National Network for Equitable Library Service

Esi Edugyan won wide acclaim for her stunning novel Half-Blood Blues'a Man Booker Prize finalist and winner of the Scotiabank Giller Prize. In it, 83-year-old Sid Griffiths remembers his time during WWII playing in a Berlin jazz band called the Hot Time Swingers. When jazz music was denounced by the Nazis, Sid and his bandmates fled to Paris'a move that put Hieronymous, the band's brilliantly talented trumpeter, in constant danger due to his Afro-German heritage.

As gentrification encroaches on historic Harlem, Sharifa Rhodes-Pitts untangles the myth and meaning of its storied legacy. Drawing on Harlem's history and her own observations, Rhodes-Pitts introduces a variety of observers who shared a common hope that Harlem would become the ground from which blacks fully entered America's democracy.

In 1799, the artificial island of Dejima lies in Nagasaki Harbor as Japan's outpost for the Dutch East Indies Company. There, Jacob de Zoet has come to make a fortune large enough to return to Holland and marry the woman he loves.

Tudor England is a precarious place for booksellers Kate Gough and her brother John, who offer forbidden translations of the Bible. Caught between warring factions--led by English opponents of the Lutheran reformation and Henry the VIII himself--Kate embarks on a daring adventure that will lead her into a dangerous marriage and a web of intrigue that pits her against powerful enemies.

Full of danger, full of suspense and full of heart these are five interconnected narratives, each rooted in the sixties and each haunted by the Vietnam War.

This novel, set in 1979 China, is the story of those affected by the execution of a 28-year-old counterrevolutionary. Though suffering, Li's characters nevertheless struggle to maintain hope amid cruel circumstance.

After a scandal ends her apprenticeship with Michelangelo in 1559, artist Sofonisba Anguissola accepts an invitation from King Felipe II to become lady-in-waiting and painting teacher to his teenage bride Elisabeth. And though Sofi's developing affair may be risky, Elisabeth's dalliance with the king's brother Don Juan could be deadly.

Set in the shadowy back streets and glittering salons of wartime Paris. Film producer Jean Casson, a Paris sophisticate struggles to come to terms with the uncomfortable realities of life under German occupation, as he becomes caught up in the activities of what was to become the French Resistance.

Captain Alexander de Milja understands that his life, as he knows it, is over. But even in this bleakest of circumstances, all need not be lost. At a decimated cavalry stable under the droning German bombers, Alexander is offered a choice: die in a last stand, or accept a new appointment--and discover a way to keep on fighting even in the face of defeat. His first mission: lead the final refugee train south from doomed Warsaw.

Bulgaria, 1934. The local fascists have just murdered the brother of Khristo Stoianev. Now Khristo is recruited into the NKVD--the Soviet secret police--for special service in the Spanish civil war.