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Lunenburg (new edition)
Publisher: Nimbus Publishing$24.95Annie Welles is an officer with the Halifax Regional Police’s Robbery and Violent Crimes Unit. Recently divorced without custody of her two young sons, Annie’s career, too, is now stalling under the ambitions of her ruthless colleagues. When two murders occur within forty-eight hours of each other, she takes a risk to follow her intuition, hoping to prove herself.
John Taggart is a Scottish journalist looking to land the scoop that will secure his future. In Halifax to cover the Royal visit and a high-profile RCMP coup in a small coastal town, John has a chance to understand his mother’s connection to the province, which she has always kept hidden.
As both become wrapped up in the double homicide, they’re led to the small, picturesque town of Lunenburg and a thirty-year-old murder case with a long-buried secret. The town’s dark past holds the answers they both need, but uncovering it could prove more danger than it’s worth.
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The Spoon Stealer
Publisher: Nimbus Publishing$24.95The main character is born in 1894. The book contains her memoir, so the action goes back and forth in time, including Emmeline’s childhood, through World War One and World War Two and up to “present day,” which is 1968-1969.
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Ava Comes Home
Publisher: Nimbus Publishing$19.95From the author of Relative Happiness and Shoot Me comes a riveting story about one terrible secret—a secret kept in shame, buried deep for self-preservation, and exposed in a moment that changes forever the lives of everyone involved.
Ava Harris is a famous actress living the life of the rich and fabulous in L.A. when a family crisis calls her home. It’s been ten years since she’s set foot in Glace Bay, Cape Breton—back when she was plain old Libby MacKinnon. Why she ran away, no one knows. Returning home, she must face her family, her friends, and her first love, Seamus O’Reilly, whose heart broke the day she left.
Ava is a good little actress, determined that no one will know what happened. She will keep the truth buried at all costs—even if she has to run again. But secrets have a way of surfacing, especially in a small town, and love has a way of blasting through the toughest barriers. While Ava can never go home again, perhaps Libby finally can.
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Shoot Me
Publisher: Nimbus Publishing$19.95The South End house where Elsie Brooks and her big, complicated family live is bursting with secrets. Elsie’s banished husband lives in the basement. Her lonely sister lives in the attic. Her twenty-something daughters come and go as they please. And when the renegade ninety-one-year-old archaeologist they all know as Aunt Hildy comes home to die, the poor old place becomes impossibly full-of hidden meanings and hidden treasure, of murder and mystery.
Shoot Me is a story about family, fortune, and figuring out who you are. Bestselling author Lesley Crewe has created a mixed-up, frantic, ultimately lovable East Coast family. But as Aunt Hildy would say, “Life is not something that needs to be tamed. It’s messy. Always was, always will be.”
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Brighten the Corner Where You Are A Novel Inspired by the Life of Maud Lewis
Publisher: Nimbus Publishing$24.95In this bittersweet novel inspired by the life of Nova Scotia folk artist Maud Lewis, master storyteller Carol Bruneau gives voice to the artist, allowing her to speak from beyond the grave, freed from the stigmas of gender, poverty and disability that marked her life and shaped her art.
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Are You Kidding Me?! Collector’s Edition Chronicles of an Ordinary Life
Publisher: Nimbus Publishing$29.95For the first time, bestselling novelist, columnist, and humorist Lesley Crewe’s finest newspaper columns are collected in one place.
Not merely razor sharp, Lesley’s wit is also ocean wide, taking in everything from the humiliations of breast pumping to the indignities of aging, from the frantic excess of holiday preparations to the homey irritations of a long marriage.
As precise in her observations as Jane Austen and as fractious on occasion as Oscar the Grouch, Crewe also has a sweet, tender centre, taking us from a hearty laugh to a good cry in a single paragraph. Readers will relate to Crewe’s ache at missing her mom, her nostalgia for her childhood, her frustrations at raising teenagers, and her impatience for terrible parking lot etiquette in equal measure. The book spans sixteen years’ worth of columns for The Cape Bretoner Magazine, Cahoots Magazine, and The Chronicle Herald.
Are You Kidding Me?! is a side-splitting, heartwarming, Cape Breton–flavoured celebration of the little things.
An exclusive Collector’s Edition featuring—not even kidding!—bonus material:
A bookplate, signed by Lesley Crewe
A letter from Lesley to her fans
An essay about how Lesley’s writing career began
A Q&A between Lesley and her long-time editor
A brand-new bonus column -
Are You Kidding Me?! Chronicles of an Ordinary Life
Publisher: Nimbus Publishing$21.95For the first time, sixteen years’ worth of Cape Bretoner Lesley Crewe’s finest newspaper columns are collected in one place. The bestselling novelist, columnist and humorist employs a sharp, versatile wit, anchored by a tender centre, to bring readers laughter and tears. Crewe celebrates life, and all its warts, in this side-splitting, heartwarming collection.
