National Network for Equitable Library Service

Gloria Murray's daughter jokes that Gloria would have sold her first born to further her musical career - a reproach closer to the truth than anyone but Gloria suspects. Gloria, born just before the Great Depression, knows from the moment she hears a soaring song played on the piano that she must follow that river of emotion. After an adolescence playing in churches and hotel lobbies, she prepares to study in post-World War II France, when another sort of passion intrudes and, halfway through her year abroad, she finds herself forced into a hard choice that she shares with no one.

"Set in nineteenth-century Tokyo and twentieth-century Boston, Pure Inventions tells of the incredible adventures of Hiroshiprankster, forger, authenticator, and artist. The son of a Japanese courtesan and an American naval officer, Hiroshi never feels at home in his native Japan. Torn by his mixed heritage, he is constantly compelled to reinvent himself, sometimes with disastrous consequences.

In a small working-class town, the building of a new dam uproots everyone and everything including the graveyard and those who rest beneath it.

In 1831, eighteen-year-old Oonagh Corcoran emigrates with her sister from southern Ireland to Upper Canada. In the deep folds of cool, green forest off the vast inland sea of Lake Ontario, she believes she has found paradise -- only to discover that the New World harbours its own horrible injustices when she meets a fugitive slave from Virginia named Chauncey Taylor. Love grows between them as Chauncey slowly reveals his terrible past to Oonagh, reliving the pain and tragedy he and his family suffered as slaves.

When a small fire starts to creep through the underbrush deep within a Montana forest valley, Porter Cassel is brought in to organize the firefighters charged with containing it. The fire moves quickly from bad to worse, rapidly scaling the forest canopy and killing one of Cassel's men. Removed from command, Cassel takes the fire investigation into his own hands, discovering that the fire was not just a random flare-up, but the work of an arsonist.

English novelist Guy Boyd's publisher forces him, against his inclination, to write a biography of the late Gabriel Brown, an eminent dealer in Old Masters. From the start, the project rattles the young Englishman, who has little interest in the Canadian-born connoisseur. As he settles into living in the dead man's house, interviewing his friends and lovers, Guy becomes fascinated with the process of life writing. He even travels to Canada to research the existence of a man who determinedly left no clues behind.

After stumbling on a bank robbery in progress, Mary Apostrophes and Bill Brown are mistaken for superheroes, and a video of their accidental gallantry goes viral.

Shannon Carew has a complicated relationship with history. Born a Newfoundler, she has spent years on the other side of the country in order to erase her past and set down new roots. But when an opportunity to work with Newfoundland and Labrador's archaeological sites appears, Shannon cannot resist and decides to return home. What awaits her is unexpected - for among the threads of history, and the tangles of her old life, is the chance to discover a new connection.--inside front cover.

Cary Fagan began his career writing short stories before moving on to novels as well as numerous books for children. Yet he has never given up his love for the story form. Here are ten new stories whose characters are funny, serious, peculiar, and absorbing -- as only Cary Fagan can write them.

"According to what we've been told, the source of all knowledge is somewhere just south of Sunset Boulevard. The problem is that Danny has lost the address." So begins Martyn Burke's tragi-comic novel of love and war. Danny, a Canadian sharp-shooter, and Hank, in the US Army, have been stationed in Kandahar, but they are in Los Angeles desperate to find the Hollywood psychic who will reveal the whereabouts of the women they love.