National Network for Equitable Library Service

The Byrne family is strong, but are being tested everyday as life becomes more and more desperate in 19th century rural Ireland, forcing the family to leave their homeland.

Jack is 14 going on 15. For the past seven years, he and his younger brother and sister, and his mother and father, have lived in a remote cabin on the Athabasca River west of Edmonton. It's the late 1930s, and the river is almost as wild and untamed as it was before humans began settling along the riverbanks. The reason for the Whyte family living there has a good deal to do with Malcolm, Jack's father, and what we would call his PTSD after serving in World War One.

Arachne Manteia is a road rider, a traveling sales rep who drives a classic Mercedes and peddles women's underwear for a living. From her working class childhood to her comfortable adult life, Arachne refuses the conventional and embraces whatever adventure fate throws in her path. A rogue sales rep with a man in every town, she lures each into her web of desire. All of them she claims as part of her never-ending journey, which promises fulfillment but offers no map for her longing.

Opening night of the season at Winnipeg’s Prairie Theatre Centre is a glittering event on the city’s arts calendar, and this October, there is real drama happening offstage. Gerald Blaise, the company’s well-loved Artistic Director has failed to show up. When Gerald’s body is found in the trunk of his car abandoned outside the city limits, Sergeant Roxanne Calloway of the RCMP finds herself investigating the death.

Linked short stories based in the imaginary city of Fontainebleau, on the banks of the Detroit River. There's something poisonous in the water, something menacing in the sky, and the soil, laced with an ancient curse, is yielding up unidentified bones along with corn. Then there are abusive husbands, snuff film producers, inconspicuous con women, and pederasts who live secret double lives.

Wendy Hebb has been a fisherman's wife for forty years. She has also been a mother, a yoga instructor, and part-time soap maker. She loves her life in picturesque Lunenburg, Nova Scotia, but it's just not enough anymore. With a decades' old business degree and a burning entrepreneurial desire, she decides that when her husband, Paul, retires, it will finally be her turn to live out her dream. The catch: her dream is to open a sex shop.

Witches are hated in Württemberg, Germany, in the eighteenth century. It’s not so long since they were burned, and any woman who knows too much, who’s too clever or quick or skilled at healing, is suspect. Young Lilli knows this, and yet she also knows that the wise woman she’s learning from, Alisz, isn’t evil. She is teaching Lilli which plants cure a fever, which help a cough, which speed a difficult labour. She only wants to help people, and so does Lilli. But Lilli’s father hates any sign of witchcraft and is furious at their connection.

Nothing exciting ever happens on Darby’s Island, Newfoundland. That is until one summer afternoon in 1975 when a Chevy towing a trailer drives off the ferry. The Great Prospero, Hypnotist and Magician is printed in large red letters across the side. People on the island are thrilled that the renowned Prospero is going to perform at the community hall. However, after the hypnotist suggests his subjects are seagulls, Jake Pickford, with arms flapping, leaves the building and does not return to the stage. That same evening, the archbishop is found stabbed to death on the beach.

I move around the side of the house. There is a thick mass of shrubs on the north-east side. Juniper, and caragana gone wild. Without thinking, I pluck a flower and put it into my mouth, savouring the delicate yellowness of its flavour. Now when did I learn to do that? Who first put a caragana blossom on my tongue? Emma G. Weaver easily loses herself in history. She's much more comfortable imagining the lives of the dead than getting involved with the living.

It’s been almost a year since Charlotte Romer set foot in her hometown of River John, Nova Scotia. She’s been living at a boarding school hours away, hiding from the trauma and broken relationships she left behind. All she has left in the small town is her older brother, Sean, who is struggling to keep the lights on in their run-down family home. Charlotte hasn’t spoken to her best friend, Sophie, since she fled. It’s not exactly a celebratory homecoming.