National Network for Equitable Library Service

It’s Labour Day, Camilla’s favourite weekend of the year. She’s planning to relax and ponder what’s happening in her relationship with policman Sgt. Ray Deveau. She’s emphatically not planning to get involved in anything that means trouble. No wonder the news that an old acquaintance has had an accident comes as a surprise. There must be some mistake. By the time Camilla unearths Laura’s connection to a violent revolutionary group active two decades earlier, she’s had several blows to the head and discovered that people shes been talking to keep ending up dead.

Twelve-year-old Martin Jessup, teller of tall tales and other untruths, cannot understand his sister’s objections to the family’s move from Winnipeg to small-town Ontario. With Dad in the military, moving is a fact of life. Settling into his new home, Martin is intrigued by a deserted house across the street and by an unfriendly neighbour, who seems to be waiting for something to happen. Martin and new friends Granger and Holly form a club that meets in the deep end of an empty swimming pool.

In the remote wilderness of West Quebec, where trees outnumber people a million to one and lakes a thousand to one, Death’s Golden Whisper opens with the sudden arrival of float planes bringing what Meg Harris believes are fishermen to the isolated northern lake she lives on. Within hours, she discovers that these men have come to develop a gold mine. She combines forces with Eric Odjik, chief of the neighbouring Migiskan reserve, to fight the mining company.

Winner of the 2004 ForeWord Book of the Year Award Toronto in 1856 is industrializing with little time for scruple or sentiment. When Reform politician William Sheridan dies suddenly and his daughter Theresa vanishes, only one man persists in asking questions. A former suitor of Theresa’s, bank cashier Isaac Harris has never managed to forget her, despite her marriage to another man. Thrust into the role of amateur detective, he must now struggle with the demands of his job and the shortcomings of the fledgling city police.

Winston Patrick, a successful lawyer but dissatisfied with his career defending the downtrodden of Vancouver’s criminal world, trades in the courtroom for the high school classroom. Soon Winston’s past life meets his present when a student accuses a fellow colleague of a teacher-student love affair. Reluctantly, Winston agrees to provide legal defence, but the case takes an even uglier turn: the student is murdered, making her alleged lover the prime suspect. And this is no ordinary student.

Over eighty per cent of Canadians live near a body of waterand that means when Canadians turn to crime, somebody usually ends up all wet. In this anthology of original crime fiction, editors Violette Malan and Therese Greenwood celebrate that most Canadian of locations: the ocean, lake, or river near you. With tales set across Canada, by award-winning authors like James Powell, Rick Mofina and Barbara Fradkin, and even a crossover story from fantasy writer Tanya Huff, you may just find your next vacation spot… or maybe not.

Remembrance Day is a proud day for Camilla MacPhee’s good friend, Mrs. Violet Parnell, one of five thousand Canadian women to go overseas during World War II. But the next day she has vanished. Camilla, with only a few letters and documents to guide her, follows her friend to Tuscany, chasing though historic towns, across high promontories and along steep mountain roads. Vanishing old partisans and Allied aircraft crash sites keep Camilla hopping as she tries to find Mrs. P. before someone with a deadly serious reason to keep the past hidden finds her first.

The third Polly Deacon novel finds our heroine in the unlikely (and uncomfortable) job of designing a mascot (Kountry Kow) for a new mega-grocery store, despite vitriolic opposition by local merchants, including her aunt. This is nasty enough, but when allegations of municipal corruption arise concerning the sale of the property on which the store will stand, Polly’s sleuthing instincts take over, to the usual chagrin of her sometimes boyfriend, surly Detective Mark Becker.

The starter’s gun explodes, and Hollis Grant excitedly begins her very first marathon race, only to stumble almost immediately over a body lying in the road, the body of the Reverend Paul Robertson, her soon-to-be ex-husband. When the crush of runners passes and the medics arrive, it becomes clear that the Reverend has not collapsed from the rigours of the race, but has been brutally stabbed.

In the sequel to Down in the Dumps, Polly finds herself touring as set and puppet designer for a small rural theatre company. When the stage manager mysteriously fails to appear for the first rehearsal, Polly has to step in and do the job. The full-time employment is welcome, but the work is hell. Dealing with a cast of viciously feuding actors, a mysterious practical joker whose tricks are decidedly gruesome, and a deepening conviction that the stage manager has been murdered, Polly finds her new job more than a little stressful. Where’s the stage manager’s body?