This book, by award-winning writer Stephen Kimber, takes readers behind the scenes of an epic family feud inside one of Canada's wealthiest families. The Phelans owned Cara Operations and its many popular restaurant chains, including Harvey's and Swiss Chalet. Trouble began when family patriarch Paul James Phelan refused to yield control to the next generation. What followed pitted brother against sisters, against father in boardrooms and courtrooms. You might be surprised to know who won ...

On the night of December 1, 1943, Frank Johnson, a Commander in the Royal Navy, returned to his Halifax base after an urgent train trip to New York where he'd visit his wife. She was in hospital there in a coma after what had been described as a tragic car accident. Arriving at his Marlborough Woods home around midnight, Johnson spent the night burning documents in his fireplace. After that… well, that's when things got interesting.

“Members of the jury, have you agreed upon your verdicts?” The court clerk asked her rote question with a wavering, tell-me-don’t-tell-me tone that seemed to capture perfectly the nervous, nerve-wracked mood among the more than three dozen men and women sitting in the Halifax Law Court’s Courtroom 3-1 on the blustery afternoon of December 18, 1998. Everyone in the sterile, high-ceiling, red-bricked courtroom craned to look at the six women and four men in the jury box, trying to read the t...

"Swissair 1-1-1 is declaring Pan Pan Pan. We have smoke in the cockpit." Seventeen minutes after the co-pilot's distress call, the Geneva-bound jet crashed into the Atlantic off Peggy's Cove, Nova Scotia just over an hour after leaving New York on September 2, 1998, killing all 229 people on board. Acclaimed journalist Stephen Kimber tells the moving story of the crash and its far-reaching human consequences. Kimber introduces us to a wide variety of people: from the victims and their fami...

Excerpted from the forthcoming nonfiction thriller, What Lies Across the Water: The Real Story of the Cuban Five, "Shootdown" provides a chilling account of how a Miami based anti-Castro group launched an escalating series of incursions into Cuban airspace the American government seemed unable or unwilling to stop, and how those provocations led to tragedy over the Straits of Florida and, later, a travesty in a Miami courtroom.

“Swissair 1-1-1 is declaring Pan Pan Pan. We have smoke in the cockpit.” Seventeen minutes after the co-pilot’s distress call, Swissair Flight 111—a New York-to-Geneva-bound jet—crashed into the Atlantic Ocean off Peggys Cove, Nova Scotia, killing all 229 people on board. Flight 111 tells the dramatic story of that September 2, 1998 tragedy and explores its far-reaching human consequences. Kimber introduces us to an eclectic cast of characters—the victims and their families, the fishermen ...

She met the man of her dreams and suddenly had it all. Then, in one fateful night, she lost everything, and the nightmare beganJennifer Robertson was working hard to build a life for herself from the ashes of her first marriage. Still only twenty-six, she swiped right on a dating app and met Gerry Cotten, a man she would not normally have considered—too young and not her type—but found she’d met her match. Eccentric but funny and kind, Cotten turned out to be a bit...

Winner, Evelyn Richardson Non-Fiction AwardFinalist, APMA Best Atlantic-Published Book AwardFinalist, George Borden Writing for Change AwardAlexa McDonough’s impact on Canadian politics cannot be measured solely by election victories or seat tallies. As the first female leader of a mainstream Canadian political party, she helped transform Nova Scotian and Canadian politics. In the process, she transcended party affiliation and gender to become simply ...

Is the man who blows up an airplane and kills dozens of civilians a murderous terrorist... or a valiant freedom fighter? Is the man who tries to stop the bomber a threat to national security... or a hero of the people? It depends. What Lies Across the Water is a narrative nonfiction thriller. About terrorists who blow up airplanes and try to overthrow governments. About intelligence agents who try to stop them. The twist is that these terrorists are not Muslim. T...

Marking the 225th anniversary of loyalist landings in Canada, this important and comprehensive history is essential reading on the shaping of our country.The few hundred loyalists who gathered at Roubalet’s Tavern in New York on the night of Saturday, November 16, 1782, shared a vision of the future intended to sustain them through the nightmare of the present. Abandoned by the king to whom they had promised their loyalty, unwelcome in the land that had so recently been theirs, the...

The untold story of how war transformed the city of Halifax.Stephen Kimber recreates life in Halifax during the Second World War, a city transformed by the influx of military and civilian personnel serving the war effort. Poorly governed and corrupt, the city erupted at the end of the war in Europe in the infamous V-E Day riots of May 1945.Halifax was the only Canadian city directly caught up in the drama, danger, death, and disaster of our last “good” war. Through the eyes...

She met the man of her dreams and suddenly had it all. Then, in one fateful night, she lost everything, and the nightmare beganJennifer Robertson was working hard to build a life for herself from the ashes of her first marriage. Still only twenty-six, she swiped right on a dating app and met Gerry Cotten, a man she would not normally have considered—too young and not her type—but found she’d met her match. Eccentric but funny and kind, Cotten turned out to be a bit...