National Network for Equitable Library Service

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.

Detective Lane returns for a fourth time in Smoked, Garry Ryan's darkest mystery to date. When Jennifer Towers is found dead in a graffiti-tagged dumpster, Detectives Lane and Harper must decipher the art to find its artist - and possibly the victim's killer. What begins as an unconventional murder investigation leads to the disturbing discovery of two abused children, whose father becomes a prime suspect in the case. In true Detective Lane form, Lane must protect the damaged youths while keeping his own family in tact.

After a series of assassinations rocks Calgary's underworld, Detective Lane is conscripted along with his husband Arthur into working undercover to seek out links in the Mexico - Canada drug connection and stop the violence. As tensions mount back in Canada and outright war on the streets seems imminent, the laconic detective and his allies must use some unorthodox tactics to avert disaster in the Gulf of California and dismantle the cartel.

Inspector Coswell hunts for a not-so-good doctor's on UBC's campus.

Edith Stoker's father is building a wall in their backyard. A very, very high wall - a brick bulwark in his obsessive war against their hated neighbour Edward Black. It is 1969, and far away, preparations are being made for man to walk upon the moon. Meanwhile, in the Stokers' shabby home in the East Midlands, Edith remains a virtual prisoner, with occasional visits from her grotesque and demanding Aunt Vivian serving as the only break in the routine.

Calgary's Detective Lane deals with complications on the homefront with the birth of his nephew Indiana, and a series of gruesome killings that shakes his partner to the core.

It’s Christmas time but many of Gerry Coneybear's friends are away for the holidays and she has no family to celebrate with at the Maples, the old house bequeathed to her by her aunt. Just the 23 cats her aunt left her with. When Gerry first finds a bone in her bedroom, naturally she assumes it’s a chicken bone one of the cats has dragged in from the garbage. But it turns out to be from a skeleton buried under the floorboards in the woodshed. On the up side, the skeleton is over 100 years old.

When Gerry Coneybear, a cheerful young artist, comes to her Aunt Maggie's funeral, she is shocked to learn that she has inherited her aunt's rambling 200-year-old waterfront home. Unfortunately, the house comes with a multitude of her aunt's cats as part of the bequest. As Gerry fends off the greedy, jealous relatives and the mysterious part-time housekeeper, she gradually comes to realize that her aunt may have been murdered. Cats, teacups, horticulture and art come together to help Gerry solve the mystery.