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Atlantic Canada’s Greatest Storms
Publisher: Nimbus Publishing Limited$24.95Wind, waves and snow: Atlantic Canada has experienced more than its share of dramatic and tragic storms. In this accessible narrative, author Dan Soucoup takes readers from the eighteenth century to present day, as he details the blizzards, floods, tornadoes—and even tsunamis—that have brought havoc to the East Coast.
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Casey The Remarkable, Untold Story of Frederick Walker “Casey” Baldwin: Gentleman, Genius, and Alexander Graham Bell’s Protégé
Publisher: Nimbus Publishing$24.95Eleven months before the historic 1909 flight of the Silver Dart in Baddeck, Frederick Walker “Casey” Baldwin, became the first Canadian to fly. One of Alexander Graham Bell’s young associates, Casey was an aeronaut, engineer and politician—and heralded as a true genius. In this biography by John Langley, Casey’s remarkable story is told in full for the first time.
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You Won’t Always Be This Sad A Book of Moments
Publisher: Nimbus Publishing$24.95In the wake of her son’s unexpected death, author and storyteller Sheree Fitch wrote it all down, penning an honest, lyrical memoir with words to stir heart. You Won’t Always Be This Sad invites readers on a journey through grief towards hope, guided by the immeasurable depths of a mother’s love.
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Oak Island Mystery: Solved!
Publisher: Cape Breton University Press$24.95For more than two centuries, adventurers, thrill seekers and treasure hunters have tried to unlock the secret of Oak Island, investing millions of dollars, and costing at least six lives. And the obsession continues: a television series in the winter of 2014 and seasonal walking tours that include locations highlighted by the series.
Theories and intrigue abound – a clandestine treasure trove? The resting place of some holy relic? A cache of priceless documents? The promise of treasure is a powerful compulsion – Oak Island story is embroiled with politics and treachery from its humble beginnings – and many have risked and lost entire fortunes, and in some cases their very lives, chasing these theories. The bald truth is that nobody actually knew, and every imaginable theory from the fantastic to the ridiculous was concocted to explain that unknown.
To get at the real treasure of Oak Island it is necessary to dig deeply, but through the facts, not the legends, and Joy Steele’s thorough investigation reveals a remarkable and credible truth vastly different than legend would have it.
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The Book of Selkie
Artist: Briana Corr ScottPublisher: Nimbus Publishing$24.95Stories about the selkie have been told for hundreds of years by those who live near the North Atlantic and North Sea. Sometimes called “seal folk,” the selkie, as humans, are tall and strong with dark hair and eyes. Extremely private, they keep their seal coats hidden away until they get restless and are called to the sea, and take on their seal forms.
In her lyrical follow-up to She Dreams of Sable Island, artist and author Briana Corr Scott explores the Selkie legend in a book of short, whimsical poems. Find out what Selkie likes to eat, where she lives, how she spends her time on land and in the sea, and learn a Selkie lullaby. Lilting and lyrical, with acrylic paintings that recall the ocean?s depths, this magical book is ideal for both bedtime and playtime. Features a paper doll, clothes, and seal.
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Nova Scotia Folk Art An Illustrated Guide
Publisher: Nimbus Publishing$24.95There may be many folk artists in Canada, but there is only one integrated folk art scene: the one in Nova Scotia.
Classic folk art is the work of artists who did not think of themselves as artists, who made art that they never considered to be art at all. There were no festivals, no galleries, and no touring exhibitions when they started—just a sign by the side of the road, a painted house, or colourful sculptures in the yard to attract the attention of passers-by. Today in Nova Scotia, contemporary folk art has become a distinct style, one which stresses individual creativity over collective utility. The maker, and their stories, is central to the appeal.
Written by former Art Gallery of Nova Scotia curator Ray Cronin, Nova Scotia Folk Art features profiles of fifty artists—some obscure and some well known—from the first, second, and third waves of folk art. The list includes Barry Colpitts, Laura Kenney, Ralph Boutilier, Craig Naugler, Joseph Norris, and Maud Lewis. With more than 150 colour images, this illustrated guide explores the exhibitions, collections, and festivals that allowed a group of Nova Scotia artists to move their creations from the roadside to the museum, and in so doing to create its own genre: Nova Scotia Folk Art.
