National Network for Equitable Library Service

Charlotte Parkhurst was raised in an orphanage for boys, which suited her just fine. She didn't like playing with dolls, she could hold her own in a fight, and she loved to work in the stable. Charlotte had a special way with horses and wanted to spend her life training and riding them on a ranch of her own. The problem was, as a girl in the mid-1800s, Charlotte was expected to live a much different life--one without the freedoms she dreamed of. But Charlotte was smart and determined, and she figured out a way to live her life the way she wanted.

In the sequel to Discovering Emily, Emily Carr is determined to become an artist. But her parents have died, and she and her siblings are ruled by the iron-willed eldest, Dede. Dede is more concerned with decorum than with ridiculous dreams and is not averse to punishing Emily severely. In the face of such resistance, and in the conservative climate of nineteenth-century Victoria, Emily must find a way to make her dream come true.

When Gabriel Rivages recounts the life of Olympic gold medalist and silver-screen heart-throb Johnny Weissmuller (1904-1984), he brings to life a vibrant patchwork of America’s 20th century, from its athletic exploits to its literary underground, from its cinematic glory to its obscure failures.

San Martín (Mexique), décembre 2010. L’explosion gigantesque d’un pipeline secoue toute la ville et une marée de pétrole en feu se déverse dans les rues, emportant tout sur son passage. Les responsables de ce désastre : des narcotrafiquants. Inspiré de ce fait divers, Le cartel des volcans raconte l’histoire tragique de Juan Esteban Duarte, un jeune délinquant qui sombre dans la violence et les activités criminelles, sous la férule de Ramón qui, depuis un soir d’été de son enfance, est devenu l’homme qu’il déteste le plus au monde.

Préface de Jean-Luc Brassard May O’Leary, fille d’un millionnaire de Vancouver, Patrick Murphy de la Baie James et Simon Latour un écorché vif de Montréal sont trois adolescents décrochés de la famille, de l’école et de la société. Ils plongent malgré eux dans la petite misère et la délinquance de la rue. Leur rencontre avec Benoît Craig, à la suite d’un cambriolage, va les mettre sur la piste du raccrochage qu’ils vont parcourir au milieu de défis à haut risque et à travers une tragédie en montagne où l’effort et la détermination leur apporteront un idéal de vie.

High Rider is the historical novel based on the life of John Ware (1845–1905). Born a slave on a rice plantation in South Carolina, John Ware became one of the most successful independent ranchers in southern Alberta through the sheer force of his will and through his incredible skill at the cowboy trade.This fascinating historical novel details his adventures, as well as his trials and tribulations, on the long road that took him from South Carolina to Texas to Montana and finally north to Canada. High Rider is the compelling story of a truly great, yet unsung, Canadian hero.

“The Black Barber of Barkerville,” as Wellington Delaney Moses was known, came to British Columbia from San Francisco, looking for a new home and a place of peace. He was among the first black people to arrive in B.C., hoping that the colony, with its Creole governor, James Douglas, would offer a more tolerant and welcoming frontier than had California; he was not disappointed. Moses was a remarkable figure in Victoria in its first years, opening a prosperous barbershop and becoming a popular man about town. But adventure still called.

Born into Somali royalty and Saudi Arabian wealth, Fatma is given away in infancy and, at age 12, forced into an arranged marriage with a young Peace Corps worker. Prejudice and cultural demands lead to a number of painful promises that will dictate the course of her life on two continents. Sometimes It Snows in America is a novel loosely based on the true account of an African woman’s descent into an American hell, and finds its echo in the descent of her native Somalia into its own hell of violent desperation.

College Street is a quasi-pseudo biography of all the people, places, and events the author took for granted as a child and teenager, but now wishes he could revisit and replay at will. His vivid descriptions, through the eyes of a young child and teenager, bring this once fledgling neighborhood to life. Dominated by the Portuguese and the Italians, the area was a continual confusion of weddings, funerals, feasts, and processions.

Laura Marello writes, through the voice of Eduard Steichen, that “… all these powerful artists are so invulnerably weak.” Rodin, his lover Camille Claudel, Picasso, Rousseau, Nijinski, Matisse, Rilke and others, all tenants of Hôtel Biron, and all brilliantly and excitedly human, presented by manuscripts fictionally collected. The result is an appropriately cubist look at each, because we see each from several subjective vantages. This is a brilliantly conceived work of reflective and self-reflective parts.