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Saint John Curiosities
Publisher: Nimbus Publishing$19.95Saint John Curiosities is a collection of short and interesting glimpses of the city’s people, places, and events from its very beginning to the present day. Author and well-known storyteller David Goss brings together little-known, fascinating findings that he has uncovered during forty years of research, drawing stories from newspaper articles, maps, and museum and library archives.
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Halifax Haunts
Publisher: Nimbus Publishing$19.95The streets of Historic Halifax are paved with the dark and eerie tales of its colourful and gruesome past. Shadowy secrets and hints of the unknown are lurking around every corner and in the mist that rolls in from the Atlantic. Centuries of tragic happenstance have left behind many restless spirits that are awaiting your discovery: the ghost of an eighteenth-century French admiral has been spotted marching- to the beat of his own missing heart- across the harbour and through the streets of Halifax; the haunting profile of a victim of the Halifax Explosion has been seen in the window of the city’s oldest church; a spectral tall ship has been sighted plying the waters just off Point Pleasant looking for a rematch with its War of 1812 opponent.
Halifax Haunts presents the spooky history behind thirty-three of the city’s scariest places. Master storyteller Steve Vernon serves as your trusted guide and offers phenomenal detail while winding you through the ghostly and ghastly happenings that still haunt Halifax to this day. -
The Great Maritime Detective
Publisher: Nimbus Publishing$19.95He was a sailor a miner, a bounty hunter, a prospector, a ghost hunter, and a railway guard, just to name a few. Whether sinner or saint, Peter Owen Carroll, a.k.a. Peachie Carroll, is best remembered as the infamous Maritime police detective of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
Although his methods were sometimes unscrupulous, and he was often considered a mercenary, Peachie Carroll was a formidable investigator. Peachie was fired, re-hired, and quit many times, but as a police officer Peachie solved some of the Maritimes’ best-known crimes, such as the murder of Moncton police officer Joseph E. Stedman. He arrested moonshine-makers and embezzlers, petty thieves, rum-runners, bank robbers, and murderers. In 1896, Peachie gained fame again, solving the New Brunswick murders of Eliza Dutcher and her son.
In The Great Maritime Detective, author Monica Graham profiles this long-standing hero of Pictou County and one of the region’s ultimate characters. -
Historic Baddeck
Publisher: Nimbus Publishing$21.95Historic Baddeck takes us on the town’s journey of early discovery and later growth, from the first few houses set among Atlantic aboriginal wigwams to what Baddeck is today–a magnificent summer escape and thriving lakeside village. Author Joceyln Bethune has paired some of the town’s most captivating historical images and presented them with compact and interesting vignettes of the region’s past.
Part of the Images of Our Past series.
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Halifax Street Railway 1866-1949
Publisher: Nimbus Publishing$17.95The Halifax Street Railway is a photographic history of Halifax’s oft-forgotten transportation system. The book features over one hundred historical photographs documenting technological changes to the street railway system over its eighty-three-year history. The Halifax Street Railway will appeal to history buffs and all those who remember the city’s early transit systems.
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Back to the Beach
Publisher: Nimbus Publishing$12.95Back to the Beach is a simple but lively story about Gus and his dog, Sam, who experience a gleeful day at the beach. Amidst their playful romping, racing, splashing, and exploring, Gus and Sam come across various beach treasures. One by one, they present each treasure to Gus’s parents, who relax “back at the blanket,” and one by one, each treasure is denied in the rhyming chorus. This story is suitable for early/emerging readers and beachlovers alike. Written primarily in prose, there is a recurrent rhyming refrain that contributes to its appeal for “chiming in” when shared aloud. The illustrations, intended to be bright, lively, and engaging, feature mixed media, including coloured pencil, graphite, and watercolour.
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Bluenose Ghosts (2nd Edition)
$22.95Ghosts guarding buried treasure, phantom ships, haunted houses and supernatural warnings of death—these are just some of the strange and mysterious phenomena that you will encounter in Bluenose Ghosts. These unexplained mysteries are all the more chilling because they are based on personal experiences of ordinary people, told to Helen Creighton, one of Canada?s most respected and renowned folklorists, over a period of thirty years. So when the moon is full and the wind is howling, be prepared to be spooked by apparitions and things that go bump in the night. Bluenose Ghosts was an instant hit when it was first published in 1957.
