National Network for Equitable Library Service

The youngest child of the local doctor and evangelical preacher, Annie Baldwin was expected to work hard and not protest. Life on a pioneer farm was tough, so neighbors helped each other. George Richardson, the underage Doctor Bernardo boy, orphaned and shipped to Canada a few years earlier, is loaned to the Baldwins to help bring in the hay. Younger brother Peter Richardson was placed with another neighbor, so the brothers stayed in touch with each other. The Great War brought a lot of changes to life, even in the back woods of Ontario.

Showcasing a selection of stories from Armin Wiebe's 30 year writing career, Armin's Shorts features tales from the familiarly fictitious Mennonite community of Gutenthal, re-imagined origin stories from the Tlįchǫ of the subarctic, and flights of pure fantasy set in modern day Winnipeg.

When Canadian Forces soldier Jan Blaylock's father- an investigative journalist- and the rest of her family are murdered in an attempt to cover up illegal arms sales, Blaylock abandons military life to plan her revenge against Integrated Security, the multi-national conglomerate she deems responsible.

Welcome to Blind Crescent, where everyone is watching, but nobody sees a thing. In this fictitious slice of suburban life, Michelle Berry peels back the pretensions of manicured lawns and the rictus smiles of friendly neighbours. With a deft hand, she paints a picture of suburbia so absurdly real that every suburbanite reader can’t help but feel strangely at home.

Belonging and the search for home and family are at the center of the title story, "Fatted Calf Blues." Here, a woman hitchhikes home to Alberta to see her dying father. At a truck stop near Dauphin, Manitoba she meets a fellow traveller who radically changes the course of her homecoming. "The Darkened Door" explores the nature of desire when a couple arrives home to discover an anonymous love note on their apartment door and can't help but be intrigued.

Catherine, an archivist, has spent decades committed to conserving the pasts of others, only to find her own resurfacing on the eve of her retirement. Carefully, she mines the failing memories of her aging mother to revive a mysterious Uncle and relive the tragic downfall of her brother. Catherine remembers, and in the process, discovers darker family secrets, long silenced, and their devastating aftermath.

Montgomery “Monty” Haaviko has done the crimes—robbery, assault, embezzlement, arson, smuggling, attempted murder—and has lived the criminal lifestyle, where nothing is permanent. Crime may look easy, but a career criminal can’t even follow a TV series. For Monty the endless danger and fear, along with a hard-to-kick drug habit, became too much. Now, all he wants to do is settle down in a quiet Winnipeg neighbourhood with his wife, his baby son, his dog, and his pet mouse, and try something new: an honest job and life as an ordinary decent citizen.

"There are people who break open and make a new, bigger, self. But some of us are ... brittle." When stress causes an old trauma to surface, Lucy, a longtime community organizer, teacher and anti-poverty activist, loses control of her life. On probation and living on the streets of Halifax's North End, all she has left is friends. Faithful friends like Judith, her lawyer, who is helping her take back her life.

Anxiety is the watchword at most school reunions, with side-eye comparisons of greying hair and extra pounds around the belly. Not our Randy Craig. She's more concerned with resolving a 20 year old CanLit scandal and catching a ruthless killer. While helping her best friend Denise organize their 20 year reunion at the University of Alberta, Randy's tumultuous past as a graduate student comes rushing into the present as she faces off against old ghosts and imminent death.

Demoralized by his job and dissatisfied with his life, Mark punches the clock with increasing indifference. He wanted to help people; he’d always believed that as social worker he would be able to make a difference in people’s lives. But after six years of bureaucracy and pushing paper Mark has lost hope. All that changes when he meets Bumi, an Indonesian restaurant worker. Moved from his small fishing village and sent to a residential school under the authoritarian Suharto regime, Bumi’s radical genius and obsessive-compulsive disorder raise suspicion among his paranoid neighbours.