National Network for Equitable Library Service

Reggie Scott has always prided himself on being a hard-hitting middle linebacker. But after he is involved in a play on which an opposing player is seriously injured, things change. Football doesn’t seem to matter so much when another boy is lying on the field, unable to move. When Reggie is accused of being a “dirty” player, he is forced to confront his guilt and decide if he can continue to play football.

During WWII, Jed’s English father serves as a fighter pilot overseas, while Jed and his mother move back to her Tsimshian community on Canada's west coast. When the military sets up a naval base in town, Jed is hired to help out, honored it seems, for both his father's bravery and his own native skills as a hunter. Presented with a military jacket, Jed finds an allegiance to his country and a pride in his mixed heritage that he's never felt before. But one day Jed's world is shattered.

The rooster has been kidnapped by the fox. What is the little hen to do? Go to the shed and build a paper wagon, that's what. With two Herculean mice in place of horses, the little hen heads for the fox's house deep in the forest. On the way, she is joined by a cat, a brick, a needle and a hairy spider, all desperate for a ride. Will they be able to complete the rescue?

Spending Christmas holidays in the wilderness with his ex-con aunt Mag is not Evan's idea of a good time. What's worse is that everyone he meets-even his new friend Cedar-is making a big deal about a loon that is hanging around on the lake. Why should Evan care about a dumb bird? When he discovers that the loon will die without help, he realizes he does care, but rescuing the wild bird turns out to be whole lot harder, and more dangerous, than he expected.

Something sinister happened to Mackenzie's twin sister Breanne the last time the two girls were in Ireland. Now they're back and the winter solstice is approaching. Breanne scoffs at their elderly relatives' tales of fair folk and banshees and the thin barrier between two worlds, but Mackenzie remembers what happened to Breanne five years before, at the summer solstice. Mackenzie is convinced the Otherworld is real, but is it a place of enchantment or enslavement for humans?

Vancouver Post gossip columnist Nicole Charles is only slightly put out when she discovers she’s been downsized. She figures she’s lucky to still have a job. It just means she needs to get a desk so she can work out of her apartment. But the desk she buys at auction proves to have more history than she’d anticipated, and the cache she finds in a secret compartment in that desk has links to a money-laundering ring, and an old school-mate. Will this be the story that lands Nicole a job on the news desk?

Rosario Gomez gave up gang life after his brother was killed in a street fight. Now all he wants to do is finish night school, be a good father and work hard enough at his job at the supermarket to get promoted. But when an old friend shows up to ask him why he left the gang, Rosario realizes he was fooling himself if he thought his violent past would just go away. When his pregnant girlfriend is hit in a drive-by shooting, Rosario has to make some hard choices. Revenge means a return to his old ways, something he swore he would never do.

Chloe thinks of herself as a normal teenage girl--if there's any such thing--until a formless alien being inhabits her body. The being is named Welkin and claims to be a Universal. Welkin has entered Chloe's body as part of a school project. Chloe agrees to let this weirdo observe her life for three days as long as Welkin doesn't interfere. Welkin tries to respect the non-interference portion of the agreement. But Welkin's stream of alien commentary as Chloe deals with boys, her coach and math homework has a comic, and sometimes enlightening, impact on Chloe's life.

Greg is an avid sailor. On a solo trip off the rugged coast, he stumbles upon a family of desperate refugees stranded in a lifeboat. The family convinces Greg to help them, and keep their existence secret. When his plan begins to unravel and the family flees into an oncoming storm, Greg goes after them.

Callie’s mother has chained herself to the neighbor’s tree and is living inside the tree house. She refuses to come down until the neighbor, Mr. Wilson, agrees to leave the tree standing. Soon reporters arrive, followed by an activist group called the singing Grannies and a gang of bikers, each group with their own wacky agenda. Callie doesn’t want to deal with any of them, but she needs to get her mother to come down from the tree so that her life can return to normal.