This new edition of Bluenose Ghosts features a new foreword from Nova Scotia writer Clary Croft that explores Creighton’s enduring influence on the province’s folklore.
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Atlantic Seafood
Publisher: Nimbus Publishing$24.95Drawing from over 20 years of experience as a professional chef in Chicago, Staten Island, Boston, and the Bahamas, Nova Scotia native and chef Michael Howell brings delicious twists to Atlantic seafood in this new cookbook. The book is organized by seafood type, so finding the right recipe is a breeze, and it also means home chefs will be able to select meals based on what’s available in their area. An additional section on sustainable and ethical food choices helps readers make the right choices when it comes to buying Atlantic fish and shellfish. A must-have for any seafood enthusiast!
Includes 40 colour photographs as well as special instructions for sauces and stocks. Types of seafood include: char, clams, crab, haddock, halibut, lobster, mackerel, monkfish, mussels, oysters, salmon, salt cod, scallops, shrimp, smoked seafood, sole, squid, sturgeon, swordfish, and tuna. -
Nova Scotia’s Lost Highways The Early Roads that Shaped the Province
Publisher: Nimbus Publishing$21.95At the turn of the nineteenth century, road travel in Nova Scotia was still in its infancy. Many Nova Scotians still preferred water routes, and those “roads” that did exist were often little more than blazed trails not fit for wheeled vehicles. But it wasn’t long before roads were established around the province to allow for a steady increase in traffic and sophistication of vehicles.
Author Joan Dawson has used nineteenth-century maps and surveys to not only trace the paths of these old roads, but to explore the residents and businesses that sprang up along them. She follows the roads out of Halifax to Windsor and Truro (the “Great Roads”) as well as the oldest post roads along the Annapolis Valley, the South Shore, northern and eastern Nova Scotia, and even Cape Breton. These earliest highways, now mostly forgotten or buried in wilderness, reminds us of the hard-working crews and surveyors who defied geographical difficulties to make travelling easier for Nova Scotia’s residents.
Featuring 40 maps and illustrations, Nova Scotia’s Lost Highways is a fascinating history of early travel in the province.
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Rum-Running
Publisher: Nimbus Publishing$17.95The first book in the Stories of Our Past series, Rum-Running is an intriguing look at one of the most fascinating aspects of Atlantic Canada’s past. Journalist and author Allison Lawlor chronicles the history of this furtive trade and recounts the exploits and escapades of the East Coast’s most infamous liquor smugglers. Complete with enthralling first-person accounts, fact-filled sidebars, and over 60 photos, and written in an easy-to-read, accessible style, Rum-Running is the rollicking story of one of the most captivating, and controversial, chapters of Canadian history.
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Bitter, Sweet
Publisher: Nimbus Publishing$10.95Pru Burbidge lives a simple life on the family homestead on Dalhousie Road in 1940s rural Nova Scotia- until her father abandons the family and her mother falls ill. Her life is turned upside-down by these events, and she is forced to take on the role of primary caregiver to her siblings, Jessie, Flora, and Davey. Things go from bad to worse when Pru’s mother dies, leaving Pru and Jessie, her older brother, to care for the family in secret so they are not separated and sent away to foster homes, or worse- the orphan house. Pru and Jessie do everything they can to hide the fact that their mother has passed away and keep the family together, but their situation becomes increasingly dire as their money and food supplies begin to run out and their neighbours start getting suspicious. When the situation comes to a head and they are on the verge of being found out, Pru and her siblings must work together to save their family from being torn apart.
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History of Port Royal/Annapolis Royal, 1605-1800
Publisher: Nimbus Publishing$27.95Today, it’s a quiet community of approximately 600 people, but the town of Annapolis Royal was once the centre of early European settlement. It was the capital first of Acadia, then of Nova Sscotia, and an imperial battleground in the struggle for control of North America.
