Where the Ghosts Are
Publisher: Nimbus Publishing$22.95If you’re from Halifax, you’ve probably heard that the Five Fisherman Restaurant is supposedly haunted, and that Georges Island is overrun with ghosts. If you’re from Nova Scotia, you probably know about rumours of buried treasure on Oak Island, or about the UFO sighting in Shag Harbour. But what about the Grey Lady of Stoney Beach? Or the Ghost of Haddon Hall? Featuring addresses and GPS coordinates, this guide to Nova Scotian haunts maps out the origin stories of 50 spooky tales.
Author Steve Vernon has covered every corner of the province in search of the spooky, bizarre, and unexplained. The perfect companion for those interested in the history of the province and thrill-seekers alike, Where the Ghosts Are is a DIY-ghost tour of Nova Scotia’s most haunted spots.
Stories From the Six Worlds (2nd edition)
Publisher: Nimbus Publishing$22.95In Stories from the Six Worlds, it is their stories, passed down by word of mouth, that best preserve and present Mi’kmaw culture. For in their tales, the People themselves speak about their world and give us glimpses of how their universe manifests, in all its fascinating otherness. Mi’kmaw stories have many levels: entertainment, instruction, warnings. They might subtly encode maps of the land’s important resources, or of the wheeling skies at night. Telling stories, Elders wove humour and stark tragedy, terror and beauty, to teach their listeners how to survive. More importantly, they underlined, over and over again, how their listeners, as humans, must conduct themselves. Their tales resound with the universal themes included in any worldview—Order and Chaos, Courage and Fear, Change, Revenge and Mercy, Death, Rebirth, and Power—yet are powerfully rooted in Mi’kmaw tradition, Mi’kmaw land. Their voices still speak to us, down the centuries.
Drawing on various sources, Ruth Holmes Whitehead retells the tales in a voice close to that of the original storytellers. This new edition includes an updated design and the original collection of twenty-nine stories. In Stories from the Six Worlds, Mi’kmaw legends are offered to all people whose search for meaning draws them again to the ancient cultures.
Haunted Harbours
Publisher: Nimbus Publishing$17.95This is a collection of ghost stories from Nova Scotia—from the restless spirits of Devil’s Island to the Black Dog of Antigonish Harbour. Documented and well-known stories from the provincial archives are mixed with word-of-mouth legends of strange happenings and scary sightings from across Nova Scotia. Steve Vernon relies on his storytelling experience to create moody and terrifying tales from the annals of history.
Believing the Line
Publisher: Breton Books$18.00Painter Jack Seigel died penniless and forgotten. He comes alive again in Silverberg’s Believing the Line, this new book of poetry-and-art celebrating the paintings and drawings by Jack Siegel. Seigel was the quintessential single-minded artist: difficult, self-absorbed, and completely dedicated to his work. George Payerle has written that “Jack Siegel was a lonely man who drew a world of humanity, one moment at a time.” Mark Silverberg’s 65 poems, an image at a time, stand as poignant tribute to those Seigel moments.
Fishnets & Fantasies
Publisher: Nimbus Publishing$24.95Wendy Hebb has been a fisherman’s wife for forty years. She has also been a mother, a yoga instructor, and part-time soap maker. She loves her life in picturesque Lunenburg, Nova Scotia, but it’s just not enough anymore. With a burning entrepreneurial desire, she decides that when her husband, Paul, retires, it will finally be her turn to live out her dream. The catch: her dream is to open a sex shop. While Paul begrudgingly goes along with Wendy’s “half-cocked” idea, it’s out of a sense of guilt; a recently spilled secret has their marriage on the rocks. As soon as the townspeople get wind of Wendy’s plans, it opens up a whole other can of worms—and Paul finds himself bait for the local rumour mill. Her silent, “invisible” partner in the project, he secretly hopes her plan for the shop will fail.
Orbiting around Paul and Wendy’s story is a motley crew of characters, including the Hebbs’ daughter, Ellen, a feminist academic who catches the eye of a lady-killer coworker while home for the summer; Wendy’s best friend, Betty, a chain-smoking seamstress with secrets of her own; the local minister and her husband, who secretly indulge in role play; and the wealthy Sonya and Booth, who will stop at nothing to make sure the shop never opens its doors—as long as they can avoid discussing their failing marriage.
An irreverent novel full of heart and humour, Fishnets & Fantasies is a story of love and lust at any age, of old grudges and older secrets, and of the relationships that make all the awkward fumbling worthwhile.
