Baby Talk

Baby Talk is the third book in the Baby Steps series. Each book in the series focuses on a key developmental stage in baby’s first year. Babies love to communicate with the ones they love. With its modern twist on classic nursery rhymes, Baby Talk gives families the opportunity to have fun with sounds and words that are the building blocks of early language. Baby Talk will encourage baby’s first words in a fun and playful way.

Noble Goals, Dedicated Doctors

Dalhousie Medical School celebrates its 150th anniversary in 2018. This is the story of the noble goals of a handful of dedicated doctors who came together at a physician’s office to plan a medical school. They outlined a curriculum, assigned teaching roles, successfully applied to be a medical faculty of Dalhousie College, and began teaching the first class of twelve students. It was not an easy journey, one complicated over the years by war, politics, and natural disaster. In this richly detailed book, Dr. Jock Murray, a former dean of the medical school, looks at the struggles and errors, as well as the triumphs of the school. Filled with over 75 historic photos and dozens of informative sidebars, though aimed primarily at former students and faculty, Noble Goals, Dedicated Doctors is an accessible narrative that will appeal to anyone interested in the storied institution’s vast history.

A Blinding Light

It’s 1917 in Halifax, Nova Scotia. The First World War is raging, and despite its distance from the conflict, the Halifax Harbour is bustling with activity. Anti-German prejudice is rampant, and though 12-year-old Livy Schroeder and her 15-year-old brother Will are still mourning the loss of their father, who died in a mysterious boating accident just six months before, his German heritage doesn’t merit them much sympathy. The rumours he’d been a German spy are only flamed by his disappearance.

On the morning of December 6, while Livy is in Richmond begging forgiveness from the Schroeders’ former housekeeper, Will is atop Citadel Hill reporting for the school paper, when he sees two ships collide. A flash of light, then thunder from underground: the Halifax Explosion hits. Instantly, the city is unrecognizable. Lost and separated in the dark, destroyed city, will the siblings find each other again? Where is their mother? And who is to blame for the catastrophe?

In A Blinding Light, award-winning author Julie Lawson (No Safe Harbour) tells a riveting story of the Halifax Explosion and its aftermath, exploring the concepts of guilt, blame, and taking ownership, the divide between the rich and poor, locals and immigrants, as well as the human bonds that arise in times of tragedy. Young readers will be spellbound, and teachers and librarians will find plenty of topics for discussion in the book’s historical and cultural lessons.

Berth

Uprooted, longing for love and to feel somehow situated, Willa Jackson flees life as a military wife when she meets Hugh, the lighthouse keeper on McNabs Island in Halifax Harbour. The object of her fantasies, a musician, he’s the last of a dying breed in this story set during the final days of lightkeeping before automation. Romanced by this magical location—so close to the city and its lively communities, yet so remote—she involves her ten-year-old son, Alex, in her escape. Things sour when isolation and Hugh, harbourer of secrets deadlier than she can imagine, turn as brutal as the forces of nature—and of self-deception—that threaten to engulf all three. A tender yet heartbreaking story of one woman’s reckoning.

Shoot Me

The 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.”

When the Owl Calls Your Name

[…] author Alan Syliboy (Mi’kmaw Daily Drum, Wolverine and Little Thunder, The Thundermaker) comes a beautiful new book exploring spirituality, mortality and grieving. An illustrated extended version of his popular song […]

From Ben Loman to the Sea

[…] Scotia’s most prominent folk artist, Maud Lewis with the poetry of Lance Woolaver. In this new paperback edition, the reader sees through the eyes of a young man as he […]

Island Year

As they neared retirement, Greg Brown and his wife Anne gave up their life in the U.S. to settle on a windswept Nova Scotia island inhabited by wild sheep and deer, where harbour seals sing in the fog and an old lighthouse still keeps watch over the North Atlantic. Island Year: Finding Nova Scotia tells the story of the surprises, challenges and discoveries of their first year alone on an island as they restored an old fisherman’s house, explored the island, and began to learn how to live a Nova Scotia way of life.

This is a story for anyone who dreams of exchanging a fast-paced, high-tech life for something slower and just maybe more meaningful. This is a story about the night sky and the dawn chorus, lobsters and wild raspberries, a famous pirate, the kindness of others, and getting in touch with yourself again. Funny and inspiring, this book redefines what a rich life can mean.

The Social Worker

Michael Ungar, PhD, is a prize-winning fiction writer and among the most influential social work authors and speakers on parenting issues in North America. His nine nonfiction books include The We Generation and Too Safe For Their Own Good. His work has been the subject of cover stories in magazines and he is a regular contributor to radio and television. His blog
can be read on Psychology Today’s website. In 2010 he was the recipient of the Canadian Association of Social Workers Distinguished Service Award for Nova Scotia. The Social Worker is his first novel.Currently, he is a Professor of Social Work at Dalhousie University in Halifax where he directs the Resilience Research Centre. His website is www.michaelungar.com.

The Cooperators

[…] post-World War II era, and later, suppressed by big government and business. Learn how the new generation of 21st-century Co-operative Council thinkers and doers have brought it back from the […]