National Network for Equitable Library Service

Montgomery “Monty” Haaviko has done the crimes—robbery, assault, embezzlement, arson, smuggling, attempted murder—and has lived the criminal lifestyle, where nothing is permanent. Crime may look easy, but a career criminal can’t even follow a TV series. For Monty the endless danger and fear, along with a hard-to-kick drug habit, became too much. Now, all he wants to do is settle down in a quiet Winnipeg neighbourhood with his wife, his baby son, his dog, and his pet mouse, and try something new: an honest job and life as an ordinary decent citizen.

"There are people who break open and make a new, bigger, self. But some of us are ... brittle." When stress causes an old trauma to surface, Lucy, a longtime community organizer, teacher and anti-poverty activist, loses control of her life. On probation and living on the streets of Halifax's North End, all she has left is friends. Faithful friends like Judith, her lawyer, who is helping her take back her life.

Anxiety is the watchword at most school reunions, with side-eye comparisons of greying hair and extra pounds around the belly. Not our Randy Craig. She's more concerned with resolving a 20 year old CanLit scandal and catching a ruthless killer. While helping her best friend Denise organize their 20 year reunion at the University of Alberta, Randy's tumultuous past as a graduate student comes rushing into the present as she faces off against old ghosts and imminent death.

Demoralized by his job and dissatisfied with his life, Mark punches the clock with increasing indifference. He wanted to help people; he’d always believed that as social worker he would be able to make a difference in people’s lives. But after six years of bureaucracy and pushing paper Mark has lost hope. All that changes when he meets Bumi, an Indonesian restaurant worker. Moved from his small fishing village and sent to a residential school under the authoritarian Suharto regime, Bumi’s radical genius and obsessive-compulsive disorder raise suspicion among his paranoid neighbours.

Monty Haaviko, Winnipeg's favourite househusband, babysitter, and ex-con, is running for chief of Winnipeg's new police commision. It's almost honest work, except that he's been bribed to throw the election to his opponent, an ex-cop stooge of wealthy businessman, Cornelius Devanter. At the same time, Devanter's archenemy has paid Monty an even bigger bribe to ensure the ex-cop loses. Monty is happy to oblige both, but one on the campaign trail, he realises the good he can do for the citizens of Winnipeg if he wins. Meanwhile, all is not quiet on the Haaviko home front.

Bill and Julie live in thrifty middle-class wedded bliss with their 12-year-old son Sean. Julie brings home the bacon while Bill keeps house and frets over his never-ending PhD thesis: an anthropological study of the role of men in society. All is relatively well until Julie's ex-fiancé, the dashing and successful Blake Morgan, returns to Winnipeg with his wife and kids. While Bill takes solace in Blake's premature grey and pot belly, next to Blake's professional success Bill feels emasculated and questions what it means to be a man especially a domesticated one.

If This Is Freedom continues the story of struggle for Loyalist settlers in Nova Scotia after the American Revolutionary War. In the black settlement of Birchtown, times are especially hard for the former slaves. They face the difficulties of a hardscrabble existence and continued discrimination from their white counterparts. Like many desperate Birchtowners, Sarah Redmond has signed an indenture agreement, a work contract meant to protect her rights and ensure a living wage.

The Daughter Who Walked Away describes the tribulations of three generations of Iranian women. In 1919, a woman who can no longer afford to raise her nine-year-old niece, Batoul, marries the girl to the young son of a Shirazi family. Ashamed and traumatized, yet resourceful and resolute, Batoul rears her children to expect hardships and to endure them discreetly. Despite her best intentions, she plants the seeds of dysfunction. In 1967, Batoul's youngest, Mojegan, pursues a nursing career in Tehran. While intelligent and ambitious, Mojegan is naïve about intimate relationships.

This book is a moving contribution to the growing body of fictional writings about migrants and racialized women across transnational borders. An authentic description of events and stories that is profoundly touching.

Ten-year-old Cassie lives with her working-class family in 1919 Winnipeg. The Great War and Spanish Influenza have taken their toll, and workers in the city are frustrated with low wages and long hours. When they orchestrate a general strike, Cassie--bright, determined and very bored at school--desperately wants to help. She begins volunteering for the strike committee as a papergirl, distributing the strike bulletin at Portage and Main, and from her corner, she sees the strike take shape.