National Network for Equitable Library Service

In the 1980s the Bureaucracy eliminated all knowledge of the past in the wake of a nuclear holocaust. In 2030 André Gervais discovers two metal boxes containing manuscripts, diaries, and other personal papers that have somehow survived and asks an old man, John Wellfleet, to use these documents to discover the past.

Winter blankets Montreal, while a bookseller and her lover dream of Prague. As the narrator's open marriage becomes the subject of a novel, reality blurs with fiction, and she tries to reconcile the need to create with the desire for love and sex. Written in stark, spare prose, Prague is an introspective and intimate account of the making of a novel from life.

A small plane was blown up in an act of sabotage over Northern Quebec, Canada. The incident was quickly analyzed and termed a mechanical failure. The case was closed in a rush. A young actor from Montreal dies in Afghanistan, killed by a missile from a drone. His death opens up wounds and discussions that are not in the public domain. These two seemingly disparate events form the backbone of a compelling contemporary 'ideas thriller,' set in Montreal's Main district and in the blue-green mountains of Kandahar.

As a third generation logger, a life in the bush is all Joe Adler has ever known. He works, he hunts; he provides. But when a man dies on his watch, and his wife abandons their young family for writing school in Toronto, Joe must face the consequences of his hard-living ways. Left alone to care for his seven year old daughter, he enlists the help of Jenny Lacroix, the wife of the man whose death he might be responsible for. Resentful and angry, and his conscience over Jenny's husband far from clear, Joe threatens to spiral down the path of fury, booze, and violence that did his father in.

For readers of Paulette Jiles and Gil Adamson, a 19th-century tale of a father's greatest regret and path to redemption Devastated at his wife's death and stricken at raising two girls and a boy on his own, Arthur Delaney places his children in a Halifax orphanage and runs off to join the Union Army in the American Civil War. The trauma of battle and three years in a disease-ridden prisoner-of-war prison changes his perspective on life and family. After the war, Delaney odd-jobs his way up the American east coast and catches a schooner to Halifax.

For readers of The Thursday Murder Club comes a lighthearted mystery with an incredible sense of place A swine barn explodes near a lakeside town, putting veterinarian Dr. Peter Bannerman on a collision course with murder and a startling conspiracy. Peter is an odd duck, obsessed with logic and measurable facts, an obsession he puts to good use in his veterinary practice. When a murder is connected to the swine barn explosion and his friend Tom becomes the prime suspect, Peter feels compelled to put his reasoning skills, and his dog Pippin's remarkable nose, to use to help clear him.

It's early spring 1948 and Lane arrives in New Denver to find that her friend, Peter Barisoff, is not at home. Instead, in a nearby meadow, she encounters Tom, an Indigenous man in search of his ancestral lands. Lane is intrigued. Unfortunately, once Peter returns home, the day takes a gloomy turn when the trio uncovers human remains next to Peter's garden, and Lane must tell her husband, Inspector Darling, that she's inadvertently stumbled into his professional domain—again.Back in Nelson, the Vitalis, Lane and Darling's favourite restaurateurs, are victims of arson.

'Smart, beautifully written, and really, really, funny satire featuring Arthur Beauchamp.' –– The Globe and Mail Finalist for the Stephen Leacock Humour Award In this zany political thriller, the leader of the despotic Asian nation of Bhashyistan declares war on Canada after a limo bearing its visiting delegation is blown sky-high in snowy Ottawa. The suspected assassin, Abzal Erzhan, a Bhashyistani revolutionary, disappears. Was he kidnapped, was he murdered, or did he get away scot-free? Enter famed trial lawyer Arthur Beauchamp, dragged from retirement on his idyllic Gulf Island farm.

Complex, fascinating, and fun … Kill All the Judges is a classic crime work, from an author heralded as one of Canada's best, and with good reason.' — Shelf Life Finalist for the Stephen Leacock Humour Prize Is someone systematically killing the judges called to the British Columbian bar? At least one has been murdered and several have disappeared. Arthur Beauchamp returns from retirement once again to take on the case, this time defending his former nemesis, backwoods poet Cudworth Brown.

'Part Real Housewives, part grown-up Nancy Drew.' — Missy Marston, author of Bad Ideas When Jane's partner goes missing she needs to find out if he's in danger while also contending with the politics of a large international film festival: Hollywood power brokers, Russian oil speculators, Chinese propagandists, and a board chair who seemingly has it out for her. Jane has been appointed interim director of the Worldwide Toronto Film Festival after her boss has been removed for sexual harassment.