National Network for Equitable Library Service

At 18 years old, Victoria Nolan found out she was going blind. As her vision became more restricted, so did her independence. Her childhood dream had been to become a teacher, but she had to fight constantly against misconceptions about her capabilities as a visually impaired person. Even starting a family meant risking further vision loss, and as she struggled to deal with her disability, her goals for the future seemed impossible. Not wanting her children to grow up seeing their mother as someone who "couldn't," she sought opportunities to prove herself.

When Rob Ferguson went off to the five former Soviet ’Stans of Central Asia to work on a project to save the rapidly disappearing Aral Sea, he expected to have challenges and adventures, but he didn’t anticipate ending up a suspect in a brutal murder investigation. Dancing with Vodka Terrorists is a tragicomic farce and an engrossing real-life thriller told with panache and wry humour and stars a bizarre cast of corrupt apparatchiks, jolly consultants, devious autocrats and a bewitching belly-dancer who ends up gutted in a bathtub. Somehow Ferguson survives it all, wit still intact.

The Steppes Are the Colour of Sepia: A Mennonite Memoir invites the reader to embark on a journey that traces the paths of ancestral memory over the steppes of the Russian empire to the valleys of Canada’s Fraser River. Connie Braun’s narrative continues where Sandra Birdsell’s historical fiction Russlander has left off – back to the catastrophic events of twentieth-century Europe.

Jean Coulthard demonstrated that a Canadian woman could be a successful professional composer, whose music was, and still is, played extensively in concert halls across Canada and internationally. Through her seven-decade career she composed in every genre of traditional classical music: opera, symphonies, concerti, chamber music, keyboard, voice, and choir. Coulthard's story was more than that of artist and teacher. She made a place for herself in a male-dominated university and, as a westerner, she fought for the artists of her community.

The extraordinary story of Michael Smith, a man who rose from humble beginnings in Blackpool, England, to become a revolutionary gene researcher, philanthropist and Nobel Prize winner. A professor at the University of British Columbia, Smith dedicated his talent and energy to science research, and later launched the university's internationally regarded Biotechnology Laboratory. The authors present not only the career and science of a great Canadian scientist, but also the politics and personalities of university research.

Louis Riel, prophet of the new world and founder of the Canadian province of Manitoba, has challenged Canadian politics, history and religion since the early years of Confederation. In Canada’s most important and controversial state trial, Riel was found guilty of “high treason,” sentenced to hang and executed on November 16, 1885.

In this bestseller, thirty-six Canadian war brides recount their early lives, their involvement in wartime duties, the magical/funny moments when they met their Canadian husbands-to-be and their journeys from Britain to Canada. The stories convey courage and humour: qualities that carried the war brides through the difficult war years and that contribute to lively reading today. Includes fifty photos.

Captain Richards' journal is an account of three survey seasons on Vancouver Island aboard two British Navy ships, the HMS Plumper and the HMS Hecate. Between 1860 and 1862 Richards and his dedicated crew surveyed and charted the entire coastline of Vancouver Island, creating baseline information for the nautical charts we use today.This monumental task, faithfully and often humorously recorded, also includes a lively description of California on the eve of the American Civil War as Richards sits in dry dock following the near wreck of the Hecate.

Alan Twigg has here recovered the amazing story of how George and Ingeborg while travelling in northern India in 1961 encountered many of the Tibetan refugees who had fled over the mountain passes. Appalled by the condition of the children, huddled together with inadequate bedding, surviving on a diet of thin soup and momos, steamed dumplings of mixed wheat and corn flour, they expressed their desire to help. "You must absolutely come and see uncle," said a young girl. This was Khando Yapshi, the Dalai Lama's niece.

Jim McDowell’s new biography of the little-known Spanish explorer José María Narváez, reveals his significant discoveries during the European exploration of what is now Canada’s Pacific Northwest Coast. Narváez was the first European to investigate a Russian fur-trading outpost in the Gulf of Alaska in 1788. The following year he became the first Spaniard to reconnoitre Juan de Fuca Strait.