WINNER OF THE HUBERT REEVES 2021 AWARD FOR SCIENCE COMMUNICATORS It's a story peopled by leading figures of modern nuclear physics, bold chemists, and scientists accused of spying. The one idea driving them is to master the atom, whatever the result may be. With war raging in Europe, the Allies worried about advances being made by Germans scientists. The British wanted to get a jump ahead of Hitler and the physicists working for the Third Reich. England was too close to the enemy, so they decided to secretly establish a nuclear research laboratory in Montreal. The best scientists moved to Montreal with two goals in mind: develop an ultra-powerful bomb and find a new source of energy. What started as cooperation with the Americans instead became a race to harness the energy of the atom when Washington launched the Manhattan project. Montreal and the Bomb breathes new life into the exhilarating saga of European scientists secretly developing a strategic nuclear laboratory in the halls of the Universite de Montreal. It's a story peopled by leading figures of modern physics, bold chemists, and scientists accused of spying. The one idea driving them is to master the atom, whatever the result may be.

It's a long way from a basement apartment in a Montreal suburb to a new life on a fictional planet, but that's the destination our unnamed narrator has set his sights on, bringing readers with him on an off-beat and often hilarious journey. Along the way, he writes poems, buys groceries at the dollar store, and earns minimum wage at a dead-end supermarket job. But not to worry - he is John McClane, he is the ghost of Obi-Wan Kenobi (with a bacteria he's never heard of), he is Justin Timberlake... Meryl Streep... a grumpy George Clooney...In between treatments for his cystic fibrosis and the constant drip-drip-drip of disappointment, he dreams of a new life on Tatouine, where he'll play Super Mario Bros and make sand angels all day. But in the meantime, he'll have to make do with daydreams. Daydreams of normality, daydreams of surreal little catastrophes, daydreams of a better life. On Tatouine.

A surprise return home triggers a chain of events, their strands weaving together a sinister web of dreams and reality, lies and truth, secrets and spells.Jean-Michel Fortier's chilling second novel features a cast of memorable characters, including Renee, who never dreams (or does she?), and the oft-widowed Bella, who signs her personal ads "Come, and be prepared to stay forever." Following in the tradition of Fortier's absurdist first novel, The Unknown Huntsman, this is a dark and offbeat tale about lost love, lost dreams, and one lost limb.

Wendake, Odanak, Wôlinak, Pointe-du-Lac, Kahnawake, Kanesatake, Akwesasne, Kitigan Zibi are communities located all along the St. Lawrence River valley and its tributaries. They have been home to descendants of the Huron-Wendat, Algonquin, Nipissing, and Iroquois nations. These First Nations have in common the fact that their ancestors were allies of the French and had converted to Christianity. Historians have ignored these nations described as 'domiciled Indians ('sauvages domiciliés') by the French administrators. Jean-Pierre Sawaya carefully studied how an alliance of such diverse 'missions' was created, developed and conducted to become The Seven Nations of Canada. How did this confederation come about? Who took part and what were their roles? The answers are mined in the massive colonial archives. Seven Fires is original research at its best, combining detailed analysis and systematic investigation, that has enabled the author to dispel the tenacious colonial myth about irrational, submissive, and fatalistic Indigenous peoples. Readers will discover forward-looking people motivated by a deep desire for independence and solidarity.

Poetry. "If there's such a thing as fierce Buddhism, Katherine Hastings' NIGHTHAWKS finds it. Here is nature in minutely observed, embroidered detail, juxtaposed with terse and stark observations keyed from Rexroth's 'holiness of the real.' Hastings is unafraid: she writes fearlessly of subjects such as the slaughter of children at an elementary school in Connecticut, the death of a young black man in a subway station, and opens a brave and unblinking lens on a lover's cancer. In backdrop, though, always: the steadiness of nature flourishing, brilliant colors amid the unanswered questions."--Gerald Fleming "Rooted in what Hastings calls the 'momentary forever, ' these marvelous poems, so rich with detail and so full of duende, explore the paradoxes of transience. Yes, the poet reminds us: 'The alarm is set and ticking' for each least thing in the living world: 'A boy made in the image of Lorca; turkey vultures... with wings like shredded violins.' Still, the 'eyes of the world' (eyes of the poet ) 'are always hungry...'; so the poet must read every 'tune placed in her] beak // where the lust of one tear holds / every note of joy, of sorrow / trembling under the stars.' And these new poems do insist on inhabiting hard realities--a beloved's cancer diagnosis; the public murder of an innocent young man by a police officer--but also, in 'Perseid From a Park Bench, ' two lovers wish on a meteor falling through the night sky, and Hastings reminds us: 'We humans do this, place hope on a ball of dust passing through a comet's tail.'"--Susan Kelly-DeWitt "These poems capture a double exposure where earth and sky meld to map what is close and what is seemingly out of reach. Hastings' horizon shifts from the reality of earth bound oceans to the celestial ocean where we swim in a sea of stars. Like ancient astronomers, she sees connections often missed by the casual eye. She becomes in effect a soothsayer of stars and taps into the music of their stillness as they witness the coincidental paths we take in our lives, the stars above us 'an angel apiece/burning so far out of reach.'"--Colleen McElroy

Poetry. "How refreshing to come across a book like Katherine Hastings's marvelous CLOUD FIRE, rich and verdant in formal experiment and range. Mixing lyrics, narratives, curses, blessings, spells, and unabashed love poems, the work is hard-won and honest, generous and rigorous. In poem after poem Katherine Hastings casts her ever-vigilant, observing eye, sharp as it is poignant. Her deepest concern seems our perilous locale and planet: 'My city whose streams are rock doves and parrots / whose bright arm is a spring board for love and suicides' and yet 'we breathe here better than anywhere, distressed.'"--Gillian Conoley

The fate of North America was sealed on the Plains of Abraham. France and England, historical enemies, faced off in September 1759 Quebec. France controlled large swaths of North America in three colonies with some 80,000 people of European and mixed origin; England’s influence was limited to the much more populous Thirteen Colonies. The story of that battle began as tensions increased in early 18th-Century Europe, as France lost Acadia in 1713, followed by the deportation of the Acadians in 1755 and the siege of Louisbourg, the entry way to the Capital of New France. There was also conflict in 1753 in Ohio between English/American troops led by George Washington and Canadien and French troops, and the Jumonville Afffair in 1754. New France was of tremendous strategic interest for France. Its forces included a standing army, a militia raised among the “Canadiens” and many allied Indigenous nations. The English had naval superiority and could count on more numerous troops raised from the Thirteen Colonies. In this beautifully illustrated album, new light is cast on that decisive battle and on the second but little known battle of 1760, and their legacy.