Read Windsor
Your City. Your Authors. Your Books.
Read Local with the Windsor Lit List
Discover local authors. Explore the themes, history, and relationships that make us who we are.
Life is different in Windsor, and so is the literature we produce. Find your next great read in this selection of exciting local books, all published by independent Ontario publishers.
Browse by Children's and Young Adult, Fiction, Non-Fiction, and Poetry!
Children’s/Young Adult
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Battle on the Ice Windsor area setting! Exciting historical fiction for young adult readers. |
What Does Hate Look Like Windsor author! Real kids share their stories to help us to see the prejudice, violence, discrimination, and exclusion around us. |
Fiction
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Light Lifting An award-winning collection of short fiction set in Windsor, by a Windsor-raised author. |
Joyland Windsor area author and setting! Joyland is a novel about the impossibility of knowing the future. |
King of Hope Windsor author! Southern Ontario Gothic with an environmental twist. |
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Home Waltz Windsor area author! One Indigenous teenager’s experience of growing up in a world that doesn’t want or trust him. |
Morse Code for Romantics Windsor author! Wistful, darkly surreal stories, set in Southern Ontario. |
The Razor's Edge Windsor author! Linked short stories that hopscotch between time and space to explore the hunger for love, for understanding and for truth. |
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Breaking Right Windsor author! Fantastical, folkloric and absurdist stories. |
Tale of a Boon's Wife Windsor author! A young Somali woman defies convention and clan to marry the man she loves, but must face the consequences. |
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Non-Fiction
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Code White: Windsor authors! Exploring the deep systemic flaws that have transformed health care into one of the most dangerous occupational sectors in Canada. |
Going Public: Windsor author! The remarkable course from sexual abuse victim to agent of change. |
Sick of the System: Featuring a Windsor author, this collection explores how the COVID-19 pandemic has shaken the world to its core. |
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1934: Windsor author! The pride of Chatham’s East End, the Coloured All-Stars broke the colour barrier in baseball more than a decade before Jackie Robinson. |
Watching the Devil Dance The unbelievable true story of Canada’s first known spree killer, told by a Windsor local and veteran of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. |
Windsor: Then & Now Windsor: Then & Now shows us a city balancing a rich heritage with a taste for the new—a constant flux, shifting and renewing itself with the times. |
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The Rumrunners A photographic history of Windsor and its citizens during prohibition, by a Windsor local. |
The River & The Land The first authoritative survey of Windsor-Essex history to be published since the 1950s. |
The River: A memoir from one of Windsor’s most celebrated reporters and radio hosts. |
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My Town: Faces of Windsor More than 70 snapshots of the people and places that have called Windsor home. |
Ghost Road and Other Forgotten Stories of Windsor Eccentric, unexpected, and told by the city’s most popular historian, Ghost Road and Other Forgotten Stories of Windsor is the city like you’ve never seen it before. |
From the Vault Volume II: 1950–1980 Explore what were perhaps the three most important and exciting decades of Windsor's history. |
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Ford City The story of the industrial heart of Windsor. |
Border Cities Powerhouse: Explore political and social changes in Windsor during the first half of the 20th century, particularly the rise of the automotive industry. |
Five Days Walking Five Towns Fabled local raconteur Marty Gervais puts on his boots and takes the reader on a street-by-street walking tour through Windsor. |
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250 Years of Assumption Parish A detailed photo history of the past and present of Assumption Parish in Windsor. |
The Running-Shaped Hole Windsor author! The memoir of a man on his way to eating himself to death before discovering distance running. |
Riverside Drive Set in Windsor! Prohibition takes the battle, along with the party, to the streets. |
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Maiden Lane With a whisper of the occult in the chill Windsor air, Campbell and Laforet are caught up in another mystery. |
Prospect Avenue Set in Windsor! West meets East as bootleggers and cops tangle with opium smugglers and corrupt officials in a new kind of gang warfare. |
The Leamington Italian Community: A study of pre- and post-WWII immigration and settlement of three major southern Italian groups in Windsor-Essex County. |
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The Ordinary People of Essex: An overview of agricultural practices and land use in early Canada, focusing on Essex County. |
Land, Power, and Economics An examination of Ontario's formative years, focusing on Essex County from 1788 to 1850. |
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Poetry
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tend Windsor author! Visceral and playful, tend reflects the intimate awkwardness of modern life. |
Devil in the Woods Windsor area author! Poems in which an Indigenous speaker engages with non-Indigenous famous Canadians. |
Go Down Odawa Way Windsor area author! Poems that explore the physical, historical, and cultural spaces that make up the traditional territory of the Three Fires Confederacy. |
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North of Middle Island Windsor area author! A lyrical, epic journey into the unique culture and landscapes of Pelee Island. |
The Essential Eugene McNamara Eugene McNamara's poetry ponders the textures and contradictions of his adopted city: Windsor, Ontario. |
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