National Network for Equitable Library Service

Ledger of the Open Hand looks at the intimate power of money and emotional debt through the eyes of a woman trying to grab hold of her own life. Beholden to a shrewd friend and burdened by family obligations and guilt, Meriel-Claire (MC) finally stumbles into what she’s been missing. She falls in love and finds her calling as a debt counsellor in the midst of a national financial crisis. But balancing the books for strangers is easier than reconciling her own complicated relationships. Regrets and deficits accumulate until MC must decide what she owes to those she loves.

Lila is dead. And the likely suspects are all men: her flash-in-the-pan literary husband, a washed up golf pro turned criminal with a cocaine habit, and two small-time thugs looking for the perfect score. As a crime novel for a new age, this is sex, drugs, and a story that unfolds as a map of bad intentions. In One Hit Wonders, Patrick Warner weaves an energetic tale that is part caper and partmurdermystery—relentlessly satiric, brutally funny, and obsessively readable

Shunned as an outsider and mistreated due to an undiagnosed learning disability, the young and imaginative Mari-Jen Delene retreats into silence. Around her, the fictional community of Ste. Noire, Cape Breton, hosts a vividly drawn cast of characters: the uncompromising and bitter Mother Superior; the dangerous Uncle Jule; the kind-hearted holocaust survivor Daniel Peter; and Mari-Jen’s rebellious and powerfully intelligent brothers, who sleep next to a map of the world they yearn to explore.

Based on a true story, Dancing in a Jar elaborates on the real-life love affair of a young couple who leave New York City to live in the outport community of St. Lawrence, Newfoundland, during the Great Depression when the husband, Don Poynter, accepts a management position in the town’s fluorspar mine.

Chad Pelley’s Four-Letter Words, his collection of award-winning short stories, presents us with characters haunted by one four-letter word or another: love, hate, lust, or loss. A father drives across the island hoping to find his missing son, a hitman considers the life of his female victim while watching her through his scope, a lonely man frequents hospital emergency rooms to diagnose the pain of others, and another clings to a buoy at sea.

Following an awkward sexual encounter under a wharf in outport Newfoundland, sixteen-year-old Rowena Savoury travels to St. John's for a secret abortion. But in the early 1970s, the procedure is illegal, and after complications, Rowena finds herself in a hospital being questioned by a young constable who is uncertain of how to proceed. Though she doesn't know it, Rowena's decision will ripple through the lives of an entire cast of characters.

In twelve dialed-in and exceptionally honed short stories, Terry Doyle presents an enduring assortment of characters channelled through the chain reactions of misfortune and redemption. A construction worker's future is bound to a feckless and suspicious workmate. A young woman's burgeoning social activism is constrained by hardship and the desperation of selling puppies online. A wedding guest recognizes a panhandler attending the reception. And a man crafts a concealed weapon with which to carry out his nightly circuit of paltry retribution.

Daisy's job is to be as unobtrusive as possible. But when her father suddenly leaves and her mother breaks down, Daisy's old life disappears, and she is set free in the rift created between her parents. Susie Taylor's sharp, quick-witted prose carries Daisy through a family cataclysm, relationships with boys, and her increasingly confusing feelings towards girls, especially Wanda. A refreshingly perceptive and honest debut, Even Weirder Than Before explores the nature of family, friendships, and sexual awakenings—and introduces one of Newfoundland's most exciting new writers.

When Ydessa Bloom's husband dies in a Cessna crash in a mid-Ontario lake, she rents a cottage at that lake, without really comprehending why, and stays for three months. There she meets three people who will influence her life dramatically—her landlady, a yoga teacher, and a precocious eight-year-old boy named Henry Rattle.

Eating Habits Of The Chronically Lonesome will leave you struck, yet, exhilarated. The exploration of starvation and consumption is at the core of each character; what does our hunger reveal about the state of our soft hearts? Ellen jumps rope on rooftops in the searing Korean sun. She has sworn off carbohydrates until she can find pants that fit. Damon resents his two dollar chow mein bought on a Montreal curb. There are half-eaten poutines on living room floors and greasy corn kernels stuck to chins. There are weak cocktails, cheap coffees, white plastic forks, and cigarettes.