National Network for Equitable Library Service

Brilliant is a collection of short stories set in Abu Dhabi, capital of the United Arab Emirates, a polyglot city where cultures collide and converge, where money -- and sometimes justice -- is no object, where in less than two generations towers have replaced tents. In these stories, a cast of characters -- an Egyptian pastry chef, a Filipina nanny, a Canadian nurse, a lusty French urban planner, a newly destitute British couple, and a cross-dressing Emirati -- navigate this land of sudden plenty, discovering the limits of freedom, money, tolerance and their own good sense.

Everyone at the Pleasant Inn is looking forward to a very merry Christmas. Oh, irascible proprietor Trevor Rudley has his usual complaints about Mrs. Blount's non-traditional floral arrangements. And he's sure he won't like housekeeper Tiffany's new beau, Dan Thornton, a writer, of all things. But it's Christmas. Surely nothing catastrophic could happen. Bad things do happen, of course. When the snow starts falling, it seems it will never stop. Margaret Rudley runs over a man lying in the road during a whiteout. Walter Sawchuck almost chokes when someone doctors his Mrs. Dash.

In the spring of 1964, troubled teenager Cookie Blue is found dead in the Red River. Blue Vengeance follows her younger brother Danny and Cookie's friend Janine through a lazy Winnipeg summer, as they plot to kill the despised teacher they blame for Cookie's death.

NYPD Detective Nicola Cortese, veteran of three tours in Iraq and Afghanistan, is demoted and transferred to a desk job in Operations after his PTSD spirals out of control following a drug bust gone bad. When he returns to active duty, his first case, a B&E homicide, leads him to uncover an international conspiracy that is using a genetically engineered seed to take control of the world's wheat.

Tommy Wolfstein escaped from Hungary with his parents when he was eight years old, and while his parents will never forget the persecution they endured as Jews, Tommy's memories of that time are scant. He has become thoroughly Canadianized. However, when his university soccer team is invited to Hungary to play Tommy will learn about his family's difficult past and the ongoing dangers they --and he -- face.

Sky Rayburn, a somewhat eccentric but well-respected veterinarian, always had a troubled relationship with her daughter Moira. When Moira is killed in a car accident, Skye has no choice but to take in her two-year-old grandson Duncan. Maybe this time she will "get it right." Over the years, Skye creates a diary: Life Lessons for Duncan.

A horrific betrayal sets the destiny of the Alevizopoulos family, farmers who dare to choose a side in WWI and the Greco-Turkish war. Survival might mean leaving what is most precious: home. Finding Callidora follows four generations of the family as they carry and pass on the scars of the past and their need to find the place where they belong.

Margaret Rudley has finally persuaded her husband Trevor to take a vacation, a week-long canoeing expedition in Northern Ontario. Rudley hates the idea of leaving the Pleasant, the beautiful old country inn they've run for over a quarter of a century, but he is reluctant to deny her a cherished dream. They set off, accompanied by long-time guests Elizabeth Miller, Edward Simpson, Norman and Geraldine Phipps-Walker, and a pair of neophytes, Vern Peters and Eric Turnbull.

A young woman from Montreal follows the geese to the Inuit North in this deeply-felt witnessing of contemporary Indigenous life, as shaped by decades of colonial rule and government neglect. Having worked in the North for years, Juliana Léveillé-Trudel offers a portrait of a people undaunted by institutionalized racism, but in many cases broken by domestic violence, corporate mining, and the corrupting presence of summer workers up from the South in search of big paycheques.

After experiencing the disintegration of their parents' marriage, Claudine and Janine Beaulieu's lives are further complicated when their mother Odette remarries an Anglophone and they are forced to "turn English." Now, years later, Claudine has made a career out of documentary filmmaking, focusing on the painful lives of other women; Janine, a wife and mother, questions her feelings for her sister's boyfriend; and Odette succumbs to her Valium and rum addiction in a luxury retirement villa in Jamaica.