National Network for Equitable Library Service

Sky Rayburn, a somewhat eccentric but well-respected veterinarian, always had a troubled relationship with her daughter Moira. When Moira is killed in a car accident, Skye has no choice but to take in her two-year-old grandson Duncan. Maybe this time she will "get it right." Over the years, Skye creates a diary: Life Lessons for Duncan.

A horrific betrayal sets the destiny of the Alevizopoulos family, farmers who dare to choose a side in WWI and the Greco-Turkish war. Survival might mean leaving what is most precious: home. Finding Callidora follows four generations of the family as they carry and pass on the scars of the past and their need to find the place where they belong.

Margaret Rudley has finally persuaded her husband Trevor to take a vacation, a week-long canoeing expedition in Northern Ontario. Rudley hates the idea of leaving the Pleasant, the beautiful old country inn they've run for over a quarter of a century, but he is reluctant to deny her a cherished dream. They set off, accompanied by long-time guests Elizabeth Miller, Edward Simpson, Norman and Geraldine Phipps-Walker, and a pair of neophytes, Vern Peters and Eric Turnbull.

A young woman from Montreal follows the geese to the Inuit North in this deeply-felt witnessing of contemporary Indigenous life, as shaped by decades of colonial rule and government neglect. Having worked in the North for years, Juliana Léveillé-Trudel offers a portrait of a people undaunted by institutionalized racism, but in many cases broken by domestic violence, corporate mining, and the corrupting presence of summer workers up from the South in search of big paycheques.

After experiencing the disintegration of their parents' marriage, Claudine and Janine Beaulieu's lives are further complicated when their mother Odette remarries an Anglophone and they are forced to "turn English." Now, years later, Claudine has made a career out of documentary filmmaking, focusing on the painful lives of other women; Janine, a wife and mother, questions her feelings for her sister's boyfriend; and Odette succumbs to her Valium and rum addiction in a luxury retirement villa in Jamaica.

Montreal's Hochelaga district is in the grips of gentrification and its drug dealers and prostitutes are fast disappearing. Inspector Vanier, investigating the brutal death of a drug dealer, suspects the neighbourhood cleanup may involve murdering the unwanted. The local Police Commander is only concerned with declining crime rates and his improving career prospects, and is willing to go easy on a local militia group that is expanding its influence. When Vanier is suspended for brutality, he is on his own.

Inspector Luc Vanier is drinking his way through Christmas Eve when he is called out to investigate the murder of five homeless people. His investigation takes him into the backrooms of the Catholic Church, the boardrooms of Montreal's business elite and the soup kitchens and back alleys of street life in winter.

A Guatemalan journalist is kidnapped, and the only message from her kidnappers is the murder of her lawyer. In a race against time, Luc Vanier sets about reconstructing her life, through the sordid world of human trafficking, the secretive underbelly of a multinational mining corporation, and the hiding places of desperate refugees. When Vanier is brutally warned off the investigation, he throws away the rule book and goes after the villains with a vengeance.

Worlds collide when a naïve young heiress takes a tumble for a bootlegger with a murderous temper and his business partner falls in love with Montreal, the way Americans are prone to do. One world war has ended and a second is in the wings. In the space between, the neon-powered city on the St. Lawrence is notorious for its lavish nightlife, obsessive gambling and evident corruption.

How to survive the unthinkable? This is the question nine-year-old Tom has to face after witnessing his father kill his mother and then turn the gun on himself. After the horrific event, Tom refuses to speak. At first, he moves in with his childless Aunt Sonya, but she is ill equipped to deal with the traumatized boy. Before long, Tom is forced to move again, this time to downtown Toronto, where he shares a rundown house with his mercurial Aunt Rose and his reckless yet endearing Uncle Will. Claremont is a gripping story of survival.