National Network for Equitable Library Service

One of Canada’s most painful and breathtaking pictures of a soldier’s life during the First World War. Peregrine Acland’s novel All Else Is Folly is an irreplaceable depiction of the Canadian experience in the First World War. More than just a devastating portrayal of the terrors and hardships of trench warfare, the novel is also a profound meditation on the nature of man, one that draws on both the Nietzschean notion of man as warrior and Havelock Ellis’s idea of man as lover.

Set in the desperate days at the outset of the Second World War, Our Only Shield brings back Rory Ferrall, the resourceful Canadian spy from Michael J. Goodspeed’s debut novel, Three to a Loaf. Hastily recalled from a successful career in the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, Rory arrives in Britain only to find a war that is being prosecuted with political indecision and wishful thinking. The skills he displayed as a spy in the Great War are once again sorely needed by a small group of far-sighted but frustrated military planners.

Three to a Loaf is the First World War story of Rory Ferrall, a young Canadian officer of Anglo-German descent who, after being wounded and disfigured at Ypres, comes to the attention of British military intelligence. Ferrall’s German background is valuable to the war’s planners. Hundreds of German-Americans had returned to the Fatherland to fight for the Kaiser at the outbreak of war in August 1914 and the British captured one.

Originally published in 1949, Storm Below tells the story of a fictional Royal Canadian Navy ship and its crew. The adventure unfolds over six days of an escort run across the Atlantic Ocean to Newfoundland during the Second World War. The ship, the HMCS Riverford, is a composite of the vessels, mostly corvettes, that author Hugh Garner served on during his time in the Canadian navy, and the Canadian sailors whose experiences he relates are masterfully drawn from the crewmen he knew during his months at sea.

In 1939, Alfred Day had wanted war. And when he got it, he found purpose in its turmoil: he found his proper role as tail-gunner in a Lancaster bomber; he found the wild, dark fellowship of his crew; and -- most extraordinary of all -- he found Joyce, a woman to love. But now, that's all gone: the war took it away. And maybe the war has taken him away, too. Before Hitler and the bombs, Alfred was a boy in Staffordshire, helpless to defend his mother and resist his abusive father. The RAF gave him order, skills, another family, a way to be a man.

As a young man in the midst of World War II, Jacob fell in love with an older woman and began a rapturous affair, until she seemingly vanished. As strange things start to happen around him, a familiar young woman appears at Jacob's house with a mysterious notebook. The past doesn't stay buried and the mystery of Maddy Heisler is reveled. With secrets and lies, lovers and spies, Jacob will never be the same again.

In Hedda Gabler, a moving exploration of female oppression, a recently married Hedda navigates her new identity as a wife and the intense constraints put on her by society. She prefers pistols to cooking and does not care for raising a family. As Hedda fights against the pressures of her new life and her own neuroses, she comes to terms with an untimely choice. Sirens: Elektra in Bosnia is a gripping story about the horrors of collective and personal wars as a family torn apart by death and destruction becomes their own worst enemy.

Based around the lives of three distinct characters—a young soldier imprisoned for her misconduct at a prison camp in Iraq, a microbiologist-cum-weapons inspector who exposes the false justifications for war, and a mother/political opponent of Saddam Hussein—Palace of the End details the reality of the war in Iraq from three unique perspectives.

The Navy in 1942–1943 is fighting a losing battle against Japan for control of the Solomon Islands. Vice Admiral William "Bull" Halsey appoints a wild card named Harmon Wolf, an American Indian, as a destroyer commander. What happens next will change Wolf's life forever.

The Gurus were a highly advanced species who brought amazingly sophisticated technology to the human race. But now they face a far more malevolent life form. Master Sergeant Michael Venn and his band of brothers must turn back the Antag tide.