National Network for Equitable Library Service

Cassandra Wilson's life isn't easy. She's spent most of her teen years taking care of her much younger brother Chris, working to help support her widowed mother, coping with high school and its pressures, and still grieving over the death of her beloved father. Her life begins to change once she learns that her mother has been lying to her about working overtime and taking Saturday courses because she's secretly dating a man whom Cassandra fears will try to take the place of her father.

Written by a Mohawk Institute Residential School survivor, this is a fierce and candid story that reveals the heartbreaking trauma of that tragic time in our history. The author portrays how the ongoing impact of the residential schools confinements has affected Indigenous communities over several generations and has contributed to many social problems that continue to exist today.

Janwar Gupta, a brilliant but neurotic medical student intern, has a patient die under suspicious circumstances at the start of his two-week anaesthesiology placement at the Ottawa Civic Hospital.

Autumn Dean unexpectedly returns home from Europe to her father's ranch in the Okanagan Valley, where she reconnects with Bruce Langdon, a stoic childhood friend grown into an accomplished rancher. Autumn and Bruce's budding romance is halted by the revival of an intergenerational grudge between their two families that is shrouded in mystery. Autumn is insistent on uncovering the root of the hostility: a forbidden romance between her mother and Bruce's father that had devastating consequences.

My father drowned in the Aegean Sea, fifty nautical miles northeast of the port of Piraeus. When it happened, my mother and I were at home in Toronto. It was early evening in Greece, afternoon for us, and I was at school when she found out. Niko Kiriakos, tentative heir to the ailing Calypso Shipping fleet, always suspected he was cursed. Following his sudden disappearance, his wife, Anna, and daughter, Zoe, are left adrift. Unmoored, they begin to test the boundaries of their lives, struggling with issues of loyalty, identity and what it means to be a family.

Agathe and Réjean Lapointe are about to celebrate their twentieth wedding anniversary when Réjean's beloved Chevy Silverado is found abandoned at the side of the road--with no trace of Réjean. As her hope dwindles, Agathe falls in with her spirited coworker, Debbie, who teaches Agathe about rock and roll, and with Martin Bureau, the one man who might know the truth about Réjean's fate. Set against the landscape of rural Acadia, I Am a Truck is a funny and moving tale about the possibilities and impossibilities of love and loyalty.

First published in 1926, Madge Macbeth's Shackles is a controversial novel that examines the power dynamics of early Canadian feminism. The book exposes the struggles of middle-class Naomi Lennox between her role as dutiful wife to unambitious and proper Arthur and her desire for acceptance of her writing career. Filled with dialogue and debate that expose early twentieth century limitations and opportunities for both women and men, Shackles is a colourful and surprising depiction of first-wave feminism in Canada.

Adam Macallister's sportswriting career is about to end before it begins, but he's got one last shot--a Sports Illustrated profile about hockey's most notorious goon, the reclusive Terry Punchout--who also happens to be Adam's estranged father. Adam returns to Pennington, Nova Scotia, where Terry now lives in the local rink and drives the Zamboni.

It is 1970. The evergreens are thick with snow despite it being the month of April. In an Ottawa hospital, another daughter is born to the Azar family. The parents are from Kfarmichki, a village in Lebanon but their daughters were born in Canada. Four daughters, to be precise. No sons. Youssef is the domineering father. Samira is the quiescent mother. Rima, Katrina and Mona are the traditional daughters. Then there is Adele, the newest member. "You should've been born a boy," Samira whispers to Adele shortly after her entrance into the world.

Blue Bear Woman (Ourse bleue) is the first novel in Quebec written by an Indigenous woman. The story of a young Cree woman's search for her roots and identity, this is also the author's debut novel, originally published in 2007, and it will be her second book to be published in English. The novel has been described as a "texte de resistance", showing contemporary Indigenous life and the impact on the Cree of the building of the Eastmain dam in northern Quebec, posited as "virgin" territory, yet which has actually been part of the Cree traditional territory since time immemorial.