Backed by the Historical Association of Annapolis Roya, Brenda Dunn, former historian at the Fort Anne National Historic Site, has documented the long, dynamic, and unparalelled history of this fascinating place called Annapolis Royal.
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Underground Halifax (2nd edition)
Editor: Paul EricksonPublisher: Nimbus Publishing$26.95Across North America and beyond, urban archaeology is enjoying a widespread and growing popularity, as people are drawn by its sense of mystery and the alluring prospect of discovery. The individual authors of the narratives within Underground Halifax tell stories with a “human face,” bringing people and events-some ordinary, others famous-back to life, and doing so with objects as well as words. Each author in the volume employs an array of illustrations of what once lay hidden underground-map, photographs, and sketches-as well as drawings and photographs of unearthed structures and artifacts. Once you”ve been given a glimpse at what lies beneath the layers of Halifax, walking the city”s streets will never be the same again.
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South Shore Tastes
Photographer: Scott MunnPublisher: Nimbus Publishing$22.95South Shore Tastes, the fourth installment in the popular Tastes pictorial cookbook series, celebrates the local harvest and culinary culture of Nova Scotia’s picturesque South Shore. In this attractive, easy-to-use cookbook, food critic and writer Liz Feltham collects recipes from twenty-four restaurants spanning the region, from the Sou’wester in Peggy’s Cove to Lane’s Privateer Inn in Liverpool to Chez Bruno’s Bistro in Yarmouth. Showcasing a diverse array of dishes that feature local ingredients and tastes, such as Ruisseau oysters with fresh tomato marinade, maple curry ravioli with roasted chicken, and blueberry grunt, South Shore Tastes is an ideal way to bring the flavours, sights, and traditions of the South Shore home with you.
Includes striking photos of both the dishes and the surrounding region by photographer Scott Munn, as well as a map and restaurant guide to help readers find their favourite eatery.
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Country Roads Memoirs from Rural Canada
Editor: Pam ChamberlainPublisher: Nimbus Publishing$19.95Rural people, places, and communities vary greatly in a country as geographically vast and culturally diverse as Canada. For some, the country was a place of happiness and belonging; for others, it was a source of hardship and sorrow. For many, it was both. Some writers grew up loving their rural homes, never wanting to leave. Others couldn’t wait to escape to the city.
From Victoria, British Columbia, to St. John’s, Newfoundland, three generations of Canadians tell their stories of growing up in rural communities in Country Roads. The writers–including journalist Pamela Wallin, NHL coach Brent Sutter, and award-winning authors Sharon Butala and Rudy Wiebe–share one thing in common: they were all country kids whose upbringing profoundly impacted their identities. The thirty-two memoirs in Country Roads are sometimes humorous, sometimes heartbreaking, but always engaging. -
Historic Sussex
Publisher: Nimbus Publishing$20.95First a settlement for the Maliseet and Mi’kmaq peoples and later a safe haven for American Loyalist immigrants in the eighteenth century, Sussex was not incorporated as a town until after the establishment of a railway station in 1895. In Historic Sussex, author Elaine Ingalls Hogg has collected over 150 historical images from Sussex’s beginnings up to the Second World War, including photos of the town’s famed agricultural producers, its businesses, and its military encampment, Camp Sussex. Named as Canada’s “typical small town” by the CBC in 1956, Sussex has a rich history that comes alive in this new entry in the popular Images of Our Past series.
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Halifax and the Royal Canadian Navy
Publisher: Nimbus Publishing$29.95On May 4, 1910, the Liberal government of Sir Wilfrid Laurier passed the Naval Service Act, which created the Royal Canadian Navy (RCN). Ever since, the RCN and the city of Halifax-a strategic Canadian port on the Atlantic-have been partners. During the Second World War’s Battle of the Atlantic, Halifax was a major centre of operations for the RCN, which was tasked with the crucial missions of escorting merchant ships and hunting German U-Boats not far off Halifax’s coast. But the relationship with the city of Halifax was not without turmoil: at the conclusion of the war the pent-up frustrations of sailors boiled over into the V-E Day riots.