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Throw Down Your Shadows
Publisher: Nimbus Publishing$22.95Sixteen-year-old Winnie is a creature of habit, a lover of ritual and stability. If she had her way, not much would change. But when a new family moves to town, Winnie and her three best friends—all boys—find themselves changing quickly and dramatically to impress Caleb, their strange and charismatic new companion. Under Caleb’s influence, Winnie and her friends test boundaries, flirt with danger, and in the end, illuminate darkness within each other and themselves.
Following a before and after structure that pivots around a mysterious and devastating fire at a local winery, Throw Down Your Shadows is a compelling exploration of the contours of young friendship and the development of powerful new appetites.
Reminiscent of The Girls by Emma Cline and Sweetbitter by Stephanie Danler, this literary coming-of-age story feeds a growing demand in adult fiction for candid portrayals of the young female experience as complex and provocative, and announces a bold new voice in Canadian fiction.
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Good Mothers Don’t
Publisher: Nimbus Publishing$24.95It’s 1960 and Elizabeth is slowly coming apart. Her reality is splintering and she wants to harm her children. Fifteen years later, Elizabeth is desperately trying to fill in the gaps electric shock therapy has left in her memory. She longs to find her children and explain that she never meant to leave for so long. A moving exploration of illness, memory, and how we fight for who we love.
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Use Your Imagination!
Publisher: Nimbus Publishing$19.95A woman becomes obsessed with a story about her family from 1890—when a naked, mute girl stumbled onto their property—and whether or not it really happened. A self-help guru and his chief strategist take their most affluent and unstable clients on a harrowing nature hike that destroys their company. A young convict in a prison creative writing class chronicles the rise and fall of his cellblock’s resident peacemaker. A rural neighbourhood becomes obsessed by the coming of a strange and powerful new homeowner who is in the middle of reinventing herself.
The stories of Use Your Imagination! are about stories, about the way we define and give shape to ourselves through all kinds of narratives, true or not. In seven long stories, Kris Bertin examines the complex labyrinth of lies, delusions, compromise, and fabrication that makes up our personal history and mythology. Sometimes funny, strange, or frightening, these stories represent Bertin’s follow-up to his critically acclaimed, award-winning debut, Bad Things Happen.
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The Lost Sister A Novel
Publisher: Nimbus Publishing$24.95The anticipated sophomore novel from celebrated author Andrea Gunraj, The Lost Sister explores gender, race and class dynamics through the harrowing story of sisters Alisha and Diana. Set in Toronto while drawing from real-life experiences of the Nova Scotia Home for Colored Children, The Lost Sister examines topics of child abuse, neglect and abduction in a story about guilt, redemption and peace.
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Crocuses Hatch from Snow
Publisher: Nimbus Publishing$22.95In North End Halifax, past and present interweave through the relationships of the characters in Crocuses Hatch from Snow. A soaring exploration of diverse communities across generations, author Jaime Burnet’s debut novel introduces an exciting lyrical voice in queer literary fiction.
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A Dark House & Other Stories
Publisher: Nimbus Publishing$19.95Snap decisions, risky alliances and comical wrong-headedness bring the stories in award-winning author Ian Colford’s latest collection to life. Colford weaves wit and nuance into portrayals of characters facing questions of fortune, fate and self-preservation. Awkward and dangerous situations arise as Colford, dryly yet empathetically, illustrates what happens when people do what they think is best for all.
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Kiss the Joy as it Flies Tenth-anniversary edition
Publisher: Nimbus Publishing$18.95With all the wisdom, humor and joy we’ve come to expect from Sheree Fitch, Kiss the Joy As It Flies, first published in 2008, marked the well-loved author’s move from children’s literature to adult fiction.
Set in the fictional Maritime town of Odell, with a cast of exasperating but lovable characters, Kiss the Joy As It Flies promises to be a remarkable debut and a reader’s favorite. Panic-stricken by the news that she needs exploratory surgery, forty-eight-year-old Mercy Beth Fanjoy drafts a monumental to-do list and sets about putting her messy life in order. Among other things (hide the vibrator!), she’s determined to finally uncover the identity of her secret admirer; reconnect with long-lost friend and rival Teeny Gaudet; and, most importantly, get her hands on the note her father left before committing suicide all those years ago. But tidying up the edges of her life means the past comes rushing back to haunt her and the present keeps throwing up more to-do’s. Between fits of weeping and laughter, ranting and bliss, Mercy must contemplate the meaning of life in the face of her own death. In a week filled with the riot of an entire life, nothing turns out the way she’d expected.
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Lay Figures
Publisher: Nimbus Publishing$22.95In Saint John, New Brunswick in 1939, Elizabeth MacKinnon is swept up in the city’s vibrant community of artists. She finds herself joining their struggles to make sense of making art in a time of economic depression. In a story that couples bitter despair with exuberant triumphs, Elizabeth and her fellow artists make life-changing discoveries about politics and social responsibility, desire and betrayal.
