Clune
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
KL
by Nikolaus Wachsmann
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Home Is Burning
by Dan Marshall
Flatiron Books
Jesus' Son
by Denis Johnson
Picador
Art and Fashion
by E.P. Cutler and Julien Tomasello
Chronicle Books
Wilberforce
by H. S. Cross
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Cancer Ward
by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
The Way Things Were
by Aatish Taseer
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Find Me
by Laura van den Berg
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
The Sasquatch Hunter's Almanac
by Sharma Shields
Henry Holt & Co
Radiance
by Catherynne M. Valente
Tor
A Poet of the Invisible World
by Michael Golding
Picador
Love Fortunes and Other Disasters
by Kimberly Karalius
Feiwel and Friends
A Darker Shade of Magic
by V. E. Schwab
Tor
Furiously Happy
by Jenny Lawson
Flatiron Books
The Big Green Tent
by Polly Gannon
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
The Unfortunates
by Sophie McManus
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
One Thing Stolen
by Beth Kephart
Chronicle Books
The Big Trip
Lonely Planet
The Wake
by Paul Kingsnorth
Graywolf Press
Six of Crows
by Leigh Bardugo
Henry Holt & Co
One Thousand Things Worth Knowing
by Paul Muldoon
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Book
by David W. Miles, illustrated by Natalie Hoopes
Familius
Tesla: a Portrait with Masks
Vladimir Pistalo
Graywolf Press
#12DaysofBookmas!
by Melissa
Contests / December 08, 2015
We're celebrating the holidays with #12DaysofBookmas! Stop by our Twitter or Facebook and follow the #12DaysofBookmas hashtag for daily giveaways. Retweet your favourite posts on Twitter or share your favourite posts on Facebook for opportunities to win some fabulous books!
See below for giveaway rules and regulations.
- No purchase is necessary to participate.
- Entry is limited to persons aged 16 and above who are Canadian residents. Grand Prize entry is limited to Canadian residents aged 16 and above, excluding Quebec.
- To enter, retweet the post on Twitter or share the post on Facebook for your chance to win the prize that day. No other entry method will be accepted. Raincoast Books Distribution Ltd. is not responsible for late or misdirected entries or transmission errors.
- Winner selection is based upon random draw, and each giveaway will close 24 hours after the original posting time. Any entries received after the 24 hour window will be excluded from the draw. There will only be one winner selected for each prize offered. Winners will be announced the day after each post, unless the giveaway is posted on a Friday, in which case the winner will be announced on a Monday. There will be no posts or winners announced on weekends.
- The Grand Prize giveaway will end at 11:59 PM PST on December 26th, 2015. Any entries received after this time will be excluded from the draw. The winner will be announced on December 28th, 2015.
- Odds for winning the prizes will depend on the number of entries received.
- Prize value will range between $5 and $100 (Canadian dollars) depending upon the book(s) being given away, with the exception of the Grand Prize which is valued at over $400. Prizes have no cash value and must be accepted as awarded.
- The prize will be shipped via standard post at no cost to the winner.
- Entry information collected by Raincoast Books Distribution Ltd. will not be used for any purpose other than to provide the winners with their prizes.
- Entry limited to one entry per sweepstakes offer per person. Void where prohibited by law.
- Giveaway Sponsor: Raincoast Books Distribution Ltd. 2440 Viking Way, Richmond, BC, Canada V6V 1N2
- This giveaway is in no way associated with Facebook or Twitter.
The Big Green Tent by Ludmila Ulitskaya
by Alisha
Fiction / November 02, 2015
The expression “May you live in interesting times” is believed to be an ancient Chinese curse. Centuries ago it was adopted by Russians and altered to become “God spare us from living in era of changes”. Doomed to eternal punishment by the history of their own country, Russians hope for a life in peace.
For generations, Russian writers have examined the lives drained by the love and hate relationship with their country. To name just a few: Leo Tolstoy with his War and Peace, Boris Pasternak with Doctor Zhivago, Michail Bulgakov with The White Guard, Vasily Grossman with Life and Fate, Varlam Shalamov with The Kolyma Tales, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn with One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich and now Ludmila Ulitskaya with The Big Green Tent.
“The Big Green Tent” is a tremendous collection of human stories. Whereas each of these stories would be precious and stimulating food for thought by itself, Ulitskaya weaves a sophisticated lace of twisted relationships and random encounters, creating a refined saga, which affects the reader on a deeply emotional level. The focus of the novel is on three school friends. Being very different in the way they were born and bred, they have a strange connection. A peculiarly broad-minded and devoted teacher challenges their perception of Russian history and literature by reading poetry, by discovering the city’s hidden past and by asking contentious questions. Reaching adulthood, they follow their own paths, struggling to stay away from the deception and denunciation in society. The reader meets a vivid cast of characters, discovers the dissident movement and explores the dangers of “samizdat” – illegal reproducing and distributing of banned publications. Again and again he is being asked those eternal moral questions, Russian literature is preeminent in. And yet again we have to balance between ego and soul, free will and fate, honor and betrayal. “The Big Green Tent” is a rich insightful research of human behaviour in yet another of the“interesting times” in Russian history – the KGB era.
The thoughtful reader will appreciate the powerful storyline, splendid language and clever observations of one of the most prominent contemporary Russian writers—Ludmila Ulitskaya.
The Big Green Tent by Ludmila Ulitskaya is available November 10, 2015.