National Network for Equitable Library Service

"Cammie Deveau began life with a few strikes against her. She's visually impaired, abandoned by her mother at birth, her father was a casualty of the Second World War-and if all that isn't enough, she's being raised by her bootlegging aunt. No wonder she dreams of starting a brand new life. When Cammie learns about a school for blind and visually impaired children she becomes convinced a new life is waiting for her in Halifax, but how will she ever convince her aunt to let her go?

"Fred has had a rough summer. His secret crush on Mai is going strong, his mother has barely recovered from a battle with cancer, and his unreliable father's diving business has gone completely underwater. Now Fred, Mai, and Grace, extraordinary fossil hunters, are at the Fortress of Louisbourg hunting a different kind of treasure. They are secretly excavating the historic site, trying to find a mass of jewels Fred's ancestor may have buried there; jewels that could save Fred's family.

"Pru Burbidge lives a simple life on the family homestead on Dalhousie Road in 1940s rural Nova Scotia until her father abandons the family and her mother falls ill. Her life is turned upside-down by these events, and she is forced to take on the role of primary caregiver to her siblings, Jessie, Flora, and Davey. Things go from bad to worse when Pru's mother dies, leaving Pru and Jessie, her older brother, to care for the family in secret so they are not separated and sent away to foster homes, or worse the orphan house.

At the centre of this story of a modern-day knight errant is Tully Stamper, a bankrupt, a liar, a tippler of corn juice and a deadbeat husband who has abandoned his wife and child on fraudulent psychiatric grounds. He is also one of the world's last innocents. The setting for Tully's adventure is Gomez Gap, Florida, a sliver of the Old South turned into a Hollywood backdrop for the movie recreation of a famous Civil War battle.

Set on the Niagara frontier in the final days of the American Revolution, The Life and Times of Captain N. sees the revolutionary new world order from the standpoint of the losers. Hendrick Nellis, a Tory guerrilla, has also been a redeemer of whites abducted by Indians. His son Oskar finds himself sometimes allied with the Indians, sometimes at war with them.

A Guide to Animal Behaviour is a stunning collection of stories by an author who is fast becoming one of the great, innovative story writers of his generation. Urbane, stylish, and off-beat, the stories in this collection touch the lives of an astonishing array of characters whose common experience is of a world that is wayward yet full of marvels. This is sophisticated fiction at its best. A maximalist writer of ideas, he packs his sentences with energy, exuberant imagery and amazing turns of thoughts.

Bishop's Road is set in contemporary St. John's and tells the story of a year in the lives of a handful of odd characters, women mostly, shaken out of their pathetic complacency by a teenage delinquent with magic in her eyes. There are bones in the attic, humour, tragedy, joy, a little romance, murder and some madness and the delicious realization that life is best lived out loud.

Set in a 1920s coal-mining town, 13-year-old JW Donaldson is a good student with a bright future. As school ended for the year in 1926, JW was looking forward to summer. His father works in the mine, and there is a lot of talk around town about the mines. JW doesn?t know the details. Slowly JW's parents reveal the truth: his father's hours have been reduced and they face difficult decisions to make ends meet that will impact on the young man?s life.

Colourful characters, subtle satire and social conscience is omnipresent in the hilarious adventures of Cape Breton pals Tinker and Blue in late-sixties San Francisco. It was Blue's idea to drive their fourth-hand 1957 push-button Plymouth out to San Francisco to check out the famed Haight-Ashbury district. Hitchhiking hippies, homespun humour, wit and wisdom, troubles in love and trouble with the law converge to make Tinker and Blue a funny and clever.

Smallish and inelegant, Shean?s postwar, post-industrial economy is in desperate disrepair, and the lengths that some civic leaders will go to in order to do "what?s best" sometimes requires a leap of faith that has unintended consequences. When a global corporation plans a daring scheme to exploit the remaining coal from an improbable source -- and thus to secure Shean?s economic future -- politicians try to marginalize the few voices of dissent. Some voices, however, are not easily silenced.