Staff Picks
At FriesenPress, we celebrate each and every book we help our authors publish. Here are some of our team’s recent favourites – happy reading!
Erasing The Five O'Clock Shadow
by
Monica Miatello
A middle-class Roman Catholic Italian, hockey player, avid drummer, and popular kid, Monica Miatello (formerly Chris) knew she was different from the age of five. But it was the late 1960s—a time when information about gender dysphoria was practically non-existent. As a result, although she had many friends, her childhood and teenage years felt lonely and isolating. That is, until she met Sandy. Falling in love and getting married weren’t things Miatello ever thought would happen to someone like her. Both pharmacists, the couple moved to a small Ontario town of 900 people, purchased a pharmacy, and had two daughters. With Sandy’s support, Miatello navigated the hills and valleys of her secret cross-dressing life, which ultimately led to her transition in the late 1990s. Her courageous journey from life as a man to embracing life as a woman couldn’t have happened without transparency, honesty, and a patient willingness to educate those around her. It also required the support of people who accepted her authentic self, an openness to discovery, and the ability to trust others. And it would not have happened without humour, positivity, and the ability to laugh at—and love—herself. Heartwarming, emotional, and empowering, Erasing The Five O’Clock Shadow is a remarkable and inspiring personal story about transitioning and being transgender in an ever-changing world.
Resilience in Residence
A Story of Survival, Strength, and the Pursuit of a Life Worth Living. by
Ness Mickey
Ever looked at someone and wondered, How did they survive that? Want to know what it really takes to rebuild a life from the inside out? Resilience in Residence isn’t just Ness Mickey’s story of survival—it’s a guide for reclaiming your life and building something stronger, braver, and more aligned with who you’re meant to be. Through raw reflection, hard-won lessons, and unrelenting hope, this book offers a roadmap for anyone who has ever felt knocked down, counted out, or lost in the rubble of life’s hardships. More than a memoir, it’s a blueprint for rebuilding—not just a home, but a sense of belonging within yourself. Giving voice to the pain, strength, and quiet courage so many carry in silence, Resilience in Residence holds space for those who feel like they’re falling apart behind the scenes. Healing isn’t always polished or linear, but it is possible. And maybe that’s where the real work begins. Because change doesn’t start with the system, it starts with us. We don’t return to balance until we return to our humanity. Every shift we want to see—compassion, justice, integrity, empathy—begins with the courage to evolve ourselves. We often believe that isn’t enough, but that belief is what keeps us stuck. When we change, everything around us does too. Resilience in Residence invites you on a deeply personal, fiercely honest journey from brokenness to boldness, proof that the courage to rebuild your life is the same courage the world needs to heal. The power to rebuild has always been yours. It’s time to live what you love, and become who you were meant to be, because the world needs it.
The Chase
by
Marianne Perry
What if Anna was in the early stages of Alzheimer’s disease? Or, were the nightmares simply the result of emotional and physical fatigue from juggling a demanding career, long-distance relationship with her adult children, and helping the family care for her increasingly frail mother? But what if an ominous element was encircling Anna? How else had a startling holograph will from a beloved uncle who died twenty-five years ago suddenly surfaced? What explanation accounted for Anna receiving a 1900 land deed for an unidentified tract of land somewhere in Europe? And who had mailed Anna a letter revealing alarming family truths? The Chase is a thrilling tale of deceit and treachery that unfolds in North America, Sweden, Switzerland, Italy, and South America. It confronts our deepest fears and raises the possibility of beginning anew.
Oliver The Crane
by
Jordan Barons
Oliver is a construction crane, and he’s been hired to help build a condo tower where hundreds of people will live. It’s his job to lift big, heavy things way up into the air. Oliver and his friends hoist rebar, lift fly forms, and unload concrete as the building comes together floor by floor. He loves working with his friends onsite, but when the job is done, what will happen to him? Every kid loves to know how things are made, especially the role of big trucks and heavy machines. Oliver the Crane embraces that curiosity and teaches kids how a tower crane works, what goes into building a high-rise condo, and what happens to machinery when it’s not on the job. Kids will learn all about the construction industry, and even parents might learn a new fact or two!
Mindful Travel Sketching
A Memoir of Journeys Inner and Outer by
Hiroshi Shimazaki
In this third and final volume of the Mindful Art series, Hiroshi Shimazaki explores what has always been at the heart of his sketching/painting activities, whether for academic research or for pure pleasure. Here he reminisces about times on site and relishes the memories the sketches evoke. As always, he invites readers to enter the world of travel sketching with mindfulness, curiosity, and wonder—as well as, on occasion, a sense of humour. Mindful Travel Sketching: A Memoir of Journeys Inner and Outer contains over three hundred of Shimazaki’s travel sketches from all over the globe, and will appeal to artists, would-be artists, travellers, would-be travellers, and admirers of the artist’s work. Other books in the series are Mindful Landscape Sketching and Mindful Landscape Painting: My Watercolour Journeys.
The Silenced Path
by
Maria Moore
Based on the true story of Getruda Peters, this poignant, unflinching novel exposes the abuse and neglect she suffered as a resident of a government-run institution in Ontario in the 1980s. After witnessing the brutal murder of her father, followed by her mother abandoning her, young Gerda and her siblings are forced to leave the insular world of their Old Colony Mennonite community. Separated from her brothers and sister, she is shuffled from foster home to foster home and endures bullying and cruelty. She is sent to an institution for intellectually disabled adults, which is meant to nurture her, provide community, and give her life skills. But when a supervisor sexually abuses her and the staff doesn’t believe her, she becomes trapped in the patterns of survival she has endured her whole life. Left traumatized and stripped of belonging, Gerda finds fragile peace in a nearby forest, beneath a canopy of whispering leaves and amidst the quiet company of birds and wild creatures. Nature becomes her unlikely teacher, offering gentle lessons in kindness and resilience. This story offers a haunting and lyrical portrait of a young woman’s journey through loss and isolation toward self-discovery and strength. Through the darkness, Gerda forges a future shaped not by her past, but by the courage and compassion she learns to claim as her own.
Minnifitty and the Rotten Kids
by
J.E. Smith
When Princess Minnifitty is sent to live with her Great Aunt after her parents’ unfortunate encounter with a blind-as-a-bat dragon, her entire world is turned upside down. Feeling abandoned and invisible, Minnifitty gets cranky and stays cranky. And she takes it out on everyone, especially those rotten neighborhood kids. But when the unexpected happens and Minnifitty has to depend on the very people she has behaved the absolute worst to, will they help her… Or has she taken her crankiness too far? Minnifitty and The Rotten Kids, a story about second chances, seeing past rough edges, and how friendship sometimes arrives uninvited.
I Can't Be the Only One Who...
A Collection of Unique Reflections and Private Thoughts from Ordinary People by
C.H. Dégagné
At some point in life, we’ve all probably (secretly) questioned ourselves along these lines: Am I the only person this happens to? I can’t be the only one who likes or dislikes this. Am I the only one who exhibits this odd behaviour? Am I seriously the only person who thinks or feels this way? I can’t be the only one like this. I Can’t Be the Only One Who… is an uplifting collection of personal reflections from a diverse group of ordinary people from all walks of life. Each anonymous contributor shares a unique anecdote about themselves that they believe to be uncommon or odd, whether it’s a private thought, an unconventional habit, or a life circumstance. At the end of the day, this book showcases that we’re not alone after all, amidst our distinct peculiarities - even though at times we may feel like we are.