National Network for Equitable Library Service

Meet Marcus O, a man who's feeling older but not much wiser as he sets jaded eyes on that last vigorous stretch before the dreaded sunset years. With the approach of the terminal semester of a long-winded career, he's wondering "What next?" and closing down leftover business. First, there's Judaea, a workplace nemesis inspiring Marcus' visions of reprisal. And there's L'Oréal Zhang, a style-conscious student and frequent visitor to Marcus' university office whose shallow interests seem calculated to aggravate him alone.

Christian McPherson's second collection of short stories serves up a boozy menu of mixed cocktails. Whether it be funny twisted tales of suburban marriages on the rocks, glue sniffing felons looking to win a radio contest, or Humpty Dumpty drinking the greatest cup of coffee in the world, these stories will have you reading and laughing to the last drop. There is also a serious side to Going Fly, in which we examine loss and what we do to carry on in the face of overwhelming tragedy.

Robin MacFarland is a smart, funny, self-deprecating journalist who works for the Home and Garden section of a major Toronto newspaper while she grapples hilariously with her weight, drinking and spirituality. The city news is slow and Robin has been assigned to dig up a real estate development story in cottage country near Huntsville, Ontario. Her editor has given her a long list of potential angles including water pollution, light pollution, traffic congestion, boat traffic, taxes, electricity costs, golf courses, fertilizer, algae blooms, land grants and native rights.

Hilarity and queer magic realism twist the throttle when Jackie, a loner with a secret bank-robbing persona, meets Vespa: sexy, sculpture-welding artist and collector of vintage motorbikes. Still planning elaborate revenge on a New York ex-lover, Jackie tests both her new relationship and the loyalties of her friends, a rag-tag gang of post-punk eccentrics, realizing how love changes hatred only after her scheme runs out of control.

What will endure...love, revenge, or Archibald? It's the summer of 1990 in West Vancouver. Maggie, a 23-year-old nursing school drop-out, has just started a job as a live-in personal assistant to Archibald, a flamboyant, elderly novelist with a quick wit, sharp tongue, and a penchant for nasty practical jokes. In between picking up his medications and groceries, Maggie desperately tries to hold the unravelling threads of her life together.

Montreal student Jerome Lupien - libidinous, unscrupulous, and fresh out of university - is ambitious and at loose ends. Whether on a hunting trip into Québec's northern woods, on an escape planned in good faith to Cuba, or seeking to make his way in Montreal, Jerome cannot help but be embroiled in misadventures and underworld escapades.

Finalist, Scotiabank Giller Prize. Frances Price - tart widow, possessive mother, and Upper East Side force of nature - is in dire straits, beset by scandal and impending bankruptcy. Her adult son Malcolm is no help, mired in a permanent state of arrested development. And then there's the Price's aging cat, Small Frank, who Frances believes houses the spirit of her late husband, an infamously immoral litigator and world-class cad whose gruesome tabloid death rendered Frances and Malcolm social outcasts.

A Japanese detective agency in Midwest America; a sex triangle with the vampish Angela at its apex, and love-sick Pohl and lust-warped Burnett at the receiving ends; a Fat Man devouring a huge luncheon amidst the splendors of his garden; and has-been vixen Violet seeking justice and revenge. Just some of the elements of No. 22 Pleasure City, a novel that ranges in flavor between Japanese manga, pulp fiction and tongue-in-cheek pornography. The novel is a story of betrayal, obsession, rejection, friendship, and--ultimately--redemption.

Izzy Spellman's hostile takeover of her family's firm, Spellman Investigations, isn't going as planned. Her parents are on strike, her sister Rae is acting suspicious, and the bills are piling up fast. So when Izzy is accused of embezzling money from a wealthy client, she sets out to clear her good name before she loses everything.

A sequel to "The Devil Wears Prada" finds Andy Sachs and her partner, Emily, blossoming throughout eight years at the head of a wildly successful high fashion bridal magazine only to be haunted by memories of their former boss on the eve of Andy's wedding.