History books tend to focus on certain people and to ignore the stories of others. Black History Month reminds us that everyone participates in history, and everyone deserves to have their story heard.

Celebrate Black History Month with these titles, including fiction, non-fiction, and biographies.

Learn about the history of the Riverview/Essondale hospital in PoCo, and Mental Health treatment in BC. Includes resources on the history of mental illness with a focus on first person accounts. In partnership with Coquitlam Heritage's exhibition titled Riverview: an artists point of view.

A booklist to learn about Indigenous history in North America.

A mix of History, Mystery, uplifting books and others on my 'to read' list.

Canada History Week 2022 takes place from November 21 to 27. This year’s theme is Arts, Culture, and Creators! The week encourages Canadians to reflect upon and engage with Canada’s past.

As in film westerns, the western novel has been revived in newer and unconventional ways in recent years. There has been the rise in popularity of the “weird western”: a hybrid genre which blends elements of the traditional western (a lawless frontier, a hero pit against all odds) with those of other types of fiction such as noir, mystery, horror and science-fiction (namely, the alternate Victorian universe known as steampunk).

Films within the noir genre are quite diverse, but have a few things in common: a dark and brooding atmosphere, a cynical protagonist with a complicated past, and plotlines that are fatalistic. Noir fiction has developed alongside these films since the 1930s and 1940s and has the same characteristics. Although classic noir novels by such authors as Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett are detective stories, others are written in the form of psychological thrillers, and horror, western and science-fiction novels.

Favourite fiction from the 1910s through the 1940s.

Fantasy fiction with strong female characters. For ages 9 and up.