Every patient tells a story. Drawing on a forty-year medical career, Dr. Larry Kramer has written about some of the people he has met along the way. The stories chronicle love and loss, tragedy and comedy, and empathetically observe patients who live and die, some with courage and some with fear. These accounts frame the story of one physician's life and how it was shaped, changed, and guided by those he encountered every day.

Many knew Dr. Savage as their physician. Others speak about his time as mayor of Dartmouth. Yet most remember him as Nova Scotia's twenty-third premier. From tackling the health and education systems to making turn-the-province-on-its head decisions while premier, John was determined to change the way things were done. "Against the Grain" chronicles how he fought the status quo with unwavering conviction to leave a lasting legacy that would change the province of Nova Scotia forever.

"Sculpting Towards the Light" is an intimate and insightful story of a sculptor and his work. It follows the paths of imagination and activity which gave birth to a very unique work of art. The paths are diverse and unexpected, twisting into personal history, racing forward into the future, and then resting in the euphoric moments when the mind and its thoughts no longer exist and the carving occurs as if of its own accord.

This is the story of the leading roles some Nova Scotians played in the North American door-to-door sales profession in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. "The Peddlers" takes you on a door-to-door tour of the origins of household brands like Minard’s and Sloan’s Liniment, and also chronicles a century-old Hants County murder case involving two young peddlers — one the victim, the other the perpetrator.

Cook offers contemplative glances and lingering views on everyday life, as if observed through a window on the weather, landscape, and appearance or disappearance of things that matter. These observations act as mirrors that reflect the self and allow the merging of inner and outer worlds. The poet's rewards are discoveries of self and other in the magic visions and sounds that arise in combinations of words, like bits of winter ice reflecting prisms of light, life, and vision.

"Colours in Winter" is a whimsical children's picture book. The child, with her two bird friends, wishes that the giant snowflakes were coloured. Everything is too white. She thinks of green frogs in the spring, enormous red strawberries in the summer, and yellow and brown leaves in the autumn. Her desire becomes true and the snowflakes are suddenly all different colours. When everything turns back to white, she makes a wonderful discovery: there is colour everywhere in the winter.

Janice Landry asks the very tough question, "What are you the most grateful for?" to fifteen inspiring Canadians from five provinces and two esteemed guests from the United States. Let's face it: it's easy to be grateful when things are running smoothly. The people in "Silver Linings" have discovered that gifts may actually emerge from life's toughest challenges.

From Andrea Miller — an editor and staff writer at Lion's Roar, the leading Buddhist magazine in the English-speaking world — comes a diverse and timeless collection of essays, articles, and interviews. Miller, whose writing is by turns earnest and irreverent, unadorned and lyrical, talks to Buddhist teachers, thinkers, writers, and celebrities about the things that matter most and she frames their wisdom with her own lived experience.

December 1954: the old city in winter wears its two hundred years of grime and vice without any shame. On the street, hard-drinking Halifax police detective Ray Vargas has an unfailing habit for finding trouble, and when a man is found shot to death in the back of a Chevy truck, Vargas finds more trouble than he can handle — the murdered man is his oldest friend and the husband of his lover. Vargas sets off to find a killer in a city that doesn't much want a killer to be found.

Early on a May morning, a young Nova Scotia woman straps on a small backpack and leaves the Halifax common to start her journey along the coastal roads of Nova Scotia. Planning to cover almost a marathon a day, she will walk the perimeter of the entire province in just under three months to raise awareness for the Heart and Stroke Foundation and the Brigadoon Children's Camp Society. She stays with locals each night and meets countless Nova Scotians who walk with her and tell her their stories.

Linda and Michael wrote "In Two Voices" together: it is the intimate account of Linda’s surgery with Michael as her surgeon. The story builds a piece at a time as Linda and Michael tell each other their experience and then respond to one another’s writing. As the relationship shifts from one of patient and surgeon to one of Linda and Michael as colleagues and friends, they encounter surprises as their trust and mutual understanding develop.

Set in contemporary times, a young Mi’kmaw drum singer and a Euro-Nova Scotian biologist meet at dusk each day to count a population of endangered Chimney Swifts (kaktukopnji’jk). They quickly struggle with their differing views of the world. Through humour and story, the characters must come to terms with their own gifts and challenges as they dedicate efforts to the birds. Each "count night" reveals a deeper complexity of connection to land and history on a personal level.

Poetry can address our most intimate, frightened, hopeful selves. Langille found this to be true as she introduced poems to men and women in prison and gave writing assignments based on the discussions these poems inspired. Over and over participants shared private moments of self-awareness. The support they gave each other and the stories they told were profound. This book confirms that creative expression has a central place in the process of rehabilitation.

There was a time when railways criss-crossed Nova Scotia, carrying passengers and delivering mail, moving freight and produce, hauling timber, coal, gypsum, and iron ore. But those days have passed thanks in large measure to the advent of the automobile, improved highways, long-haul trucking, and the vagaries of market demands and resource extraction. "End of the Line" opens a window to the past, taking the reader for a nostalgic trip back in time on the abandoned Dominion Atlantic Railway.

"The Legend of Gladee’s Canteen" tells the story of a popular Nova Scotia beach and a pioneer family who, against the odds, constructed a simple canteen at Hirtle’s Beach in 1951 and ran it for forty years. The book draws on the author’s family associations, personal memory, and the outlying stockpile of collective recollections — a tapestry of events woven through the evolutionary fabric of a small, relatively isolated Maritime coastal community.