National Network for Equitable Library Service

Canada's answer to Chuck Palahniuk. A bear runs amok in a luxury hotel. A daily swim at the local pool becomes a question of life or death. The champion of a border wall faces an unexpected adversary.The twelve stories in Different Beasts ask what it means to be both human and monster. Shape-shifting waifs, haunted stuffies, scavenging drones, insectoid demon-gods, and mutant angels all come to life in this wildly imagined debut.

To pursue her dream of building a life free from violence for her son and herself, Yalda flees from her nightmarish past as well as her troubled homeland, Iran. But in her new haven, she realizes that nightmares haunt not only her past, but also her present and future. She does what she can to survive, but all her plans dissolve like the shadows and ghosts that follow her. Having fled from an authoritarian regime, and now living in a North America panic-stricken by global terrorism, Yalda is obsessed with all the forms and aspects of violence.

Seeking cell phone reception after a remote plane crash, city kid Jared and local Kyle scale a hill that Kyle's Cree grandmother has forbidden him to climb. Coming down the next day, the boys find that the plane has disappeared, the forest has changed, and something is hunting them. A modern imagining of the Cree Wîhtiko legend. Jared's plane has crashed in the Alberta wilderness, and Kyle is first on the scene. When Jared insists on hiking up the highest hill in search of cell phone reception, Kyle hesitates; his Cree grandmother has always forbidden him to go near it.

Based on a true unsolved crime from 1877, Laurie Glenn Norris's debut novel tells the story of two small towns linked by the disappearance of a teenage girl. Mary Harney is a dreamy teenager in Cumberland County, Nova Scotia, whose ambitions are stifled by her tyrannical grandmother and alcoholic father.

When Mitch Harding makes an impulse buy, he really goes big. He spends his entire savings on a wrecked dirt bike after witnessing a rider crash it at an Endurocross race. He is now the proud owner of a used bike, one that needs a lot of work. With the help of his uncle, an ex-pro rider, and new friend Kelsey, a championship rider herself, they get the bike up and running. But a bet with the previous owner threatens to strip Mitch of his hard-earned vehicle. Whoever wins the next race gets to keep the bike. Mitch is determined to win.

Highlighting the tension between insiders and outsiders, and set against a sinister backdrop, Fireweed and Bracken follows the life of Effie Cambridge who, awkward and searching, leaves her complicated life in Ontario to work as a high school teacher in Charlottetown, PEI, where she makes friends, courts rejection, finds love, and struggles to come to terms with not only herself but with the life she is attempting to build in a place she doesn't belong.

It's 1977, and 10-year-old Tina couldn't be happier about her life. Not because she just moved to Yarmouth, Nova Scotia, but because she's finally old enough to make her dream come true: she can play on a real hockey team. But when she tries to join the league, she learns that girls aren't allowed to play on the boys' team-and there's no team for girls.Despite jeers from classmates and cruelty from some of the town's adults, Tina is determined to play. She wants it more than anything.

A stolen house on a Polish square. A pop bottle with a less than pleasant history on Vancouver's east side. Nadia Baltzan knows a few things about theft. As a girl she took what she could - from her neighbourhood library, her piano teacher's record shelves, her father's wallet - as she plotted her escape. The Girl Who Stole Everything is the story of a mother and daughter in the Polish countryside, and a father and son on Vancouver's downtown east side. In these old and new worlds a mystery lurks.

Where I Fall, Where She Rises is a novel that follows two women on opposite ends of a terrorist kidnapping. While one woman suffers and falls at the hands of her captors, the other exploits the fame of such a publicized event to secure a future for her unborn child. Lea Ironstone is a Canadian freelance journalist who recalls her time spent in the very dangerous red zone of Baghdad, after the 2003 U.S. invasion. A self-destructive addict, she refuses to relegate herself to the safer green zone, where most mainstream news journalists like Paul Shell are protected.

When Cricket McKay and her best friend, Shilo, discover that a cougar has been seen in the town of Waterton, they are thrilled that school closes for a few days as a precaution. The townspeople are worried though. They want the cougar caught and relocated, which could be disastrous for the cougar. Cricket's dad, the national park's warden, is receiving reports of the cougar causing all kinds of trouble around town, but it's the type of trouble it doesn't make sense for a cougar to get into. Then Cricket and Shilo find evidence that another animal may be to blame.