National Network for Equitable Library Service

Antigonish, Nova Scotia. Tareq Hadhad was worried about his father: Isam did not know what to do with his life. Before the war began in Syria, Isam had run a chocolate company for over twenty years. But that life was gone now. The factory was destroyed, and he and his family had spent three years in limbo as refugees before coming to Canada. So, in an unfamiliar kitchen in a small town, Isam began to make chocolate again.

Ali's lyrical, hypnotic storytelling takes us on an unlikely journey to a place that only now exists in his childhood memories: a remote industrial community in the boreal forest of Northern Canada. I was mesmerized by the voice of a poet who methodically and artistically recounts his once in a lifetime journey to connect with a Cree tribe called the Pimicikamak, the original owners and occupiers of the land and water that mesmerized him as a child.

As tech investors the world over search for elusive unicorns (start-ups valued at over $1 billion), acclaimed business journalist Gordon Pitts asks whether there can be a place for high-tech innovation and unicorn-like value creation outside of major urban centres, whether in Atlantic Canada, rust-belt New York, or Northern Ontario.

"Greenfield offers new insight into Bruno and Molly Lamb Bobak's complex relationship. They met and married in the aftermath of the Second World War, having served as official war artists, and continued to paint for decades. Based on new evidence, this book captures the Bobaks' intertwined lives, their clashing relationship, and the enduring value of their art.".

Growing up on the south shore of Nova Scotia, Tyler LeBlanc wasn't fully aware of his family's Acadian roots - until a chance encounter with an Acadian historian prompted him to delve into his family history. LeBlanc's discovery that he could trace his family all the way to the time of the Acadian Expulsion and beyond forms the basis of this compelling account of Le Grand Dérangement.

An exploration of the earth's last wild frontier, filled with high-stakes stories of people and places facing an uncertain future. On a life raft in the Mediterranean, a teenager from Ghana wonders whether he will reach Europe alive, and whether he will be allowed to stay. In the North Atlantic, a young chef disappears from a cruise ship, leaving a mystery for his friends and family to solve.  A water-squatting community battles eviction from a harbour in British Columbia, raising the question of who owns the water.

The Restigouche River flows through the remote border region between the provinces of Quebec and New Brunswick, its magically transparent waters, soaring forest hillsides, and population of Atlantic salmon creating one of the most storied wild spaces on the continent. In Restigouche, writer Philip Lee follows ancient portage routes into the headwaters of the river, travelling by canoe to explore the extraordinary history of the river and the people of the valley.

In 1971, Harry Bruce, recognized as one of Canada's top non-fiction writers, lost his mind-according to his peers-when he left bustling, lucrative Toronto and moved his family to the tough little seaport of Halifax. Harry was already acquainted with Halifax; at eighteen, he lived at HMCS Stadacona as an officer-cadet in the Royal Canadian Navy. He joined the navy chiefly to lose his virginity.

Born into a dark, unhappy childhood and battling severe mental and physical health issues all through her adulthood, Lucy Maud Montgomery had a challenging private life. But she gave the world Anne Shirley - the freckle-faced, fiercely independent redhead as representative of Canada as the maple leaf. Anne of Green Gables is considered one of the greatest works in Canadian literature. Available in thirty-two editions, it continues to be immortalized on television, film and stage.

Among the Loyalists who were transported to the shores of New Brunswick by the British after their defeat by revolutionary Americans were several hundred African Americans. Like their counterparts who went to what is now Nova Scotia, among this group were formerly enslaved men, women and children who had been granted their freedom in exchange for joining the British side during the revolutionary war. In the colony that soon became New Brunswick, slavery was still legal. Many African American Loyalists had to become indentured labourers to survive in this new situation.