The Devil and the Deep Blue Sea

The Devil and the Deep Blue Sea

Steven Laffoley

Nonfiction: Nova Scotia, History, Crime, Ships
$19.95
192 pages
6" x 9" paperback
ISBN 978-1-897426-27-2

Order this book from: Nimbus Publishing (or 1-800-Nimbus9)
or Chapters or Pottersfield Press mail order.


Madness arrived in Halifax, Nova Scotia, silent and wet, at the bottom of a ship's dory, in the rough folds of a thick, grey canvas—a shapeless, nameless dream, radiating shadows and darkness.

Investigating murder is grim business. This is particularly true if the murder happened more than a hundred years ago in the cramped cabin of an old schooner later torpedoed and sunk. Think about it. Everybody involved in the case is dead. And the important clues to the mystery are buried somewhere beneath ocean sand.

Still, on a cold afternoon in late February, I found myself standing at the edge of an old Halifax wharf investigating another cold-case murder mystery. The case was just too damned good.

In the summer of 1896, an old schooner sailed from Boston to Argentina with twelve people on board. A few days into the journey, the captain, his wife, and the second mate were all murdered—with an axe. And no one on board saw it happen.

The surviving crew members were a rogues' gallery of gruff, seafaring brutes, each offering the weary, cold-case investigator multiple names, wild accusations, and fast-changing testimony. Also on board was a passenger, a young student from Harvard University. Perfect.

Like I said, I had to take the case. It was just too damned good.

And so begins another cold-case murder investigation by writer Steven Laffoley, as he travels the tough streets of Halifax to the courtrooms of Boston in search of a killer. Along the way, he explores the world of 1896 and discovers that nothing in this case is what it first seems. In turns fascinating, frightening, and funny, The Devil and the Deep Blue Sea is an intriguing true tale of murder, mystery, and madness.


Steven Laffoley has been a writer, teacher, and dues-paying member of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters. He is the author of Mr. Bush, Angus and Me, the award-nominated Hunting Halifax, and Death Ship of Halifax Harbour.

The Social Worker by Michael Ungar, PhD

The Social Worker

Michael Ungar, PhD

$21.95
240 pages
5 1/2" x 8 1/2" Trade Paperback
ISBN 978-1-897426-26-5
(Available in March 2011)

Order this book from: Nimbus Publishing (or 1-800-Nimbus9)
or Amazon or Chapters or Pottersfield Press mail order.

$12.95 ebook on Smashwords 
(suitable for Kobo, Kindle, Sony, Stanza, iBooks ereaders)

Joey is not your typical social worker. He burns down houses to solve bureaucratic deadlocks, steals to get his clients bigger welfare cheques, and lies if it will help prevent his supervisor from intruding in the lives of his young clients.


Joey knows all too well what it feels like to be a client. In and out of foster homes, his father dead, his mother an abusive emotional wreck, Joey puts his talents as a juvenile delinquent to good use, even when he's locked up in a secure detention centre. Fortunately for Joey, there's one youth worker, a former boxer with his own secrets to hide, who inspires Joey to finish his education.


Still the delinquent at heart, Joey sets out to get revenge on the system that he believes failed him and his family. Joey's plan for revenge may have worked, except buried in old agency files he learns that his family has many secrets yet untold and that the lives of social workers are more complicated than they seem to the children in their care.


The Social Worker is a controversial and provocative story of what it means to reach out to the most vulnerable, set amid the hidden world of those whose motivations to help can be as difficult to understand as the systems for which they work.




Michael Ungar, PhD is a prize-winning fiction writer and among the most influential social work authors and speakers on parenting issues in North America. His nine non-fiction books include The We Generation and Too Safe for Their Own Good. The Social Worker is his first novel. His work has been the subject of cover stories in magazines and he is a regular contributor to radio and television. His blog can be read on Psychology Today's website. In 2010, he was the recipient of the Canadian Association of Social Workers Distinguished Service Award for Nova Scotia.


