National Network for Equitable Library Service

The years when John Diefenbaker's Progressive Conservatives were in office were among the most tumultuous in Canadian history. This book provides a fresh assessment of foreign policy in the Diefenbaker era to determine whether its failures can be attributed to the prime minister's personality traits, particularly his indecisiveness, or to broader shifts in world affairs.

Toronto restauranteur and bookshop owner Henry Royce devotes most of his time and energy to running his quirky store and perfecting its collection of rare and used books. But when a body turns up in Crime Fiction and a semi-rare book titled Stylus of Death mysteriously disappears from the stacks near the victim, Royce is suddenly catapulted into the action-packed world of police and private investigators.

For decades, the name Labatt was synonymous with beer in Canada, but no longer. Brewed in the North traces the birth, growth, and demise of one of the nation's oldest and most successful breweries. Opening a window into Canada's complicated relationship with beer, Matthew Bellamy examines the strategic decisions taken by a long line of Labatt family members and professional managers from the 1840s, when John Kinder Labatt entered the business of brewing in the Upper Canadian town of London, to the globalization of the industry in the 1990s.

Having retreated to the idyllic Polynesian island of Bora Bora to savour and lament the lost past, Harry Lindstrom finds himself drawn into a strange relationship with a raven-haired, B-list movie actress and her invalid husband. Harry learns from the amiably grotesque Inspector Theophil Queequeg that they are leaders of a virulent religious movement, and that the woman is far more dangerous than he could ever have imagined. Back in Toronto, she reappears with a disturbing capacity to make Harry wonder about the moral justifications for murder.

Even That Wildest Hope bursts with vibrant, otherworldly characters-wax girls and gods-among-men, artists on opposite sides of a war, aimless plutocrats and anarchist urchins-who are sometimes wondrous, often grotesque, and always driven by passions and yearnings common to us all. Each story is an untamed territory unto itself: where characters are both victims and predators, the settings are antique and futuristic, and where our intimacies-with friends, lovers, enemies, and even our food-reveal a deeply human desire for beauty and abjection.

Seventeen-year-old Erich is a prisoner of war working at a northern Alberta logging camp. Twelve-year-old Max goes to school-reluctantly-in the nearby town. The two would be unlikely friends, except that neither has anyone else to turn to. At the height of World War II, nobody wants to befriend a German. It doesn't matter that Erich was forced into the military by his father, or that Max was proudly born in Canada. They are both easy targets for the locals' grief and anger against the Nazis.

It's 1977, and 10-year-old Tina couldn't be happier about her life. Not because she just moved to Yarmouth, Nova Scotia, but because she's finally old enough to make her dream come true: she can play on a real hockey team. But when she tries to join the league, she learns that girls aren't allowed to play on the boys' team-and there's no team for girls.Despite jeers from classmates and cruelty from some of the town's adults, Tina is determined to play. She wants it more than anything.

What would it feel like if the world emptied out? Lowell Garrish has lost everything-his parents, his grandma, the music the waves make on the shore in Nova Scotia. Desperate to hold on to real sound, Lowell sets off on a road trip across Canada with a tape recorder, capturing something from every person he meets and his observations along the way. But as he drives, strange occurrences and mass disappearances imply that something terrible is happening, and Lowell begins to realize that time for humanity may be running out.

Their whole bodies are ready for sleep, but sleep doesn't come. The cold has deserted winter, causing the polar bears in the zoo to pace in an endless quest for sleep. Their caretaker, Sasha, will do anything to bring them slumber. But when a boy named Marcus suddenly appears at his window, bringing a different outlook on the meaning of family, Sasha finds himself buried under new responsibilities-such as packing lunches and reading bedtime stories-rather than snow.

John Weinzweig (1913-2006) was the pre-eminent Canadian composer of his generation. Influenced by European modernists such as Stravinsky, Berg, and Webern, he was the first Canadian composer to employ serialism, thereby bringing a spirit of innovation to mid-twentieth-century Canadian music. A forceful advocate for modern Canadian composition, Weinzweig played a key role in the founding of the Canadian League of Composers and the Canadian Music Centre during a buoyant and expansive period for the arts in Canada.