National Network for Equitable Library Service

Anne Savoie a toujours eu honte de ses origines modestes. Avec David, son grand amour, elle réalise son rêve: travailler dans l’entreprise de sa belle-famille, gravir les échelons de la société, goûter enfin au luxe et au succès. Puis, survient la tragédie : victime d’un accident d’escalade, son chéri meurt subitement et l’univers de la jeune femme s’écroule. Profitant du drame pour se débarrasser de cette bru sans manière qu’elle a toujours détestée, Ruth Lampron, la belle-mère d’Anne, donne le coup de grâce : elle évince la veuve de la compagnie et la prive de tous ses avantages sociaux.

«Maman, c’est quoi l’ego? Ce genre de question me mettait hors de moi à l’époque où l’ambition me tenait lieu de cœur. Mais un jour, il y a eu ce séisme dans mon crâne. Après, je n’ai plus jamais été la même.» Passionnée par le cancer du cerveau, Maryse s’accroche à son identité d’éminente neuropédiatre et cherche désespérément la reconnaissance. Mais voilà que Charlot, ce fils singulier, cette vieille âme, cet enfant qui l’émerveille et l’exaspère à la fois, la plonge dans des questionnements inconfortables, la pousse dans ses derniers retranchements.

Deux personnages antinomiques:David, jeune homme timide, indécis, qui étudie le piano et rêve d’écrire un roman et Octave, bourlingueur, coureur, cynique et sûr de lui. L’un sauve la vie de l’autre…pour mieux l’empoisonner. Entre les deux, l’apaisante Rachel, jeune pianiste dont David est éperdument amoureux. Ce roman palpitant aux échos de violence, d’amour, de manipulation et de lâcheté met en lumière la dangereuse paralysie que peut entraîner la recherche d’excellence chez l’être qui se déçoit constamment lui-même.

Un homme se réveille dans une maison inconnue, entouré d’étrangers. Interrogeant ses compagnons d’infortune, tous différents les uns des autres et n’ayant en apparence aucun point commun, il tente de comprendre la situation et, surtout, de s’échapper de ce lieu où il est tenu prisonnier. De fil en aiguille, de confidences en révélations étonnantes, de morts soudaines en rédemptions inattendues, l’homme qu’on surnomme l’amiral finira par nouer les ficelles de cet étrange casse-tête. Mais au prix de combien de vies ?

It is autumn, 1997 and Kate Thuringer is back in her hometown to help her college-age daughter settle into her new life. A professional photographer, Kate has lived in Western Canada for nearly three decades. Before her marriage, however, she survived a turbulent year in which Québécois terrorists kidnapped a British diplomat and murdered an innocent politician. The middle-aged Kate is obsessed with the past, particularly with the memory of a poor francophone student with whom she had been involved during the historic October Crisis.

Births mark beginnings, while funerals toll in endings. Yet there resides so much in-between drama in the timeline of an extended family: moments of intense joy, times of heart-wrenching grief, and the day-to-day plodding of ups and downs that color the struggle with loss in all of human existence. In a series of linked short stories that superbly capture the emotions her characters' experience, the author deftly chronicles the personal episodes that transform the lives of five Italian-American cousins during the final years before the death of one of the family patriarchs.

For Annie and Evan it was love at first sight. To the outside world, Annie was vivacious and charming, a successful broadcaster and writer. But once they start living together, Evan discovers Annie works desperately to hide her all-consuming fears, obsessions and neuroses. And her alcoholism. Evan believes love is forever and will conquer all. But soon Annie's closeted physical and verbal abuse, control and emotional disorders turns his life upside down. Sex, drugs and booze offer little succour but the true nightmare begins when Evan decides he's had enough and finds himself behind bars.

Centered around a young high school teacher, The King of the Sea Monkeys is a novel in two parts. Because the protagonist suffers from a traumatic brain injury, the first part is fragmented, finding its way in the narrative in disorderly pieces. The protagonist's “normal” life disintegrates when he is involved in an altercation at a convenience store which ends in a shooting. He survives a terrible injury but his world is undone.

In a letter that she writes to a certain Théodore, the narrator in Images evokes a tumultuous period in her life: her adolescence. During this period, filled with anxiety and panic, she found help and comfort from Dorothée, a young woman barely older than her, who helped her escape her nightmare existence. What was the young Isaac so afraid of at the time? And why is she now remembering the terrifying events of her youth? Images is about the fear of dying, the pull death has on us, and how we seek the help and comfort of others in an effort to escape this nightmare.

Somewhere in the West Bank, an Israeli patrol is attacked by Palestinian commandos. One soldier is killed and another kidnapped. Wounded, in a state of shock, the hostage loses hold of reality and forgets everything, even his own name. Eventually rescued and taken in by two Palestinian women, he becomes Nessim, brother of Falastìn, an idealist law student, and son of Asmahane, the blind widow of an official shot dead in an ambush. Nessim passes through the looking glass, suffering the daily anguish of the inhabitants of the colonized West Bank.