National Network for Equitable Library Service

In October 2005, Jason Foster, then a staff member of the Alberta Federation of Labour, was holding a picket line outside Lakeside Packers in Brooks, Alberta with the members of local 401. It was a first contract strike. And although the employees of the meat-packing plant—many of whom were immigrants and refugees—had chosen an unlikely partner in the United Food and Commercial Workers local, the newly formed alliance allowed the workers to stand their ground for a three-week strike that ended in the defeat of the notoriously anti-union company, Tyson Foods.

A compelling personal memoir and a scathing indictment of bureaucratic indifference and agenda-driven government policies.In his thirty years in the Canadian prison system, Robert Clark rose from student volunteer to deputy warden. He worked with some of Canada's most dangerous and notorious prisoners, including Paul Bernardo and Tyrone Conn. He dealt with escapes, lockdowns, prisoner murders, prisoner suicides, and a riot.

From pop icons to working mothers, women are abandoning feminism in unprecedented numbers. Even scarier, they are also leading the charge to send it to its grave. Across North America, women head anti-feminist PR campaigns; they support anti-feminist politicians; they're behind lawsuits to silence the victims of campus rape; they participated in Gamergate, the violent, vitriolic anti-women-in-technology movement; and they're on the frontlines of the fight to end abortion rights.

With the loosening of restrictions on the Chinese economy in the 1980s and 1990s and the rise of the middle class, many observers thought that Western-style democracy would soon follow. Instead, China has adopted its own version, with a market-driven economy where actions that might call into question the decisions of the governing party are strictly forbidden.

Shortlisted, East Coast Literary Award and Evelyn Richardson Prize for Non-FictionIt was over in seconds. In the early hours of January 12, 2008, seven members of a high school basketball team and their coach’s wife died instantly when their school van collided with a tractor trailer. Travelling in dirty weather, minutes from their Bathurst, New Brunswick, homes, the impact forever shattered the lives of eight families and their community. In the weeks that followed the horrific crash, two women who lost their sons in the accident forged a bond.

Shortlisted, Democracy 250 Atlantic Book Award for Historical WritingOn a frigid February evening in 1805, Amos Babcock brutally murdered Mercy Hall. Believing that he was being instructed by God, Babcock stabbed and disembowelled his own sister, before dumping her lifeless body in a rural New Brunswick snowbank. The Ballad of Jacob Peck is the tragic and fascinating story of how isolation, duplicity, and religious mania turned impoverished, hard-working people violent, leading to a murder and an execution.

It began as rumours. Whispers at dinner parties. Warnings about bad dates with a Canadian celebrity. Then, seemingly out of nowhere, superstar CBC broadcaster Jian Ghomeshi revealed his interest in "rough sex" in a long Facebook post, and a scandal of unprecedented scale descended on the radio host. What the public did not know was that months before Ghomeshi's emotional post, Canadaland podcaster Jesse Brown and Toronto Star journalist Kevin Donovan were quietly pursuing serious allegations against him.

Winner, Best Atlantic Published Book AwardShortlisted, Canadian Regional Design AwardsIn May of 1896, a young magician from New York City joined the cast of the Marco Magic Company and embarked on a summer-long tour of eastern Canada, including New Brunswick and Nova Scotia. It was during this excursion that Handcuff Harry AKA Harry Houdini first showcased the talent that transformed him from a small-time conjurer, who performed for pennies in dime museums, into the world’s most celebrated escape artist.

Winner, W.O. Mitchell Award, Wilfrid Eggleston Award for Non-Fiction, and Alberta Reader’s Choice AwardFollowing his mother’s death in 2004, Tyler Trafford discovers an album of old letters and creased photographs that reveal a mother he never knew, a man he’s never heard of, and a love affair doomed by class and circumstance. The letters are from Jens Müller, a Norwegian pilot who trained in Canada during the early days of World War II, one of only three prisoners who would make it home after The Great Escape.

In the late 1920s, Canada's economy was showing all the signs of a full-fledged depression. Life savings were evaporating, unemployment was up, and exports were dramatically down. Riding on the popularity of his promise to "blast" Canada's way into world markets — and thus stop the economy's downward spiral — Richard Bedford Bennett defeated William Lyon Mackenzie King at the polls on July 28, 1930, and assumed the leadership of the country.