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Growing Up With Julie
Publisher: Acorn Press$19.95Growing Up With Julie is the story of Gerry Steele’s childhood with a French-speaking mother in an English-speaking community. Set in Miscouche, near Summerside, Prince Edward Island, in the early part of the 20th century, the story is an historical snapshot of a life heavily influenced by the Catholic church, poverty and the Depression, alcoholism, and cultural tensions between the Acadians and the Scots. At the head of the family is Steele’s grandmother, a woman unwavering in her beliefs—regardless of their merit, validity, or tendency to offend. It is also a story of one woman’s determination to educate her children in a hard-living rural society coming to terms with modernity.
Gifted with an excellent memory for detail, Gerry Steele delivers a story that is rich in integrity and precision, with a good dose of humour to brighten up the dark corners.
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Shape of Things to Come
Editor: Richard LemmPublisher: Acorn Press$19.95In this new collection, Richard Lemm traces his own journey from the west coast of North America to the east coast of Canada with his first foray into the world of short fiction. His hard-living characters follow their own paths through relationships with parents and siblings, friends and lovers, discovering and sometimes crossing their limits as they try to find their own way in the world. A thirty-something man takes a chance on finding love after he encounters an exotic opera singer on an airplane. Two brothers face their own ghosts as they come to terms with the death of their father. A young man tries to live with his friends’ idea of justice after one of them crosses the line. The stories are decidedly masculine – sometimes apologetically so – but always honest. They resonate long after the pages are closed, offering a fresh voice from one of Atlantic Canada’s finest poets.
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Acadian Legends, Folktales and Songs
Publisher: Acorn Press$18.95Island historian and folklorist Georges Arsenault has been collecting songs and stories from Acadian Prince Edward Island since his student days in the 1970s: words gathered by lamplight in the early part of the 20th century, when the local men and women would pass on what they’d learned from elders long gone. His 17 informants were mostly hard-working parents of very large families, some well-educated and some not. Included in this collection are 8 stories, 13 legends and 23 songs with lyrics and musical notation, mainly reproduced from taped interviews. Originally published as Contes, legendes et chansons de l’Île-du-Prince-Edouard, this English translation by Sally Ross includes footnotes and a bibliography, as well as photos of his informants
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A Bountiful Harvest
Editor: Alice Anna ReesePublisher: Acorn Press$22.95Little did organizers know when they planted the seed 15 years ago that the Literary Awards would reap such a bountiful harvest. This collection of over 35 first-prize short stories, poetry, and writing for children represents the best new writing in Prince Edward Island. Readers will recognize several of the names – people who have gone on to be published or produced – including Rai Berzins, Lesley-Anne Bourne, Judy Gaudet, Elaine Hammond, Hugh MacDonald, Brent MacLaine, Steve McOrmond, Dianne Hicks Morrow, Melissa Mullen, Libby Oughton, and Nancy Russell.
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Landmarks: An Anthology
Editor: Brent MacLainePublisher: Acorn Press$16.95Poetry by 50 of the Atlantic region’s finest poets
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Tales From Willowshade Farm
Publisher: Acorn Press$3.99Betty Howatt has spent half a century on her family’s fruit farm in Prince Edward Island, within sight and sound of the Northumberland Strait. In this collection of stories, she shares her gardening lore, her memories of days gone by, and her prodigious knowledge of the flora and fauna around her. Told with wisdom, humour, and a refreshing lack of sentimentality, these chronicles are both entertaining and informative, and give the reader a tantalizing glimpse into a fast disappearing world of peace and beauty on a small family farm.
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Long Reach Home
Publisher: Acorn Press$15.95Reaching back through a family full of stories and characters, from Newfoundland on her mother’s side to New Brunswick on her father’s, the poems in Long Reach Home are characteristically personal, warm, and accessible- by turns humorous, by turns enraged- but always engaged with the world, distilling simple pleasures and fundamental human struggles from everyday experience.
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Dip & Veer Reflections on the Art of Alex Colville
Publisher: Acorn Press$14.95Frank Ledwell has previously published one volume of prose and poetry, The North Shore of Home (Acorn Press, 2002) and two collections of poetry, Crowbush and Other Poems (Ragweed, 1990) and Dip & Veer: Reflections on the Art of Alex Colville (Acorn Press, 1996). He has performed as a popular storyteller in venues across Prince Edward Island. Frank Ledwell is a Professor Emeritus of the English Department of the University of Prince Edward Island, where he taught creative writing for many years. He was the first recipient of the PEI Council of the Arts’ Award for Distinguished Contribution to the Literary Arts, and for many years was known as the Island’s unofficial poet laureate.