Currently, he is a Professor of Social Work at Dalhousie University in Halifax where he directs the Resilience Research Centre. His website is www.michaelungar.com.


Michael Ungar is also the author of Playing at Being Bad: The Hidden Resilience of Troubled Teens.

The Mi'kmaq Anthology Edited by Rita Joe and Lesley Choyce

The Mi'kmaq Anthology

Now back in print!

Edited by Rita Joe and Lesley Choyce

Autobiography, Poetry, Traditional stories, Essays
286 pages
6" x 9" trade paperback
$21.95
ISBN-10 1-895900-04-2
ISBN-13 978-1-895900-04-0

Order this book from: Nimbus Publishing (or 1-800-Nimbus9)
or Amazon or Chapters or Pottersfield Press mail order.

This is the most comprehensive single volume of Mi'kmaq writing available. Included are essays on history, culture, spirituality as well as autobiography, traditional stories and poetry in this spirited and varied collection.


First published in 1997, the book is a valuable landmark of an ancient culture that speaks directly to those intrigued by Aboriginal history and culture. The writers in this volume express both pain and joy, outrage and celebration. There is wisdom here to be shared as the contributors document Mi'kmaq life both ancient and modern. Sacred ceremonies and beliefs are explored and personal histories revealed. Included also, however, are writers documenting some of the harshest realities of Nova Scotia history, including Cornwallis's scalping proclamation of 1749 and the travesties of the residential schools of the twentieth century.


Contributors include Don Julien, Lindsay Marshall, Murdena Marshall, Mary Louise Martin, Elsie Charles Basque, Shirley Kiju Kawi, Noel Knockwood, Helen Sylliboy, Marie Battiste, Theresa Meuse, Isabelle Knockwood, Katherine Sorbey, Daniel N. Paul, Harold Gloade and Rita Joe.


Rita Joe states in the introduction, "When it comes to Mi'kmaq history, there are many unanswered questions for all of us. Poets pose some of those questions. Mi'kmaq historians attempt to reveal truths that have long been hidden. Many writers in this volume tell us stories from their own lives to reveal experience, tradition, knowledge and spiritual understanding. Ancient stories handed down provide insight into a way of looking at the world that differs greatly from the messages we receive on TV, in the newspapers and from our political leaders."




Rita Joe was born in Whycocomagh in 1932 and received the Order of Canada for her writing and contribution to Canadian culture. Before her death in 2007, she published several important books of poetry and inspired many younger Mi'kmaq authors.


Lesley Choyce is the publisher of Pottersfield Press, teaches English in Dalhousie University's Transition Year Program and is the author of a number of books.




In the fall of 2011, Pottersfield will publish The Mi'kmaq Anthology, Volume 2, a book celebrating the life of Rita Joe.


The image of my people is uppermost in my mind, the beauty told, one thought inspiring another. Nenwite'ten ke'luk weji tu'ap. (Remember I found the good.) Jika'winen we'jitutqsip kutoy ninen. (Look at us and you too will find the good.) Being a stranger in your own land is a sad story. The turnaround may be the schools. Let us have our say or none at all. Iknmulek na! (We give! Let us.)


- Rita Joe

Diligent River Daughter by Bruce Graham

Diligent River Daughter

Bruce Graham

Novel
$19.95
224 pages
5 1/2" x 8 1/2" Trade Paperback
ISBN 978-1-897426-23-4
(Available in March 2011)

Order this book from: Nimbus Publishing (or 1-800-Nimbus9)
or Amazon or Chapters or Pottersfield Press mail order.

In 1914 when Canada is swept into the Great War, Charlene Durant is already a veteran of loneliness and heartbreak, yet her indomitable spirit and belief in her own intelligence keep her from sinking into despair.


There is nothing normal about her life. A mother's death is not unusual in the time of widespread epidemics and neither is the quarantine imposed on the shattered remnants of her family. But becoming her father's assistant as a young girl and travelling the dusty roads of Nova Scotia as he sells tombstones to the recently bereaved is an unorthodox education. After almost going mad with grief at his wife's death, her father has become an aging Lothario, unpredictable and miserable when the army repeatedly refuses to enlist him. But finally, by 1916 with thousands dead on the battlefields, he becomes a soldier and goes to Europe to fight.


