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Shining a light on the dark history of hangings in Canada. Take a journey through notable cases in Canada’s criminal justice history, featuring well-known and some less-well-known figures from the past. You'll meet Arthur Ellis, Canada’s most famous hangman, whose work outfit was a frock coat and striped trousers, often with a flower pinned to his lapel. And you will also encounter other memorable characters, including the man who was hanged twice and the gun-toting bootlegger who was the only woman every executed in Alberta.

Canada’s past is rich with high-flying adventures — whether it’s pilots fighting in the skies or the King of the Rumrunners fleeing the feds! Read their stories in this two-book collection. Dancing in the Sky: The Royal Flying Corps in Canada Dancing in the Sky is the first complete telling of the First World War fighter pilot training initiative established by the British in response to losses occurring in European skies in 1916. A valuable addition to Canada’s military history, this book will appeal to all who enjoy an exceptional adventure story embedded in Canada's past.

2017 Arthur Ellis Award, Best Nonfiction Book — Winner A sinister plot by a young woman left her mother dead and her father riddled with bullets. From the outside looking in, Jennifer Pan seemed like a model daughter living a perfect life. The ideal child, the one her immigrant parents saw, was studying to become a pharmacist at the University of Toronto. But there was a dark, deceptive side to the angelic young woman. In reality, Jennifer spent her days in the arms of her high school sweetheart, Daniel.

The sensational story of a girl's tragic death and the whirlwind of racial prejudices that came in its wake. On Boxing Day 2005, fifteen-year-old Jane Creba was fatally shot on one of the busiest streets in Toronto. Police and journalists reported her death as that of an innocent bystander caught in the crossfire of rival gangs. In the months that followed Creba’s death, fifty-six men of colour were arrested in connection with the shooting. Twelve men went to preliminary hearings. One black man pleaded guilty, and another three men, also black, were convicted of her murder.

A National Post Bestseller! How did Tom Thomson die in the summer of 1917? Was landscape painter Tom Thomson shot by poachers, or by a German-American draft dodger? Did a blow from a canoe paddle knock him unconscious and into the water? Was he fatally injured in a drunken fight? Did he end his life out of fear of being forced to marry his pregnant girlfriend?

Journalist Nadia Fezzani spent years probing the minds of serial killers in search of answers to unsettling questions: What went on in their heads as they prepared for their next crime? What drove them to murder not once, but habitually? Were they born killers, or had they begun as normal individuals and been somehow transformed into predators? Fezzani conducted groundbreaking, uncensored interviews with multiple-murderers behind bars. The account she pieces together from interviews, psychological research, criminal profiling, and genetic studies, is as unsettling as it is undeniable.

Canadians are very polite — but they also commit murder. And those who think that mass homicides and wanton killings are recent phenomena in Canada should treat themselves to Fatal Intentions. Using contemporary accounts, Barbara Smith vividly recreates a number of murder cases from 1920s Nova Scotia to 1980s British Columbia. Some, like the Boyd Gang adventures, are still remembered often inaccurately or romantically; others, like the murder of Flora Gray in Yarmouth, or the murder of twenty-three innocents in Quebec in 1949, can now be recalled by only a few.

Quiet pleasant communities, sparkling under the clear blue skies of Alberta, have witnessed bloody murders and violent mayhem. From a wide variety of accounts, Babara Smith has selected eight intriguing stories that will astound and amaze you. Mystery still surrounds the fate of pro golfer Frank Willey who disappeared in 1962. Two men were convicted of his murder, but his body has never been found. No suspect, however, was ever found in the case of MaryAnn Plett.

When a child-abuse scandal is uncovered at an unlicenced daycare in small-town Saskatchewan, it polarizes the community. Frann Harris, a rookie court reporter assigned to the trial the longest in Saskatchewan history starts to wonder if the scope of the alleged crimes is dwarfed by something even more startling: a botched police investigation and inappropriate courtroom procedures.Harris' narrative alternates between the stories of child sexual abuse and whimsical recollections of her own childhood, using the odd touch of humour.

Twisted tales of killers who almost got away with perfect murders. A man murders the first four infants he fathers with his lover, then tries again with a fifth. Two men have three things in common: each commits what seems like a perfect murder, each marries his victim’s wife far too soon, each has an overdue appointment with the gallows. A man cuts up the body of his victim into little pieces and gets away with the crime until he slaughters another neighbour six years later.