The Books from Home for the Holidays Gift Guide is here, and with it, a chance to wrap up something truly meaningful this season: an Atlantic story!

This year’s selections highlight the incredible talent thriving across Atlantic Canada, from heartfelt memories and imaginative children’s books to local food stories rooted in place. Whether you’re shopping for a curious young reader, a loved one who finds joy in the kitchen, or someone who seeks quiet reflection, these books offer a piece of the region’s spirit to share. 

Each one is a reminder that the best gifts don’t just fill shelves, they start conversations, spark memories, and bring a little more warmth to winter days. 

Books for the Food Lover

For those who believe the best stories are shared around a table.

Edible East Coast Mushrooms: A Guide to Atlantic Canada’s Common Edible Mushrooms

By Jeffrey C. Domm and Ben Kendrick

Published by Formac Publishing

This new guide from best-selling illustrator Jeffrey Domm with Ben Kendrick will help readers identify 30 edible mushrooms found on Canada’s East Coast. The only book to focus on regional edible mushrooms, this illustrated guide features:

• Foraging 101
• Colour portrait of each species
• Identification checklists
• When each species is in season and where to find them
• Key information to prevent misidentification
• Tips for cooking with wild mushrooms

Nourish Nova Scotia Presents What’s for Lunch?

By Nourish Nova Scotia

Illustrated by Emma FitzGerald

Published by Nimbus Publishing

Hungry for something fun? Get cooking with What’s for Lunch?—a joyful collection of most-loved recipes from Nova Scotia School Food Programs, brought to you by Nourish Nova Scotia.

Whether you’re a new cook, a young chef, or a family learning together in the kitchen, What’s for Lunch? invites you to create a Picnic Plate, bake up a Handmade Pizza, make a big batch of Breakfast Sandwiches, or stir up some Butter Chicken! Each easy-to-follow recipe comes with tasty ideas for toppings, sides, and simple swaps to make it just right for you and your family.

You’ll also meet some of the inspiring folks behind Nova Scotia’s made-from-scratch school lunches, explore where local food ingredients come from, and discover bite-sized fun facts to spark curiosity. Colourful illustrations by beloved local illustrator Emma FitzGerald bring it all to life!

Books for Reflection and Resilience

For readers who find strength in stories of hope, healing, and humanity. 

We Walked Him to the Door

By Lori Weber

Published by Pottersfield Press

A MAID death is like no other — it is deliberate, legal, and comes at an appointed time. Through the eyes of his widow, this memoir tells the story of Ron’s MAID journey and of its effects on his family. Ron suffered for years with chronic pain, slowly losing his quality of life. When finding relief from the health system failed, he made a bold decision — to access medical assistance in dying. He was able to so because of Bill C-7, which received royal assent in Canada in March of 2021. Replacing the original MAID law (Bill C-14), the new law allowed people whose deaths were not reasonably foreseeable to end their lives.

Accessing MAID was not easy. First, Ron had to find support for his application since none of his doctors backed his decision. Next, he had to prove that his physical suffering was unbearable and that he had tried every remedy possible. For his family, learning of this decision was devastating. However, watching his decline and suffering had been equally difficult. Even his three beloved grandchildren were aware that he was not the grandpa they once knew.

The memoir is also the story of a relationship, from Ron and Lori’s first meeting at university to their last day. Both Anglo-Quebecers with a long family history in the province, the two built a life together. Early days, bonding with Ron’s two young daughters, moves to other parts of Canada, and trips abroad provide memories that Lori rakes over as she awaits the day chosen for MAID — all to the backdrop of that ticking clock. She and the three daughters formed a team, providing love and support, and working together to make Ron’s last months as fun-filled and easy as possible. The book examines the courage it takes to stand by someone facing MAID.

Finally, the memoir is about the aftermath of a death, and the huge void that is created when one loses a partner of thirty-five years. Building a new life in Nova Scotia, with grief as a constant companion, created its own challenges.

I Wish You Well

By Adrian McNally Smith

Published by Acorn Press

When Adrian Smith was exposed to asbestos and mould at his workplace at the age of forty, he became extremely ill. Ten years later, he experienced a major relapse that permanently damaged his central nervous system, affecting every aspect of his life.

Told he would not live to sixty if he didn’t significantly change his lifestyle, Adrian began to work on preventing further illness, then on maintaining whatever health he could find. But he fell into a cycle of setback and recovery, over and over. It was a cycle he could only free himself from when he realized that instead of prevention and maintenance, he needed to focus on creation?specifically, creating health.

Creating health is a model of intentional living where a person moves from habit to routine to ritual, and if you are in dire need of healing, the difference can be life changing.

In I Wish You Well, Adrian shares his twelve essential steps to creating health and wellness, drawn from his personal experience as well the wisdom of philosophers, writers, and medical professionals. And he shares the ways in which for him, Prince Edward Island is itself a channel for healing.

Books for Young Readers

For the curious, the creative, and the kind-hearted. 

To Be With You

By Dave Gunning

Illustrated by Meaghan Smith

Published by Nimbus Publishing

Whether they’re big or small, scruffy or sleek, every family dog wants the same thing: to be by their human’s side! This heartfelt picture book celebrates that undeniable bond between pups and their people, showing the world through a dog’s eyes—and how their whole world revolves around their family.

Written by award-winning singer-songwriter Dave Gunning and with cozy and bright illustrations by Meaghan Smith, this is one picture book you’ll want to read (and sing!) over and over again.

