National Network for Equitable Library Service

Errol the adventurous little mouse takes to the sky when he meets a young girl, Natasha, playing with a toy airplane. Later, when Errol is left alone, he decides to fly Natasha's toy plane and begins a magical journey that takes him back in time to one night in 1940. He meets up with Dan, a radio operator on a full-sized Hudson bomber, and gets to accompany the crew on their late night, top-secret flight across the Atlantic. When an enemy plane appears over Ireland and threatens the safety of crew and craft, only Errol can save them from disaster.

Where in this racket can Nanny be? When you get invited to a kitchen party at your grandmother's house, there may be certain things you don't expect to find: like moose and foxes and bears! In this exciting, playful romp through a Newfoundland kitchen party, there are an increasing number of animal party crashers…and one fun-loving Nanny smack dab in the middle of it all.

The palette of the illustrations includes lots of strong reds and blues and blacks. The texture brings a lot of flow to the sky and water. And the shapes are often playful, even dreamy. As Alphonse saws the wood to build his shack, his long hair flows out behind him, and a bird joins him on his perch (which he's about to cut off); when he's astonished, exclamation points form a ring around his head. This whimsy cheer aligns with the tone of 'The Ice Shack's' adventure.

At times irreverent and darkly humorous, Mercy of St. Jude is a story of profound loss, and the unforeseen effects that secrets can have on those we love. When Mercedes Hann dies, her great-niece, Annie Byrne, returns to Newfoundland for the funeral. With the family gathered to say goodbye, Annie searches for the truth by trying to unravel the secrets that shaped Mercedes’ life, and, ultimately, her own. But can Annie trust the truth? And, in the end, whose truth is it?

Wrecked Upon This Shore is a bold new novel from Kate Story that follows and will build upon the success of her critically-acclaimed debut Blasted. At the novel's centre is Pearl Lewis: abused by her father at a young age, she is wild, charismatic, and damaged.The story moves back and forth in time. We follow Pearl through the eyes of her adult son Stephen, but also from the viewpoint of Mouse, the girl she befriends and falls in love with as a teenager. Mandy, christened Mouse by the seductive, aggressive Pearl, had a relatively sheltered upbringing in Newfoundland.

In Deluded Your Sailors, the culture industry is a weapon, a victim, and an opportunity, depending on the perspective of two main figures: the unsteady but perceptive Nichole Wright, whose discovery of crucial documents threatens a government-funded tourism project, and the politely menacing, shape-shifting Reverend Elias Winslow. And in parallel storytelling: an early eighteenth-century girl, daughter of a nameless prostitute, winds up first as object of depraved pleasure, espionage agent and courier, and finally captain of a Salem trading vessel.

Finton Moon is an unusual child who feels like an alien. A gentle soul growing up in the rough town of Darwin, Newfoundland, he lives with his strict Catholic mother and grandmother, lawless father and three older brothers. While his grandmother has him "right ready for the seminary," Finton's interest lies in books, nature and solitude. He is secretly in love with the unattainable Mary Connelly, while eschewing the attention of the equally misfit Alicia Dredge, who adores him from afar.

After her mother dies, fourteen year old Zoe is whisked away to Newfoundland to live with a father she has never met. In the tiny village of Port au Choix, she gets caught up in solving the mystery of finding the habitation site of the Maritime Archaic Indian, an ancient culture that lived in the area more than four thousand years ago. At the same time, Zoe has her own mystery to solve. Going through her mother's journals, she discovers secrets that baffle and confuse her. Could Zoe's life have been nothing more than an elaborate lie?

Levi Conley has spent his life making a hard living off the water. Fishing defines who he is. But after being betrayed by his business partners, who are also his brothers, he flees out west for the “big bucks” promised by work as an apprentice welder. The work is well-paid, as promised, but it is also hazardous. And there is the unexpected collaboration with Jon Smith, a young native and contemporary artist; Levi respects his craftsmanship but balks at his politics.

Strays, Ed Kavanagh’s first work of fiction since the award-winning novel The Confessions of Nipper Mooney, features ten memorable stories that explore the lives of those who somehow find themselves adrift. In “The Strayaway Child” a ninety-year-old woman recalls her girlhood during the Great Depression when she was a “sad, silent little nobody”; in “The Red Merc” a boy learns deep truths about his often absent father; and in “The Wind” a Newfoundlander in a big Canadian city struggles with issues of identity.