National Network for Equitable Library Service

The End of Me is a collection of 56 very short stories about death, written by Giller Prize finalist John Gould. These "sudden stories" or "postcard fiction" or "flash fiction" explore the experience of mortality. With an ear attuned to the uncanny and the ironic, John Gould catches his characters at moments of illumination as they encounter the dark mystery of their finite being. Rife with invention, with fresh ideas and arresting voices, this collection of flash fiction - funny, sad, absurd - draws from the imponderable a great compassion and vitality.

Migration comes in unlimited shades of colour where we straddle between physical, emotional, and spiritual boundaries within ourselves-and within our worlds and beyond...Who are the shades within us? We are called immigrants, locals, explorers, natives, settlers, pioneers, discoverers, newcomers, drifters, tenants, transients, nomads, expatriates, wanderers, evacuees, refugees, pilgrims, aliens, foreigners, squatters, visitors, intruders, conquerors, asylum seekers, urbanites, outsiders...

Finalist, Rogers Writers' Trust of Canada Fiction Prize; Finalist, Edmund White Award for Debut Fiction; a Globe and Mail Best Book of the Year. In Téa Mutonji's disarming debut story collection, a woman contemplates her Congolese traditions during a family wedding, a teenage girl looks for happiness inside a pack of cigarettes, a mother reconnects with her daughter through their shared interest in fish, and a young woman decides to shave her head in the waiting room of an abortion clinic.

An updated and whimsical new take on what it means to be Canadian. Featuring the Journey Prize-shortlisted story, "How Does a Single Blade of Grass Thank the Sun?" When asked in an interview about the Shanghai Sharks, the team that shaped his formative sporting years, Chinese basketball star Yao Ming responded, "how does a single blade of grass thank the sun?".

Telling stories of ordinary lives with extraordinary skill, Pamela Mordecai draws delicately detailed portraits of life in Jamaica and other islands, with occasional trips to Canada. Her characters speak with the cadences of the Caribbean, and cope with the universal experiences of birth and death, joy and betrayal.

Ladies of the Night is set in Toronto and Antigua. With women's loves and lives as their focus, the stories contain dramatic twists and turns: some humorous, others shocking and disturbing, all leaving a haunting melody behind. The Toronto stories capture the issues women face as they walk the ground of intimate and family relationships in that city. The Antiguan setting of some of the stories are reflective of Prince's insight into relationships, captured in her novel and essays.

From the streets of Danang, where a boy falls in with an American missionary, to the Canadian prairies, where an aging rancher finds himself smitten and a teenage boy's infatuation reveals his naiveté, and a young woman in a cloistered Mennonite community is torn between faith and doubt, Here the Dark deftly renders moral complexities and asks what it means to be lost--and how, through grace, we can be found.

From Kentucky to the California desert, these forty-two short stories follow girls and women in moments of obsessive desire and fantasy, wildness, brokenness and fearlessness, and more.

Une maison, c'est la sécurité. C'est aussi un signe de réussite, c'est même l'ultime refuge de qui cherche à s'isoler. Lorsque Jacques voit se présenter la chance de quitter son logement miteux et d'emménager dans une petite maison, SA maison, grande est sa confiance de laisser derrière lui la grisaille d'une vie ancienne. Certes, la maison n'a rien d'un palace mais, déjà, il s'y sent bien. Bientôt s'estompent les mauvais souvenirs, remplacés par un bien-être qu'il ne se souvient pas d'avoir connu.

On dit que la nuit, tous les chats sont gris. On en dit aussi qu'elle porte conseil, et quantité d'autres choses. Il est toutefois un pouvoir de la nuit qu'on ne dit pas. Car non contente de recouvrir les lieux, de dissoudre les contours, de métamorphoser le monde qui nous entoure, la nuit efface aussi la nature factice des gens de jour, révélant d'inavouables facettes que chacun enfouit en soi. Prenez cet homme, assis près de vous, sur le banc d'un parc. Ou cette silhouette qui glisse sur un rideau de ténèbres.