National Network for Equitable Library Service

A writer observes Hasidic Montreal and a diverse community.

R.U. Singh has always known he is destined to live the life of an English country squire. After a few false starts, in Bombay, Thunder Bay, and Toronto, he settles into a comfortable existence as a small-town Ontario lawyer, much solicited for the diversity he lends committees and conclaves. But--lest he forget--he is accepted only at the whim of his woman in white, a commanding university administrator, and by her whim can also fall. Mr.

Young and homeless on the streets of Toronto, a fugitive from an unquiet past that has followed him from his hometown in Northern Ontario, Benjamin Doheney is sustained by unusual sources of strength: his devotion to Sanskrit, the ancient literary language of India; the love he shares with Aditi--a PhD student in Sanskrit at the University of Toronto--and his vision of a future with her in India, a land he has never seen.

The poet Li Po has journeyed across the world and perhaps across centuries. When he comes across a bag of money in a downtown parking lot, we also meet the delinquent who lost the bag of money in the first place. The assemblage in Jack Hannan's first novel are driven by wordsmithery, trickery, and flights of such fancy for an instant, the signal comes in clearly, and we might all step into this world where anything is possible.

The Girl Who Stole Everything is the story of a mother and daughter in the Polish countryside, and a father and son on Vancouver's downtown east side. In these old and new worlds a mystery lurks. In Poland, a house stands empty on a village square seventy-five years after its owners were killed. In Vancouver, the aftermath of a murder in an east side pawn shop overturns the life of the victim's niece.

Faith, Rhoda, and Erica, affectionately known the Three Graces, are members of a liberal Jewish congregation in contemporary Montreal. Rabbi Nate wants a grand new synagogue; Marty, the congregation's treasurer, harbours a raunchy secret; and Melly is a hard-nosed Holocaust survivor with an agenda.

Morgan Turner's grief over her sister's brutal murder has become a rut, an everyday horror she is caught in along with her estranged parents and chilly older brother. In search of a way out, she delves the depths of a factory abattoir, classic horror cinema, and the Canadian criminal justice system, as it tries her sister's killer and former lover, who is arguing that he is "Not Criminally Responsible" for his actions because of a mental disease.

A man is shot by a hunter in the Eastern Townships of Quebec, and his sons want justice.

This autobiographical novel traces the journey of a woman from her youth in Socialist Eastern Europe to her transplanted life in Montreal, Canada. She is a precocious, thoughtful child, whose early life in Romania is marked by the scarcities of the time and the political games needed to survive, but she is not unhappy. Placed around her family's house are hives--the bees discourage the secret police from visiting too often--and the bees provide both a childish diversion and an overarching metaphor for departure and home.

A breathtaking literary debut, Love Letters of the Angels of Death begins as a young couple discover the remains of his mother in her mobile home. The rest of the family fall back, leaving them to reckon with the messy, unexpected death. By the time the burial is over, they understand this will always be their role: to liaise with death on behalf of people they love. They are living angels of death. All the major events in their lives – births, medical emergencies, a move to a northern boomtown, the theft of a veteran’s headstone – are viewed from this ambivalent angle.