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Fireflies in the Magnolia Grove
Publisher: Acorn Press$15.95In this, John Smith’s sixth book of poetry, Prince Edward Island’s inaugural Poet Laureate offers up a dialogue about “being,” in the intellectual context of modern times. He explores stages of being, as an individual, as one in relationship to others, and as a part of the earth and of the universe. The poet’s acquaintance with physics, algebra, and geometry collides with his own philosophical questionings, using language to bridge the ephemeral and the infinite. The poems are the distilled, heady musings of a writer whose poetic voice spans millennia.
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Last Tomato
Publisher: Acorn Press$15.95Jane Ledwell grew up in Prince Edward Island. She won first prize for both prose and poetry in the Atlantic Writing Awards in 2001, and has been published in journals such as blueSHIFT and anthologies such as Landmarks and A Bountiful Harvest. She lives and writes in Charlottetown.
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Her Teeth are Stones
Publisher: Acorn Press$15.95Each of Judy Gaudet’s poems is a path to somewhere resonant, redolent of memories and anticipations both bittersweet and beautiful. She traces the paths the mind and body takes purposefully, as well as those it happens onto, by chance or consequence. The poems light on home and history, travel afar, return again. They are marked by the toughness of wholly looking and experiencing and are leavened by wry humour and true gratitude for the beauty and magic that touch the earth’s days — and our human ones, tripping over the stones of her path. Her Teeth Are Stones is Judy Gaudet’s first full-length poetry book, following her chapbook Poems, you say.
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Beautiful Veins
Publisher: Acorn Press$15.95A Canadian poet’s last wordsA sense of ego-urgency has seemingly sucked hard on any high octane left in my system, and what used to take me a decade and more to accomplish as a writer has suddenly fruited within a 12-month time frame.- Joe Sherman, December 2005The result is Beautiful Veins, Joe Sherman’s final book of poems. Joseph Sherman, author of seven books of poetry, editor, and supporter of the arts, died on January 9, 2006, in Charlottetown. He was 60.Beautiful Veins begins with the picture of a child, of “one life with all the promise of its beautiful veins.” Some of the poems catch details of domestic life and its indwelling spirit and glancing irony; they explore the cache of memory. Others evoke history and landscape, opening them up to careful consideration. Always there is a love of language and its quirks, oddities, split-levels, riches. Out of the intricate and elliptical syntax, moments of joy are discovered, named against the threat of time and illness.
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And My Name Is Stories from the Quilt
Publisher: Acorn Press$19.95In this, Margie Carmichael’s first collection of short stories, ordinary women have extraordinary skills, gifts and strengths; they are women who live next door or in the distance, shadowed by fear or absence of recognition. Age, race, and culture connect in the timeless fabric of the quilt, with craft, patience, and faith connecting the women through the threads of their diversity.Anna tells of life after residential school; Irini reflects on her life in war-torn Afghanistan. In Tansie, two adults survive childhood abandonment. Freelance cosmetician to the dead Flora Hill offers insight into the lighter side of love, marriage, and death.Featuring illustrations by Dale McNevin, the book is a collaboration that began with an original painting and companion poem first published in the Maritime Centre of Excellence for Women’s Health 2000 Calendar.
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Hangman’s Beach
Publisher: Nimbus Publishing$21.95A skilful blend of romance and historical fact woven about Halifax, Nova Scotia, while the Napoleonic Wars were shaking the world. A few miles away on Melville Island, a French prisoner daily faces the agonizing question: What would be his fate if the British discovered that he had shot and killed Lord Nelson at Trafalgar?
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Foggy Cat
Artist: Robert LyonPublisher: Early Childhood Education Ctr - UNB$9.95Robert Lyon’s illustrative watercolors combine beautifully with Glenda Thornton’s rhythmic language. Together author and illustrator bring Foggy Cat’s daily and seasonal life to the page. Enjoy the meanderings of Foggy Cat through the neighbourhood, the house and seasons.
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Tick-borne Diseases in Dogs A Canadian Perspective
Publisher: Island Studies Press$18.95Presenting the latest research on canine Lyme disease, anaplasmosis and ehrlichiosis, Tick-borne Disease in Dogs is an invaluable reference for veterinarians and dog owners. As geographic ranges of ticks and their associated vector-borne pathogens rapidly expand in Central, Eastern and Atlantic Canada, it is imperative to understand the complex relationships surrounding the incidence of disease in dogs to inform management and prevention.
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Poems and Lyrics by a Super-Centenarian I Needed the Quiet
Publisher: SSP Publications$9.95Garvie Samson’s 4th edition of poems penned in French and English by a Cape Breton teaching nun, who lived throughout 3 centuries (1891–2004).
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Angle
Publisher: Paul Power$22.95It was supposed to be a simple recovery operation. All Harder Security had to do was liberate a ransomed plane and fly it from Angola to anywhere else. Maybe the mistake was his insistence on being part of the operation. If he wasn’t there, Phil wouldn’t have known there was a crate of uncut diamonds on the plane. He wouldn?t be in a position to decide to crash-land the plane at their base in Ethiopia to keep from declaring them. And the government wouldn’t be forced to ask them to pack up their stuff and go. The crate of diamonds could have been the infusion he needed to grow the company. Now it seems to be the thing that will take them all down. But not without a fight.
