National Network for Equitable Library Service

Falling into Flight untangles a daughter's complicated relationship with immigrant parents -- her angry Russian mother and quiet Finnish father. And it offers insight into a life experienced through the arts: first as a young enthusiastic dancer, then as a thoughtful--and equally enthusiastic--dance critic. Shortly after her parents die, Kaija begins to experience increasingly debilitating physical ailments that have no clear diagnosis. After many referrals to specialists, her doctor suggests psychotherapy.

Most people think Alzheimer's disease is the same as memory loss or hope that if they ignore it hard enough, it will go away. That was certainly Marion Agnew's hope when her mother -- a Queen's and Harvard/Radcliffe-educated mathematician, nuclear weapons researcher, award-winning professor and researcher, as well as a mother of five -- began drifting away from her. This moving memoir looks at grief and family, at love and music. It is a coming-to-terms reflection on the endurance of love and family.

Rain on a Distant Roof takes readers inside the frightening but fascinating world of Lyme disease in Canada. This is the story of one woman's struggle to understand the disease that’s destroying her body and mind. Armed with a confusing diagnosis, a baffling array of symptoms, and a body that’s filled with diabolical bacteria, she sets out to unravel the mysteries of her malady.

Some people claim they'd like to walk away from their lives -- Shelley A. Leedahl had the nerve to do it. Was it selfishness, or self-preservation? Drawing upon childhood memories, hikes, road trips, foreign travel, her self-imposed exile to a prairie village, fortuitous meetings with strangers, and her compulsion for starting over, again and again, Leedahl has crafted a provocative and candid collection of essays that explore the implicit complexities and contradictions when personal and professional lives both complement and clash.

When singer, musician, and broadcast journalist Malka Marom had the opportunity to interview Joni Mitchell in 1973, she was eager to reconnect with the performer she'd first met late one night in 1966 at a Yorkville coffeehouse. More conversations followed over the next four decades of friendship, and it was only after Joni and Malka completed their last recorded interview, in 2012, that Malka discovered the heart of their discussions: the creative process.

Invisible Publishing's Bibliophonic Series returns, this time focusing on unsung Canadian punk rock heroes NoMeansNo. NoMeansNo: Going Nowhere, will look at a band whose career has spanned three decades, 14 albums and produced an alter ego that's become as much a part of the Canadian consciousness as SCTV. Through interviews with band members, bit players and fans, the book will explore how one punk band from Victoria, B.C. influenced musicians across the world and continue to be force in punk rock.

This is a sex book. It's a book about having sex by yourself, with one person, or with twenty people if everyone is down. It's about saying words like cunt, fuck, and come. But it's also about the things we don't talk about the mystery, the expectations, and the bullshit that can go along with sex. Kaleigh Trace - disabled, queer, sex educator - chronicles her journey from ignorance to bliss as she shamelessly discusses her sexual exploits, bodily negotiations and attempts at adulthood, sparing none of the details and assuming you are not polite company.

ARRESTING HOPE reminds us that prisons are not only places of punishment, marginalization, and trauma, but that they can also be places of hope, blessing even, where people with difficult lived experiences can begin to compose stories full of healing, anticipation, communication, education, connection, and community. The book tells a story about women in a provincial prison in Canada, about how creative leadership fostered opportunities for transformation and hope, and about how engaging in research and writing contributed to healing.

In Search of Pure Lust documents an important chapter in lesbian history that is already being distorted and erased, a time when lesbians were reinventing everything from the ground up. Along with violence against women around the globe, lesbians of the 1970s and '80s were motivated by growing militarism, rampant development, species loss, and living systems in decline. For many, this was the logical conclusion to a state of law/mind/rule that had prevailed for thousands of years - patriarchy. This is a long overdue and unvarnished insider's account of those times.

The reader will experience first-hand the personality, characteristics, and sometimes remote environment of these healers, visionaries, storytellers, and spiritualists through Dianne Meili’s faithful re-telling of the interviews she conducted with each during the two years she spent travelling throughout Alberta.