National Network for Equitable Library Service

Lillie Dempster of Saint John, New Brunswick, often imagines herself on the big screen. It is the one fantastic escape she can afford from her tragic daily life. In the burgeoning early years of the twentieth century, Lillie is a lot like the distressed damsels from the silent films she loves. Orphaned by the Great War and the Spanish influenza at fourteen, Lillie is forced to move in with her upstairs neighbour, Frank. She finds, however, that life does not get much better as a pretty young girl who draws unwanted interest from men wherever she goes.

Eleven-year-old Katelyn has always had voices and visions. She's long suspected she is hearing from past lives. But when she runs away from home and hides out with an old friend in Vancouver, her visions become more real. She finds herself writing the words of someone else in a diary, the words of someone whose fate was deeply impacted by the Komagata Maru incident. As Katelyn learns more about the Komagata Maru and the person communicating with her, she realizes that she must correct a wrong from the past.

Set in 1936 Montreal, this is the story of Lawrence Nolan, a fifteen-year-old piano prodigy who is forced to keep the shameful secret of his mother's mental illness as he attempts to raise himself and his younger brother. When his brother becomes ill, he is left with overwhelming responsibilities, and while at a piano competition in Montreal, Lawrence makes a dramatic decision that puts his future on hold in order to rectify his family life.

Liz Ryerson believes that Hillcrest Village, her Toronto neighbourhood, is quaint and quiet, but stumbling over a corpse while walking her dog dissolves that illusion for good. When she realizes she actually knew the murdered man, a real estate broker who appraised the building she co-owns with her philandering ex-husband, she becomes obsessed with solving the crime. The more instability is revealed in her life, the more she needs to find out who killed James Scott -- and why.

Gloria Murray's daughter jokes that Gloria would have sold her first born to further her musical career - a reproach closer to the truth than anyone but Gloria suspects. Gloria, born just before the Great Depression, knows from the moment she hears a soaring song played on the piano that she must follow that river of emotion. After an adolescence playing in churches and hotel lobbies, she prepares to study in post-World War II France, when another sort of passion intrudes and, halfway through her year abroad, she finds herself forced into a hard choice that she shares with no one.

"Set in nineteenth-century Tokyo and twentieth-century Boston, Pure Inventions tells of the incredible adventures of Hiroshiprankster, forger, authenticator, and artist. The son of a Japanese courtesan and an American naval officer, Hiroshi never feels at home in his native Japan. Torn by his mixed heritage, he is constantly compelled to reinvent himself, sometimes with disastrous consequences.

In a small working-class town, the building of a new dam uproots everyone and everything including the graveyard and those who rest beneath it.

In 1831, eighteen-year-old Oonagh Corcoran emigrates with her sister from southern Ireland to Upper Canada. In the deep folds of cool, green forest off the vast inland sea of Lake Ontario, she believes she has found paradise -- only to discover that the New World harbours its own horrible injustices when she meets a fugitive slave from Virginia named Chauncey Taylor. Love grows between them as Chauncey slowly reveals his terrible past to Oonagh, reliving the pain and tragedy he and his family suffered as slaves.

English novelist Guy Boyd's publisher forces him, against his inclination, to write a biography of the late Gabriel Brown, an eminent dealer in Old Masters. From the start, the project rattles the young Englishman, who has little interest in the Canadian-born connoisseur. As he settles into living in the dead man's house, interviewing his friends and lovers, Guy becomes fascinated with the process of life writing. He even travels to Canada to research the existence of a man who determinedly left no clues behind.

Shannon Carew has a complicated relationship with history. Born a Newfoundler, she has spent years on the other side of the country in order to erase her past and set down new roots. But when an opportunity to work with Newfoundland and Labrador's archaeological sites appears, Shannon cannot resist and decides to return home. What awaits her is unexpected - for among the threads of history, and the tangles of her old life, is the chance to discover a new connection.--inside front cover.