National Network for Equitable Library Service

When Erika Drake, of the Westmount Drakes, met and fell in love with Marc Reiser, a Jew from northern Ontario, their respective worlds were turned upside down. Set against the backdrop of the first three years of the Second World War.

In 1941, fifteen-year-old Madli hopes the Soviet occupation is temporary, but when thousands of Estonians are deported, she knows lives are in danger. She longs for the safety of her grandfather's farm. Days later, the Nazis invade her country. Friends and family find themselves divided as they try to choose which dictator they'd rather live under: Hitler or Stalin. Madli is horrified by both, but how long can she remain neutral? Every day brings new dangers and unimaginable decisions.

In England in the spring of 1939, Clancy, an Australian nurse, waits with her infant daughter for news of her lover, who was a volunteer with the Mackenzie-Papineau Brigade in the Spanish Civil War. As she waits, Clancy shares with her daughter the story of her own childhood in the Australian bush and her disastrous marriage to an English archaeologist. When the Spanish Civil War erupted, Clancy volunteered on the Republican side. Her chance for happiness amid the chaos came when she met the young Canadian, Douglas Ross. She has not heard from him since the final desperate offensive.

The artistic world of mid-16th Century Italy comes to life through the eyes of a piebald slave stolen from her home and family in Africa. Chiara, as she is eventually named, is sold to Paolo Pallavicino, an artist in service of Giuliano de Medici. When several unfortunate incidents occur, the artist's wife believes her to be a curse and demands that she be sent away. From this starting point, Chiara works her way from painter to painter, observing the games the artists play on each other and the rivalries that fuel their artistic creations.

This beautiful novel from the acclaimed, award-winning author of A Casual Brutality and The Innocence of Age, joins politics and love in a powerful story set in both the Caribbean and Canada. Neil Bissoondath draws us with a startling grace of language into the lives of a mother and daughter whose worlds and dreams collide to release deeply buried secrets.

After her father disappears on Crystal Night, fifteen-year-old Freda, her mother and Freda's younger sister flee Germany for the -safe haven- of Shanghai. But the safe haven becomes anything but safe when Freda's mother abandons her children. Forced to become an adult before her time, Freda finds strength, work and new friends. She also joins the Junior Jewish Resistance, a small group of young people determined to show their defiance toward Japanese and Nazi soldiers, who are too close for comfort in their new home.

The year is 1738. Jacques Lafargue, a wide-eyed young Frenchman, arrives in New France aboard the Saint Michel. But before his Canadian adventure has a chance to begin, he is detained at Quebec harbour by suspicious port officials.

Lillie Dempster of Saint John, New Brunswick, often imagines herself on the big screen. It is the one fantastic escape she can afford from her tragic daily life. In the burgeoning early years of the twentieth century, Lillie is a lot like the distressed damsels from the silent films she loves. Orphaned by the Great War and the Spanish influenza at fourteen, Lillie is forced to move in with her upstairs neighbour, Frank. She finds, however, that life does not get much better as a pretty young girl who draws unwanted interest from men wherever she goes.

Set in 1936 Montreal, this is the story of Lawrence Nolan, a fifteen-year-old piano prodigy who is forced to keep the shameful secret of his mother's mental illness as he attempts to raise himself and his younger brother. When his brother becomes ill, he is left with overwhelming responsibilities, and while at a piano competition in Montreal, Lawrence makes a dramatic decision that puts his future on hold in order to rectify his family life.

Gloria Murray's daughter jokes that Gloria would have sold her first born to further her musical career - a reproach closer to the truth than anyone but Gloria suspects. Gloria, born just before the Great Depression, knows from the moment she hears a soaring song played on the piano that she must follow that river of emotion. After an adolescence playing in churches and hotel lobbies, she prepares to study in post-World War II France, when another sort of passion intrudes and, halfway through her year abroad, she finds herself forced into a hard choice that she shares with no one.