National Network for Equitable Library Service

Alani Baum, a non-binary photographer and teacher, hasn't seen their mother since they ran away with their girlfriend when they were seventeen - almost thirty years ago. But when Alani gets a call from a doctor at the assisted living facility where their mother has been for the last five years, they learn that their mother's dementia has worsened and appears to have taken away her ability to speak. As a result, Alani suddenly find themselves running away again - only this time, they're running back to their mother.

A soucouyant is an evil spirit in Caribbean folklore, and a symbol here of the distant and dimly remembered legacies that continue to haunt the Americas. This first novel set in Ontario, in a house near the Scarborough Bluffs, focuses on a Canadian-born son who despairingly abandons his Caribbean-born mother suffering from dementia. The son returns after two years to confront his mother but also a young woman who now mysteriously occupies the house.

A bold and breathtaking anthology of queer Indigenous speculative fiction, edited by the author of Jonny Appleseed. This exciting and groundbreaking fiction anthology showcases a number of new and emerging 2SQ (Two-Spirit and queer) Indigenous writers from across Turtle Island. These visionary authors show how queer Indigenous communities can bloom and thrive through Utopian narratives that detail the vivacity and strength of 2SQness throughout its plight in the maw of settler colonialism's histories.

Cassandra Wilson's life isn't easy. She's spent most of her teen years taking care of her much younger brother Chris, working to help support her widowed mother, coping with high school and its pressures, and still grieving over the death of her beloved father. Her life begins to change once she learns that her mother has been lying to her about working overtime and taking Saturday courses because she's secretly dating a man whom Cassandra fears will try to take the place of her father.

Written by a Mohawk Institute Residential School survivor, this is a fierce and candid story that reveals the heartbreaking trauma of that tragic time in our history. The author portrays how the ongoing impact of the residential schools confinements has affected Indigenous communities over several generations and has contributed to many social problems that continue to exist today.

Janwar Gupta, a brilliant but neurotic medical student intern, has a patient die under suspicious circumstances at the start of his two-week anaesthesiology placement at the Ottawa Civic Hospital.

Autumn Dean unexpectedly returns home from Europe to her father's ranch in the Okanagan Valley, where she reconnects with Bruce Langdon, a stoic childhood friend grown into an accomplished rancher. Autumn and Bruce's budding romance is halted by the revival of an intergenerational grudge between their two families that is shrouded in mystery. Autumn is insistent on uncovering the root of the hostility: a forbidden romance between her mother and Bruce's father that had devastating consequences.

My father drowned in the Aegean Sea, fifty nautical miles northeast of the port of Piraeus. When it happened, my mother and I were at home in Toronto. It was early evening in Greece, afternoon for us, and I was at school when she found out. Niko Kiriakos, tentative heir to the ailing Calypso Shipping fleet, always suspected he was cursed. Following his sudden disappearance, his wife, Anna, and daughter, Zoe, are left adrift. Unmoored, they begin to test the boundaries of their lives, struggling with issues of loyalty, identity and what it means to be a family.

Agathe and Réjean Lapointe are about to celebrate their twentieth wedding anniversary when Réjean's beloved Chevy Silverado is found abandoned at the side of the road--with no trace of Réjean. As her hope dwindles, Agathe falls in with her spirited coworker, Debbie, who teaches Agathe about rock and roll, and with Martin Bureau, the one man who might know the truth about Réjean's fate. Set against the landscape of rural Acadia, I Am a Truck is a funny and moving tale about the possibilities and impossibilities of love and loyalty.

First published in 1926, Madge Macbeth's Shackles is a controversial novel that examines the power dynamics of early Canadian feminism. The book exposes the struggles of middle-class Naomi Lennox between her role as dutiful wife to unambitious and proper Arthur and her desire for acceptance of her writing career. Filled with dialogue and debate that expose early twentieth century limitations and opportunities for both women and men, Shackles is a colourful and surprising depiction of first-wave feminism in Canada.