National Network for Equitable Library Service

Alexander Graham Bell, Baddeck's most illustrious resident, and one of the world's greatest inventors, is also famous for the greatness of his compassion. It's 1908, and ten-year-old Eddie MacDonald shares the friendly inventor's passion for solving problems and for taking long walks in the fields above Bras d'Or Lake. But whereas Bell is renowned by many for being the smartest man in the world, Eddie is just a local farm boy who struggles to learn to read and write.

Tina is short, but she packs a wallop. And she knows every move a boxer needs to get to the top. It's 1979, and the glory days of the sport are over. With the family gym about to fold, and her father unwilling to listen to a word she says, Tina explodes and takes off, leaving Sydney's Whitney Pier behind her for good. But it isn't her temper that turns things around, it's a road trip with her sister, and a Mi'kmaw light-heavyweight they meet along the way. Tina's convinced he'll go the distance - with her as Manager.

Descended from one of the three most prominent families in Acadia, Jeanne Dugas (1731-1817) and her family lived for more than thirty years under the threat of capture and deportation by the British militia and attacks by pirates and privateers. The story follows trials and tribulations from Louisbourg to Grand Pré, to Port Toulouse and Mira, Île-Saint-Jean, Remshic, Restigouche and back again -- often more than once. Captured by the British militia, the family was imprisoned, where three of her four children died.

In 1744, at age 15, Jacques and his father leave France for Louisbourg, the capital of Île Royale--a far cry from his books and music and the comforts of his mother's home. In the Acadian forests that surround Louisbourg, a young Mi'kmaw man named Two-feathers watches the strange comings and goings of soldiers and citizens. The two young men follow very different paths--one formally educated and refined, the other curious and skilful--both seeking to understand their father.

"It is the late 1960s, and the world of twelve-year-old Ruth Iverson pretty much revolves around her friends, a boy she likes, The Monkees and spending time with her dad, doing special stuff like watching the Toronto Maple Leafs win the Stanley Cup. But she is soon to realize that her mom's strange behavior, which has become an embarrassment, is a symptom of a disease that will affect her family's life and possibly Ruth's future. While she watches major events like the marriage of John Lennon and Yoko Ono, the assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr.

A moving story of losing family but finding a new one. Thirteen-year-old Rachel is bad news, or so her foster care worker tells her. She's been shuttled from one rotten foster family to another ever since her mother and brother died in a car accident five years ago, and she's running out of options.

In Somewhere I Belong, we meet young P.J. Kavanaugh at North Boston Station. His father has died, the Depression is on, and his mother is moving them back home. They settle in, and P.J. makes new friends. But the P.E.I. winter is harsh, the farm chores endless, and his teacher a drunken bully. He soon wants to go home; the problem is how. A letter arrives from Aunt Mayme announcing a Babe Ruth charity baseball game in the old neighbourhood. But Ma won't let him go. P.J is devastated. The weeks pass, then there is an accident on the farm. P.J. becomes a hero and Ma changes her mind.

It's lobster season at The Shores, a fishing village isolated from The Island in a storm surge. Parker, a collector of antiquities, moved there with his partner Guillaume, a chef just out of rehab. "Hy" McAllister, a writer looking for lobster recipes for a newsletter, also needs a speaker for her Women's Institute meeting. Enter Camilla, founder of the Lobster Liberation Legion. The legion starts freeing lobsters from their traps, angering the villagers and the man who runs Parker's fisheries empire.

A young widow, orphan and mother, Wilhelmina Anne Brown is just beginning to find some stability in her new home in Prince Edward Island when she is forced to deal with the death of her beloved uncle, Bill Darby. Darby, a Charlottetown private investigator, leaves Anne and her fourteen-year-old daughter a small savings account and his business, where Anne has worked as office manager for six years. What follows is Anne's struggle to protect her family, find justice for her clients, and forge a new life for herself.