National Network for Equitable Library Service

Eli has lived in Crooked River his whole life, and he knows better than anyone about that sinking number. His father, uncle and grandmother are dead; he didn't know his mother, and his grandfather Clarence, an eccentric builder of hotels and a now-underwater castle, walked to the river one day and never returned. Eli's childhood friend, George, also went missing, back when they were kids, and was never seen again. Eli has spent years wondering about both Clarence and George.

These stories are diary shreds of young women who are in school but things happen anyway. Girls with their hears open like agar petri dishes. The setting could be Toronto, Montreal, New Orleans, a Gothic castle or a bathtub. What people say matters. The girl might finally find someone she can talk to but falls asleep too soon. She will fall down taking the scenery with her. Stars are brought down into sugar containers and stirred into coffee. A couch is thrown out on the grass and you're invited to have a seat.

Nominated for an Alberta Book Award. Time you had a haircut. Look like a mop. Not that skinny. Skin and bloody bone, boy. Jacob breaks the point of his pencil but makes it look like an accident. And away Dad goes out the door and thump thump down the stairs. Jacob eyes the hole at the end of his pencil. Listens till he can’t hear the Torino anymore. Crawls under the covers. Hopes the rest of December comes and goes like a heartbeat. Eleven-year-old Jacob McKnight doesn’t like running. He doesn’t like the hills, the cold wind, the slushy electrolyte drinks, the interval training.

Winner of the 2013 CBC Overlookie Bookie Award for Most Underrated Canadian Book! An admirer of Miley Cyrus performs a three-thousand word sentence in defence of his passion. Actor Matthew McConaughey descends into a surreal, stupefying desert of the soul. An aging porn star dons a grotesque dinosaur costume to film the sex scene of his life. Such are the speakers and stars of a collection of stories that explode the conventions of short fiction.

KWONG WAS A GOD. Everything was about to change. In less than forty-eight hours, guy'd be taking the stage in Van City, owning an audience meant for some all-hype-no-talent new-money rapper, spitting next-level truths that'd have A&Rs scrapping for him coast to coast. He'd ink some paper and drop an album that the world didn’t even know it had been waiting for. All with game and swag to spare. To the kids gathered out there in the bush somewhere between Township Road 382 and the United States of MTV, this man was god.

Winner of the 2009 ReLit Award! He saw it. Like one dead eye filmed over. Like a tunnel that would kill you. Like a star coming to explode you. He saw it. Closer and closer. It was morning. It was daylight. He shouldn't be thinking this. This was a nighttime thing. Stop. Stop. Stop thinking. He felt it. Like black oil on his spine. Like night inside of him. Chase and Haven only have each other. Their mother is mostly absent; she's tired from working too hard at her motel cleaning job and avoiding their father's fists. He's mostly absent too, usually drunk and often violent.

All Tom's friends really are superheroes. There's the Ear, the Spooner, the Impossible Man. Tom even married a superhero, the Perfectionist. But at their wedding, the Perfectionist was hypnotized (by ex-boyfriend Hypno, of course) to believe that Tom is invisible. Nothing he does can make her see him. Six months later, she's sure that Tom has abandoned her. So she's moving to Vancouver. She'll use her superpower to make Vancouver perfect and leave all the heartbreak in Toronto. With no idea Tom's beside her, she boards an airplane.

Shortlisted for the Commonwealth Writers' Prize for Best First Book (Canada and Caribbean region) Nine-year-old Phineas William Walsh has an encyclopedic knowledge of the natural world. He knows that if you wet a dog's food with your saliva and he refuses to eat it then he's top dog, and he knows that dolphins can sleep half a brain at a time. What he doesn't know, though, is why his grandfather died, or why waste-of-flesh Lyle always picks on him.

First published in 1975, The Cage was a graphic novel before there was a name for the genre. Considered an early masterpiece of the genre, the Canadian cult comic has been out of print for decades. The new edition includes an introduction by Canadian comics master and Lemony Snicket collaborator Seth (Palookaville; It's a Good Life, If You Don't Weaken).

Angelica isn't a liar. She just loves making up stories. When she goes to sleepaway camp and is mistaken for a princess, she could easily clear up the misunderstanding...but pretending to be royalty is way more fun! When her best friend from home surprises her at camp, Angelica is forced to fess up. Luckily, she also has a talent for repairing things, and when disaster strikes on the girls' kayaking trip, Jelly has to repair more than just her newfound friendships.