National Network for Equitable Library Service

Away from the Dead is set in the chaotic times of the Russian revolution, and traces the lives of various characters connected through love and family and loyalty. The novel follows the lives of a bookseller south of Kiev who deserts the army and writes poetry to his lover back home; an adopted Mennonite/Ukrainian peasant who runs with the anarchists only to discover that love and the planting of crops is preferable to killing; and in which a Mennonite estate owner steals a young mother's child.

A fresh, unique work of metafiction that follows a graphic novelist who loses control of his own narrative when he attempts to write the story of his fraught upbringing in 1980s Chinatown. In a Chinatown housing project lives twelve-year-old Benny, his ailing grandmother, and his strange neighbor Constantine, a man who believes he’s a reincarnated medieval samurai. When his grandmother is hospitalized, Benny manages to survive on his own until a social worker comes snooping. With no other family, he is reluctantly taken in by Constantine and soon, an unlikely bond forms between the two.

A Quebec bestseller based on the life of Michel Jean's great-grandmother that delivers an empathetic portrait of drastic change in an Innu community. Kukum recounts the story of Almanda Siméon, an orphan raised by her aunt and uncle, who falls in love with a young Innu man despite their cultural differences and goes on to share her life with the Pekuakami Innu community. They accept her as one of their own: Almanda learns their language, how to live a nomadic existence, and begins to break down the barriers imposed on Indigenous women.

Is love more compelling than justice? A wife pleads for love. Her husband longs for revenge. Gripping and evocative, Some Unfinished Business tells the story of a young man who is determined to prevail through anti-Soviet resistance in occupied Lithuania, imprisonment in the Gulag, and the icy hands of bureaucracy that attempt to thwart his love for a woman with a mysterious past -- all while chasing the back of the man who dared him to dream in the first place.

A gripping multigenerational novel that explores the history and human cost of colonialism in the Congo. April 1958. When the Brussels World's Fair opens, Robert Dumont, one of the people responsible for the biggest international event since the end of the Second World War, ends up laying down his arms in the face of pressure from the royal palace: there will be a "Congolese village" in one of the seven pavilions devoted to the settlements.

The hilarious and heartbreaking story of two William Pings in Newfoundland--the lost millennial and the grandfather he knows nothing about William Ping's millennial life revolves around eating at restaurants, posting online about eating at restaurants, then overanalyzing it. This changes unexpectedly when a dinner with his Chinese girlfriend's family goes sideways and his insecurity about his biracial identity and his ignorance of his own Chinese heritage overflow like lava.

France, 1918. In the final days of the First World War, a young Chinese woman, Pauline Deng, runs away from her uncle’s home in Paris to evade a marriage being arranged for her in Shanghai. To prevent the union, she needs the help of her cousin Theo, who is working as a translator for the Chinese Labour Corps in the French countryside. In the town of Noyelles-sur-Mer, Camille Roussel is planning her escape from an abusive marriage, and to end a love affair that can no longer continue. When Camille offers Pauline a room for her stay, the two women become friends.

Private investigator John Blacksad puts one of his nine lives on the line in this sizzling story of hot jazz and cold-blooded murder. Writer Juan Díaz Canales and artist Juanjo Guarnido join creative forces once again to deliver A Silent Hell, a grim tale of 1950s noir set against the colorful backdrop of New Orleans's fabled music scene. Hired to track down a missing pianist, Blacksad quickly finds himself in the midst of voodoo, drugs, the rollicking atmosphere of Mardi Gras, and the dark underbelly that it hides.

Set on a US college campus in 1964, In the Defense of Liberty is a powerful, fast-paced novel exploring gender nonconformity and the reach of history. It's 1964, and the students at Merida University in Ohio can sense that something is brewing -- the campus is rippling with undercurrents of anger and alienation. As they work to make sense of the rapidly shifting cultural and ideological climate, the four main characters of In the Defense of Liberty are also consumed by their own personal dramas.

In this highly anticipated new edition of her debut novel, Winona LaDuke weaves a nonlinear narrative of struggle and triumph, resistance and resilience, spanning seven generations from the 1800s to the early 2000s.