National Network for Equitable Library Service

Andre Szara, a Polish journalist who becomes a spy for the Soviet Union in the late 1930s, is ordered to complete many tasks of espionage in Paris. Through Szara's character, the beginnings of World War II are revealed.

Seventeen-year-old Orchid belongs to an aristocratic family that has fallen on hard times. Unexpectedly, she is chosen as one of the emperor's lesser concubines. Within the Forbidden City are thousands of women hoping to bear the emperor a son and become his empress. Orchid, determined and resourceful, schemes her way into the royal bed and seduces the emperor. But as the opium trade erodes the might of the Ch'ing dynasty, Orchid find herself at the center of a crumbling nation.

During the 1937 attack on Nanjing, American missionary and women's college dean Minnie Vautrin decides to remain at her school during a violent Japanese attack that renders the school a refugee center for ten thousand women and children.

Following her discovery selling oranges outside of Theatre Royal, Covent Garden, Ellen "Nell" Gwyn leaves behind a life of poverty to become a theatre star. Soon she is mistress to the libertine King Charles II. And though their love is true, gossip-mongers and court politics threaten to tear their romance apart.

The story of a thirteen-year-old boy in London growing up during the second world war.

"A coming-of-age novel about a teenager growing up in the suburbs of Toronto in the 1960s with a father who tortures him psychologically. His world opens up when he realizes he is gay"--Provided by publisher.

Set in 1961 Canada, In a Wide Country tells the story of twelve-year-old Jasper and his mother, Corrine, traveling together from Winnipeg to a farm in Alberta, then Edmonton, then to Vancouver.

In the Great Fire of Smyrna (1922), Kivelli lost everything: her family, her friends, her social position, and her future. Stranded in the Greek city of Piraeus, populated by gangsters, prostitutes, fortune tellers, and other refugees, she finds herself living in the broom closet of a brothel. Luckily, the sound of her singing voice captures the attention of a local taverna owner, who suggests she come with him and perform for his customers.

Flying with Amelia chronicles the dreams and struggles of a cast of unforgettable characters through more than a hundred years and across a vast landscape as they face challenges and find courage, sometimes in surprising places. In 1847 a famine ship arrives in Canada from Ireland, and here, the tale begins, weaving through generations and time. A St. John’s boy learns the finer points of communication while his employer receives the first transatlantic wireless signal. A British Home Child finds sorrow and solace on an Ontario farmstead.

For Bluma Goldberg, the teenaged daughter of a Jewish bootlegger, Prohibition-era Chicago is the furthest place one can get from law and temperance. Her first steps into womanhood are made all the more uncertain by the dangers of her father’s shadowy world. Decades later, her loving son, Joey Krueger, a man coming off his own share of emotional turmoil, remains mystified by the person he’s known all his life. Who is she really?