National Network for Equitable Library Service

Already an award-winning writer, ZZ Packer now shares with us her long-awaited debut, Drinking Coffee Elsewhere. Her impressive range and talent are abundantly evident: Packer dazzles with her command of language, surprising and delighting us with unexpected turns and indelible images, as she takes us into the lives of characters on the periphery, unsure of where they belong.

The story of a thirteen-year-old boy in London growing up during the second world war.

Kate Beaufort is sent by her inventor brother Jack to meet a prospective suitor in China when she discovers that her brother's inventions are used by the British Secret Service. She now must deliver a vital item to doctor Henry Tattersall, who falls ill, leaving Kate to stand up to opium smugglers and slave traders.

"A coming-of-age novel about a teenager growing up in the suburbs of Toronto in the 1960s with a father who tortures him psychologically. His world opens up when he realizes he is gay"--Provided by publisher.

In the Great Fire of Smyrna (1922), Kivelli lost everything: her family, her friends, her social position, and her future. Stranded in the Greek city of Piraeus, populated by gangsters, prostitutes, fortune tellers, and other refugees, she finds herself living in the broom closet of a brothel. Luckily, the sound of her singing voice captures the attention of a local taverna owner, who suggests she come with him and perform for his customers.

Twenty-eight-year-old Will, a teacher living in Montreal's gay village, has spent the last few months recovering from a breakup with his first serious boyfriend, Max. He has resumed his search for companionship, but has he truly moved on? Will's mother Katherine - one of the few people, perhaps the only one, who loves him unconditionally - is also in recovery, from a bout with colon cancer that haunts her body and mind with the possibility of relapse.

For Bluma Goldberg, the teenaged daughter of a Jewish bootlegger, Prohibition-era Chicago is the furthest place one can get from law and temperance. Her first steps into womanhood are made all the more uncertain by the dangers of her father’s shadowy world. Decades later, her loving son, Joey Krueger, a man coming off his own share of emotional turmoil, remains mystified by the person he’s known all his life. Who is she really?

To all who knew him, Etienne Morneau lived unremarkably. Raised in an orphanage, his parents unknown, people considered him reserved, unfeeling, and antisocial. His death would have gone unnoticed were it not for his art and writing discovered afterwards. His secret drawings are proof of his artistic genius and his memoir, written in a kaleidoscope of thought and arranged like a dictionary, reveal the depth of his humanity and the uniqueness of his perception.

In telling the intersecting stories of Edmund, Teresa, and Joel - all of whom leave trails of hopeful chaos in their wake - Greg Kearney has painted a blackly comic, yet surprisingly earnest, portrait of modern loneliness.