There is an aura that cloaks islands in mystique and stirs the imagination. Nova Scotia would be an island if not for a narrow isthmus linking Canada’s second smallest province to New Brunswick. The ocean waters surrounding Nova Scotia have proportionally more islands than anywhere else in the Atlantic. In fact, there are more than 3,800 islands that lie “scattered like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle” along nearly 5,000 miles of coastline. For Ghost Islands of Nova Scotia, Mike Parker has selected a treasure trove of 330 images and maps to produce a series of pictorial vignettes accompanied by a wealth of descriptive text. Legendary islands such as Sable, Seal, St. Paul, and Scatarie come to life, as do a score of others including Sambro, McNabs, Georges, Lawlor, Devils, Melville, Little Hope, McNutts, Oak, Isle Haute, Bon Portage, Liscomb, the Tuskets, the Canso Islands, and LaHave Islands.Featured are tales of abandoned settlements and homesteads, lighthouses and keepers, storms and shipwrecks, contagious diseases and mass burials. There are stories of lost cemeteries and ghostly apparitions, pirates and buried treasure, smugglers, spies and murderers, forts, prisons and secret passageways, even picnics, carnivals and merry-go-rounds. Ghost Islands of Nova Scotia is a virtual encyclopedia of our coastal past – a look back at a rugged, adventurous, dangerous, often lonely and sometimes tragic way of life.