National Network for Equitable Library Service

On connaît bien le vers «Heureux qui comme Ulysse a fait un beau voyage». Mais les voyages ne sont pas toujours merveilleux. Très jeune, Christine en fait l’épreuve dans des périples étranges, au péril parfois de sa vie. Quand vient le temps des amours, elle s’éprend d’êtres excentriques. Quand vient le temps de la pensée, elle accueille en elle les mots des poètes. Elle poursuit sa route tandis qu’elle puise une force nouvelle dans le dépaysement, y trouvant peu à peu une autonomie.

Nicola aura bientôt 18 ans. Élevé par un père aimant et protecteur, il mène une vie paisible jusqu’à ce qu’il découvre un terrible secret derrière l’apparente banalité de son existence. Profondément troublé par le mensonge tissé autour de lui depuis toujours, il quitte son nid douillet le soir de son anniversaire. Destination : à la dérive. De Montréal au Pacifique, puis de Yellowknife à l’Atlantique.

Tu aimes les témoignages? Tu adoreras ce livre! C’est un roman basé sur une histoire vraie. Tous les gais ont une histoire intéressante à raconter au sujet de leur coming out, quand la vie les a poussés à devoir assumer leur homosexualité. Si vous demandiez à mes parents, ils vous raconteraient la fois où ils ont trouvé de la porno gaie sur mon ordinateur. L’heure horrible qu’on a passée à la table de la cuisine. Ma mère et son sourire figé. Mon père avec son bel habit d’agent immobilier, cramponné à la table, qui répétait sans cesse «OK, une minute...

We all know adults who are stranded in the amber of adolescence. Growing older but not necessarily growing up is the central theme of Middle-Aged Boys & Girls, featuring characters who, to varying degrees, are stuck in adolescent roles of rebel, outcast, enfant terrible and cool kid. All are linked by losses--of looks, of status, of job security, of health, of confidence--which forces them to life's inevitable turning point.

No Safeguards, the first in a trilogy, follows Jay and his brother Paul from childhood to young adulthood. We witness the destructive impact of fundamentalist Christian beliefs on their mother and father, opposition to those beliefs by the boys' grandmother and each boy's very different response to their parents' religiosity. This becomes even more poignant after they leave their grandmother's comfortable home in St. Vincent to join their mother in Montreal.

In this novel from a Quebecois feminist writer, a shy sixteen-year-old falls in love with a classmate while attending a Catholic boarding school for prospective schoolteachers. When the fantasized relationship fails she takes superficial refuge with a group of girls recognizing her own loneliness and that of the group.

Nominated for a 2005 Governor General's Award Alice Charles has just moved to Montreal to go to McGill University. She’s never had a boyfriend and doesn’t know how to do laundry. She joins the Film Society and hangs out in the library. She drifts away from boring Bethany, her best friend from high school, and starts to trail after Allegra, the caffeine-addicted, dish-throwing artist in the dorm room next to hers. And, most of all, she thinks about how she’s still a virgin and how she’ll never figure it all out.

At McDonald's, when I'm throwing out the stuff on my tray, there's a point where I get scared that my wallet could have been on there, too. I always think, as everything is tumbling into the garbage, that I might have tossed my wallet on the tray and forgotten. It always feels possible. So begins Jonathan Goldstein's first novel, Lenny Bruce is Dead. It's the story of Joshua, a young man who's uncertain about a lot more than the possible loss of his wallet. He might as well be talking about his whole life.

Lemon has three mothers: a biological one she's never met, her adopted father's suicidal ex, and Drew, a school principal who hasn’t left the house since she was stabbed by a student. She has one deadbeat dad, one young cancer-riddled protege, and two friends, the school tramp and a depressed poet. Figuring the numbers are against her, Lemon just can't be bothered trying to fit in. She spurns fashion, television, and even the mall. She reads Mary Wollstonecraft and gets pissed off that Jane Eyre is such a wimp.

Nominated for an Alberta Book Award. Time you had a haircut. Look like a mop. Not that skinny. Skin and bloody bone, boy. Jacob breaks the point of his pencil but makes it look like an accident. And away Dad goes out the door and thump thump down the stairs. Jacob eyes the hole at the end of his pencil. Listens till he can’t hear the Torino anymore. Crawls under the covers. Hopes the rest of December comes and goes like a heartbeat. Eleven-year-old Jacob McKnight doesn’t like running. He doesn’t like the hills, the cold wind, the slushy electrolyte drinks, the interval training.