National Network for Equitable Library Service

"Valentine Schwartz had it all: his girlfriend was the most beautiful girl in school, he came from a rich family, and his best friend, Huddie Rosen, all but worshiped him. Although Valentine wasn't the brightest student, no one could have forseen him falling off the roof of his north Toronto high school in a suit of medieval armour, and dying at the tender age of seventeen. Twenty-five years later Huddie Rosen, now living in Prague, has more important questions on his mind. Can he save his marriage and family?

Urgle is not a good hunter; he's not good at much of anything, particularly being a big brother to Cubby. But he has no family to fall back on: Urgle and Cubby live among the Brothers of the Ikkuma Pit. One by one, generations of boys have been abandoned as babies by their mothers to fend for themselves in the Pit. They spend their lives struggling to survive in an all-boys village. They don't know what lies outside the Pit, because no one has ever ventured out and returned to tell about it. Until now.

A robber holds up a Canadian bank but instead of stealing money he takes from each person the item of most sentimental value. As time passes the loss of these items have a dramatic effect on the victims: one discovers God under her sofa, another is attacked by her lion tattoo when it comes to life, & the wife of our narrator starts to shrink.

A collection of stories that seeks to examine the dark side of ordinary people.

It's taken 400 years of travel, but the starship Venture has finally arrived at its destination. Beta Earth is an uninhabited, untouched planet that seventeen-year-old engineer Ursa has to colonise with her crewmates. The first night Ursa is on Beta Earth her world goes out of control when she encounters a dead body. She's positive she saw a large creature with sharp teeth, something that shouldn't even be on the planet, but nobody believes her.

The year is 1738. Jacques Lafargue, a wide-eyed young Frenchman, arrives in New France aboard the Saint Michel. But before his Canadian adventure has a chance to begin, he is detained at Quebec harbour by suspicious port officials.

Losing weight over the summer gains Serena some popularity, but it also means discovering first-hand the pains of being a 15-year-old girl in a world that both sexualizes and shames young women. After narrowly avoiding exploitation in a short-lived relationship, Serena aligns with a new friend who was the victim of an explicit image that was shared at school. When Serena finds herself in a relationship with a new guy, she is surprised to find a different set of expectations. But have her previous experiences damaged her too much to make it work?

Naomi is in Dublin, Ireland, visiting her grandparents as her thirteenth birthday approaches. Adult residents of Ireland have begun losing their memories as the result of a virus that has hit the country, causing many to wander the streets disoriented, sometimes violent. As Naomi keeps a written record of her experiences, she fears that one day the virus will hit her and her young friends, too. But what caused the virus? The answer may have something to do with strange, otherworldly beings who are starting to pop up unexpectedly.

Cameron Dodds has just turned thirty. A writer, he get his ideas from the lives of others, often borrowing stories from the patients of his workplace, the Salvation Army Treatment Centre. When one of the patients, Darrel Greene, hangs himself, Cameron sees a great opportunity for a story -- maybe even a novel. He begins to research Darrel's past, and decides to visit his sister, June, a grown woman with Down's Syndrome.

Lillie Dempster of Saint John, New Brunswick, often imagines herself on the big screen. It is the one fantastic escape she can afford from her tragic daily life. In the burgeoning early years of the twentieth century, Lillie is a lot like the distressed damsels from the silent films she loves. Orphaned by the Great War and the Spanish influenza at fourteen, Lillie is forced to move in with her upstairs neighbour, Frank. She finds, however, that life does not get much better as a pretty young girl who draws unwanted interest from men wherever she goes.