National Network for Equitable Library Service

Moving with her mother from Vancouver to Wells, British Columbia, Elizabeth Connell longs for the excitement of the city and her father, brother, and friends left behind. While she is in the peaceful graveyard of nearby Barkerville she finds a small gold ring that has very special powers. By twisting the ring on her finger, Elizabeth is transported to the nineteenth century during the heyday of the gold rush. Caught between her present life with family and friends and a love in the past, Elizabeth learns more than history.

These twelve linked stories confirm what we’ve suspsected all along: eventually we all outsmart our parents. In this brilliant debut collection by Debbie Howlett we return to the turbulent 70s revisiting the bittersweet wonder years of Diane Wilkinson, a precocious teen living in suburban Montreal amidst the Catholic/Protestant, Federalist/Separatist split that foreshadowed the October Crisis.

An artist cooks a Jamaican meal for her straying lover, thinking she might just have the one ingredient that will ensure he never leaves her. A beautiful woman slips into the sea near her Jamaican home and disappears on the eve of a reunion with her Scottish fianc. A white law student and a black harlot do a sexual tango in a shanty with fatal results.

Short-listed for the 2007 Ottawa Book Award for Fiction When 17-year-old Rigg and his friend Ari hang a marauding wolf in the wilds of medieval Greenland, they get much more than they bargained for: a hint of werewolves, glimpses of human sacrifice to the old Norse gods, and an encounter with a resourceful native girl that changes their lives forever. This adventure brings Rigg and Ari into conflict with Rigg’s grandfather, Erik the Red, the ruler of the Greenland Norse colony, and with his daughter, Freydis, skilled in black magic.

Fifteen-year-old Rigg, son of Leif Eriksson, loves mystery and adventure. In the early eleventh century, he finds both of these in abundance when his father sails away and leaves him behind in Vinland, the Vikings' precarious foothold on the wild Newfoundland coast. Soon, Rigg makes an amazing discovery. The Vikings aren't alone in this alien land. But who inhabits it with them? Demons, giants, or another human tribe – one that equals the Norse invaders in skill and bravery?

"With the pace, intensity, and beauty of a thoroughbred beginning its stretch run, Twelve Trees is simply mesmerizing." – M.T. Kelly Exracetrack journalist Priam Harvey, occupant of the prized "corner stool" at McCully's Tavern, marks the first anniversary of his firing from Sport of Kings magazine and the coincident departure of his girlfriend, Barbara, by doing what he does best: drinking and gambling.

While camping in Ontario’s Algonquin Park with their fathers, best friends Dani and Caitlin spend the night by themselves at an isolated site on Canoe Lake, rumoured to be the favourite spot of the famous Canadian painter Tom Thomson. After a sleepless night, the girls are stunned by the appearance of a ghostly canoe drifting towards the shore. Is this really the ghost of Tom Thomson, the creator of The Jack Pine and West Wind?

Short-listed for the 2002 Arthur Ellis Award for Best First Novel Dr. Rebecca Temple has just returned to practice in an old converted house in the Kensington Market area of Toronto, six months after the death of her artist husband, when she's confronted with the violent murder of a patient she had earlier diagnosed as paranoid. Sylvia Warsh's accomplished first novel explores the decades-old deceptions and plots that go back to World War Two Poland and underlie the murder of Goldie.

Commended for the 2009 Best Books for Kids & Teens For Skye Haverill and her family, it begins as an ordinary day. But in the annals of Canadian history, October 7, 1825, is the date of one of our greatest national disasters. The Haverill family has been turned upside down in the last year. Following the death of their mother, Skye and her brother, Tavish, have adjusted to live with a single parent. And when they're asked to make another adjustment – when his father remarries and his new wife becomes pregnant – Skye finds that some changes are too much to handle.

Rosemary Watson and Peter McAllister think their future is clear: they’re finally heading off for university. They’re thinking about finding apartments, picking courses, living like adults.But what happens when the future becomes the past? While helping Rosemary’s brother move into an apartment in Toronto, Peter and Rosemary fall into an underground river and are swept back in time, to Toronto in 1884. It’s a struggle to survive and adapt to the alien culture of the late nineteenth century.