The Friendship Centre

By Theresa Meuse

Illustrated by Zeta Paul

Published by Nimbus Publishing

A modern story of traditional Indigenous knowledge from the author of The Sharing Circle that teaches young readers about the importance of the Friendship Centre for urban Indigenous peoples.

Matthew is visiting his uncle in the big city! He can’t wait to tour the Friendship Centre, where Uncle Hunter works, and enjoy all the food, activities, and resources it has to offer.

With language classes, drumming circles, feasts, and more, Matthew learns that the Friendship Centre provides a home away from home for urban Indigenous people. It’s a space created for Indigenous people by Indigenous people, and Matthew feels welcomed right away. Matthew drums, smudges, and tastes freshly baked bannock, but his favourite parts of his visit are the people he meets.

From the author of Sweetgrass, The Gathering, and The Sharing Circle, and the illustrator of Muinji’j Asks Why, this story welcomes all into a safe and inviting community space.

M Pour Magnifiques Musiciennes

By Anneli Loepp Thiessen

Illustrated by Haeon Grace Kang

Published by Bouton d’or Acadie

This resolutely feminist musical primer presents a remarkable selection of some of the greatest female figures in the history of music. Each letter invites you to discover or recognize an inspiring, unique and often committed artist, whether composer, musician, conductor or pop singer. From Joséphine Baker to Nannerl Mozart and Lisa Leblanc, this picture book is a veritable immersion in the colorful world of women’s music. An essential source of inspiration for the next generation of artists.

Books for the History Buff

For readers fascinated by the stories that shaped our coasts and communities.

The Spirit of Scatarie

By Lesley Crewe

Published by Nimbus Publishing

A stunning new work of historical fiction from the bestselling author of The Spoon Stealer, set on Nova Scotia’s remote Scatarie Island, following three friends whose lives are inextricably bound, and the spirit who guides them.

You might be startled that this tale will be told to you by a ghost. I prefer the word spirit but it’s all the same. The truth is, I have as much right to tell this story as anyone. Scatarie Island belongs to the living and the dead

Christmas Day, 1922: three babies are born on Scatarie Island, off the coast of Cape Breton. Although born to different parents, Hardy, Sam, and Mary Alice grow up together in their wild homeplace, exploring the rocky coastline, picking bakeapples, and scavenging treasures from the countless ships that have wrecked there over the centuries.

But change is lapping at the shores of this isolated island, the Second World War the biggest change of all. One friend leaves to fight, one tends the light, and one struggles to understand how a place where wealth is measured in fish and family can possibly survive this outmigration.

Only one of them knows about Cara. A girl who wrecked on the island’s shores a hundred years earlier, emigrating from Ireland. A girl who fell in love with the windswept grasses and salt-scrubbed air and tight community of Scatarie, and remains as a spirit. A girl who keeps watch, everywhere from the rugged island to the blood-soaked beaches of France?nudging the three friends towards their destinies.

Part ghost story, part romance, part history, and a stirring tribute to young soldiers and their brave war brides, The Spirit of Scatarie is an epic tale with whispering island winds at its heart.

Our Land: The Maritimes

By G.P. Gould and A.J. Semple

Published by Goose Lane Editions

Our Land: The Maritimes examines the historical and legal background to Indigenous land claims in New Brunswick, Prince Edward Island, and Nova Scotia, tracing the patterns of land dealings that resulted in the setting up of reserves, the creation of Status and Non-Status Indians, and a government policy of assimilation.

A groundbreaking work published in 1980 by the Aboriginal Rights and Land Claims Commission of the Métis and Non-Status Indians, Our Land: The Maritimes was critical in challenging the political consensus that Indigenous land claims in the Maritimes had been “superseded by law.” This foundational book, now reissued with a new preface by co-editor G.P. Gould, draws upon historical documents including proclamations, treaties, and laws. Chronicling the large-scale land loss and assimilation as a result of the creation of the Indian Act, Our Land: The Maritimes delves into records from the 17th and 18th centuries to find evidence of early acknowledgment of Aboriginal Title and provides a legal analysis of why it still exists today.

Boat

By Katherine Knight

Published by Goose Lane Editions

Out of the museum and into the wild, Katherine Knight’s photographs imagine model boats reconnected to their stories and sites of origin. Since 2015, she has been photographing model boats — imagining them at sea, on display, and in the changing weather of a maritime landscape. In this fascinating and highly original book, she teases out the allure of the boat model while also exploring the impulse to collect and the desire to tell stories in material form.

Knight’s camera knows no bounds. Her photographs include a tribute to a beloved dory, a memory of a passing ship, a mashup of several ferries, and a ship caught in the snow and ice — hand-crafted models linking places and people of the North Atlantic. Accompanied by first-person recollections and insights into model making, these models by builders across Atlantic Canada celebrate the tenacity and creativity of their makers and the stories that inspired them. At once the material residue of historical patterns of leisure and labour and resilient artifacts that linger on, these model boats bridge fact and fiction, reconnecting treasured artifacts to lived experience.

Guest essays by poet Sue Goyette, cultural historian Sara Spike, museum curator William Knight, and writer Peggy Gale intertwine with first person accounts by model makers, a ship’s captain, and others to create a unique record of lived experiences related to model boats.

These titles are just a glimpse of what’s waiting inside the Books from Home for the Holidays Gift Guide, available now online and at bookstores across Atlantic Canada. 

Each book is a celebration of the voices that shape our communities and the readers who keep them alive. 

So this year, shop local, read Atlantic, and wrap up a story worth sharing!