National Network for Equitable Library Service

Scattered Bones is a story of the complicated, fragile and sometimes fatal relations between Indigenous people and settlers in Northern Saskatchewan in the 1920s. Aboriginal spiritual traditions are beginning to cross paths with the construction of a residential school, and ancient acts of violent vengeance are shaping the trajectory of events in the town 200 years later.

It’s 1842. 14-year-old Jennie Lawrence has been found guilty of stealing, and finds herself aboard one of the few women-only convict ships destined for Australia.

Jennie had been desperate – and, as she gets to know the other women on the convict ship – she realizes she’s not the only one. Many of the women she gets to know were trying to survive, and feed themselves and their families, before they were caught and sentenced to Australia.

Winner, Muslims for Peace and Justice Fiction Prize, 2017 Saskatchewan Book Awards.

In 1932, after the death of their father, ten-year-old Polly and her older sister Maud must leave their home in Winnipeg and begin a new life with their grandmother on a remote island off the coast of B.C. Maud goes off to boarding school in Victoria and Polly, despite missing her sister, begins to adapt to her new life on the island. But on the edge of this budding happiness, is a dark secret that Polly struggles to keep.

After her ghost-hunting uncle dies, Oxford student Jillian heads to his village to pack up his things. Upon arriving, terrifying events convince Jillian that an angry spirit is trying to enter the house. Is it a ghost—or something more sinister?

In 1919, Kitty Weekes obtains a nursing position at a remote hospital for soldiers shell-shocked by the horrors of the Great War. But something more is going on at Portis House; the former occupants left abruptly, and all the patients seem to share the same, horrific nightmare.

On a dank and foggy November evening in 1796 a Royal Mail Coach on its way from Hull to York is stopped by two highwaymen. One of the passengers is abducted. Two weeks later the headless body of a man is discovered beneath a hedge in the same locality. In the following weeks more headless bodies are discovered. A constable from the town of Hull and his bookseller friend Nicholas Twygge are asked by the Sheriff and Aldermen to investigate the deaths.

Set in 17th-century Mi'kma'ki, territory of the Mi'kmaq of Maritime Canada, Cibou is the story of a young Mi'kmaw woman and her relationship with Jesuit missionary Antoine Daniel -- a historical figure who was stationed in Cape Breton -- and his brother, Captain Charles Daniel who had established a French fishing and trading post there. Susan Biagi has woven a marvelously intuitive tale, at once beautiful and harsh, observing the simple and dangerous lives of cultures interacting on the threshold of new world history.

In the summer of 1916, Private Daniel Baker marches into battle with the boys of Nova Scotia's 25th Battalion. Out of brutal necessity, Danny has steeled himself against the trials and horrors of war, but he is completely unprepared to meet the love of his life in war-torn France. Audrey Poulin has the soul of an artist. She lives alone with her grandmother in the quiet French countryside, where her only joy is in her brush and palette. When, by chance, she encounters Danny, the handsome young soldier captures her heart and inspires her painting.

"Pru Burbidge lives a simple life on the family homestead on Dalhousie Road in 1940s rural Nova Scotia until her father abandons the family and her mother falls ill. Her life is turned upside-down by these events, and she is forced to take on the role of primary caregiver to her siblings, Jessie, Flora, and Davey. Things go from bad to worse when Pru's mother dies, leaving Pru and Jessie, her older brother, to care for the family in secret so they are not separated and sent away to foster homes, or worse the orphan house.