National Network for Equitable Library Service

A collection of stories that seeks to examine the dark side of ordinary people.

It's taken 400 years of travel, but the starship Venture has finally arrived at its destination. Beta Earth is an uninhabited, untouched planet that seventeen-year-old engineer Ursa has to colonise with her crewmates. The first night Ursa is on Beta Earth her world goes out of control when she encounters a dead body. She's positive she saw a large creature with sharp teeth, something that shouldn't even be on the planet, but nobody believes her.

The year is 1738. Jacques Lafargue, a wide-eyed young Frenchman, arrives in New France aboard the Saint Michel. But before his Canadian adventure has a chance to begin, he is detained at Quebec harbour by suspicious port officials.

Losing weight over the summer gains Serena some popularity, but it also means discovering first-hand the pains of being a 15-year-old girl in a world that both sexualizes and shames young women. After narrowly avoiding exploitation in a short-lived relationship, Serena aligns with a new friend who was the victim of an explicit image that was shared at school. When Serena finds herself in a relationship with a new guy, she is surprised to find a different set of expectations. But have her previous experiences damaged her too much to make it work?

Naomi is in Dublin, Ireland, visiting her grandparents as her thirteenth birthday approaches. Adult residents of Ireland have begun losing their memories as the result of a virus that has hit the country, causing many to wander the streets disoriented, sometimes violent. As Naomi keeps a written record of her experiences, she fears that one day the virus will hit her and her young friends, too. But what caused the virus? The answer may have something to do with strange, otherworldly beings who are starting to pop up unexpectedly.

Cameron Dodds has just turned thirty. A writer, he get his ideas from the lives of others, often borrowing stories from the patients of his workplace, the Salvation Army Treatment Centre. When one of the patients, Darrel Greene, hangs himself, Cameron sees a great opportunity for a story -- maybe even a novel. He begins to research Darrel's past, and decides to visit his sister, June, a grown woman with Down's Syndrome.

Lillie Dempster of Saint John, New Brunswick, often imagines herself on the big screen. It is the one fantastic escape she can afford from her tragic daily life. In the burgeoning early years of the twentieth century, Lillie is a lot like the distressed damsels from the silent films she loves. Orphaned by the Great War and the Spanish influenza at fourteen, Lillie is forced to move in with her upstairs neighbour, Frank. She finds, however, that life does not get much better as a pretty young girl who draws unwanted interest from men wherever she goes.

Eleven-year-old Katelyn has always had voices and visions. She's long suspected she is hearing from past lives. But when she runs away from home and hides out with an old friend in Vancouver, her visions become more real. She finds herself writing the words of someone else in a diary, the words of someone whose fate was deeply impacted by the Komagata Maru incident. As Katelyn learns more about the Komagata Maru and the person communicating with her, she realizes that she must correct a wrong from the past.

Set in 1936 Montreal, this is the story of Lawrence Nolan, a fifteen-year-old piano prodigy who is forced to keep the shameful secret of his mother's mental illness as he attempts to raise himself and his younger brother. When his brother becomes ill, he is left with overwhelming responsibilities, and while at a piano competition in Montreal, Lawrence makes a dramatic decision that puts his future on hold in order to rectify his family life.

Liz Ryerson believes that Hillcrest Village, her Toronto neighbourhood, is quaint and quiet, but stumbling over a corpse while walking her dog dissolves that illusion for good. When she realizes she actually knew the murdered man, a real estate broker who appraised the building she co-owns with her philandering ex-husband, she becomes obsessed with solving the crime. The more instability is revealed in her life, the more she needs to find out who killed James Scott -- and why.