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A Wholesome Horror Poor Houses in Nova Scotia
Publisher: SSP Publications$15.95Brenda Thompson’s poignant treatise on the treatment of the poor in Nova Scotia and the evolution of private and government-subsidized poor houses. None of these 32 buildings remain. This is a very important book that makes us pause and ask serious questions.
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Maritime Melange
Photographer: Shannon WilliamsPublisher: Chocolate River Publishing$12.95Maritime Melange was inspired by New Brunswick?s coastlines and the International Sculpture Symposium that was hosted by Sculpture Saint John. The award-winning poem is illustrated by the photography of Shannon Williams as it appears in print for the first time. Previously, it was set to music and performed by the New Brunswick Symphony Orchestra at the 2016 Sculpture Symposium in Saint John, NB.
A map showing the locations of the sculptures is included.
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Simple Beauty The Art of Texture, Form & Colour
Publisher: Nimbus Publishing$44.95Focusing his intuitive photographic lens on beauty in the commonplace, George Fischer brings to light a vivid world beyond technology, traffic, and tension. A place to pause with inspirational gems and moments of splendour. A realm where deeply sensitive images of life spark amazement and awaken joy.
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Bay of Fundy’s Hopewell Rocks
Publisher: Chocolate River Publishing$19.95Every year, thousands of visitors from around the world descend the staircase at Hopewell Rocks to walk on the ocean floor. Bay of Fundy’s Hopewell Rocks offers an intimate, behind-the-scenes tour of this striking and fascinating place. The book is full of intriguing tidbits on the history and natural history of the Hopewell Rocks Park at all times of the year. Snair’s descriptions of the tidal action and geology of the area are easy to understand and the self-guided tour portion will help readers make the most of their trip to the Rocks. His images of one of the most photographed places in New Brunswick are both stunning and original, so the book will become a treasured souvenir of this natural wonder of the world.
This spring, the author was exploring the beach when he discovered that the Elephant Rock formation pictured on the New Brunswick medicare card had partially collapsed. Historical photos of this formation can be seen on pg 8 (from the 1900s, showing a previous rock fall) pg 13 (1935) pg 61, pg 91 (both before the current collapse.)
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Weird Rocks
Artist: Dan BilyeuPublisher: Mountain Press Publishing$12.00Michele Corriel introduces readers to sixteen unusual rocks and explains the science behind what each one does and how it does it. Youngsters will discover what makes one kind of rock smell like a rotten egg, what rock acts like a magnet, and what rock contains hidden treasure.
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Organic Gardening in Cold Climates
Publisher: Mountain Press Publishing$12.00If you live in the north country, you don’t have to settle for anemic tomatoes on your grocer’s shelves. Organic Gardening in Cold Climates can teach you how to reap a vegetable bounty despite a short growing season.
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Nature’s Yucky ! Gross Stuff that Helps Nature Work Gross Stuff that Helps Nature Work
Publisher: Mountain Press Publishing$10.00Nature’s Yucky uses kids’ natural fascination with the stinky, the gross, and the icky to help them learn more about wild animals and why critters behave as they do.
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You Can Be a Nature Detective
Publisher: Mountain Press Publishing$14.00This wonderful book explains how children and adults alike can have fun using nature’s clues to figure out such conundrums as which bird built what nest, what butterfly or moth a caterpillar will turn into, and which animal made what tracks.
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Fiddleheads to Fir Trees : Leaves in all Seasons
Artist: Laurie CaplePublisher: Mountain Press Publishing$12.00Children will be delighted by the fourteen diverse North American plants depicted in Fiddleheads to Fir Trees, from weeping willow and cedar to cattail and poison ivy. The plants are organized by season, starting with the tender fiddleheads of a fern in early spring and ending with the snow-dusted needles of the balsam fir.
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Ice Age Mammals of North America A Guide to the Big, the Hairy, and the Bizarre
Publisher: Mountain Press Publishing$20.00Colourfully illustrated descriptions of strange and marvelous beasts form the heart of Ice Age Mammals of North America. You’ll learn about the geologic events that led to the ice ages, along with possible causes for the mass extinctions of so many species. Fun sidebars explore such topics as the enormous size of some Ice Age animals and how DNA analysis is revolutionizing our knowledge of them. You’ll even discover sites where you can view remains of these fascinating creatures today.
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Evidence from the Earth Forensic Geology and Criminal Investigation
Publisher: Mountain Press Publishing$16.00Filled with information on how forensic geology is conducted and verbally illustrated with colorful details on real criminal cases, Evidence from the Earth entertains the reader while revealing the secrets of the discipline. From cases of purloined palm trees to tales of kidnapping and murder, author Ray Murray leads readers through some of the most fascinating investigations involving soil and rock evidence.
