National Network for Equitable Library Service

The creation of the Canada–US border in the Pacific Northwest is often presented as a tale of two nations, but beyond the macro-political dynamics is the experience of individuals. Before and After the State examines the imposition of a border across a region that already held a vibrant, highly complex society and dynamic trading networks. Allan McDougall, Lisa Philips, and Daniel Boxberger explore fundamental questions of state formation, social transformation, and the (re)construction of identity to expose how the devices and myths of nation building affect people’s lives.

Black Teeth is a compelling collection of linked stories that explore growing up in Winnipeg's famously multicultural North End through its 1960s Golden Age and beyond, examining the strange dual legacy of that experience. While urban ethnic mixes and immigrant populations shift over time and place, every city has its foreign part, that transition zone where strangers, freaks, and outsiders -- the Other -- reside.

15th century Oakham, in Somerset; a tiny village cut off by a big river with no bridge. When a man is swept away by the river in the early hours of Shrove Saturday, an explanation has to be found: accident, suicide or murder' The village priest, John Reve, is privy to many secrets in his role as confessor.

Sir Phillip knew that Eloise Bridgerton was a spinster, and so he'd proposed, figuring that she'd be homely and unassuming, and more than a little desperate for an offer of marriage. Except ... she wasn't. The beautiful woman on his doorstep was anything but quiet, and when she stopped talking long enough to close her mouth, all he wanted to do was kiss her ... and more. Did he think she was mad? Eloise Bridgerton couldn't marry a man she had never met! But then she started thinking ... and wondering ...

Michael Stirling and his cousin John, the Earl of Kilmartin, are as close as brothers. However, Michael is secretly in love with John's wife Francesca Bridgerton. When John suddenly dies, Michael is wracked with guilt and pain. Even though he is determined to remain simply Francesca's friend and confidant, the temptation is far too great.

Jennifer Robson takes us inside the workrooms where one of the most famous wedding gowns in history was created. Balancing behind-the-scenes details with a sweeping portrait of a society left reeling by the calamitous costs of victory, she introduces listeners to three unforgettable heroines, their points of view alternating and intersecting throughout.

In the latest installment in Wendell Berry's long story about the citizens of Port William, Kentucky, readers learn of the Coulters' children, of the Feltners and Branches, and how survivors "live right on." "Ignorant boys, killing each other," is just about all Nathan Coulter would tell his wife about the Battle of Okinawa in the spring of 1945. Life carried on for the community of Port William, Kentucky, as some boys returned from the war while the lives of others were mourned. In her seventies, Nathan's wife, Hannah, now has time to tell of the years since the war.

Returning to the territory of "Brokeback Mountain," National Book Award and Pulitzer Prize-winner Annie Proulx delivers a stunning and visceral collection of new stories. In Fine Just the Way It Is, she has expanded the limits of the form. Her stories about multiple generations of Americans struggling through life in the West are a ferocious, dazzling panorama of American folly and fate. Proulx's characters try to climb out of poverty and desperation but get cut down as if the land itself wanted their blood.

Features selected readings from the works of James Joyce, whose works came to define the modernist movement in literature.

From the acclaimed author of the international bestseller Einstein's Dreams comes a lyrical memoir of Memphis from the 1930s through the 1960s: the music and the racism, the early days of the movies, and a powerful grandfather whose ghost continues to haunt the family.