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Medicinal Herbs of Eastern Canada
Publisher: Nimbus Publishing Limited$24.95Learn how to identify, collect, and prepare a variety of local wild plants, most growing right in your own backyard. Covering 73 different plants, each with detailed, full-colour illustrations and accessible tips, facts, and recipes, this essential guide makes it easy to benefit from your neighbourhood’s wild offerings.
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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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How to Retire Debt-Free and Wealthy A Finance Coach Reveals the Secrets, Tips, and Techniques of How Clients Become Millionaires
Publisher: Nimbus Publishing$24.95For most people, planning for the future is usually last on the to-do list. They simply wait to long to save and plan—and then panic. Licensed Financial Advisor Christine Ibbotson offers accessible and realistic guidelines in a series of achievable steps, from debt elimination to wealth management. Ibbotson’s book is sure to leave readers with all the tools and techniques to create an easy-to-follow financial plan.
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Ontario Picnics A Century of Dining Outdoors
Publisher: MacIntyre Purcell Publishing Inc.$24.95The history of picnics in Ontario by Lindy Mechefske, two-time Taste Canada gold-award winning author, is a tour de force. With more than a hundred rare, old images, this book is a rich, visual feast as we look back at over a century of photographs and other treasures all celebrating Ontario picnics.
Packed full of charming and enticing surprises, this is a book that belongs on every single Ontarians’ bookshelf.
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Queens County A History in Pictures
Publisher: MacIntyre Purcell Publishing Inc.$24.95Queens County: A History in Pictures offers the definitive look at the county and its people. Since 1929, the Queens County Historical Society has been collecting photographs of the people, industry, landscapes and events of Queens County. To date, the collection contains more than 40,000 photographs and thousands of artifacts.
Over the years, many historical figures, including baseball legend Babe Ruth, renowned author Zane Grey, and famed Chicago financier Thomas Howell, have come to fish, hunt and discover the riches of the area’s land and sea. This collection captures that history like never before. You can almost hear the call of the wild and the roar of the ocean.
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Lunenburg A History in Pictures
Publisher: MacIntyre Purcell Publishing Inc.$24.95With more than 140 photos, many of them seen here for the first time, Lunenburg: A History in Pictures offers a stunning portrait of this one-of-a-kind port town. Stephen Ernst has put together the definitive photographic account of this magnificent seaside town. You can almost taste the salt in the air.
From the town’s earliest structures to the grand Victorian streetscapes to the heyday of the fishing industry, the Bluenose, and so much more, this book captures the majesty and dynamism that earned Lunenburg a UNESCO designation and an international reputation.
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Fishing for a Living A Nova Scotia History in Pictures
Publisher: MacIntyre Purcell Publishing Inc.$24.95With more than 140, never-seen-before photos, Fishing for a Living: A Nova Scotia History in Pictures captures the world?s most dangerous profession. We see up close the men and women (and often children) whose livelihood was derived from the sea. Indeed, it is the sea that provided not only sustenance and a living but shaped every aspect of their lives.
This stunning historical portrait is a tour de force that will appeal to Nova Scotians and tourists alike. It is a visual window into the much-fabled life of Fishing for a Living.
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Atlantic Seafood Recipes from Chef Michael Howell
Publisher: Nimbus Publishing$24.95Chef Michael Howell shares over fifty of his favourite seafood recipes, covering fourteen different types of fish with dishes ranging from classic to contemporary.
Atlantic Seafood is full of easy tips for buying locally and ethically, presenting dishes to impress, and making simple substitutions. With over forty vivid colour photographs, Atlantic Seafood appeals to the fish connoisseur in all of us.
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Out of Old Ontario Kitchens
Publisher: MacIntyre Purcell Publishing Inc.$24.95Out of Old Ontario Kitchens is a window into the past, exploring the stories of the First Peoples and settlers. It pays homage to all those who trapped and fished and hunted; to those who cleared the land and planted crops; and most importantly to all those women — our mothers and aunts, our grandmothers and great-grandmothers and great-great grandmothers — who got up and lit the fire; who toiled and stirred and cooked and baked and who kept families alive through long hard winters, through plagues and depressions, famines and wars. Work every bit as important as agriculture, commerce, mining, politics, and the development of infrastructure.