Hurt and angry over her father's decision to desert her, Charlene takes her unstable Aunt Matilda and leaves for Boston, where she lies about her age to get a job in a newspaper. She falls in love with a youthful crime reporter and befriends an old Irish sea dog who takes her into the midst of a kidnapping and murder.


Charlene brushes against the great events of her time: the Titanic sinking, the Halifax Explosion, the suffragette movement, and the struggle of a young woman to be accepted into the man's world of newspaper work. Overshadowing all is the war that changes the world and everyone in it. Diligent River Daughter is the story of how a brave and strong-willed young woman from the Parrsboro Shore fights for her independence and identity in a most troubled time.




Bruce Graham is a Nova Scotia writer and former broadcaster, who for many years was the face of the evening TV news in Maritime homes. Bruce and his wife Helen live in their hometown of Parrsboro. Diligent River Daughter is his fifth book. The Ship's Company Theatre adapted two of his previous novels—The Parrsboro Boxing Club and Ivor Johnson's Neighbours, both published by Pottersfield—for the stage.


Bruce Graham is also the author of: Anchorman, Parrsboro Boxing Club, Dream of the Dove, and Ivor Johnson's Neighbours.

Otto Strasser in Paradise: A Nazi in Nova Scotia by H. Millard Wright

Otto Strasser in Paradise: A Nazi in Nova Scotia

H. Millard Wright

Nonfiction: History, World War II, 1950s, Nova Scotia, Politics
$16.95
160 pages
6" x 9" Trade Paperback
Includes photographs
ISBN 978-1-897426-25-8
(Available in April 2011)

Order this book from: Nimbus Publishing (or 1-800-Nimbus9)
or Amazon or Chapters or Pottersfield Press mail order.

Otto Strasser along with other top Nazis such as his brother, Gregor Strasser, Goebbels, Goering, Hess and a few others, laid plans to take over Europe and then the world. But Otto eventually disagreed with Adolph Hitler on various issues in the National Socialist Party and was ejected from its ranks and formed the Black Front, a breakaway Nazi movement. Gregor Strasser was murdered by Hitler, who feared his influence in the Nazi Party. And Otto, who could well have been the leader of the German government but for some dramatic twists of fate, ran through Europe with Hitler's hitmen hot on his heels. So how did he end up living in bucolic, rural Nova Scotia for 13 years, from 1942 to 1955?

Strasser continued to criticize Hitler from outside Germany. Britain whisked him out of harm's way and sent him to Canada where he remained from 1941 to 1955, literally a prisoner. The Canadian government prohibited him from publishing articles; his mail was censored and the RCMP kept him under surveillance. By the time he was allowed to return to Germany, he was largely forgotten. He died in 1974, a dispirited and disheartened man.

Much has been written about Otto Strasser, but little about his years in Bridgetown, Clarence and Paradise, Nova Scotia. It is this period of his life that this narrative explores.

H. Millard Wright was born and grew up in Nova Scotia's Annapolis Valley. He had a successful business career, becoming a vice-president and board member of L.E. Shaw Ltd. and president of Clayton Developments. He is a past president of the Halifax Board of Trade, a past director of the Maritime Chamber of Commerce, past director of the Canadian Chamber of Commerce, and past director of the Atlantic Provinces Economic Council. He formed his own company, Colonial Scientific Ltd., in 1971 and retired in 1992. He has published eight books.

Angels and the Afterlife by Laverne Stewart

Angels and the Afterlife

Laverne Stewart

Nonfiction: Angels, The Maritimes, Spirituality
$19.95
176 pages
6" x 9" Trade Paperback
ISBN 978-1-897426-24-1
(Available in April 2011)

Order this book from: Nimbus Publishing (or 1-800-Nimbus9)
or Amazon or Chapters or Pottersfield Press mail order.

