National Network for Equitable Library Service

Brilliant is a collection of short stories set in Abu Dhabi, capital of the United Arab Emirates, a polyglot city where cultures collide and converge, where money -- and sometimes justice -- is no object, where in less than two generations towers have replaced tents. In these stories, a cast of characters -- an Egyptian pastry chef, a Filipina nanny, a Canadian nurse, a lusty French urban planner, a newly destitute British couple, and a cross-dressing Emirati -- navigate this land of sudden plenty, discovering the limits of freedom, money, tolerance and their own good sense.

Another summer, and The Pleasant Inn is filled to capacity. This season is especially exciting, as perennial guests Miss Miller and her long-time admirer Mr. Simpson have chosen to marry at the Inn. The guests and staff are clamouring to be involved, particularly Bonnie Lawrence, a young wife adrift while her husband is off fishing. Margaret and Trevor Rudley are delighted to host the wedding, and barring Mrs. Lawrence's obsessive interfering, everything is set to go off without a hitch.

A movement in the sonata form traditionally comprises thee sections -- exposition, development and recapitulation -- which explore two themes according to set key relationships. In the 1920s dancer/choreographer Martha Graham and her musical collaborator Louis Horst developed a modern dance structure based on the sonata form and the inevitable change that comes from confrontation.

The stories in Night Watch, a new collection from Susan Zettell, delve deep into dark waters. Zettell looks unflinchingly at life's bountiful sorrows: the loss felt by abandoned children, the sudden intrusion of sickness or death, the fierce love suffered by the mother of a troubled child, the journey away from home and the shining, difficult path of return. These are stories about rising to the surface, about bravely striking out and beginning again after loss.

In his heyday, Jacques Normand was France's Public Enemy Number One, a glamorous rogue who captured the imagination of the entire country. As he led the police on a merry chase, he also made the career of Commissaire Louis Moreau, former head of the Paris Anti-gangs unit...now the commander of a small Police Judiciare force in a sleepy border town. After escaping from prison, Normand fled Paris and has been neither seen nor heard from for more than ten years.

This debut short-story collection showcases Mary Hagey's uncanny ability to capture the essence of being human. These richly satisfying stories, told with wry humour, intelligence, and verve take us into fictional territory that is at once utterly original and as real as the world around us. These are people we know. Some of them might have fared better in life if they'd had different parents perhaps, or married someone else, or worked at pleasing themselves instead of others, or if unforeseen circumstances hadn't tripped them up and held them back.

One summer afternoon in 1954 a jealous four-year-old girl named Cherry Ring bites her baby brother Pete on the cheek. She bites him so hard that little Pete needs a skin graft to repair the damage and will have a scar for the rest of his life. Cherry knows what's she's done is wrong, and she really is sorry. But sorry isn't going to be good enough. The bite marks the beginning of a troubled relationship between the siblings that will last a lifetime. As Pete gets older he perfects an ability to completely ignore his sister.

Every day desperate people at the mercy of smugglers flee conflict zones, crossing the Mediterranean in rickety boats in the hopes of using Greece as the conduit to a better life elsewhere. Thousands perish in the attempt. Those who survive face yet more challenges, for the Greeks themselves, in an economic crisis worse than any in living memory, have neither the resources nor the will to play host to the constant influx of refugees. In The Brink of Freedom we see how worlds collide when a young boy goes missing from a refugee camp in Athens.

There's a deadly August heatwave and Inspector Aliette Nouvelle is looking forward to her upcoming vacation. She's been working hard, without much reward. Denied promotion to the coveted Commissaire's post -- which seemed practically guaranteed before the dubious Jacques Normand affair -- she now finds herself working under the new acting Commissaire, Claude Neon, her former assistant. It's hard not to be bitter.

Set in post-war Communist Hungary, in the fictional town of Békes, Never, Again is the story of seven-year-old Tomi Wolfstein, the son of Holocaust survivors who have never told him anything about their past experiences in the concentration camps.