Butter Tart Island
Publisher: Acorn Press$17.95Twelve-year-old Jane Smith isn’t surprised when her parents announce they’re relocating, but her life is about to change, big-time. Maybe she isn?t the only one with secrets.
Because We Love, We Cry
Publisher: Nimbus Publishing$17.95During the global pandemic, Sheree Fitch shared what she calls “moments”—her first-burst warm-up writing exercises, on social media almost every day. Sometimes funny verse, other times lyrical prose or poetry, these daily missives were one way to negotiate the strange, unpredictable times. On April 20, immediately upon waking, as the full story of the tragedy in Portapique, Nova Scotia, was unfolding, Fitch thought of all affected, the painful day ahead, of what parents would say to their children. She thought about grieving when apart.
These words moved through her immediately that day. Fitch shared “Because We Love, We Cry” on social media and it was embraced by Nova Scotians and those who love them across the country. It was read aloud in Canadian Parliament and during a provincial news conference about COVID-19, and by Fitch herself during a nationally broadcast vigil held for the twenty-two victims of the Portapique tragedy.
After many requests, Nimbus and Sheree have come together to make the poem available in book form. Featuring colour line drawings and the full poem on heavy cardstock for safekeeping, as well as a pull-out postcard to send to loved ones near and far, Because We Love is a mantra, a prayer, a lament, a talisman, a paper rosary, a beating heart to keep close to your own.
A portion of the book’s proceeds will be donated annually to the families of victims.
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.
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.
Maritime Mysteries (revised edition) And the Ghosts Who Surround Us
Publisher: Nimbus Publishing$19.95In this new edition of the classic book, Bill Jessome brings together over eighty of the region’s most spine-tingling tales–both old and new–that you wouldn’t believe in your wildest dreams–maybe in your spookiest nightmares! Featuring a new cover design and updated foreword from journalist and nephew Phonse Jessome.
Wild Green Light
Publisher: Pottersfield Press$19.95Wild Green Light is a collaboration that brings together the poetry of acclaimed author David Adams Richards and award-winning writer Margo Wheaton. Drawing upon a fiercely shared passion for the natural world—as well as a literary friendship that has spanned more than two decades—each of these New Brunswick-born writers pays powerful tribute to a rapidly disappearing rural way of life. Atmospheric and spare, these poems take us into a world of deep woods, abandoned fields, kitchen tables, and back roads.
The book is divided into two sections, representing the unique voice and perspective of each author. Wheaton’s section consists of two elegant lyric poems, as well as a fifteen-part sequence written in a poetic form known as “ghazals.” Sorrowing and precise, the poems in this sequence survey the remains of her working-class childhood home, a once-thriving place, ravaged by family alcoholism and despair. Both celebratory and grieving, these poems grapple intensely with larger issues of working-class poverty, limited choices, and the chaotic legacy of addiction.
The book’s opening section gathers together twenty lyric poems by Richards, each one steeped in his own direct, visceral experience of his beloved Miramichi. Bold, plain-spoken, and elegiac, these deeply felt poems explore the grand terrain of love and loss and are marked with the same purposefulness, acuity, and compassion that appear in Richards’ fiction.
Alike and different, these two writers share a devotion to the physical landscapes of New Brunswick and call us to fiercely cherish the beauty of rural life and experience.
The Silence of the Vessel A Novel
Publisher: Pottersfield Press$21.95“I want to be a nun.”
Elspeth, recently retired from Cape Breton University’s Celtic Culture Department, is not sure how to deal with her teenage daughter Cecelia’s outdated and strangely troubling post-secondary plans. Maybe the spiritual inclination Cecelia has would have been welcomed in the past, but with all the scandals the Catholic Church has been going through during recent decades, all Elspeth can do is wonder if it is too early in the day for a glass of wine before responding.
Cecelia has always been a quiet, sometimes even cold child, and Elspeth worries once again if she and Andrew had been too old to raise a menopausal baby. Now as Cecelia approaches high school graduation, and all the decisions that come with that transition, the gap between them seems to be more than merely an age thing.
As she tries to understand her strange desire to become a nun, Cecelia befriends an aging Sister at the Notre Dame congregation at the convent in Mabou. Madonna, a fitting name for a woman who lived a life devoted to God, is in a time of transition as well, struggling with ailments of an aging mind and body. Because of Cecelia’s interest, she tries to piece together the reasons she became a bride of Christ.
