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Hendrik Groen may be old, but he is far from dead and isn't planning to be buried anytime soon. Instead, he sets out to write an exposé: a year in the life of his care home in Amsterdam.

Twelve-year-old Fiona Macgregor receives a diary for her birthday and uses it to record the arrival of the Spanish Flu epidemic in Toronto in 1918 and the impact it has on her family. Includes factual historical information about the Spanish Flu in Canada.

"“Its an immense night out there, wheeling and windy. The lights on the street and in the houses against the black wetness, little unilluminating glints that might be painted on it. The town seems huddled together, cowering on a high tiny perch, afraid to move lest it topple into the wind.” The town is Horizon, the setting of Sinclair Ross brilliant classic study of life in the Depression era. Hailed by critics as one of Canadas great novels, As For Me and My House takes the form of a journal.

Closing in on 40, the sometimes misstepping Adrian Mole faces a host of unpleasantries--just one of which is his escalating number of nocturnal visits to the loo. Meanwhile, on the marriage front, it might be fair to say that his once-passionate relationship with his wife has grown just the tiniest bit stale, and contact with his former lover, Dr. Pandora Braithwaite, is certainly not helping matters.

In the aftermath of a fatal car accident, a private journal of love notes written by a husband to his wife passes into the keeping of a hospital patient, and from there through the hands of five other suffering people, touching each of them uniquely.

"In the midst of the Irish famine, Johanna flees one disaster - only to land in another. After a massive potato famine strikes Ireland, thirteen-year-old Johanna Leary flees to Canada with her family. But typhus and other illnesses plague the 'coffin ships,' so named for the staggering number of immigrants who died enroute. One by one Johanna loses the members of her family - first her baby brother on the journey over, then her mother in the Grosse Isle fever sheds where sick passengers are quarantined when they reach the port of Québec, and her father soon after.

Sappho was so happy when she married Gavin. She was in love and it seemed that at last everything was falling into place. But she hadn't considered his daughter, Isobel. Now cast in the role of Wicked Stepmother, Sappho tries all she can to befriend Isobel and find her place in the new family. It's not easy, but no one had promised it would be.