National Network for Equitable Library Service

An obsessive historian's quest for the remains of the founder of Quebec, Samuel de Champlain, ends in murder. Could a secret buried with Champlain for nearly 400 years be so dreadful that someone would kill to protect it? Although he is supposed to be on leave, Chief Inspector Gamache cannot walk away from a crime that threatens to ignite long-smoldering tensions between the English and the French. Meanwhile, he is receiving disquieting letters from the village of Three Pines, where beloved Bistro owner Olivier was recently convicted of murder.

A stranger is found murdered in the village bistro and antiques store and all clues point to bistro owner Olivier being the killer. Once again, Chief Inspector Gamache and his team are called in to strip back layers of lies, exposing both treasures and rancid secrets long buried--but not forgotten.

A vast abandoned home. A chilling séance. A sudden death. To Chief Inspector Armand Gamache, it's the stuff of an old novel - but when he discovers the victim was murdered, a sinister shadow falls over the town of Three Pines, and an old secret, buried deeper than the dead, returns once more to haunt the living.

<p>Coyote Columbus story: Thomas King uses a bag of literary tricks to shatter the stereotypes surrounding Columbus's voyages. In doing so, he invites children to laugh with him at the crazy antics of Coyote, who unwittingly allows Columbus to bring about the downfall of her human friends. And he makes the point that history is influenced by the culture of the reporter.</p>

The seated child. With a single powerful image, Deborah Ellis draws our attention to nine children and the situations they find themselves in, often through no fault of their own. In each story, a child makes a decision and takes action, be that a tiny gesture or a life-altering choice. Jafar is a child laborer in a chair factory and longs to go to school. Sue sits on a swing as she and her brother wait to have a supervised visit with their father at the children's aid society. Gretchen considers the lives of concentration camp victims during a school tour of Auschwitz.

Four sisters and their mother explore their fears while teeny ghost people dress up in fragments of their children's clothes. A somewhat-ghost tends the family garden. Deep in the mountains, a shape-shifting mother must sift through her ancestors' gifts and the complexities of love when one boy is born with a beautiful set of fox ears and another is not. In the wake of her elderly mother's tragic death, a daughter tries to make sense of the online dating profile she left behind.

While sorting through the possessions of his recently deceased neighbour, Harold Johnson discovers an old, handwritten manuscript containing epic stories composed in an obscure Swedish dialect. Together, they form The Björkan Sagas. The first saga tells of three Björkans, led by Juha the storyteller, who set out from their valley to discover what lies beyond its borders. Their quest brings them into contact with the devious story-trader Anthony de Marchand, a group of gun-toting aliens in search of Heaven and an ethereal Medicine Woman named Lilly.

Set in the Eastern Caribbean at the beginning of the 20th century, No Pain Like This Body describes the perilous existence of a poor rice-growing family during the August rainy season. Their struggles to cope with illness, a drunken and unpredictable father and the violence of the elements end in unbearable loss. Through vivid, vertiginous prose and with brilliant economy and originality, Ladoo creates a fearful world of violation and grief, in the face of which even the most despairing efforts to endure stand out as acts of courage.

In fierce prose and poetic fragments, Leanne Betasamosake Simpson's Noopiming braids together humor, piercing detail, and a deep, abiding commitment to Anishinaabe life to tell stories of resistance, love, and joy.

Set on five continents and spanning decades, We Two Alone traces the arc and evolution of the Chinese immigrant experience. A young laundry boy risks his life, pretending to be a girl to play organized hockey in Canada in the 1920s. A Canadian couple is caught in when Shanghai is succumbs to violence during the Second Sino-Japanese War. A family struggles to buy a home in South Africa in the early years of apartheid. An actor in New York struggles to keep his career alive while yearning to reconcile with his estranged wife.