Celebrate Mother's Day with Bookish Gifts from Rocky Mountain Books

Happy Mother's Day!
Mother's Day is a heartfelt occasion to honour the matriarchs in our lives – be they our mothers, grandmothers, aunts, mentors, or cherished friends. These remarkable women shape our individual journeys with their wisdom, strength, and unwavering support. At Rocky Mountain Books we celebrate these influential figures by sharing stories that inspire, adventures that beckon, and narratives that resonate with the spirit of womanhood. We've put together a list of recommended reads and hope that you'll be able to find a gift or two to celebrate Mom.
Gift Ideas for Families that hike 🌿
For those who find solace in nature and joy in shared adventures, our Family Walks and Hikes series is the perfect companion. These guidebooks are crafted for outdoor enthusiasts of all ages and abilities, featuring curated routes, informative maps, and vibrant photographs. A great gift for moms that love to explore!
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Family Walks and Hikes of Vancouver Island:
Revised Edition, Volume 1: Victoria to Nanaimo
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Family Walks and Hikes of Vancouver Island:
Revised Edition, Volume 2: Nanaimo North to Strathcona Park
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Family Walks & Hikes Canadian Rockies:
2nd Edition, Volume 1: Bragg Creek, Kananaskis, Bow Valley
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Family Walks & Hikes Canadian Rockies:
2nd Edition, Volume 2: Banff, Kootenay, Yoho, Icefields Parkway, Jasper
Gifts for planning Coast to Coast Adventures 🏔️
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Mountain Footsteps:
Hikes in the East Kootenay of Southeastern British Columbia – 4th Edition, Updated
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Wildlife Weekends in Southern British Columbia:
Day and Multi-day Trips from Vancouver for Wildlife Viewing
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Waterfall Hikes in the Canadian Rockies:
Volume 1: Banff, Kananaskis, Crowsnest, Waterton, Yoho, BC Rockies
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Waterfall Hikes in the Canadian Rockies:
Volume 2: Mount Robson, Valemount, Jasper, David Thompson, Banff, Icefields Parkway
- Seaside Walks on Vancouver Island – Revised Edition
Gift Ideas to Celebrate Women’s Voices 🌎
Instead: Navigating the Adventures of a Childfree Life - A Memoir
Instead captures Maria Coffey’s adventurous life through her biggest decisions along the way, including the decision not to have children. It’s a vivid travelogue, a love story, and a personal commentary on the risks and rewards of choosing unconventional paths. Following Maria’s trajectory as she shares her guilt-ridden relationship with her Irish Catholic mother; her baby debates with Dag in unlikely situations, like kayaking through a storm; the doubts that rear up in remote cultures where her childfree choice is unfathomable; and how children eventually – and surprisingly – come into her life.
Lights to Guide Me Home: A Journey Off the Beaten Track in Life, Love, Adventure, and Parenting
In Lights to Guide Me Home Meghan Ward takes us on a trip around the world while chronicling her transitions through some of life’s major milestones. From Costa Rica to Nepal, Rapa Nui to Malta, Meghan explores what it means to carve out her own identity amidst family expectations, her responsibilities as a parent to young children, and her marriage to an ambitious travel and landscape photographer. Whom will she discover beneath these entanglements?
Searching for Happy Valley: A Modern Quest for Shangri-La
A global quest to comprehend the meaning of “Happy Valley” on three continents and how these mountain communities continue to survive in a world that constantly challenges the very notion of “happiness.”
In a world facing environmental devastation, illness, and unprecedented mental anxieties, Searching for Happy Valley offers an alternative. Jane Marshall immerses herself in the land and forms deep connections with its people so she can learn sustainable ways of living their Indigenous populations have honed over millennia.
Flow: Women’s Counternarratives from Rivers, Rock, and Sky
Flow takes readers on an inspiring journey through the world of women in adventure sports, challenging stereotypes and celebrating the strength, resilience, and unity of women across the globe. Edited by Denisa Krásná and Alena Rainsberry, Flow examines the intersections of gender, race, class, and sexual identity within the context of extreme sports, offering a fresh perspective on the barriers these women have overcome. More than just a collection of stories, this book is a celebration of the diverse paths these women have taken, and the common drive that unites them in their pursuit of adventure.
A Time of Light and Shadow: To Asia, Africa, and the Long Way Home
In 1975, a time of new freedom for women, Ella Harvey lived in Paris, worked as a nurse in war-torn Lebanon, and fell in love in Istanbul. Jostled between cultures, between love and loss, she found her way home. A year later, restless once again, she set off alone for India, a land of unsettling contradictions. A solo trek in the Himalayas completed that Asian journey. A Time of Light and Shadow explores one woman’s complicity in privilege, a troubled past with her mother, and reflections on solitude and friendship, youth and aging, longing and belonging.
Our Trip Around the World
Our Trip Around the World is a spirited 1950s travelogue that takes the reader around the world during a time when two independent young women travelling alone was considered almost revolutionary. Starting in 1955 and travelling for three years to England, France, Spain, Portugal, Mexico, Canada, Japan, India, Nepal, Bhutan, Egypt, Turkey, Macedonia, and Greece, their adventures together culminated with their joint return to Germany in 1958.
Honouring High Places: The Mountain Life of Junko Tabei
Honouring High Places is a compelling collection of highlights from Junko Tabei’s stirring life that she considered important, inspiring and interesting to mountaineering culture. Until now, her works have been available only in Japanese, and RMB is honoured to be sharing these profound and moving stories with the English-speaking world for the first time. This beautifully curated collection of essays captures the essence of a notable time and the strength of character of one of the 20th and 21st centuries’ female mountaineering pioneers.
Out Here: Wisdom from the Wilderness
Out Here is a collection of essays that explores what the wilderness has to teach us about the human experience, using outdoor endeavours as extended metaphors for greater truths. Each carefully chosen piece embarks on a different physical and metaphorical journey: managing expectations and reality during a medical emergency in a 40-mile ski mountaineering race; staring down fear and consequences on exposed ski lines in Alaska; re-examining self-reliance and decision-making through heartbreak and snow science; and leaving room for unexpected magic as a female travelling through Patagonia.
Echo Loba, Loba Echo: Of Wisdom, Wolves and Women
Echo Loba, Loba Echo is a story about the metaphor of the wolf and how this is echoed in the lives and minds of people. A metaphor that embodies worldviews colliding, and the collision, the fallout, we live with still. It is a story about wolves’ own cultures, survival stories, acts of rebellion, and vital roles in maintaining healthy territories. And it is also a story about what we have been told to forget, or never even know, and what wolves show us about ourselves.
Chasing Africa: Fear Won’t Find Me Here — A Memoir
Chasing Africa delicately explores the loss of identity, the gift of health and adventure, and the courage to put oneself first despite guilt, fear, and the pull of family. As a teenager, Lisa couldn’t wait to escape suburbia and travel the world. Years later, as a healthy young climber, she was confronted with the depressing realities of her dad’s and her brother’s neurological diseases: Parkinson’s and progressive multiple sclerosis. In 1996, after watching her dad’s and brother’s bodies fail for five years, she was determined to push fear, worry, and guilt aside to reclaim her adventurous identity the only way she knew how: travel to Africa on her own.
Happy Mother's Day!
To celebrate Mother's Day last year, our colleagues at Heritage Group Distribution connected with authors from a few Canadian publishers to create this lovely video 🩷
RMB authors Meghan Ward and Melissa Allan took part and shared their stories to celebrate Mother's Day. We invite you to watch this short video and reflect on your own happy memories with your mother-figures throughout the years!
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