National Network for Equitable Library Service

Set in 1936 Montreal, this is the story of Lawrence Nolan, a fifteen-year-old piano prodigy who is forced to keep the shameful secret of his mother's mental illness as he attempts to raise himself and his younger brother. When his brother becomes ill, he is left with overwhelming responsibilities, and while at a piano competition in Montreal, Lawrence makes a dramatic decision that puts his future on hold in order to rectify his family life.

Gloria Murray's daughter jokes that Gloria would have sold her first born to further her musical career - a reproach closer to the truth than anyone but Gloria suspects. Gloria, born just before the Great Depression, knows from the moment she hears a soaring song played on the piano that she must follow that river of emotion. After an adolescence playing in churches and hotel lobbies, she prepares to study in post-World War II France, when another sort of passion intrudes and, halfway through her year abroad, she finds herself forced into a hard choice that she shares with no one.

"Set in nineteenth-century Tokyo and twentieth-century Boston, Pure Inventions tells of the incredible adventures of Hiroshiprankster, forger, authenticator, and artist. The son of a Japanese courtesan and an American naval officer, Hiroshi never feels at home in his native Japan. Torn by his mixed heritage, he is constantly compelled to reinvent himself, sometimes with disastrous consequences.

In 1831, eighteen-year-old Oonagh Corcoran emigrates with her sister from southern Ireland to Upper Canada. In the deep folds of cool, green forest off the vast inland sea of Lake Ontario, she believes she has found paradise -- only to discover that the New World harbours its own horrible injustices when she meets a fugitive slave from Virginia named Chauncey Taylor. Love grows between them as Chauncey slowly reveals his terrible past to Oonagh, reliving the pain and tragedy he and his family suffered as slaves.

Shannon Carew has a complicated relationship with history. Born a Newfoundler, she has spent years on the other side of the country in order to erase her past and set down new roots. But when an opportunity to work with Newfoundland and Labrador's archaeological sites appears, Shannon cannot resist and decides to return home. What awaits her is unexpected - for among the threads of history, and the tangles of her old life, is the chance to discover a new connection.--inside front cover.

The battlefield itself is a character in this retelling of Custer's Last Stand, when George Custer led his soldiers to annihilation at the Battle of the Little Bighorn in Montana in 1876. First-person narratives from Indian and white, military and civilian, men and women bring the events to life.

Callum left Scotland in 1806 when his brother married their childhood friend Rebecca, realizing he wanted her for himself. Ten years later, Rebecca is a widow when a much-changed Callum returns. Will he remember their spirited connection? Will he blame her for his brother's unexpected death?

Billy Flynn always wanted to fly. An attractive young man, a patriot, he is also an artist with pencil and paint and has an abiding affinity for nature. It's 1970 and he cannot resist the call to serve in Vietnam. A year later he is the only survivor when his helicopter is shot down. A Catalog of Birds is the story of a family and a community confronted with a loss of innocence and wounds that may never heal.

A novel based on the true story of the Spanish princess Eulalia, an outspoken firebrand at the Bourbon court during the troubled and decadent final years of her family's reign, and her journey to see her scandalous, incendiary autobiography published.

In 1739, Eliza Lucas is sixteen years old when her father leaves her in charge of their family's plantations in South Carolina, and now her family is in danger of losing everything. With the high value of indigo dye, Eliza believes it's their salvation, but it means striking a dangerous deal.