National Network for Equitable Library Service

Trained as a nurse and midwife, Elizabeth Evans never wanted to help set up the fledgling town of Aspen Coulee, Alberta, but travels there with her father when he agrees to become the town doctor. Housekeeper at the Evans’ house, Ann Montgomery hoped to keep all her San Francisco secrets locked in her ancient wedding chest. It is 1907, and the Canadian Pacific Railway is driving the engine of the west.

A murder, a tryst, a mysterious child. A Victoria aristocrat who obsesses over her Churchill relatives. A repressive Welsh mother with a royalty fixation. A once-carefree Hesquiat girl from Nootka Sound. A dashing Icelandic philanderer. And quiet, steady Julia Godolphin, trying to rise above it all.

The Horseman’s Last Call presents the closing chapters in the life of Wild Jack Strong. The story opens with Jack content on the ranch he had always dreamed of, with a loving wife and an adopted son. His good friend Jim Spencer and Jim’s family live just down the road, so life couldn’t be better. However, things take an unwanted turn when war breaks out in Europe and Jack once more feels the need to heed his country’s call. But the war changes his life in unexpected ways as he discovers that not only does loyalty sometimes go unrewarded, it can also be one-sided.

“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.

Journey into the fashionable art world of 1960s Vancouver as Margaret Spencer and Nat Southby return in Death as a Fine Art, the fifth book in the Margaret Spencer mystery series. The owner of the Silver Unicorn Art Gallery is dead, and Southby and Spencer, Private Investigators are back at work in search of the killer. With plenty of suspects and twists and turns along the way, Maggie and Nat have their work cut out for them. The cast of memorable characters are no match for the investigators.

A follow-up to The Frog Lake Massacre, The Luck of the Horseman is a cleverly written ride from the days of the Wild West. The story begins ten years after the Frog Lake massacre. Jack Strong is doing a poor job of dealing with a devastating personal tragedy. He reconnects with Sam Steele, an old acquaintance and police officer, to assist in a hunt for a man wanted for murder. During the hunt, Jack meets a roaming cowboy named Jim Spencer.

When the beautiful and flirtatious Eleanor Wentworth is sent away from London in 1870 for her scandalous behaviour, she arrives, angry and rebellious, in Victoria, a town that falls far below her expectations of society. Soon, however, she is befriended by Celia Turner, the freethinking young wife of a conservative minister, and unlikely though it seems, they become lifelong friends. When Eleanor meets the fascinating judge Matthew Baillie Begbie, the first chief justice of BC, life in the colony suddenly becomes much more attractive.

The third book in the popular Lane Winslow mystery series by an author the Globe and Mail has called a “writer to watch.”It’s early spring of 1947 in idyllic King’s Cove, and the Hughes ladies, mère et filles, are gardening and sorting through the jars of food that have been put up for the winter. But while cleaning up after the roof of their root cellar has caved in slightly, they are horrified to discover a small skeletal hand embedded in the mess.

In 1941, twelve-year-old Rivke Rosenfeld lives in the Warsaw Ghetto, where she witnesses German soldiers slashing her grandfather's beard from his face. Her anger compels her to secretly write her stories and her memories in the margins of a book of fairytales by Hans Christian Andersen. When Dr.

From Black Hand criminals to stand-up cops, from innocent victims and ordinary people to schemers and dreamers: a novel that chronicles one hundred years in the lives and relationships of those who have lived in New York City's Little Italy. A multi-generational, multi-dimensional tale that digs deep into the minds and hearts of this vibrant neighborhood.