TouchWood Editions
$12.95
978-1-55054-894-5
6 x 9, 128 pages
Paperback

Drink in the Wild
Teas, Cordials, Jams and More
Hilary Stewart

An enticing book that opens up a whole world of wild plants for brewing tasty teas and refreshing drinks, plus fruity preserves and more. 

In her trademark friendly and expert fashion, author and illustrator Hilary Stewart explains how to identify, harvest, dry and store the plant parts, then gives recipes for preparing sixty drinks and several jams. In addition, she adds practical and decorative ideas that use a number of these same plants. 

Drink in the Wild is an attractive and handy guidebook. Full-page, finely worked line drawings of fifty wild plants, together with descriptions and habitats, ensure their identification.

The plants are all native to the Pacific Northwest, and many of them grow right across Canada and the United States. 

This book is the long-awaited reissue - now greatly enhanced by additional material and accompanying illustrations of Hilary Stewart's popular but long out of print Wild Teas, Coffees & Cordials: 60 Drinks of the Pacific Northwest.

TouchWood Editions
Memoir
ISBN: 978-1-894898-61-4
5.25" x 8", 232 pages
$17.95, softcover
available September

This and That
The Lost Journals of Emily Carr
Emily Carr
edited by Ann-Lee Switzer

Once available and appreciated only by researchers, these stories remained buried in the British Columbia Archives until 2007. Finally, readers are given a new glimpse into Emily's life with this collection. Emily Carr began to write these stories in the last two years of her life. She wrote of the project: "… they are too small each to be taken singly, but each, complete in itself, serves to ornament life which would be a drab affair without the little things we do not even notice or think of at the time but which old age memory magnifies."

This collection illuminates her life and is available to all in This and That: The Lost Journals of Emily Carr. Enter Emily's world with stories like "Father's Temper," "The First Snow" and "Smoking with the Cow"-stories in which she reveals details of her family life, school days, her fascination with nature, animals she loved and how she learned to smoke.

"The book is a delight. Carr comes to us full of personality and good cheer, setting down in the most direct way moments and memories which had stayed with her all her life."-Victoria Times Colonist

Beloved Canadian artist and writer Emily Carr (December 13, 1871-March 2, 1945) was born in Victoria, British Columbia. She studied art in the U.S., England and France until 1911, when she moved back to British Columbia. Carr was most heavily influenced by the landscapes and First Nations cultures of British Columbia and Alaska. In the 1920s she came into contact with members of the Group of Seven and was later invited to submit her works for inclusion in a Group of Seven exhibition. They named her "The Mother of Modern Arts" about five years later.

TouchWood Editions
Art/biography
ISBN: 978-1-894898-58-4
10.125" x 9.375", 160 pages
colour throughout
$44.95, hardcover
Available October

Artists in their Studios
Where Art is Born
Robert Amos

With his latest book, artist Robert Amos gives readers a fascinating insider’s tour of studios on Vancouver Island and the Gulf Islands where some of Canada’s best-known artists create works.

Spanning more than 15 years of interviews and photographs, Amos has created panoramic collages of these artists' creative spaces, and even more revealing images with his words. 

Not merely biography, Amos includes examples of completed works, and the insight that only another artist, and talented arts writer, can. 

Artists in Their Studios is both a stunning compilation of our Canadian artistic heritage, and proof that art work in progress is art in itself. 

Enter the studios of:

Robert Amos is a full-time professional artist. Born in Belleville , Ontario , he began painting professionally in 1980. Focussing his work on the city of Victoria , British Columbia , he became, in his words, “a sort of expert on the urban reality” around him.

He has written four books about his paintings. Since 1986, he has written a weekly art column in Victoria ’s Times Colonist.

He was made an Honorary Citizen of Victoria in 1985, was elected to the Royal Canadian Academy of the Art s in 1996 and was the official artist of the Royal Victoria Marathon in 2003. He lives in Victoria , B.C.

