National Network for Equitable Library Service

From critically acclaimed author Russell Wangersky, comes a dark, psychological thriller about a man named Walt, a grocery store cleaner who collects the shopping lists people leave in the store and discard without thought. In his fifties, abandoned, he says, by his now-missing wife Mary, Walt is pursued by police detectives unsatisfied with the answers he’s given about her disappearance.

Just as thirteen year-old Edith Walker is about to leave childhood behind, she thinks she spots a unicorn high on a slope while hiking. Her daydreamer father Henry convinces her that what she’s seen is real. Edith’s sighting of the fabled creature – and her unfailing belief that the imaginary creature will eventually be found – sets in motion a series of events that impact the next decade of her life. Edith grows up in her big sister Vivienne’s shadow.

From internationally acclaimed crime writer Andrée A. Michaud, a brilliant and original tragicomic thriller about one man's search for peace and sanctuary amid invasive neighbours and a mysterious death. Retired fifty-something Robert Moreau flees a society he can no longer bear for Mirror Lake, Maine. Little does he suspect that an intrusive neighbour and a mysterious death will quickly dispel any illusions he may have had about finding sanctuary in isolation. The misanthropic Moreau quickly learns that his Thoreau-like vision is a fiction.

In the penultimate installment of the magnificent and ambitious Soifs cycle, widely regarded as one of the most original and ambitious endeavors ever to be undertaken in contemporary literature, renowned novelist Marie-Claire Blais once again marries the highest artistic standards with the most pressing human and political concerns. Revisiting figures from the previous novels in a swirling fresco of more than a hundred characters, Blais also takes us into the soul of "the Young Man," a white supremacist preparing to attack a Black church and murder its entire congregation.

From bestselling author Claire Fuller comes a portrait of life on the fringes of society, a heart-stopping novel of betrayal and resilience, love and survival. What if the life you have always known is taken from you in an instant? What would you do to get it back? Twins Jeanie and Julius have always been different from other people. At fifty-one years old, they still live with their mother, Dot, in rural isolation and poverty. But when Dot dies suddenly, threats start raining down.

The Loop chronicles the life of an alcoholic who is unable to escape his past to explore the ways in which abuse can shape someone into their abuser and the ways trauma can transfer from one generation to the next. How much of who we are is who we are? How much of it is someone else? What if this has all happened before?

I move around the side of the house. There is a thick mass of shrubs on the north-east side. Juniper, and caragana gone wild. Without thinking, I pluck a flower and put it into my mouth, savouring the delicate yellowness of its flavour. Now when did I learn to do that? Who first put a caragana blossom on my tongue? Emma G. Weaver easily loses herself in history. She's much more comfortable imagining the lives of the dead than getting involved with the living.

It’s been almost a year since Charlotte Romer set foot in her hometown of River John, Nova Scotia. She’s been living at a boarding school hours away, hiding from the trauma and broken relationships she left behind. All she has left in the small town is her older brother, Sean, who is struggling to keep the lights on in their run-down family home. Charlotte hasn’t spoken to her best friend, Sophie, since she fled. It’s not exactly a celebratory homecoming.

Set in a small town in Quebec, Running Downhill Like Water is made up of four interconnected stories spanning fifty years of the lives of four people whose prospects have been violently shattered. Lucy, a perennial misfit, is thwarted in her desperate hope for love and belonging; Sheila, a classical violinist, fails miserably in both her career and as a mother; and Brothers Evan and Neil, struggling with the disastrous fallout of a rigid fundamentalist upbringing, endure not only severe mental illness but catastrophic crises of faith.

'Dark family secrets, the lore of the sea, and a tender, protective friendship between women all converge in The Speed of Mercy, an unusual and surprising story set in idyllic rural Nova Scotia. With subtle humour, Conlin picks the locks on the long-closed doors of two families and bares the ugly, painful skeletons everyone knew were there but chose to hide.' - Sylvia D. Hamilton,  author of And I Alone Escaped To Tell You.