With over a hundred historically sourced recipes as well as scores of old photographs, early artworks, botanical prints, and illustrations, Out of Old Ontario Kitchens is both a visual and virtual feast. If you want to know what life was really like in early Ontario, come to the table with us. Food stories are, after all, the real stories of our lives.
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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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Old Winnipeg A History in Pictures
Publisher: MacIntyre Purcell Publishing Inc.$24.95Remember the Beachcomber Restaurant, the Assiniboine Park Conservatory, and a very small but well-designed international airport with concrete walls? From the early fortifications of Upper Fort Garry, to the architectonic surge of Winnipeg as a transportation hub—and Canada’s third largest urban centre—to the demolition of the iconic Eaton’s department store, Old Winnipeg is the story of a city that never stopped reinventing itself.
With more than 140 photographs—many of them seen here for the first time—Old Winnipeg: A History in Pictures is a visual treat. It offers us a window into the past, showing life as it was, and stirring in us the emotions of wonder and curiosity about those who have gone before us and the lives they lived.
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Thelma A Life in Pictures
Publisher: MacIntyre Purcell Publishing Inc.$24.95Thelma Stevens Pepper was born in 1920. A century later—from her adoptive home in Saskatoon—she reflects on a hundred years of life, love, and pictures.
At 60, it was creativity and passion that rescued Thelma Pepper from the depths of depression. With her kids grown and gone, she was floundering, wondering who she was, and what she was meant to do. In photography, she found what her father and grandfather before her had found and that was a capacity to peer into other lives and to find in them a celebration of the human spirit.
It was that commitment to capturing the human condition that led to her work not only being celebrated here in Canada but around the world. In these noble lives, she found herself.
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Marilla Before Anne
Publisher: Nimbus Publishing$24.95Marilla Cuthbert was fifty-two years old when the plucky red-headed Anne Shirley came to live with her and her brother, Matthew, at Green Gables farm on Prince Edward Island. A seemingly cold and dour spinster, her heart eventually softens to the loveable orphan girl. But for over a century readers have wondered, who was Marilla before Anne?
In Louise Michalos’s remarkable debut novel, readers are introduced to a spirited eighteen-year-old Marilla Cuthbert—a girl not unlike Anne herself—who is desperately in love, and whose whole life is spread before her. But when a moment of defiance brings life-changing consequences, a new Marilla begins to take shape, one who would learn to bear tragedy like a birthright, and loss as an inevitability, and who would hold steadfast to the secrets that could shatter the lives of everyone around her.
Weaving its way from Marilla’s early life in Avonlea to her coming-of-age in Halifax, Nova Scotia, and back, Marilla Before Anne is the story readers of Anne of Green Gables have longed for. Told with a refreshingly original East Coast voice, this exquisite, heartbreaking work of historical fiction takes readers on a journey back in time, to the Green Gables where Marilla Cuthbert lived, loved, and learned, long before Anne.
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Gabriella’s Kitchen
Publisher: Nimbus Publishing$24.95When Gabriella first saw the Greek island of Corfu, “it was simply paradise”—except that there were no good restaurants. So she and her sociable Greek husband rented a charming old Venetian villa and opened their own. Here, Gabriella developed her own special recipes and catering to the rich and famous who increasingly found their way to her door (Julian Huxley, Paul McCartney, and Albert Finney, to name a few). In this bright, practical, and unusual cookbook, Gabriella shares her original recipe. Sprinkled throughout the book are engaging stories of people and events that coloured and enriched her life.
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The Painted Province Nova Scotia Through an Artist’s Eyes
Publisher: Pottersfield Press$24.95“I gain a strong sense of interconnectedness and belonging when I look at her work. There is a universality and humanity Joy finds every time.” —Sheree Fitch
Since 1972, Joy Laking has lived and painted in Nova Scotia, capturing beauty in watercolours, oils, and acrylics in many locations. She sees beauty in both the usual and the unusual. The Painted Province lets the reader see Nova Scotia through an artist’s eyes.
Here, Joy has grouped some of her favourite paintings into forty regions, each with her personal commentary. In each of the regions, one of the images will have its GPS coordinates. You are encouraged to bring this book along in your travels to find some of the places where she created paintings. When you discover the exact spot, please take a photo. Then email it to her and she will post it on her website.
Joy constantly finds ways to enhance her own creativity. Every year, she paints in unfamiliar countries, such as Bolivia, Ghana, India, and Sri Lanka, to return home to see Nova Scotia through fresh eyes. Joy has also written a play, children’s books, articles about rural life, and work for the CBC.