Part of the popular Images of Our Past series, Halifax and the RCN marks the centennial of the Royal Canadian Navy’s founding in 1910. Author John Boileau’s superbly researched narrative is supplemented with over 150 historical photos of the sailors, ships, and shore establishments that defined the RCN. An accessible and lively photographic history, Halifax and the RCN is a worthy tribute to the Royal Canadian Navy and its home port.
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Halifax Warden of the North (Updated Edition)
Publisher: Nimbus Publishing$29.95First published in 1948, Halifax Warden of the North has remained the best-known and most influential chronicle of Halifax since it first hit the shelves. In this updated version of the Governor General’s Award-winning history of Halifax, celebrated journalist Stephen Kimber picks up where Thomas Raddall left off, adding three new chapters that cover the city’s history from the mid-1960s to the present day, including the destruction of Africville, the arrival of the Buddhists in the 1970s and 80s, the amalgamation of HRM in the 1990s, and the storms of the most recent decade.
Already the definitive history of Halifax, this newly updated edition of Raddall’s fascinating historical portrait will be an essential addition to all local historians’ libraries.
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Corvette Navy
Publisher: Nimbus Publishing$19.95At the beginning of World War Two, Britain stood alone, relying on the vital supplies transported by convoy across the North Atlantic. The pride of Hitler’s navy, the U-boat wolf-packs, waited there to pick off the slow, unarmed convoys. What stood between the U-boats and their prey were the corvettes. They were small, battered, under-equipped, and in need of repair. They were manned not by naval professionals but by a group of skilled and dedicated amateurs, many still in their teens, their officers often in their mid-twenties. Yet this little band of amateurs took on and beat the German U-boat professionals, and won a vital portion of the war.
James B. Lamb, an ex-corvette officer, captures the excitement as well as the inevitable tragedy involved when teenagers who had never even seen the sea were shoved aboard aged and ill-equipped ships and forced to grow up fast. Trapped in a world gone mad, the crews of the corvettes countered with individualism and a unique sense of the absurd. Amid the antics and fear, these men banded together to become a highly efficient fighting unit. They witnessed history and created some history of their own.
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Lobster Fishing on the Sea
Artist: Brenda JonesPublisher: Nimbus Publishing$10.95Susan’s father is a lobster fisherman in the Northumberland Strait, and one Saturday morning he lets Susan come on the boat with him. They empty their traps together and Susan sees all different sea creatures- rock crabs, sculpins, and more. Wonderfully illustrated in vibrant colours by Brenda Jones, Lobster Fishing on the Susan B has a simple storyline and incorporates information about lobster fishing and marine life.
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Fossil Hunter of Sydney Mines
Publisher: Nimbus Publishing$11.95Thirteen-year-old Grace already has too much going on — grieving over her father’s mysterious death, dealing with her distraught mother’s erratic parenting, and evading her creepy nosy neighbour, Mr. Stuckless, just for starters. She and her friends Fred, Mai Ling, and Jeeter like to get away from it all by hunting for fossils near their secret hideaway, the abandoned mine they’ve nicknamed The Black Hole. But when Grace receives a strange note regarding her father’s death, it sets off a chain of events that sees Grace and her friends turning into detectives to solve the mystery behind his suspicious disappearance. As the clues and suspects start piling up and the investigation becomes more and more dangerous, Grace and her friends find themselves racing against time through treacherous sinkholes and abandoned mine shafts to figure out what really happened to her father.
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Anne: La Maison aux pignons verts récits pour jeunes lecteurs
Artist: David Preston SmithPublisher: Nimbus Publishing$12.95Anne Shirley is hot-tempered, melodramatic, impulsive, accident-prone, and one of the best-loved literary characters in the world. From her feud with Gilbert Blythe to her near-drowning in the pond to the incident with the currant wine, Anne’s adventures come to life for a whole new generation in Anne of Green Gables: Stories for Young Readers. This French-language adaptation of Lucy Maud Montgomery’s Anne of Green Gables, written by Prince Edward Island writer Deirdre Kessler and translated by Jo-Anne Elder, is suitable for readers ages six and up. With twenty-eight colourful, historically accurate illustrations by award-winning illustrator David Preston Smith, Anne of Green Gables: Stories for Young Readers will delight readers too young for chapter books but nonetheless enthralled by the enduring appeal of Montgomery’s timeless story.
