National Network for Equitable Library Service

Named the fourth most important 'Book of the Year' by the National Post in 2015 and voted 'One Book/One Province' in Saskatchewan for 2017, The Education of Augie Merasty launched on the front page of The Globe and Mail to become a national bestseller and an instant classic.

'[A] delightful mix of memoir and field study.' — Publishers Weekly STARRED review Award-winning and beloved author Helen Humphreys discovers her local herbarium and realizes we need to look for beauty in whatever nature we have left — no matter how diminished Award-winning poet and novelist Helen Humphreys returns to her series of nature meditations in this gorgeously written book that takes a deep look at the forgotten world of herbariums and the people who amassed collections of plant specimens in the 19th and 20th centuries.

The story of the bloody 1917 Battle of Vimy Ridge is, according to many of today's tellings, a heroic founding moment for Canada. This noble, birth-of-a-nation narrative is regularly applied to the Great War in general. Yet this mythical tale is rather new. 'Vimyism'—today's official story of glorious, martial patriotism—contrasts sharply with the complex ways in which veterans, artists, clerics, and even politicians who had supported the war interpreted its meaning over the decades. Was the Great War a futile imperial debacle? A proud, nation-building milestone?

In the autumn of 1915 Will Bird was working on a farm in Saskatchewan when the ghost of his brother Stephen, killed by German mines in France, appeared before him in uniform. Rattled, Bird rushed home to Nova Scotia and enlisted in the army to take his dead brother's place. And We Go On is a remarkable and harrowing memoir of his two years in the trenches of the Western Front, from October 1916 until the Armistice.

With interviews from Chris Hadfield and Marc Garneau, the tale of Canada's involvement in international space exploration from the 1960s to the present day  Canada is a small but mighty power in space exploration. After providing the Canadarm robotic arm for the space shuttle in 1981, Canada received an invitation to start an astronaut program — a program that quickly let its people accumulate skill and prestige. Canadian astronauts have since commanded the International Space Station, flown as co-pilots on spacecraft, and even held senior roles within NASA.

The first ever biography of Toe Blake — Hockey Hall of Famer and eleven-time Stanley Cup winner 'Holy Dirty Dora!' Hector 'Toe' Blake would bark while pacing behind the Montreal Canadiens bench, hands thrust into his pockets, jawing at chewing gum before intentionally banging his forehead into the glass that separates players and fans. No lead was safe or sufficient for the lifelong hockey man at the helm of the greatest dynasty in NHL history.

An intimate history of the journalists who covered Canadian history, and made some of their own. The history of the press gallery is rich in anecdotes about the people on Parliament Hill who have covered 23 prime ministers and 42 elections in the past 150 years. Mining the archives and his own interviews, Robert Lewis turns the spotlight on the watchers, including reporters who got too close to power and others who kept their distance.

John Werner was a storyteller. A Mennonite immigrant in southern Manitoba, he captivated his audiences with tales of adventure and perseverance. With every telling he constructed and reconstructed the memories of his life. John Werner was a survivor. Born in the Soviet Union just after the Bolshevik Revolution, he was named Hans and grew up in a German-speaking Mennonite community in Siberia. As a young man in Stalinist Russia, he became Ivan and fought as a Red Army soldier in the Second World War.

Blue Monday: one of the most unforgettable days in Canadian baseball history. Danny Gallagher leads readers up to that infamous day in October 1981 when Rick Monday of the Los Angeles Dodgers hit a home run off of Montreal Expos pitcher Steve Rogers in the ninth inning, giving the Dodgers a berth in the World Series. Readers will be taken back to 1976 when a five-year plan for winning the National League championship was set in place by the Expos with the hiring of experienced manager Dick Williams.

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.