National Network for Equitable Library Service

Brilliant experimental, surrealist fiction from the award-winning author of Snowball, Dragonfly, Jew

When 16-year-old Raina Resnick is expelled from her Manhattan private school, she’s sent to live with her strict aunt — but Raina feels like she’s persona non grata no matter where she goes. Her sister, Leah, blames her for her broken engagement, and she’s a social pariah at her new school. In the tight-knit Jewish community, Raina finds she is good at one thing: matchmaking! As the anonymous “Match- Maven,” Raina sets up hopeless singles desperate to find the One.

In Platinum Blues, Oliver Gulliver is a small-town lawyer in northern California, and he's slowly going broke. He's a plodder and a dreamer, has never tested himself in a big trial, and is immensely protective of his two teenage girls. His very attractive 18-year-old returns home from San Francisco, where she had been seeking a modeling career, dragging home with her a once-famous, now burnt-out and alcoholic rock star, C.C. Gilley. They're in love. Oliver is utterly shocked and dismayed.

Phoebe’s Way is the story of a Saint John Ambulance therapy dog whose unsentimental lessons on aging propel this powerful work of fiction from author Pamela Ditchoff. Phoebe’s cross is carried throughout the rooms of Mersey House, a nursing home in Safe Harbour, Nova Scotia. Each chapter represents a station of the journey and an insight into the emotional weight born by the residents and those who care for them.

“OVERQUALIFIED’s cover letters are like a slap in the face, butthe slap is hilarious, and you can’t stop laughing, and as soonas it’s over you want to tell all your friends about the slap.You know the kind?”
— Ryan North, Dinosaur Comics

“Joey Comeau’s OVERQUALIFIED is Judy Blume’s ARE YOU THERE,GOD? IT’S ME, MARGARET as chewed up and spit out by J. G.Ballard. . . . A book whose melancholy is leavened by a surprisinghilarity.&dquo;
— Paul Di Filippo,author of THE STEAMPUNK TRILOGY and COSMOCOPIA

Over Our Heads is a novel that weaves together the histories of two very different half-sisters who return home to deal with the aftermath of their grandmother's death. Emma, a punk band singer and poet turned pet psychic, and Rachel, an actuary with an interest in astronomy, both carry the remnants of childhoods overshadowed by issues of bullying, abandonment, alienation and fear. In the raw terrain of profound loss, the two sisters struggle through the stages of grief--each in their own way.

“An extremely good crime novel, brimming with historical verisimilitude . . . with a richly detailed protagonist and a seriously compelling mystery.” — Booklist on Black Rock

Jackie has a map of the city on the wall of her bedroom, with a green pin for each of her trees. She has a first-kiss tree and a broken-arm tree. She has a car-accident tree. There is a tree at the hospital where Jackie’s mother passed away into the long good night. When one of them gets cut down, Jackie doesn’t know what to do but she doesn’t let that stop her. She picks up the biggest rock she can carry and puts it through the window of a car. Smash. She intends to leave before the police arrive, but they’re early.

From the acclaimed author of Lemon comes a clever and heartbreaking new novel of love and revelation

Harriet is 11 going on 30. Her mixed-media art is a source of wonder to her younger brother, Irwin, but an unmitigated horror to the panoply of insufficiently grown-up grown-ups who surround her. She plans to run away to Algonquin Park, hole up in a cabin like Tom Thomson and paint trees; and so, to fund her escape, she runs errands for the seniors who inhabit the Shangrila, the decrepit apartment building that houses her fractured family.

Declan Burke fled Ireland forty years ago and never looked back. Now settled in New York, he thinks he's put the old country behind him, until he reads the obituary of one Cathal Murphy. The obituary, he sees at once, is not about Murphy at all. It is a coded indictment of Burke's own life. And an announcement of his impending death. Halifax lawyer Monty Collins investigates the obit with its allusions to Burke's IRA past. Collins gets no help from Burke, who--good soldier to the end--keeps the silence of the grave.