National Network for Equitable Library Service

Bex loves urban exploration--sneaking into abandoned locations--but he always plays it safe. Then a new kid, Kieran, offers him a risky, irresistible mission.

Sara has never been out of the tiny town of Hope, Ontario, where she has been in an orphanage all her life. After a fire destroys the orphanage, clues about her parentage, a medical certificate and a Star of David, lead her to Germany. Sara arrives in Germany determined to explore her newly discovered Jewish heritage and solve the mystery of her parentage. What she encounters is a country still dealing with the aftermath of the Holocaust.

Dot, whose name reflects her stature, has always had big dreams. But her dreams have to be put on hold while she searches for the truth about her parents. She gets a job as a seamstress at a lakeside resort in rural Ontario and falls hard for Eddie, a charming local boy who is equal parts helpful and distracting as Dot investigates her past. Searching for answers to questions about her birth, Dot learns more than she ever wanted to about the terrible effects of war, the legacy of deceit, and the enduring nature of love.

After the orphanage she lives in is destroyed by fire, Betty, an innocent and trusting teen, takes a job as a maid in Kingston, Ontario. Welcomed into the household of the wealthy Remington clan, Betty makes friends with the staff at the house and soon discovers that her mother had also been a maid there and that her father is in a nearby jail, convicted of murdering her mother. When she meets her father, she is taken aback by his claims of innocence, and she decides to try to uncover the truth about her mother's murder and her father's conviction.

When his brother Bunny vanishes from the Toronto City Hall skating rink, Spencer, a budding filmmaker, finds himself plunged into the stuff of movie thrillers: kidnapping, terrorists, intrigue, a missing document, a world-famous pop star, disguises, romance and a rogue alligator. As he races the clock to save his brother, he must sort the real from the make-believe and unravel a murder mystery involving his grandfather.

Steve is looking forward to a relaxing (and perhaps romantic) time under the Spanish sun with his friend, Laia. But when an email from his brother DJ arrives, implicating their grandfather in shadowy international plots involving nuclear bombs, Steve and Laia put aside all thoughts of a lazy, sun-drenched vacation. In a desperate attempt to find out if Steve's grandfather was a Cold War-era spy, they crack mysterious codes, confront violent Russian mobsters, dodge spies, unearth a bomb and avoid nudists.

DJ has always been the best at everything-sports, school, family-so climbing Kilimanjaro is just another thing he'll accomplish almost effortlessly. Or so he thinks, until he arrives in Tanzania and everything starts to go wrong. He's detained at immigration, he gets robbed and his climbing group has issues. Forced to go polepole (slowly), DJ finds out the hard way that youth, fitness level and drive have nothing to do with success on the mountain-or in life.

Charlie and his family are about to embark on another trip, to another out-of-the-way place off the beaten path. This time they are heading to an island in Croatia -- an incredibly beautiful country that lives in the shadow of war and conflict. Even for a seasoned traveler like Charlie, Croatia is a very different experience: the language is unfamiliar and half the words have no vowels, goats are a traffic-calming device, and red cliffs loom like fortresses over an impossibly blue sea. Still, Charlie and his little brother, Max, manage to find adventure wherever they go.

Even though it is now 1901, the people of Buxton, Canada (originally a settlement of runaway slaves) and Chatham, Canada are still haunted by two events of half a century before--the American Civil War, and the Irish potato famine, and the lasting damage those events caused to the survivors.

Former novelist Elaine Benson is helping an elderly spinster write a memoir of her years with the Canadian Army Nursing Sisters of WWII when she discovers that the writer hired before her died under suspicious circumstances.