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Sleeping Dragons All Around pb
Artist: Michele NidenoffPublisher: Nimbus Publishing$15.95In this classic children’s book, a girl wakes up in the middle of the night and wants some cake. But to reach the refrigerator, she has to tiptoe past a host of sleeping dragons, like Priscilla in her pink pantaloons, the punk rock dragon Fagan with spiky green hair, and Beelzebub (who sleeps in the tub). When she stubs her toe, the dragons wake up, and she has to think fast to befriend the dragons.
An award-winning bestseller first published in 1989, Sleeping Dragons All Around is back to spark the imaginations of a whole new generation. Sheree Fitch’s celebrated lipslippery poetry and Michele Nidenoff’s colourful illustrations combine to make one of the most delightful children’s books ever published in Canada.Sheree Fitch has read this book to audiences from sea to sea to sea in Canada, in the Himalayas, and along the eastern coast of Africa. Her first two books, Toes in My Nose and Sleeping Dragons All Around, launched her career as a poet, rhymster, and a “kind of Canadian female Dr. Seuss.” Fitch has won almost every major award for Canadian children’s literature since then, including the 2000 Vicky Metcalf Award for a Body of Work Inspirational to Canadian Children. She has over twenty-five books to her credit. Fitch’s home base is the east coast of Canada. She dances with dragons daily.
Michelle Nidenoff’s illustrations have been featured in magazines and children’s books, including The Canadian Children’s Treasury. Among her credits is a bronze award from the Broadcast Design Association in Ontario. She lives in Toronto. -
Dread Crew
Artist: Sydney SmithPublisher: Nimbus Publishing$12.95The pirates of the Dread Crew, ruthless junk hunters, are on the rampage through the Maritime woods. On their trail is a boy pirate tracker Eric Stewart, who gathers mounting evidence of their hooliganism until one day their clue-laden path of destruction completely disappears. Little does Eric know that the rumbling, stinking pirates are much, much closer than he thinks. This paperback edition includes eight pages of new content including a pirate glossary and praise pages. Check out dreadcrew.com for lots more additional content!
This book is recommended for antsy boys who long for glory, for spritely girls inclined to reach out for adventure, and for good-humored grown-ups who like the smack of Limburger and devils’s club sandwiches with a dash of junebug pepper.
The Dread Crew: Pirates of the Backwoods contains things disgusting, rude, repulsive and crush-like in nature. It also includes the most gigantic party ever seen, a rampaging woodship, random explosions, a prison, an escape, inventions, blackberry sploosh and many, many secrets as well as unexplained stinks.
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1917 Halifax Explosion and American Response
Publisher: Nimbus Publishing$19.951917 Halifax Explosion and American Response, is the captivating story of Canada’sworst disaster and American relief efforts. Survivor’s accounts, newspaperarticles, and official reports reveal the heartwarming stories of the doctors,nurses, relief workers, and ordinary citizens who came to the aid of thedevastated city of Halifax, Nova Scotia.
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Case Against Owen Williams
Publisher: Nimbus Publishing$19.95Allan Donaldson’s first novel, Maclean, was shortlisted for the Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize. Donaldson’s new novel is a literary mystery set in the fictional town of Wakefield, New Brunswick, against the backdrop of the Second World War. Following a night at The Silver Dollar dance hall, a teenage girl turns up dead in a gravel pit. The last person reported to have seen her is Owen Williams, an introverted soldier stationed with the local garrison of “Zombies”—conscripted men unwilling to serve overseas. When Lieutenant Bernard Dorkin, a young lawyer from Saint John, volunteers to defend Williams, whom he believes is innocent, he finds himself up against a theatrical local favourite leading the prosecution and a public mostly hell-bent on a foregone conclusion. The Case Against Owen Williams explores the potential for wrongful conviction and the gaps in the justice system that allow it to flourish.
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Inspired Rug-Hooking
Publisher: Nimbus Publishing$24.95Working from twenty years’ experience as a rug hooker, studio owner, and teacher, Deanne Fitzpatrick shares her sources of inspiration, work habits, ideas about creativity and design, and helpful guidelines for creating beautiful, expressive rugs. Practical suggestions for hooking houses, landscapes, seasons, stories, and people are accompanied by the artist’s insight into tapping creativity and learning how to make art from life.
