The Ambitious City

The gripping second installment of the MacNeice Mysteries reads like a crossover episode between Sons of Anarchy and Dexter, as Detective Superintendent MacNeice and his team face off against a gang of violent bikers and a bloodthirsty serial killer... As a local biker war rages — seven shrink-wrapped corpses have been found buried on a farm just outside of Dundurn — an ambitious waterfront project meant to revive the dying industrial city is underway. Dredging is nearly complete when six more bodies turn up at the bottom of the lake. With the body count rising, the situation in Dundurn escalates as a serial killer begins targeting the city’s successful young women of colour. Outgunned by the bikers and outmaneuvered by the serial killer, MacNeice convinces Fiza Aziz, the young Muslim detective who burned out on their last case together, to come back to the force. Things go well until Aziz deliberately puts herself in the killer’s sights...

Hamilton has been called many things over the years, some positive - the Ambitious City, Steeltown - some not so much - the armpit of Ontario. But the city has endured it all and continues on, undaunted. In this wide-ranging collection of essays editor Paul Weinberg has collected many of the stories that have made up Hamilton's latest rising. From lost neighbourhoods to the environmental battle over the Red Hill Valley Parkway, from the rise of citizen journalism to the birth and impact of the James Street North Art Crawl, from the continual fight for inclusion to the new fight against gentrification, Reclaiming Hamilton looks at how this complex, storied city is reinventing itself right now.

With the same eye for character, anecdote and circumstance that made Peter Ackroyd’s London and Colin Jones’s Paris so successful, Levine’s captivating prose integrates the sights, sounds and feel of Toronto with a broad historical perspective, linking the city’s present with its past through themes such as politics, transportation, public health, ethnic diversity and sports. Toronto invites readers to discover the city’s lively spirit over four centuries and to wander purposefully through the city’s many unique neighborhoods, where they can encounter the striking and peculiar characters who have inhabited them: the powerful and powerless, the entrepreneurs and the entertainers, and the moral and the corrupt, all of whom have contributed to Toronto’s collective identity.

The rise to power of one of Canada's most progressive municipal movements in recent memory. When it was dreamed up in the early 2000s by a transportation bureaucrat with a quixotic dream of bringing tramways back to the streets of Montreal, few expected Projet Montréal to go anywhere. But a decade and a half later, the party was a grassroots powerhouse with an ambitious agenda that had taken power at city hall--after dumping its founder, barely surviving a divisive leadership campaign and earning the ire of motorists across Quebec. Projet Montréal aspired to transform Montreal into a green, human-scale city with few, if any equal in North America. Equal parts reportage, oral history and memoir, Saving the City chronicles what the party did right, where it failed, and where it's headed. Written from the perspective of someone who worked for Projet Montréal's administration for almost a decade, Daniel Sanger's book draws on dozens of interviews with other actors in the party and on the municipal scene, past and present. A highly readable history of Montreal municipal politics over the past 30 years, Saving the City will also discuss issues of interest to city-dwellers across Canada. Are political parties at the municipal level a good thing? Is Montreal's borough system a model for other big cities? What are the best ways to control urban car use? What is the optimum width for a sidewalk? The best kind of street tree? And why free parking is a terrible idea.

North Vancouver is one of the most historic areas of BC's Lower Mainland, with a district population of more than 120,000 people, and more than 45,000 living in the City of North Vancouver itself. The area's easy access to downtown Vancouver, its multi-use waterfront and many recreational opportunities have made it one of the province's most desirable places to live, an enviable mix of residential and commercial development in the midst of one of the most spectacular natural settings in the world. But how did this thriving multicultural city develop from a hodgepodge of wood frame buildings and muddy trails in just 100 years? The Ambitious City details the fascinating story of North Vancouver, from the migration of the Squamish people to Burrard Inlet, to the settlement of Moodyville in the 1800s through to the city's incorporation in 1907. The development of the area's shipbuilding industry and the economic and cultural revitalization of Lonsdale Avenue is also covered. Published in honour of the City of North Vancouver's 2007 centennial, The Ambitious City is a dynamic popular history that includes first-person accounts as well as a host of archival photos and illustrations. Warren Sommer skillfully connects the community's history with that of the province, covering ethnic relations, colonialism, labour history and politics.

The highly anticipated fourth instalment in the critically acclaimed MacNeice Mysteries series finds MacNeice and his team on the hunt for a sophisticated serial killer who draws his inspiration from classic works of art — perfect for fans of Dan Brown’s mysteries with a historical twist. Two bodies have been found in the master bedroom of a mansion in Dundurn’s old-money neighbourhood under the mountain. Howard Terry and his son, Matthew, have both been shot twice in the chest. Under Matthew’s body is a doll with blood-red cotton wadding spilling out of its head. Nearby, a mannequin in a nightshirt lies on its back, with two bullet holes in the chest. On the other side of town, a body is discovered below the Devil’s Punchbowl waterfall. Leaning against an enormous rock is a man in a cotton nightshirt wearing a papier mâché donkey’s head. Two rounds in the chest. Something about the way the bodies have been arranged suggests the murders are connected and triggers a memory in Detective Superintendent MacNeice of an image he saw years before...

With 150 archival plans, photographs, and illustrations, Mark Osbaldeston explores 200 years of significant but unrealized building, planning, and transit schemes in Hamilton. Learn about the escarpment amphitheatre, the Gage Avenue tunnel, the King’s Forest Zoo, and the downtown planetarium, none of which ever came to fruition.

The heart-pounding first installment of the MacNeice Mysteries, featuring a sophisticated detective solving the horrific murder of a beautiful young violinist — perfect for fans of Peter Robinson’s Alan Banks series. Detective Superintendent MacNeice is returning from a pilgrimage to his wife’s grave when he’s called to a crime scene of singular and disturbing beauty. A young woman in evening dress lies gracefully posed on the floor of a pristine summer cottage so that the finger of one hand regularly interrupts the needle arm of a phonograph playing Schubert’s Piano Trio. The only visible mark on her is the bruise under her chin, which MacNeice recognizes: it is the mark that distinguishes dedicated violinists, the same mark that once graced his wife. The murder is both ingenious and horrific, and soon entangles MacNeice and his team in Eastern Europe’s ancient grievances...