Faith, family, and fate bring these three women together. Cecelia is looking for hope in an increasingly fragile world but Madonna’s past, if she can face it, may challenge all of them.
Boy With a Problem
Publisher: Pottersfield Press$21.95“…giant storytelling talent unleashed.” —Jon Tattrie, Atlantic Books Today
The daughter of an alcoholic desperate to be loved.
A father reliving a failed dream though his teenaged son.
A struggling immigrant surprised to discover that money does not buy happiness.
A creative boy struggling to please his dead father.
An eco-warrior defying her entire town for what she believes is right.
A father unable to reconcile the assault of his daughter with the world he raised her to believe in.
A gay pastor in self-imposed exile from church and family.
A stranger in a Santa suit dispensing fatherly advice.
A granddaughter who must end the life of the woman who raised her.
A survivor of a small-town drug addict determined to save her cousin from terrifying dreams.
An anxiety sufferer who finds refuge in sadomasochism.
A university student looking for love in all the wrong animal liberation schemes.In sharp, insightful prose, Boy With a Problem taps into the heart of our deeply human fear of failing to truly connect with others. The fissures that erupt between us, how quickly they widen from cracks to chasms—this is the thread running through these wise, raw, and tender stories.
While Crossing the Field
Publisher: Pottersfield Press$19.95While Crossing the Field is Deborah Banks’s debut book of poetry. Her poems take us out onto the land where experiences in the natural world are filtered through the internal landscape of longing, presence, gratitude, and attentiveness. From the lowly spider to the vast expanse of the Atlantic below her house, the poet invites us to consider who we are when everything in our bustling world is removed and we are left with the greatest expanse of all: the Now and how it can inform our every breath.
Waiting for the Small Ship of Desire
Publisher: Pottersfield Press$19.95This latest collection of Cooper’s poetry includes some of his most personal poems, including revelations to him after the death of his mother and sharply etched emotional memories of childhood and grandparents. It includes other verse as well inspired by Robert Bly, John Keats, and the Urdu poet Ghalib, among others.
Readers return to Allan Cooper’s poems to be reminded of the quiet power of nature and how it can shape our lives and provide sustenance, vision, and even salvation when necessary. Here are poems to be read slowly and cherished.
Halifax Nocturne A Novel
Publisher: Pottersfield Press$21.95December 1954: the old city in winter wears its two hundred years of grime and vice without any shame. The paint peels from ramshackle homes, and the streets congeal with snow and mud. Weary pedestrians trudge through the bleakness with chins tucked below the collars of threadbare coats. Nothing comes easy to the old city, and nothing ever changes — too many tangled secrets and too many unspoken debts. And yet a new suspension bridge, being built out over the harbour to Dartmouth and set to open in the spring, promises a better tomorrow. Such promised are not easy to keep.
On the street, hard-drinking Halifax police detective Ray Vargas has an unfailing habit for finding trouble, and when a man is found shot to death in the back of a Chevy truck, Vargas finds more trouble than he can handle — the murdered man is his oldest friend and the husband of his lover.
Frank’s death reminds Ray of an unspoken debt left unpaid. He sets off to find a killer in a city that doesn’t much want a killer to be found. At every turn, he encounters lies and danger. With his partner Artie Brennan and friends Ezekiel Dixon and jazz great Louis Armstrong, Ray tries to make sense of the deepening mystery, but hope is hard to come by — at least until he meets Lee White, Frank’s one-time assistant, who might just be his own bridge to a better tomorrow.
Nothing in Halifax is what it seems. As the tension builds, and the stakes grow higher, Ray knows that his own future with Lee depends on his solving the mystery. But to do that, he must make a difficult choice: cross a bridge — or burn it.
Doing Time Writing Workshops in Prison
Publisher: Pottersfield Press$19.95Poetry can address our most intimate, frightened, hopeful selves. Langille found this to be true as she introduced poems to men and women in prison and gave writing assignments based on the discussions these poems inspired. Over and over participants shared private moments of self-awareness. The support they gave each other and the stories they told were profound. This book puts to rest many of the myths we have about inmates. It confirms both that people cannot be reduced to their worst deeds and that creative expression has a central place in the process of rehabilitation. Most pointedly, Langille’s work reveals how, by failing the men and women behind bars, the prison system harms us all.
