Order Now!

Softboiled

Calli Westbrook is a failure. Well, maybe she’s not a failure, but her amazing private eye themed business certainly is. All she wants to do is tuck her fedora under her arm, retreat to suburbia, and lose herself in a cozy mystery. Instead, she comes home to find her girlfriend in the arms of another woman.

Now sleeping on the couch in the office she can no longer afford, Calli’s luck takes a turn when a strange woman offers cash to sublet a room. But when the new tenant suddenly vanishes, Calli finds herself catapulted into a real-life mystery.

Enlisting the help of a motley crew of friends, neighbours, and a vagabond cat, Calli is on the case, discovering, perhaps for the first time, what she is truly made of.

From the back alleys and rooftops of Victoria’s historic Chinatown to the stormy waterfront, Softboiled is a wild and rickety bike ride full of danger, daring, drones, friendship, typewriter repair, and a quirky cast of characters you won’t soon forget.

Order Now!

Forward

Still smarting years after a horrible breakup, Rayanne diligently buries herself in her work. Aside from work, she has her cat. And other than her cat, she has her crushes: crushes that she prides herself on being able to resist. Then unexpectedly, one of her crushes begins to affect her more than the others, and threatens to upset the delicate balance of her carefully controlled life.

Ali is still feeling lost and numb almost a year after the death of her wife. Then one ordinary day something extraordinary happens: she is ambushed by her attraction to another woman that is both invigorating and fantastically inappropriate. Whether she's ready for it or not, it stirs up feelings Ali didn't think she was capable of having anymore.

Funny, moving, and full of heart, Forward is a graphic novel that explores the parameters of second chances and the tricky emotions of grief, fear, vulnerability, and desire.

Praise for Forward

Winner, ALA Stonewall Honor Book 2019

(Forward) bristles with textual honesty and often highly charged, lovely artwork bristles with textual honesty and often highly charged, lovely artwork. -The Vancouver Sun

A gentle and heartwarming debut about finding love after loss ... This authentic, poignant love story offers a welcome depth of emotion to what might have otherwise been a simple romantic comedy. -Publishers weekly

Forward is a sweet and poignant look at just how hard it is to start over after a traumatic relationship experience ... empowering and heartbreaking. -Shelf Awareness

Forward is a moving depiction of grief and loss, but it also includes sweet moments of sexual desire, joy, and laughter, which bubble up even in the most painful times -- kind of like real life! The book will resonate for anyone who's lost a loved one and struggled their way back into life and living. - Sarah Leavitt, author of Tangles

The courage to find new love after loss, in all its vulnerable, awkward, tender-hearted complexity, pushes our heroines 'forward' in this beautifully rendered, funny, sexy graphic novel. Lisa Maas' drawings are uniquely organic and hum with emotion; I read it from start to finish in one sitting, completely engrossed. -Jenny Jaeckel, author of Spot 12: Five Months in the Neonatal ICU

Forward was listed as one of “14 books by Canadian LBGTQ writers and illustrators to celebrate Pride Month” by the CBC (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation) in 2018

Forward was listed as one of “10 Exuberantly Queer Graphic Novels” Electric Literature in 2019