National Network for Equitable Library Service

Growing up in the shadow of a famous mother, Clara has never felt good about her body. Now, at sixteen, she has an unhealthy obsession with healthy eating. After a social media disaster, she decides to escape for the summer to Paris to stay with her estranged dad and her six-year-old brother, Alastair, who is on the autism spectrum. Charged with his care, Clara and Alastair set out to explore the city. Paris, and a handsome young French baker, teaches Clara about first love, and a new love of food.

Despite her family's threat to disown her, Idil, a young Somali woman, rejects her high Bliss status to marry Sidow, a poor Boon man. Her decision transforms her life, forcing her to face harsh and sometimes even deadly consequences for her defiance of a strict tribal hierarchy. Set in the fifteen-year period before Somalia's 1991 Civil War, Idil's journey is almost too hard to bear at times. Her determination to follow her heart and to pursue love over family and convention is a story that has been told across time and across cultures.

From the author of the bestselling Jalna series comes a story of a farm inheritance that cultivates an illicit love affair. For Derek Vale, Grimstone farm is more than an inheritance. It’s an adventure and a retreat all in one, and a chance to start over. But when an affair with a seasonal fruit-picker crosses racial lines, a gathering scandal and an unexpected child are only the first signs of a storm that could rip Grimstone from its foundations.

CCBC’s Best Books for Kids & Teens (Spring 2016) — Commended From the award-winning movie comes a story of courage and forbidden love. It’s 1882 in southern China. Li Jun, a feisty homeless girl disguised as a boy called Little Tiger, works in a fireworks factory and yearns to sail across the ocean to the mysterious Gold Mountain in faraway British Columbia to find her long-lost father and fulfill her promise to her dying mother. She joins thousands of Chinese men blasting a path for the new railway through the “impassable” Rocky Mountains.

A story of adventure and romance set in the wilds of Rupert’s Land in the early 19th century. When Orkneywoman Rose is shipwrecked on the shores of Rupert’s Land, she quickly falls in love with Alexander, a Half-caste man who is guiding her people into the dark heart of the continent. But after the death of her father at the hands of another Native, Rose turns against Alexander and all his kind. Heartbroken, Alexander returns to his wild life of running buffalo on the prairie.

A tragic love triangle set in a forgotten place during an invisible war. Inspired by true events, Underground tells the story of a troubled romance between Lukas and Elena, two members of the underground Lithuanian resistance movement in mid- 1940s. After shooting up a room full of Soviet government workers during their engagement party, Lukas and Elena become folk heroes to their political cause, but are forced deep into hiding in order to escape punishment for their role in the massacre. When their secret bunker is discovered, Lukas is nearly captured.

From the author of Macdonald, comes a new novel about an extraordinary love triangle set at the apex of Canada’s national life at the dawn of the twentieth century. A deeply absorbing novel of passion and politics, Laurier in Love reveals a side of Sir Wilfrid Laurier as Canadians have never known him: romantic and idealistic, inspiring and seductive, yet conflicted and compromised, as he balances his time between his wife and his mistress. Elegant, silver-tongued Sir Wilfrid Laurier is just beginning his fabled career as one of the nation’s greatest leaders.

The life of fiftyish Jessie Dearborn takes an unexpected turn when a ruthless developer threatens to cut down century-old trees in her small northern town in order to build a condominium. Surprising even herself, she steps in front of a chainsaw to defend the trees she loves. As the fight to save the trees intensifies, a group of gutsy, quick-witted older women joins the battle and explodes the issue into the newsmedia. At this turning point in her life, a native man helps Jessie by teaching her to trust her own instincts.

1996 Ontario Trillium Literary Award — Shortlisted 1996 Discover These Great New Writers, Barnes and Noble Award — Shortlisted What begins as a young woman’s infatuation soon escalates into a piercing study in power, obsession, and the disparity between art and reality. In this elegant novel of passion and art, award-winning Ann Ireland extends the boundaries of the traditional love story. The Instructor probes the nature of power shifts between man and woman, teacher and student. It is a story of needs that become twisted into obsession.

A classic of Canadian erotica, this is the original restored edition of the flagellation story Glassco crafted for the notorious Paris publisher Maurice Girodias and his Olympia Press.