Participants in these workshops were complicated people. As Bryan Stevenson, an attorney who fights for the wrongfully accused on death row, says, “People are more than the worst thing we’ve ever done … Even if you kill someone, you’re not just a killer.” Doing Time makes us rethink the myths we have about inmates and gives us insights into the force of trauma and the power of dignity. We get a glimpse of what goes on in a prison system and we learn, as Langille learned, from the men and women she worked with.
Fixing Broken Things
Publisher: Pottersfield Press$19.95George Elliott Clarke writes of Gregory Cook’s poetry, “… a poignant, elegiac tone haunts these lyrics, whether Cook speaks of love or nature or family. Any risk of sentimentality is cut by his usage of hard particulars.”
Fixing Broken Things is Cook’s seventh book of poems. He has served as Chair of the Writers’ Union of Canada and as a member of the executive of The League of Canadian Poets. He was also a founder and first secretary the Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency (ACCESS).
In Fixing Broken Things, Cook offers contemplative glances and lingering views on everyday life, as if observed through a window on the weather, landscape, and appearance or disappearance of things that matter. These observations act as mirrors that reflect the self and allow the merging of inner and outer worlds. The poet’s rewards are discoveries of self and other in the magic visions and sounds that arise in combinations of words, like bits of winter ice reflecting prisms of light, life, and vision.
Moments from travel in Europe, Thailand, Australia, and New Zealand appear here, as much at home as his life in New Brunswick and Nova Scotia. Fixing Broken Things harvests nature, memory, love, astonishment, as well as a life of altered consciousness.
Afraid of the Dark
Publisher: Pottersfield Press$19.95Through prose and poetry, Guyleigh Johnson tells the story of sixteen-year-old Kahlua Thomas. With a hard life at home, on the streets, and in school she finds an escape during her grade ten history class through writing poetry. Hiding in the back of the class, she writes, passionately expressing and releasing emotions about identity, home, community, culture, and forgiveness. All Kahlua wants is freedom, whatever that really means.
Salt Fires
Publisher: Pottersfield Press$19.95Salt Fires is a volume of poems that embrace and reflect our human consciousness: our awareness, our blindness, our Shadow, our mythologies. They invite us to look at ourselves in ways that often are disconcerting, sometimes startling. Love of land infuses Salt Fires. Intimately inhabited and passionately shared, Nova Scotia’s farms, woods, and shores reveal themselves to be our Earth in microcosm.
A suite of Sable Island poems closes the book and affirms this notion—Sable Island, a strip of sand in a vast ocean, impossible, yet somehow here, like our planet, rich in life and beauty. This is the work of a mature poet who examines moral blindness and human frailties by inhabiting the experiences of the poems’ speakers with vulnerability and honesty. Accessible, clear, and alive with music, the poems inform and incite.
Toward the Country of Light New and Selected Poems 1978-2018
Publisher: Pottersfield Press$19.95This collection brings together Allan Cooper’s best poems over the last forty years. He weaves visions of nature with insight into the workings of the human heart. Read them individually or read them as a single long, flowing and eloquent narrative. The meditative and compassionate observations will transport the reader from the chaos of everyday life into a healing realm of possibility.
In Toward the Country of Light, the author offers open sonnets, prose poems, ghazals, small poems inspired by the Chinese and Japanese, and poems influenced by Robert Bly and Francis Ponge. As Cooper observes, “Over the years I’ve come to understand that the poem itself usually demands the form it takes and that language uses us for its own secret purposes.”
The Way We Hold On
Publisher: Pottersfield Press$19.95The Way We Hold On is Abena Beloved Green’s debut book of poetry. Her poems address cultural, social, and environmental issues, relationships, and reflect on everyday life as a small-town raised, semi-nomadic, first-generation Canadian. Here are poems about holding on and letting go—of ideas, opinions, beliefs, people, places, and things.
Signs of Life Images Formed from Words and Clay
Publisher: Pottersfield Press$21.95Gerri Frager has spent much of her life working in the care of critically ill infants and children and integrating the arts into patient care and education. Poetry and pottery have each been a sanctuary during tough times as has noticing the everyday beauty found in nature. In Signs of Life: Images formed from Words and Clay, the author merges these passions to create a most unique and insightful book. Each poem is accompanied by an image of pottery created by Frager, one reflected in and mirroring the other. Signs of Life is a powerful exploration into matters of loss and love through poetry and pottery and the life experiences of a medical professional who has dedicated her life to healing and comforting those she works with.
