National Network for Equitable Library Service

A novel about silence, tinged with the fantastic, The Country Will Bring Us No Peace sneaks the brutality of grief into your imagination. Simon and Marie can't seem to have a baby. And so they flee the city for an idyllic village, where things will certainly be better. But the town is gloomy, even hostile - things haven't been the same since the factory closed down and a broadcast antenna was erected. Now there are no birds singing, and people have started disappearing.

Part modern fable, part detective novel, a journey through grief in the imaginary world of Metaphoria. One cold winter night, Charlie shares a cab with a stranger in a purple hat. As they talk, a cloud of purple smoke overwhelms him and he wakes up to find himself behind the only desk in the Epiphany Detective Agency. Charlie, as it turns out, is trapped in Metaphoria, an otherworldly place that reality has forgotten, a place where everything means something else. His first client is Shirley Kintsugi, who insists on hiring Charlie to find her husband's missing heart.

Botanist Alfred Homer, ever hopeful and constantly surprised, is invited on a road trip through Southwestern Ontario by his parents' friend, Professor Morgan Bruno, who wants company as he tries to unearth the story of the mysterious poet John Skennen. But this is no ordinary road trip. As Alfred and the Professor encounter towns with familiar names but where Black residents speak only in sign language or where there are Indigenous Parades, house burnings, werewolves, and witches, we realize that this is a journey through the psyche of Alfred and, indeed, though the psyche of Canada.

A debut novel by acclaimed poet Lisa Robertson, in which a poet realizes she has written the works of Baudelaire. One morning, the poet Hazel Brown wakes up in a strange hotel room to find that she's written the complete works of Charles Baudelaire. Surprising as this may be, it's no more surprising to Brown than the impossible journey she's taken to become the writer that she is.

One Friday, Vancouver lawyer Paul Brenner has dinner with his son, Daniel. They talk about work, health, money, and music, and part ways. The following evening, Paul receives the phone call that is every parent's worst nightmare: Daniel has been killed in Stanley Park. 'Hold Me Now' is an unflinching portrayal of a father's grief, as Paul learns how very different the new world -- a world without his son -- will be for him. The investigation of Daniel's murder, the trial, and the sentencing of the killer test Paul's faith in the legal system.

A compelling, haunting novel about a man experiencing gaps in time, and the pain of living with mental illness. Felix wakes up one day to find himself with a girlfriend he doesn't recognize, a life together that is unfamiliar. A novel, with his name on the cover, that he doesn't remember writing. He's been losing time since university. Sometimes these gaps are minutes, sometimes months. But now he begins experiencing flashbacks--revisiting moments from his past--and moments where he gets a glimpse of an unsettling future. He will do anything necessary to keep the people he loves safe ...

Set in an unnamed Pakistani city shortly after Partition, the lives of Ustad Ramzi, one of the greatest wrestlers of the land, who is now old and warmed only by the memories of his past, and the equally renowned Gohar Jan, a courtesan whose kotha once welcomed lords of the land but is now in danger of being shut down, unravel.

A'isha Nasir is a Nigerian teenager who has been charged with adultery. She is sentenced to death by stoning--a sentence to be carried out after her daughter is weaned. Sophie MacNeil is an ambitious, though inexperienced, Canadian journalist living in Nigeria. Speechless is the story of how their lives become intertwined in a fast-paced tale of justice, witness, and courage. Speechless offers a thoughtful and complex view of how stories are told. Who should tell a story? What happens when one speaks on behalf of another?

Grief cannot abide a mystery. No one understands that better than the Clareys of Halifax, a close and loving family whose lives are transformed one night in 1937 when Edie, their wilful daughter and sister, vanishes, leaving no trace, no clue, as to what happened to her. The lingering question of her disappearance will ricochet through succeeding generations of Clareys.

In the spring of 1964, troubled teenager Cookie Blue is found dead in the Red River. Blue Vengeance follows her younger brother Danny and Cookie's friend Janine through a lazy Winnipeg summer, as they plot to kill the despised teacher they blame for Cookie's death.