National Network for Equitable Library Service

Dany has to uncover his family's secret in order to save his father.

In the Great Fire of Smyrna (1922), Kivelli lost everything: her family, her friends, her social position, and her future. Stranded in the Greek city of Piraeus, populated by gangsters, prostitutes, fortune tellers, and other refugees, she finds herself living in the broom closet of a brothel. Luckily, the sound of her singing voice captures the attention of a local taverna owner, who suggests she come with him and perform for his customers.

Twenty-eight-year-old Will, a teacher living in Montreal's gay village, has spent the last few months recovering from a breakup with his first serious boyfriend, Max. He has resumed his search for companionship, but has he truly moved on? Will's mother Katherine - one of the few people, perhaps the only one, who loves him unconditionally - is also in recovery, from a bout with colon cancer that haunts her body and mind with the possibility of relapse.

Flying with Amelia chronicles the dreams and struggles of a cast of unforgettable characters through more than a hundred years and across a vast landscape as they face challenges and find courage, sometimes in surprising places. In 1847 a famine ship arrives in Canada from Ireland, and here, the tale begins, weaving through generations and time. A St. John’s boy learns the finer points of communication while his employer receives the first transatlantic wireless signal. A British Home Child finds sorrow and solace on an Ontario farmstead.

For Bluma Goldberg, the teenaged daughter of a Jewish bootlegger, Prohibition-era Chicago is the furthest place one can get from law and temperance. Her first steps into womanhood are made all the more uncertain by the dangers of her father’s shadowy world. Decades later, her loving son, Joey Krueger, a man coming off his own share of emotional turmoil, remains mystified by the person he’s known all his life. Who is she really?

To all who knew him, Etienne Morneau lived unremarkably. Raised in an orphanage, his parents unknown, people considered him reserved, unfeeling, and antisocial. His death would have gone unnoticed were it not for his art and writing discovered afterwards. His secret drawings are proof of his artistic genius and his memoir, written in a kaleidoscope of thought and arranged like a dictionary, reveal the depth of his humanity and the uniqueness of his perception.

When Erika Drake, of the Westmount Drakes, met and fell in love with Marc Reiser, a Jew from northern Ontario, their respective worlds were turned upside down. Set against the backdrop of the first three years of the Second World War.

Doubting Yourself to the Bone is a story about the nature of grief, about what it means to be a parent in the face of great sorrow, the idea of re-invented love and hope. Set in Paris and a small town in the Canadian Rockies, the novel is propelled forward by a horrific car crash that reverberates for the victim's husband and daughters.

In telling the intersecting stories of Edmund, Teresa, and Joel - all of whom leave trails of hopeful chaos in their wake - Greg Kearney has painted a blackly comic, yet surprisingly earnest, portrait of modern loneliness.