National Network for Equitable Library Service

Stories of the road allowance people are old men's stories, translated by Maria Campbell and given to you in the dialect and rhythm of her village and her father's generation. In the M¿Æis oral tradition, these stories must be said aloud to give life to the voices in village English.

"Abducted as an 11-year-old child from her village in West Africa and forced to walk for months to the sea in a coffle--a string of slaves-- Aminata Diallo is sent to live as a slave in South Carolina.

Elf and Yoli are sisters. While on the surface Elfrieda's life is enviable (she's a world-renowned pianist, glamorous, wealthy, and happily married) and Yolandi's a mess (she's divorced and broke, with two teenagers growing up too quickly), they are fiercely close ' raised in a Mennonite household and sharing the hardship of Elf's desire to end her life. After Elf's latest attempt, Yoli must quickly determine how to keep her family from falling apart, how to keep her own heart from breaking, and what it means to love someone who wants to die.

"It is 1983. On the streets of Vancouver women's libbers are marching. In the forests of the northern interior a tapped out logging contractor is slowly going broke. Down the road, on a small stump ranch, Adare and Dave Wilkins face the fact that they have given the best years of their lives to a farm that can never support them. In a tumultuous time, when ancient values are being put to the test and found wanting, a scattered family is forced into an uneasy proximity by the need to make end-of-life decisions for their dying mother." -- Publishers website.

Literary legend and four-time winner of the Governor General's Literary Award Marie-Claire Blais delivers the latest installment in her ongoing portrait of life in contemporary North America. In this swirling fresco, we meet unforgettable characters, some familiar from previous works, some new. This time, Blais lets us into the consciousness of fifteen-year-old Mai, an unusually perceptive young woman whose uncensored observations on femininity and youth, freedom and constraint belie her age.

When Priscilla Jayne Morgan, a country music superstar, becomes the talk of the tabloids, her record label hires her ex-crush Jared Hamilton to escort her on her summer tour, causing things to get hot and heavy.

Peter, the only boy among four siblings born to Chinese immigrants, is convinced he is a girl and must fight the confines of a small town as well as the expectations of his parents to forge his own path into adulthood.

School is just like a film set: there's The Crew that make things happen, The Extras who fill the empty desks, and The Movie Stars, whom everyone wants tagged in their Facebook photos. But Jude doesn't fit in. He's not part of The Crew because he isn't about to do anything unless it's court-appointed; he's not an Extra because nothing about him is anonymous; and he's not a Movie Star because even though everyone know his name like an A-lister, he isn't invited to the cool parties.