National Network for Equitable Library Service

Anne Shirley moves to Summerside where she becomes principal of the local school and deals with a family who resents her presence.

In 1717, Tess Willoughby's privileged life is shattered when she is forced to accept a mysterious Spinner ring from a dying stranger. Worse yet, she finds herself forced onto a merchant ship bound for the pirate-infested West indies and betrothed to the stranger's murder - a man desperately covets the ring's supposed power of prophesy.

Sam Brown is a shy, nineteen-year-old farm kid fresh out of cooking school. Determined to make a life for himself in the city, he lands a job in a busy downtown Saskatoon diner. There, he meets Slash, the restaurant's gruff middle-aged cook and Bliss, an abrasive waitress. As the two men help Bliss struggle with her own demons, they are forced to face the truth inside of their own unlikely friendship. Baggage is a novel about lost souls finding one another; it's a story of intimacy and how it forces us to see the truths we don't always have the strength to face on our own.

When twelve-year-old Ana's zoologist parents move the whole family into the zoo, the Sneers--the clan of carnivorous female predators in her class--have even more ammunition to make her life miserable, although she tries to act like a chameleon and fade into the background.

Keita Ali has nothing: no bank account, no papers, no legal identity. A runner, he has fled home-- a brutal dictatorship that produces the world' s fastest marathoners-- to live as an illegal refugee in a wealthy western nation, surviving on winnings from local races. But the government is cracking down on illegal immigrants, so Keita-- who will be executed if he is deported to his homeland-- goes underground.

"Thirteen year-old Ailish, a feisty Irish fortune-teller, is about to become part of history. She becomes trapped on the mightly Great Eastern just as the ship sets off on its voyage to lay the very first trans-Atlantic telegraph cable. Escape is impossible! Ailish must pretend to be a boy to keep from being pitched into the ocean by the superstitious sailors, while dodging a dangerour ruffian who has stolen her golden treasure.

Bernice Meetoos, a Cree woman, leaves her home in Northern Alberta following tragedy and travels to Gibsons, BC. She is on something of a vision quest, seeking to understand the messages from The Frugal Gourmet (one of the only television shows available on CBC North) that come to her in her dreams. She is also driven by the desire to meet Pat Johns, who played Jesse on The Beachcombers.

Henry Hayward is a drowning man. With a soured long-term romance finally at an end, no family, and no refuge to be had in work, he progressively spends his days in the solace of alcohol and his nights with a series of interchangeable partners. In a quest to simultaneously recover from unrequited love and to find meaning in what is becoming an increasingly emotionally arid life, Henry travels to Afghanistan as an army-affiliated contractor.

September, 1983. Fourteen-year-old Bo, a boat person from Vietnam, lives in a small house in the Junction neighbourhood of Toronto with his mother, Thao, and his four-year-old sister, who was born severely disfigured from the effects of Agent Orange. Named Orange, she is the family secret; Thao keeps her hidden away, and when Bo's not at school or getting into fights on the street, he cares for her. One day a carnival worker and bear trainer, Gerry, sees Bo in a street fight, and recruits him for the bear wrestling circuit, eventually giving him his own cub to train.

"Both familiar and strange, this story of a large Canadian city seen through the wide eyes of a naive and inexperienced young immigrant - wise in the culture of comic books - is both hilarious and heartbreaking. Samuel is just 17 when his mother dies and he is called to live with the father he has only heard of. He leaves his village in Trinidad and flies to Toronto, where he finds his father living in a place called Regent Park.