National Network for Equitable Library Service

Marilla Cuthbert was fifty-two years old when the plucky red-headed Anne Shirley came to live with her and her brother, Matthew, at Green Gables farm on Prince Edward Island. A seemingly cold and dour spinster, her heart eventually softens to the loveable orphan girl. But for over a century readers have wondered, who was Marilla before Anne? In Louise Michalos's remarkable debut novel, readers are introduced to a spirited eighteen-year-old Marilla Cuthbert--a girl not unlike Anne herself--who is desperately in love, and whose whole life is spread before her.

In Bronze-Age Crete, before horses were common on the island, potter's-daughter Clio continues to raise and train them even though an accident has left her unable to ride. After a series of difficult years in the community, the threat of raiders prompts the town's ruling Lady to demand the sacrifice of a maiden between ages twelve and fourteen, who will be selected at the spring equinox. Certain that she will be named the sacrifice, Clio struggles to go on with the ordinary activities of making pots and preparing the town's defenses.

Set in the tumultuous 1970s when women, African Americans, and the gay and lesbian community fought for equality while a "New Right" mobilized in defense of political conservatism and traditional family values, Memory's Shadow is the story of a family that survived the Holocaust and their ongoing engagement with that legacy long after World War II has ended. The novella deals with memory and mourning through the lens of the adult sisters in the Berk family.

Daria is a novel about a young immigrant girl trying to find her way in a new (but also very old) world, where patriarchal networks abound.

Bird Shadows is a playful tale of eccentricities, misconceptions, and misogyny. While working on a personal spiritual project, an irreverent artist encourages her religious sister to rethink the marriage that seems to be killing her soul. The people in the quaint little Bay of Fundy fishing village of Brood Bay will not soon forget the events of 1995. It was an outrage! A good Christian family was torn apart by the wicked influence of a mentally unbalanced, morally challenged artist.

Two high school friends take very different paths during WWII. The traditional Angie falls in love—forever—with a sailor, whose life is suddenly ended by a German torpedo, while her friend Dorothy attempts something unheard of in the forties: going to law school. Newfoundland during the wartime forties was hardly Rosie the Riveter Country. So, when Angie loses her sailor lover and marries the boy next door—who turns out to be a sexual sadist—she fears there is no way out. She turns to her friend Dorothy, a woman lawyer at a time when such aspirations seemed impossible.

Marian lives in a world of spectres. She is devoted to her research on ghosts in Québécois literature to the exclusion of nearly everything else, including her husband. When an after-hours encounter at a conference sparks an uncomfortable attraction to her professor, Rémy, the ghosts of her research begin to haunt her-all too literally. As his flirtation with Marian becomes a full-blown affair, Rémy wonders if he's courting his own demise. Not only is he betraying his fiancée, he is also violating university policy, putting his career at risk.

Sam and Crystal’s coastal adventure continues as brother and sister dive deeper into the marine habitats of Eagle Cove, home of Aunt Kate and Uncle Charlie. In their latest adventure, the kids learn about one of the most ecologically important ecosystems on the west coast: the eelgrass meadow. This rich habitat provides food and shelter to countless marine critters—from tiny micro-organisms to juvenile fish—and is the basis of a gigantic food web that supports herring, salmon, black bears, humpback whales, and many other species.

Set between Kansas and Saskatchewan in 1907, this middle-grade novel follows a young boy who gets separated from his family en route to Canada and must find his way alone across the immense prairie landscape. Following the sudden death of his eldest brother, twelve-year-old Peter is chosen by his father to travel by train from Kansas to Saskatchewan to help set up the new family homestead. But when Peter's boxcar becomes uncoupled from the rest of the train somewhere in South Dakota, he finds himself lost and alone on the vast prairie.

A Lethal Lesson(#8). Back home in the Kootenays after her Arizona honeymoon, Lane offers her assistance when neither the outgoing teacher, Rose, nor her replacement, Wendy, show up at the local schoolhouse one blizzardy Monday in December. But when she finds the teachers' cottage ransacked with Rose unconscious and bleeding, and Wendy missing, Lane delivers Rose to the hospital in Nelson and turns the case over to her exasperated husband, Inspector Darling, and his capable colleagues, Sergeant Ames and Constable Terrell.