Tips for choosing colours, experimenting with texture, preparing a backing, transferring a design, and achieving realistic depictions are interspersed with passages on artistic inspiration and process. Best of all, over 80 striking colour photographs of the author’s own projects and techniques provide readers with excellent reference points for turning their own experiences into magnificent rugs.
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Plants for Atlantic Gardens Handsome and Hard-working Shrubs, Trees, and Perennials
Publisher: Nimbus Publishing$29.95With all the special challenges associated with gardening in Atlantic Canada, in-depth information and genuine inspiration are even more important. Plants for Atlantic Gardens is your go-to resource for growing perennials, shrubs, and trees on the East Coast. Well-known gardening columnist Jodi DeLong profiles over 100 of the best species for planting in Atlantic Canadian gardens. Each plant description includes essential gardening information, such as growing requirements, hardiness, height, and bloom period. In an accessible, friendly writing style, Jodi also tells prospective gardeners about the plant’s natural history in the region and shares her own experiences-both good and bad!
The book includes a hardiness map, Jodi’s list of preferred further reading, and short sidebars on useful topics like soil type, native plants, and pollinators. Over 200 colour photos provide readers a great opportunity to truly assess each plant’s suitability for their own gardens.
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Underground Nova Scotia
Editor: Jonathan FowlerPublisher: Nimbus Publishing$27.95Underground Nova Scotia provides an accessible introduction to the archaeologist work being done across Nova Scotia. Edited by St. Mary’s University anthropologists Paul Erickson and Jonathan Fowler, these fifteen essays cover early Acadian, Mi’kmaq, Black Loyalist, and Norse sites, as well as more recent settlements and industries. The collection includes details of new work at some of the province’s established historic sites, including Grand Pre, Fort Edward, and Fortress Louisbourg, as well as less familiar studies and technologies: tracing and ancient portage route through Southwest Nova Scotia, and the use of airborne lasers to chart eighteenth-century land disputes on the Isthmus of Chignecto.
From the lost Black Loyalist settlement of Birchtown to skeletons recently found at the Fortress of Louisbourg, these essays will fascinate history lovers.
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Bluenose
Publisher: Nimbus Publishing$15.95The second title in the Stories of our Past series, Bluenose tells the story behind the ship on Canada’s ten-cent coin. Beginning with the schooner’s launch in Lunenburg in 1921, author Monica Graham describes Bluenose‘s career as a fishing boat, her racing exploits (seventeen years undefeated in the International Fisherman’s Trophy), her representation of Canada at the Chicago World’s Fair in 1933, and her time as a shipping vessel in the Caribbean rum and sugar trade. The book’s final chapter recounts Bluenose‘s demise on a coral reef in Haiti and the launching of the replica, Bluenose II.
Using a colourful design, and with photos, maps, diagrams, interviews with crew members, and sidebar features on sailing and shipboard life, Bluenose offers a fascinating introduction to a Canadian and Nova Scotian emblem to satisfy a variety of interests.
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Shoot Me
Publisher: Nimbus Publishing$22.95A new smaller format of Lesley Crewe’s second novel, now with a reader’s guide and author interview.
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.”
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Pumpkin People
Artist: Ron LightburnPublisher: Nimbus Publishing$13.95Every autumn, strange figures start appearing around Kentville, Nova Scotia. Sauntering down the sidewalk, sitting in a tree, cavorting on a lawn—who are these peculiar people?
They’re the Pumpkin People! Made of cornstalks, straw, and, of course, pumpkins, these folkloric figures arrive every year to celebrate the harvest in a most creative way.
The immensely popular Pumpkin People tells the magical secrets of Kentville’s famous residents. Sandra Lightburn’s verse reveals the nighttime revelry of the half-funny, half-spooky figures; Ron Lightburn’s colourful illustations bring their wild Ceilidhs to life. And a special section in the back teaches pumpkin fans young and old how to build their own pumpkin person!
