National Network for Equitable Library Service

Welcome to Darwin, Newfoundland, a small town with big secrets. On the surface, nothing ever changes and everyone is content. But the truth is as restless, cold, and mutable as the ocean in these sixteen linked short stories. In Darwin, people's secrets are hidden and their fears are buried. But night after night, the moon bears quiet witness to their brightest moments and darkest days.

These are Emily's last five days in Lightning Cove, a community on the northeast coast of Newfoundland where she struggles to free herself from an oppressive husband. Her life, she senses, is only half-occupied. All of which explains the three plane tickets hidden beneath a loose floorboard in the basement - one for herself and one each for her two youngsters. But a lot can happen in five days. With the town on the verge of a massive collapse because of layoffs and the workers facing a possible plant closure, the air is already tense.

"My father has married me to a mad old man." These words, written on a slip of paper inside a fading brocade collar, are a clue to the unlikely marriage of a Jewish remittance man and a 14-year-old orphan in a remote Newfoundland fishing station. More curious still are the connections that entangle a retired schoolteacher and an Israeli scholar almost two centuries later.

Blasted is a story of Ruby Jones, an irreverent, exuberant, and troubled woman who lurches between love affairs and cities. The narrative shifts between generations and geographies, between contemporary life and stories as old as the hill that looms over Ruby's birthplace. All the while, she is haunted by mysteries that surround her father and the generations before him. When Ruby unravels at last, she must face the demons that pursue her.

The Chain Locker shows us how heroism, loyalty, and friendship play out in this amazing novel based on true stories about brave Newfoundland sealers.

Vancouver, 1942. When best friends Esther and Michiko spot the beautiful Princess Elizabeth and Princess Margaret dolls—in vogue at the time—in the local toy store window, they long to get the dolls for their shared birthday. But when Esther receives the doll and Michiko doesn't, their friendship starts to unravel.The story is set against the backdrop of an atmosphere of increasing hostility and racist attacks upon the Japanese community—culminating in the Internment.As the story opens, restrictions on Japanese Canadians are increasing. Then Michiko and her family are sent away.

Three poetic novellas centred around the author's background of growing up as the child of a veterinarian.Full of humour and compassion, Night Watchcollects three novellas that explore the lives of rural veterinarians. Wigmore's vets struggle to stay awake during unending calving seasons, reaching for moments of stillness and grace between phone calls and farm calls; they balance their own family's births and deaths with shepherding animals through caesareans and euthanasia, covering miles of road in their vast jurisdictions during harsh winters and muddy, ruthless springs.

Twelve-year-old Macy is an amateur treasure hunter who finds lost things along the southern Saskatchewan shores of Buffalo Pound Lake. When her mom announces she's leaving her park ranger job at the lake to be a police officer in the city, Macy decides she needs to find a treasure big enough to put Buffalo Pound on the map so her family can stay put. But instead of a treasure, Macy finds a mermaid kidnapped from the West Coast and brought to the Prairies by a monster known only as 'The Beast.' Macy must find a missing magic shell to reconnect the mermaid with her family.

In 1913 Dr. Louis Thomas and his family settle on the French islands of St. Pierre and Michelon. Enchanted by how this French land navigates the harsh climate of the Atlantic Ocean, he immerses himself in his passion for photography and captures the soul of the place. Yet despite his love for St. Pierre and its people, he leaves one day, abandoning his photographs. Fifty years later, Francois, a native of St. Pierre now working in Paris, and a young aspiring writer Emily, discover the impressive collection of photographs left behind.

In this fast-paced novel about a man who returns to university following the death of his wife, David Edwards is drawn into a criminal web of drugs, sexual slavery, and political intrigue that threatens the very future of Canada.