National Network for Equitable Library Service

Alex Paterson is the number-one goalie on his high-school  hockey team. And he's thrilled that his team has made the playoffs. But when graffiti that apparently can be traced back to Alex is found on the walls of the school, and a photo of Alex at a party with a beer in his hand starts making the rounds, he is suspended from the team, and his reputation as a good kid is put in doubt. Alex knows he's innocent. The problem is, he cannot figure out who would want to frame him. Or why. Is it the other goalie who wants all the glory for himself?

What might happen when one tries to move a railway station? Do you know where Jericho is? Can someone could become rich based on knowledge of an obsolete size of paper? Ever had nightmares about a pitcher plant? In Fool's Cap and Other Stories, readers will travel to Italy, France, Germany, England, Nova Scotia, and other parts of Canada. There's a story about road hockey, two old friends discovering things over a cup of coffee, an event that leads a shadowy figure to change his life, an odd pair of vigilantes, and even a man with a coin in his mouth.

Camp Clearwater is home to best friends Nate, Owen and Mercy. They practically grew up on the Starling River. But the summer they turn sixteen an incident forces the camp to close its doors. Mike Elliot, the river guide who taught the teens everything they know, is lost to the rapids. A tragic accident, everyone agrees. Except for Nate. Mike was the best kayaker he'd ever met. The smartest. The safest. He respected and loved the river, and as far as Nate is concerned, the river loved Mike back.

Tom 'Brooder' Doran, Deputy Chief of the Police in Beaufort, Quebec, has his hands full when financier Paul Carignan is struck by a stray bullet. Tom investigates but collides with the unwillingness of town leaders to investigate what really happened. Carignan's teenage sons take on the residents they're sure are responsible for the shooting--and are then besieged in their house with the men they've taken captive. Their mother, Catherine, must decide whether to support her sons in their dangerous campaign for justice-or side with local police.

In 1907, the fifteen-year-old French-Canadian Ernest Dufault left his home in Quebec for Montana, where he was promptly arrested as a cattle thief and, as a prisoner of the state of Nevada, passed himself off as an American cowboy named Will James. Over the next few decades, Dufault, a.k.a. James, would flourish as a cowboy and horsebreaker and go on to become an artist, a soldier, a Hollywood stuntman, a bestselling author of award-winning westerns - and his own false memoir.

After the death of her boyfriend, sixteen-year old Valentine stops going to school, quits seeing her friends and, finally, won't leave her bed. Desperate for her daughter to recover, Valentine's mother takes her on a trek in Thailand. In the mountains north of Chiang Mai, Valentine finds a world she didn't know existed, where houses are on stilts and elephants still roam wild. She learns about the Burmese civil war and the relentless violence against the Karen and Rohingya peoples.

Just as fourteen-year-old Lucy is starting to figure out life after her mom's death, her dad ships her off to Cape John, her mom's hometown, for the summer. Worse, she has to live with her nutty great-aunt Josie, who doesn't cook edible food or suffer fools. Soon Lucy meets Colin, freshly moved from the West Coast, who's digging an enormous hole in his new yard. He spends every day digging deeper in protest of his family's unilateral decision to move to this tiny oceanside community.

Reminiscent of Gaétan Soucy's The Little Girl Who Was Too Fond of Matches and William Golding's Lord of the Flies, Audrée Wilhemy's The Body of Beasts is a startling, gorgeously written novel that tells the story of the Borya family minding a lighthouse and living in isolation. Their lives are altered when young Osip, peering from the lighthouse gallery he has made his home, sees a woman, Noé, arrives in Sitjaq - her dress scant, her skin curiously scarred, and her manners mysterious and wild.

Even That Wildest Hope bursts with vibrant, otherworldly characters-wax girls and gods-among-men, artists on opposite sides of a war, aimless plutocrats and anarchist urchins-who are sometimes wondrous, often grotesque, and always driven by passions and yearnings common to us all. Each story is an untamed territory unto itself: where characters are both victims and predators, the settings are antique and futuristic, and where our intimacies-with friends, lovers, enemies, and even our food-reveal a deeply human desire for beauty and abjection.

Fourteen-year-old Tanya Kofsky is invisible. She hates that no one listens to her, at home or at her new school. So as student elections get underway, Tanya starts secretly painting controversial images on the walls of the school. Soon everyone is talking about this amazing artist with a lot to say. The election results turn out to be a catalyst for more rebellion. And not just from students. Teachers, tired of the principal's authoritarian leadership, start promoting self-expression.