National Network for Equitable Library Service

Gripping in its intensity, excruciating in its detail, John Mellor's account of the 1942 Canadian raid on the well-fortified beach town of Dieppe, France, is written with the fairness of a good historian, the eloquence of a well-honed author, and the compassion of a good interviewer-a man who was there. Mellor quickly puts the reader in the landing craft and on the beaches with individual Canadians who formed the bulk of the attackers.

In 1936, long before the discovery of the Viking settlement at L'Anse aux Meadows, the Royal Ontario Museum made a sensational acquisition: the contents of a Viking grave that prospector Eddy Dodd said he had found on his mining claim east of Lake Nipigon. The relics remained on display for two decades, challenging understandings of when and where Europeans first reached the Americas. In 1956 the discovery was exposed as an unquestionable hoax, tarnishing the reputation of the museum director, Charles Trick Currelly, who had acquired the relics and insisted on their authenticity.

Between the twelfth and fifteenth centuries in Europe, not all women fit the stereotype of passive housewife and mother. Many led bold and dynamic lives. In this collection of historical portraits, Maria Teresa Brolis tells the fascinating tales of fashion icons, art clients, businesswomen, saints, healers, lovers, and pilgrims - both famous and little known - who challenge conventional understandings of the medieval female experience.

The majestic high-wheel bicycle, with its spider wheels and rubber tires, emerged in the mid-1870s as the standard bicycle. A common misconception is that, bound by Victorian dress and decorum, women were unable to ride it, only taking up cycling in the 1880s with the advent of the chain-driven safety bicycle. On the contrary, women had been riding and even racing some form of the bicycle since the first vélocipèdes appeared in Europe early in the nineteenth century.

How can a country at peace suddenly be plunged into war? What compels hitherto peaceable citizens to take up arms and kill one another? In For Want of a Fir Tree: Ukraine Undone, Frédérick Lavoie tells Artyom, a four-year-old child he saw lying in his little blue coffin on a January afternoon in 2015, about the sequence of events that led to his death.

A timely, intriguing collection of the overlooked stories of Victoria's pioneers, trailblazers, and community builders who were also diverse people of colour. Often described as "more English than the English," the city of Victoria has a much more ethnically diverse background than historical record and current literature reveal.

One man retraces the ancient voyages of Captain Vancouver alone in his sailboat in this updated edition of a classic travelogue. As Sam McKinney retraced the explorations of Captain George Vancouver and his men from Puget Sound to Queen Charlotte Sound he wondered, "Could I have been one of them?" In the 1790s, Vancouver's crew rowed for long hours day after day, and camped on rocky beaches in all weathers to chart the intricate coastline for European colonial exploits.

The story of one family's settlement in the Cariboo and the culture of early sawmills that developed around them. In 1922, the Judson family arrived in the Cariboo by covered wagon. The stories of their life on the remote homestead at Ruth Lake is told through this humorous and heartwarming book by local historian and author Marianne Van Osch, as recounted to her by the Judsons' son, Louis, who still lives in the region. Louis tells of working at a gold mine in Bralorne at a young age, riding the rails, losing his foot in a milling accident, and witching for gold and water.

A revealing history of the ancient trail that served as a major transportation route between Washington and British Columbia and shaped the cultural and economic ties between the two jurisdictions. Trails are the most enduring memorials of human occupation. Long before stone monuments were created, pathways throughout the world were being worn into hardness by human feet. Travellers along the stretch of Highway 97 from Brewster, Washington, to Kamloops, BC, may not know that they are travelling a route as old as humankind's presence in the region.

A woman's journey to uncover the fate of seven RCAF crewmen who perished in the Second World War. For most of her life, Lisa Russ knew little about her second cousin, Robert "Bud" George Alfred Burt. All she had were two grainy photos, a poem Bud had written shortly before his death, and the knowledge that he was a tail gunner in a Lancaster bomber during the Second World War.