National Network for Equitable Library Service

From the international bestselling author of Purge and When the Doves Disappeared comes a spellbinding new novel set in present-day Helsinki about a young woman with a fantastical secret who is trying to solve the mystery of her mother’s death.When Anita Naakka jumps in front of an oncoming train, her daughter, Norma, is left alone with the secret they have spent their lives hiding: Norma has supernatural hair, sensitive to the slightest changes in her mood — and the moods of those around her — moving of its own accord, corkscrewing when danger is near.

After twenty years Max Binder is still in love with his fiery wife, Maggie, and is determined to get her the perfect fortieth birthday gift. But Max’s singular desire — to make his wife happy — leads to an unexpected event that changes the course of his family’s life and touches the people who make up their western prairie city.Set over the course of a single year, Once More With Feeling tells the story of a community through intersecting moments and interconnected lives.

From Peter Behrens, one of our most beloved storytellers and the author of the bestselling and award-winning novels The Law of Dreams and The O’Briens, comes a spectacular collection of riveting stories about growing up and growing older, falling in and out of love, and finding ourselves and losing each other.

For Sure is among other things a labyrinth, a maze, an exploration of the folly of numbers, a repository, a defense and an illustration of the Chiac language. Written in dazzling prose — which is occasionally interrupted by surprising bits of information, biography, and definitions that appear on the page — Daigle perfectly captures the essence of a place and offers us a reflection on minority cultures and their obsession with language.

This magnificent and final novel from Anne Hebert completes an internationally acclaimed literary oeuvre that is fearless in its explorations of the dark and violent side of human passion. Rose-Alba Almevida, her husband Pedro, and her son Miguel live by modest means in a Paris apartment, but each, in their way, dreams of returning home to Spain to reclaim the honour and identity stripped of them by the immigrant struggle. Yet where Pedro plans and saves for a vineyard plot to which he can retire, Rose-Alba and Miguel have vastly different dreams.

The Good Body is a triumphant blend of mordant humour and heartbreak. It tells the comic and poignant story of a retired pro-hockey ruffian named Bobby Bonaduce who is stubbornly ignoring a disease - multiple sclerosis - that may be killing him. Bobby returns to his hometown and scams his way into university in a misguided attempt to redeem his messy past and lay emotional claim to a son he abandoned twenty years earlier.

Jamie Quatro’s remarkable first book of stories, I Want to Show You More, published to spectacular reviews, announced her arrival to American letters as “a writer of great originality” (New York Times Book Review). Now, with her debut novel, Fire Sermon, Quatro delivers a startlingly unique portrait of an obsession and the complexities of a marriage.Married twenty years to Thomas and living in Nashville with their two children, Maggie is drawn ineluctably into a passionate affair while still fiercely committed to her husband and family.

No writer in Canada today is more in love with the English, and French, languages than John Lavery. That love is gloriously requited. In inventive, incantatory prose, Sandra Beck, his long-awaited first novel, paints a very unusual portrait of a lady. This is a book about many things: the struggling antics of adolescence, the banal delusions of solitude, the city of Montreal. But it is, above all, a deeply moving tribute to a woman who is both present and absent on every page. Who is Sandra Beck?

Selected as one of World Literature Today's 75 Notable Translations of 2013 Spanning five turbulent decades in Iranian history, from before the 1979 revolution, through the Islamic Republic, and up to the present, The Book of Fate is a powerful story of friendship and passion, fear and hope. A teenager in pre-revolutionary Tehran, Massoumeh is an average girl, passionate about learning. On her way to school she meets a local man and falls in love, but when her family discovers his letters they accuse her of bringing them dishonour.

Hercules is a dachshund, who was rescued from the animal shelter by the sweet and loving Caroline. Life for this little dog would be perfect if it weren't for Caroline's new boyfriend, Thomas. Hercules and his new friend, Mr. Beck -- a tomcat and a good judge of human nature -- devise a shrewd plot to get rid of Thomas and to find a new companion for Caroline.