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First Degree From Med School to Murder: The Story Behind the Shocking Will Sandeson Trial
Publisher: Nimbus Publishing$24.95A murder, a missing body, and a sensational trial that shocked the community. Will Sandeson seemed like a model son. A member of the Dalhousie University track and field team, he was about to start classes at Dalhousie’s medical school. He had attended a medical school in the Caribbean; he worked at a group home for adults with disabilities. “There’s times for whatever reason that things don’t go quite as planned,” a Halifax police officer told Sandeson shortly after he was arrested for the first-degree murder of Taylor Samson, who also, on the surface, seemed like a model son.
Samson lived in a fraternity house near Dalhousie, and when the six-foot-five physics student disappeared without a trace, the focus eventually turned to Sandeson. Sandeson’s trial, blown open by a private investigator accused of switching sides, exposed a world of drugs, ambition, and misplaced loyalties. Through interviews with friends and relatives, as well as transcripts of the trial and Sandeson’s police interrogation, award-winning journalist Kayla Hounsell paints a complex portrait of both the victim and killer, two young men who seemed destined for bright futures. First Degree includes previously unpublished photos and details never made public until now.
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Shoot Me
Publisher: Nimbus Publishing Limited$24.95The 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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Ava Comes Home
Publisher: Nimbus Publishing Limited$24.95From 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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Ancient Land, New Land Skmaqn – Port-la-Joye – Fort Amherst National Historic Site of Canada
Publisher: Acorn Press$24.95The Mi’kmaq have inhabited Epekwitk (Prince Edward Island) for millennia. At this site, known in Mi’kmaq as Skmaqn, or “waiting place,” the Mi’kmaq met the French in the 18th century to renew their friendship and military alliance at a time when the French and British empires were fighting for supremacy in North America.
As Europeans settled on what had become to be known as Isle Saint Jean, the major European players were France and Great Britain, each of whom started constructing forts and sending soldiers, warships and settlers. A key strategy of the French was to establish a close alliance with the Mi’kmaq, one that was maintained by missionaries. Thus Skmaqn became the French fort Port-la-Joye. The French saw it as the most strategic location as its harbour was large, sheltered, and easy to defend because of the narrow entrance through which any enemy ships would have to pass.
One of the first permanent French settlements on the island, Port-la-Joye was the seat of colonial government and a port of entry. This site was surrendered to Great Britain in 1758 and renamed Fort Amherst, the British organized the deportation of more than 3,000 Acadians.
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After Many Years
Publisher: Nimbus Publishing$24.95Although best known for creating the spirited Anne Shirley, L. M. Montgomery had a thriving writing career that included several novels and more than five hundred poems and stories.
This collection brings together rare pieces originally published between 1900 and 1939 that haven’t been in print since their initial periodicals. Collins and Woster have carefully curated a mixture of newly discovered stories that showcase all the charm you expect from Montgomery. With scholarly prefaces and notes for each piece, the book offers readers a rare glimpse into how Montgomery’s writing developed over the years.
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The Last Canadian Knight
Publisher: Nimbus Publishing$24.95From a small-town law office in Nova Scotia to the boardrooms of London, England, where he was Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher’s “privatization ace,” lawyer and businessman Sir Graham Day has established a sterling international reputation as a tough-minded but charming negotiator. In The Last Canadian Knight, award-winning business journalist Gordon Pitts chronicles Day’s meteoric rise and explores the valuable lessons Day has gleaned from a lifetime of global business experience.
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Chocolates, Tattoos, and Mayflowers
$24.95Did you know that goose grease apparently cures the common cold, while salt fish draws a fever? How about the fact that “Torpedos” (automobiles) were manufactured in Kentville in 1910? These are just some of the tidbits of Maritime wisdom and little-known facts that you will find in Chocolates, Tattoos, and Mayflowers.
Collected over the years for Clary Croft’s popular radio column on CBC’s Mainstreet, these stories, memories, photographs, and advertisements show a fascinating side of Maritime popular culture and history. From accounts of sea monsters and famous duels to the history behind Maritime staples like Pot of Gold chocolates and Morse’s Tea, these entertaining and evocative pieces are sure to spark conversations around your kitchen table—just like any good Maritime subject!
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