National Network for Equitable Library Service

In this new work of riveting and timely non-fiction, Davidson tells the unvarnished story of one transformative year in his life and of his unlikely relationships with a handful of unique and vibrant children who were, to his initial astonishment and bewilderment, and eventual delight, placed in his care for a couple of hours each day--the kids on school bus 3077.

The heart-rending true story of two families on either side of the Second World War—and a moving tribute to the nature of forgiveness When the Second World War broke out, Ralph MacLean traded his quiet yet troubled life on the Magdalene Islands in eastern Canada for the ravages of war overseas. On the other side of the country, Mitsue Sakamoto and her family felt their pleasant life in Vancouver starting to fade away after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. Ralph found himself one of the many Canadians captured by the Japanese in December 1941.

In Sister to Courage, Wanda takes us inside the world she shared with Viola and ten other brothers and sisters. Through touching and often hilarious stories, she traces the roots of courage and ambition, good fun and dignity, of the household that produced Viola Desmond. Tough and compassionate, Viola shines through beyond the moment she was carried out of Roseland movie theatre for refusing to sit I the blacks-only section. Viola emerges as a defender of family and a successful entrepreneur whose momentum was blocked by racism.

The intriguing criminal cases of pioneer forensics expert John Vance, "Canada's Sherlock Holmes." Heralded internationally as "Canada's Sherlock Holmes," John F.C.B. Vance (1884-1964) was Vancouver's, and British Columbia's, first forensic investigator. Despite his innocuous demeanour, during his forty-two-year career Vance helped police detectives to determine murder from suicide as well as solve hit-and-runs, safe-crackings, and some of the most sensational murder cases of the twentieth century.

In January of 1965, twenty-four-year-old U.S. Army sergeant Charles Robert Jenkins abandoned his post in South Korea, walked across the DMZ, and surrendered to communist North Korean soldiers standing sentry along the world's most heavily militarized border. While both the United States and North Korea would insist that Jenkins had defected for political reasons, the truth, as we learn in this riveting autobiography, was more mundane: he was scared, drunk, and homesick, and he believed his action would net him back to the States where he'd face a short jail sentence.

Big, skilled, mean, and nearly indestructible, Howe dominated hockey for decades. Today any bruising forward hopes to be compared with the guy who wore number 9 for Detroit for so many years. His incredible twenty consecutive seasons among the top five scorers in the NHL. Scoring 100 points after the age of forty. Playing for Team Canada against the Russians while sharing the ice with his two sons. What seems even less likely is that another player will suit up as a professional hockey player in six different decades.

The unforgettable memoir of a family betrayed by a cruel deception. Pauline Dakin, a well-known CBC journalist, spent her childhood on the run. Without warning or goodbyes, her mother twice uprooted her and her brother, moving thousands of miles away from family and friends. Years later her mother revealed they'd been running from the Mafia and were receiving protection from a covert anti-organized crime task force. When her mother decided to go into protective custody, an exhausted Dakin planned to disappear as well. But before that happened, she made a horrifying discovery.

The immense eighteenth-century scientific journey, variously known as the Second Kamchatka Expedition or the Great Northern Expedition, from St. Petersburg across Siberia to the coast of North America, involved over 3,000 people and cost Peter the Great over one-sixth of his empire's annual revenue. Led by the legendary Danish captain Vitus Bering, the ten-year voyage, which included scientists, artists, mariners, soldiers, and laborers, discovered Alaska, opened the Pacific fur trade, and, thanks to the brilliant naturalist Georg Steller, discovered dozens of New World plants and animals.

For gardening aficionados and Francophiles, a love letter to the Versailles Palace and grounds, from the man who knows them best. In Alain Baraton's Versailles, every grove tells a story. As the gardener-in-chief, Baraton lives on its grounds, and since 1982 he has devoted his life to the gardens, orchards, and fields that were loved by France's kings and queens as much as the palace itself. His memoir captures the essence of the connection between gardeners and the earth they tend, no matter how humble or grand.

On August 23, 2008, Amanda Lindhout was kidnapped outside Mogadishu in Somalia. The kidnappers’ demand was simple: pay millions or Amanda would be killed. For the next 460 days, Amanda’s mother, Lorinda Stewart, did everything in her power to get her daughter back alive. A brave, small-town mother with no experience in hostage negotiations, Lorinda was called upon by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police to be the lead communicator with “Adam”—the Somali man who identified himself as the English-speaking negotiator for Amanda’s kidnappers.