National Network for Equitable Library Service

GODMOTHER OF CAPE BRETON FICTION, and an essential figure in contemporary storytelling, Tessie Gillis has inspired Nova Scotia writers including Lynn Coady, Ann-Marie MacDonald, Alistair MacLeod, and Sheldon Currie. Her gripping stories dare to open the door to a realistic, sympathetic, and often dark portrait of rural Cape Breton life. The Innocent and Other Stories is generous selection inspired by Sheldon Currie's powerful and insightful opening essay- stories with exquisite focus on her vivid characters' hopes, fears, and failings.

A bush party leads to self-immolation. A cab ride ends in warfare. A squirrel is eviscerated. A universally impossible dare is accepted and proves not to be fatal. The weird kid triumphs. The stories in H. B. Hogan's debut collection sizzle like butter on hot cast iron-they're rich and dark and full of scrappy, sordid and sparkling humanity.

The Scent of Mogra and Other Stories is a collection of four short stories about strong female characters dealing with difficult life-changing situations. The turmoil that they face is, often, the result of a social structure that discriminates against women. Through these powerful women characters, the stories reflect attitudes and ways of life in a village in India, and in modern day Mumbai; they highlight the values of an older generation, and the dreams of a new one.

Toward the North is the first anthology of thirteen short fiction pieces written and translated by Chinese-Canadian writers during the last two decades, each of which depicts the contemporary lives of new Chinese immigrants to Canada, and illustrates newcomers' perspectives of multicultural Canada. The theme of the anthology is Chinese transnational and cross-cultural life experience. A fundamental concern shared by most of the authors is to redefine their characters' cultural identity in their acculturation across times and space.

"It was February 29 again, and I was wondering which member of my family would try to kill me this time." From this intriguing premise, the stories in this collection of short fiction by new Canadian writers map out fifteen wildly different approaches to the same terrain. From comedies about vampire conversions and French-Canadian werewolves to tense family dramas about humanoid robots and fairy-zombie hybrids, these stories chart a new set of possibilities for short fiction in Canada today.

Charity takes small steps to escape her controlling father. Jasmine endures the rumors about her at school, even though no one really knows what happened last summer. The Oh! So Perfect Hair Dolly wishes for just the right child to take her home from the store. Nicola has a run-in with a classmate on her first day at a new school in the big city - or is the classmate a wolf in disguise? A squirrel ruminates on the nature of life and death. Dani fights for her dream, in spite of her father's insistence that her older brother should be the one to play hockey.

Set in East Africa, the Middle East, Canada, and the U.S., Things Are Good Now examines the weight of the migrant experience on the human psyche. In these pages, women, men, and children who've crossed continents in search of a better life find themselves struggling with the chaos of displacement and the religious and cultural clashes they face in their new homes. A maid who travelled to the Middle East lured by the prospect of a well-paying job is trapped in the Syrian war.

In settings that range from the old American West to pre-revolutionary France, from a present-day dig site in the high tablelands of South America to deep space, That Tiny Life is a wide-ranging and utterly original collection of short fiction and a novella that examines the idea of progress - humanity's never-ending cycle of creation and destruction. In the award-winning story, "Valley Floor," a surgeon performs an amputation in the open desert in the American West.

Nominated, Scotiabank Giller Prize. Internationally celebrated as one of literature's most gifted stylists, Lisa Moore returns with her third story collection, a soaring chorus of voices, dreams, loves, and lives. Taking us from the Fjord of Eternity to the streets of St. John's and the swamps of Orlando, these stories show us the timeless, the tragic, and the miraculous hidden in the underbelly of our everyday lives. A missing rock god may have jumped a cruise ship - in the Arctic. A grieving young woman may live next to a serial rapist.

There are unseen forces in our lives that shape who we are and what we become. How we respond to those forces determines our futures. These stories examine how characters respond to the unexpected. Do we carry our memories of the beautiful moments of life with us into death? And, ultimately, what do we value in life that defines us-from a hat to the shadow of a figure in a window reminding us of what we have lost or need to hold onto?