TouchWood Editions
Memoir
ISBN: 978-1-894898-60-7
5.5" x 8.5", 320 pages
b/w photos
$19.95, softcover
Available September

A Journey to the Northern Ocean
The Adventures of Samuel Hearne
Samuel Hearne
foreword by Ken McGoogan

Widely recognized as a classic of northern-exploration literature, A Journey to the Northern Ocean is Samuel Hearne's story of his three-year trek to seek a trade route across the Barrens in the Northwest Territories. Hearne was a superb reporter, from his anguished description of the massacre of helpless Eskimos by his Indian companions to his meticulous records of wildlife, flora and Indian manners and customs. As esteemed author Ken McGoogan points out in his foreword: "Hearne demonstrated that to thrive in the north, Europeans had to apprentice themselves to the Native peoples who had lived there for centuries-a lesson lost on many who followed."

First published in 1795, more than two decades after Hearne had completed his trek, the memoir was originally called A Journey from Prince of Wales's Fort in Hudson's Bay to the Northern Ocean in the years 1769, 1770, 1771, and 1772. This Classics West edition brings a crucial piece of Canadian history back into print.

Born in London in 1745, Samuel Hearne joined the Royal Navy at the age of 12 and served under Captain Samuel Hood during the Seven Years War. In 1766, seeking adventure, he joined the Hudson's Bay Company to work as first mate on a whaling ship. He was based at the HBC's northernmost outpost, Prince of Wales fort, and was only 24 when he set out on the quest described in this book.

TouchWood Editions
Mystery/suspense
ISBN: 978-1-894898-59-1
5.25" x 8", 288 pages
$12.95, softcover
Available September

Stolen
Ron Chudley

"The sound of the river, ever-present, had finally intruded on his consciousness. If Nate was playing by himself outside, that damn river was too close for comfort. Instantly forgetting everything else, John hurried to the door, pushed it right open, stepped to the edge."

John Quarry is on vacation with his small son, Nate, when a tragedy occurs: during an overnight stop in the Fraser Canyon, the child disappears and is presumed lost to the river. The coroner's verdict is death by drowning, although the body is never recovered.

While the authorities consider the matter closed, a provocative dream convinces John that his son is not dead, but stolen. With little hope and only a single clue, John sets out on a desperate search. It takes him from B.C. to bustling Calgary, where he is arrested, to the Alberta badlands, where he is nearly murdered, and to the foothills of the towering Rocky Mountains, where he is
forced to undertake a final, perilous journey.

To find his son and save his own life, John must be more than brave and better than clever. He must have the blind faith found only in a parent in extremis.

Ron Chudley is the author of two other TouchWood mysteries: Old Bones (2005) and Dark Resurrection (2006). He has written extensively for television (including The Beachcombers) and for the National Film Board of Canada and has contributed dramas to CBC Radio's Mystery, The Bush and the Salon and CBC Stage.

TouchWood Editions
Crime fiction/mystery
ISBN: 978-1-894898-57-7
5.25" x 8", 224 pages
$12.95, softcover
Available September

Seaweed Under Water
Stanley Evans

I knew that if I dived deep enough, the bullets would lose their killing velocity. I heard, or sensed, another explosive blast. My left arm was useless. I kept diving, down and out into deeper, blacker water …

Coast Salish investigator Silas Seaweed is back in another suspenseful page-turner. What begins as a missing-person investigation takes a nasty turn when party girl Jane Colby is found drowned, strangulation marks around her neck. Silas soon discovers that some of Jane's friends would benefit by her death. Tackling the case with his usual intelligence, wit and compassion, he sets out to find Jane's killer. His search leads him to a dangerous family with disturbing secrets. 

Solving the case pulls him into Salish mythology and ritual, culminating in a terrifying underwater vision quest-one from which he may never return.

This is Stanley Evans' third book in his Silas Seaweed crime-fiction series, following Seaweed on the Street (2005) and Seaweed on Ice (2006). His previous novels are Outlaw Gold and Snow-Coming Moon, and he also wrote two plays that were produced at the Arts Club Theatre in Vancouver. He lives in Victoria, B.C.