National Network for Equitable Library Service

Set against the backdrop of Stalinism and then the collapse of the USSR, Kolia is a luminous and unforgettable story about a boy born in a Siberian Gulag and his eventual freedom and life as a clown in the Moscow circus in the 1960s. Kolia’s life begins in a labour camp in eastern Siberia in 1937. Iosif, a prisoner originally from Western Europe, teaches him the basic knowledge for survival in the harsh environment of the Gulag, but he also teaches him calculus, Russian, and French, before disappearing like most people who have lived in the open-air prison.

In 1925, in a London restaurant, J. Bruce Ismay, former chairman of the White Star Line, has a quiet dinner with his daughter Evelyn. Through the extravagant foliage of the dining room, a young woman watches. Like Ismay, Miranda Grimsden was a passenger on board the ill-fated Titanic that terrible night in April 1912. Fuelled by simmering emotions, Ismay, Evelyn, and Miranda take a backwards journey through the thirteen intervening years to confront issues of cowardice, spite, and revenge, and to dare themselves to exorcise the spectre of the past.

The harrowing tale of the last woman hanged in Newfoundland.

In 1959, the small town of Badger was the centre of a labour confrontation that forever changed the social and political landscape of Newfoundland. For two and a half months, loggers had been striking for better wages and working conditions. Led by the International Woodworkers of America (IWA), the strike reached its climax when national and provincial police forces stormed the town in an attempt to break the impasse. The Badger Riot tells the story of the deadly melee that followed.

I never imagined I would die this way. Young, surrounded by thousands, yet alone and far away from home. I thought I would be afraid, but I’m not. The pain in my chest has dulled to a mild ache. Maybe if I close my eyes I’ll see my home, see Mom one last time. She’ll be upset if I don’t say goodbye. Dad will understand the sacrifice I made for king and country. And little Joanie. She’ll miss me the most, I think. I open my eyes and my breath comes out as a shudder. Can I still be here among the dead and dying in this barren place? This no man’s land?

The story of one girls struggle with tuberculosis and her journey to recovery.

In the late nineteenth century, after disease and circumstance have left her alone in the world, Mary Rourke believes she is predestined to spinsterhood in her small community in Newfoundland. When a series of dramatic events brings a strange man to her door, Mary emerges from the comfortable isolation that she knows to follow her dreams in Boston. Those desires do not come without sacrifice and hard choices. When her past comes back to haunt her, Mary must decide whether there is room for both her aspirations and her heart—or if she must surrender one to have the other.

A novel of crime and passion in nineteenth-century Newfoundland Alexander Pindikowsky, a Polish artist working in Heart’s Content, is arrested in 1880 for the crime of forgery. He is sentenced to fifteen months at Her Majesty’s Penitentiary in St. John’s. Governor John Hawley Glover, when made aware of Pindikowsky’s talent, arranges for the prisoner to serve part of his sentence in a most unusual way—designing and painting ceiling frescoes at Government House. Ellen Dormody, a parlour maid at Government House, witnesses first-hand the brilliance of Alexander’s artistry.

A fascinating and unpredictable dramatic story of John Guy of Bristol.

The banking schooner Marion set sail from St. Jacques, Newfoundland, bound for St. Pierre, the home base of Captain Pierre Maurice, on June 10, 1915. The vessel and crew were never seen again. Many have speculated that the French captain had made good on his threat to end the life of Captain Ike Jones, but it was never proven. The Loss of the Marion tells the story from the point of view of Nellie Myles, whose husband and brother-in-law were lost with fifteen other men.