Available as an ebook:

Smashwords

The inspiration for this book began on June 12, 2009. Laverne Stewart was at a women's retreat. At 5 a.m. she was alone in her room thinking about her frustration over various works of fiction which she hadn't been able to complete. She suddenly heard a voice say, "You have not been called to write fiction. You have been called to write the truth." She knew that there was no one else with her. It was then she realized she was supposed to write a book about angels and the afterlife.

As a journalist, with over 24 years of experience, she decided to do some research. Did she really hear what she thought she'd heard? She contacted two intuitive mediums who told her they had seen this book being written six months before she'd contacted them. Stewart didn't know anything about angels or the afterlife. The mediums told her not to worry about it because the angels had everything under control. They did. In the nine months that followed she was overwhelmed by the number of people who came to her to share their stories.

"I have met and interviewed dozens of people who have shared their angelic encounters as well as their experiences with the spirits of the deceased. I have interviewed spiritual mediums and people, like me, who don't claim to have any intuitive abilities but who have had encounters with the other side and with angels. I have spoken to people who received healing and encouragement from angelic encounters, those who say the spirits of their deceased children come to them as well as the adult children of elderly parents who said they heard, saw and felt angels in the minutes before their parents crossed over to the other side."

Angels and the Afterlife contains the many stories of people whose lives were saved by beings that others could not see. There are heartfelt stories from people whose lives have been changed forever by their encounters.

Laverne Stewart spent 11 years with CTV in Nova Scotia and New Brunswick before making the leap to print media in 1999. She currently writes for The Daily Gleaner in Fredericton. This is her first book.

Under the Electric Sky: The Legacy of the Bill Lynch Shows

Christopher A. Walsh

Nonfiction: The Maritimes, Carnivals, Entertainment
$19.95
160 pages
6" x 9" Trade Paperback
Includes photographs
ISBN 978-1-897426-17-3
Available in September 2010

Order this book from: Nimbus Publishing (or 1-800-Nimbus9)
or Chapters or Pottersfield Press mail order.

"Bill Lynch and his carnival boys and girls will be back again. No need to introduce him, for his aggregation of tents, rides, and booths is known from one end of the Maritime provinces to the other." - The Halifax Mail, August 25, 1934.

Under the Electric Sky takes readers on a thrilling ride through the strange and fabled history of the Bill Lynch Shows, from its modest beginnings on McNab's Island in Halifax Harbour to the successful, tumultuous years criss-crossing the countryside to its current incarnation struggling along dark Maritime highways today.

This is one of the most curious stories of this region's past, one never completely understood and, until now, never told in its entirety. The Bill Lynch Shows would breeze into small Maritime towns after dark, packed with enough electricity and magic to illuminate the imaginations of anyone who stepped foot on the midway for the brief while it played their town. For many, its return after a long winter made summer official. The shows became entrenched in the collective psyche, at once the centre of earthly thrills and some of the greatest acts of charity ever witnessed in the region. Clarence "Soggy" Reid continued the enterprise in the same manner, until the death of a man on the carnival lot in Port Hawkesbury threatened to destroy the dream forever.

Walsh chronicles the true story of the Maritime carnival with unflinching detail, weaving flashes of the carnival's captivating past with a first-hand account of life on the carnival lot today. This is the definitive tale of the owners and hustlers who shaped the course of the business, attractions like the Turtle Woman and the Man with Two Faces who headlined the sideshow tents over the years, and the family of carnies who, for different reasons, called "the Show" home. At the core of the rough-and-tumble carnival world is a heart-rending story of sometimes misunderstood outsiders and their desperate estrangement from, and deep commitment to, the people of the Maritimes.



Christopher A. Walsh is an award-winning freelance journalist based in Calgary, Alberta. His work has appeared in the Edmonton Journal and the Halifax Chronicle-Herald and on CBC Radio in Nova Scotia. A native of Halifax, he has covered major political stories across the country and spent a few feverish weeks running with the Maritime carnival in towns throughout the region. This is his first book.