National Network for Equitable Library Service

A Winnipeg Free Press Bestseller! • In the Margins Book Award, Top Ten Selection • CCBC’s Best Books for Kids & Teens (Fall 2017) Selection Close as brothers, Jakub’s and Lincoln’s lives diverge when Jakub gets a private school scholarship and Lincoln is lured into a gang. Fifteen-year-old Jakub Kaminsky is the son of Polish immigrants, a good Catholic boy, and a graffiti artist. While his father sleeps, Jakub and his best friend, Lincoln, sneak out with spray paint to make their mark as Morf and Skar.

For Charlie Hillier, a posting to Cuba could be the perfect place to start his new life — if he survives it. With his career stalled and the office abuzz about his soon-to-be-ex-wife’s indiscretions, Ottawa bureaucrat Charlie Hillier is desperate for a change. So when the chance at a posting to the Canadian embassy in Havana comes up, he jumps at it, grateful to get as far away as he can from his ex and his dead-end job at Foreign Affairs headquarters.

2017 International Thriller Writers Award — Shortlisted, Best Paperback Original Novel Phillip Scarnum must employ his cunning and seamanship to stay alive and out of prison in this fast-paced, gritty thriller. Phillip Scarnum is sailing along Nova Scotia’s South Shore when he finds an abandoned lobster boat smashed on the rocks. He risks his life to haul it in, hoping to collect a big salvage fee, but before he can cash in, a fisherman’s body full of bullet holes washes up on a nearby beach.

Con man Max O’Brien takes a personal investigation into his own hands. Max O’Brien’s nightmare has begun again. Eleven years after the tragic disappearance of his brother, an ambassador in Central America, Max’s nephew, also a diplomat, is assassinated in New Delhi. Max is on the run from police, and this time the professional con man decides to find those responsible for the crime. Determined to track down the truth, he arrives in India just as the country is preparing for war with Pakistan. His inquiry leads him to Kashmir — the heart of the conflict — and the depths of his own soul.

Stranded by a blizzard at her isolated cabin, Meg Harris, an escapee from a failed marriage into the remote wilderness, finds herself in a desperate and terrifying situation when two strangers arrive. As night approaches, a major blizzard has cut off road access to Meg Harris’s isolated wilderness home, Three Deer Point. She is alone with her young friend Adjidamo, preparing for Christmas, when a knock suddenly echoes through the house. She finds two strange men at her front door, one of them bleeding. Against her better judgment, she lets them in.

Prohibition means two things in the Border city of Windsor, Ontario: big business, and big trouble. Riverside Drive Jack McCloskey returned to Windsor, Ontario, from the Great War lost in a battle with his inner demons. When he channels his energy into amateur fights, he's noticed by a gangster moonlighting as a boxing promoter. After a brief professional stint, Jack is invited to join the crew in the early days of Prohibition along the Detroit River. Maiden Lane It's the winter of 1923 and the border towns are under a deep freeze.

2015 Dewey Divas Pick 2016 Booklist Top Ten Multicultural Fiction List, Youth Spotlight Cam is finally settling into his new life in Laos when tragedy strikes and he’s wrongfully accused of murder. Eighteen-year-old Cam Scott is angry. He’s angry about his absent dad, he’s angry about being angry, and he’s angry that he has had to give up his Ottawa basketball team to follow his mom to her new job in Vientiane, Laos.

Autumn, 1970: Hostage-taking separatists in Quebec abduct a foreign diplomat and a cabinet minister and threaten violence across the country. As fear sets in, the government turns to Luc Cadotte, a specialist on international terrorism and veteran of the clandestine struggles in Latin America. From the jungles of Colombia to Montreal under siege, former diplomat James Bartleman plots a turbulent thriller based on events he witnessed first-hand.

2016 Manitoba Book Awards’ Michael Van Rooy Award for Genre Fiction — Winner Secrets are lurking behind the proper exteriors of Winnipeg’s turn-of-the-century houses. In June 1899, the Reverend Charles Lauchlan’s industrious life as a young Presbyterian minister is knocked off the rails when he learns that his former university roommate has been arrested on murder charges. The chief of police says it’s an open-and-shut case, but Sergeant Setter — labelled as a misfit by his fellow officers — disagrees.

Homicide becomes more than an academic study for Toronto criminologist Ted Boudreau when his own suburban home is burglarized, with deadly results. Was his computer targetted because of his interest in a secretive biker gang? Teds attempts to deal with the aftermath bring him into conflict with family, police detectives, and the Crown prosecutor assigned to the caseas well as with his university colleagues, whose penal philosophy Ted no longer believes can stand the test of real-life experience.