National Network for Equitable Library Service

Everyone at the Pleasant Inn is looking forward to a very merry Christmas. Oh, irascible proprietor Trevor Rudley has his usual complaints about Mrs. Blount's non-traditional floral arrangements. And he's sure he won't like housekeeper Tiffany's new beau, Dan Thornton, a writer, of all things. But it's Christmas. Surely nothing catastrophic could happen. Bad things do happen, of course. When the snow starts falling, it seems it will never stop. Margaret Rudley runs over a man lying in the road during a whiteout. Walter Sawchuck almost chokes when someone doctors his Mrs. Dash.

NYPD Detective Nicola Cortese, veteran of three tours in Iraq and Afghanistan, is demoted and transferred to a desk job in Operations after his PTSD spirals out of control following a drug bust gone bad. When he returns to active duty, his first case, a B&E homicide, leads him to uncover an international conspiracy that is using a genetically engineered seed to take control of the world's wheat.

On a rare father-daughter outing to the science museum, Dr. Lorne Thorpe loses his young daughter Shawn. Although she eventually returns, seemingly unharmed, she refuses to talk about what has happened. Seeking help from her erratic father, Detective Beldon must solve the mystery before more children disappear.

When art aficionado Leonard Anderson learns his wealthy patron, Luella Pryce, is to endow the local gallery on the Caribbean island of St. Napoli with her fabled art collection he is stunned. How could she? The Cartwrights, the most glorious of her paintings, had been practically promised to him! Desperate to keep them for himself, Leonard removes the Cartwrights from Luella's mansion for "cleaning," substituting clever forgeries in their stead. To erase evidence of fraud, he connives with his unscrupulous nephew to set fire to Luella's.

Margaret Rudley has finally persuaded her husband Trevor to take a vacation, a week-long canoeing expedition in Northern Ontario. Rudley hates the idea of leaving the Pleasant, the beautiful old country inn they've run for over a quarter of a century, but he is reluctant to deny her a cherished dream. They set off, accompanied by long-time guests Elizabeth Miller, Edward Simpson, Norman and Geraldine Phipps-Walker, and a pair of neophytes, Vern Peters and Eric Turnbull.

Retired Detective Kevin Beldon has left Ottawa and gone into retreat at a Buddhist monastery in California following his successful treatment for lung cancer. He's trying to make sense of his life, but death is very much on his mind. And not just his own; he's still trying to come to terms with the loss ten years earlier of his wife and son, victims of an evil mastermind whom Beldon had been forced to let escape.

Montreal's Hochelaga district is in the grips of gentrification and its drug dealers and prostitutes are fast disappearing. Inspector Vanier, investigating the brutal death of a drug dealer, suspects the neighbourhood cleanup may involve murdering the unwanted. The local Police Commander is only concerned with declining crime rates and his improving career prospects, and is willing to go easy on a local militia group that is expanding its influence. When Vanier is suspended for brutality, he is on his own.

Inspector Luc Vanier is drinking his way through Christmas Eve when he is called out to investigate the murder of five homeless people. His investigation takes him into the backrooms of the Catholic Church, the boardrooms of Montreal's business elite and the soup kitchens and back alleys of street life in winter.

A Guatemalan journalist is kidnapped, and the only message from her kidnappers is the murder of her lawyer. In a race against time, Luc Vanier sets about reconstructing her life, through the sordid world of human trafficking, the secretive underbelly of a multinational mining corporation, and the hiding places of desperate refugees. When Vanier is brutally warned off the investigation, he throws away the rule book and goes after the villains with a vengeance.

Detective Lane returns for a fourth time in Smoked, Garry Ryan's darkest mystery to date. When Jennifer Towers is found dead in a graffiti-tagged dumpster, Detectives Lane and Harper must decipher the art to find its artist - and possibly the victim's killer. What begins as an unconventional murder investigation leads to the disturbing discovery of two abused children, whose father becomes a prime suspect in the case. In true Detective Lane form, Lane must protect the damaged youths while keeping his own family in tact.