National Network for Equitable Library Service

Four strong women: Anjali, an Indo-Canadian single mother who eagerly accepts an African posting with her non-profit organization; Grace, her dedicated but dominating colleague, who opposes her; Fatimah, a farmer ousted from her home and fertile farmland, whom Anjali befriends; and Mary, Anjali's kindly maid, who must secure the future of her son, Gabriel. In Land for Fatimah, Anjali involves herself in Fatimah's quest to find new land for her scattered community, and is thrown into a web of intrigue that upturns her safe, orderly world.

In Fate's Instruments, picking up the story from where Paul's brother Jay left it in No Safeguards, Paul, an aspiring writer, marries Carlos, with whom he lived in Guatemala, and brings him to Montreal. Things go wrong from the beginning, and they break up. Then fate, in the form of a brain tumour, strikes Paul. He receives support from Jay, Lionel (himself a brain tumour survivor), friends, and the enigmatic Professor Bram. But it is Paul's exploration of his Vincentian childhood and new-found love that restores his equilibrium.

Joseph, the tactician behind the Piccadilly Circus bombing and many other such events, finds himself in a nursing home in Pierrefonds, Quebec, where he is losing his mind but regaining his conscience. In Radius Islamicus we see minds that cannot be located by drones carrying Hellfire missiles. These non-state actors, led by Joseph, do not live in caves. They live in Moose Jaw, Toronto, Amsterdam, London, New York and the Isle of Jura.

The Shining Fragments is a family saga about the Irish in Canada that explores the ramifications of abandonment, obsession, love, memory, and visionary power. Spanning the years 1882-1904, it follows Joseph Conlon from his early childhood in Ulster to his experiences of youth and adulthood as an immigrant. Left behind as a small boy on a Toronto train-station platform like so much forgotten luggage, Joseph grows up in a city bleak with bigotry. He discovers that he has artistic talent and becomes a designer of stained-glass windows.

Meet Daniel Garneau, your average gay hockey player from small-town Ontario. After moving to Toronto to attend university, Daniel meets David, a bike mechanic whose Catholic Italian mother talks to her dead husbands. Their chemistry is immediate, but Daniel is still drawn to his ex-boyfriend Marcus, a performance artist whose grandfather was a book-burning Nazi. A Boy at the Edge of the World is a rollicking dramedy that explores the compulsive and (ultimately) universal human pursuit of intimacy, sex, and love.

There are unseen forces in our lives that shape who we are and what we become. How we respond to those forces determines our futures. These stories examine how characters respond to the unexpected. Do we carry our memories of the beautiful moments of life with us into death? And, ultimately, what do we value in life that defines us-from a hat to the shadow of a figure in a window reminding us of what we have lost or need to hold onto?

Myth, folklore, and magic permeate the stories in Marianne Micros' collection Eye. Set in ancient and modern Greece, and in contemporary Europe and North America, these tales tell of evil-eye curses, women healers, ghosts, a changeling, and people struggling to retain or gain power in a world of changing beliefs. Here you will find stories of a nymph transformed into a heifer, a young soldier who returns home to discover that his brother is a changeling, a betrayed woman lost in a labyrinth, a wise woman whose position is threatened by modern technology.

A Rogue's Decameron consists of ten tales based within the spirit of Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales and Boccaccio's The Decameron: extravagance, joy and ribald humour around sex, lust, vice, death and other "hungers" of human beings. Using similar framing technique as these works, the stories explore themes such as social commentary and satire aimed at personal politics, societal mores and customs, hierarchies, and religious beliefs. All with Toronto as a backdrop and brought up to date for the sensibilities of a 21st century audience.

A Japanese detective agency in Midwest America; a sex triangle with the vampish Angela at its apex, and love-sick Pohl and lust-warped Burnett at the receiving ends; a Fat Man devouring a huge luncheon amidst the splendors of his garden; and has-been vixen Violet seeking justice and revenge. Just some of the elements of No. 22 Pleasure City, a novel that ranges in flavor between Japanese manga, pulp fiction and tongue-in-cheek pornography. The novel is a story of betrayal, obsession, rejection, friendship, and--ultimately--redemption.

Mouth of Truth is a gripping account of impossible choices , divided loyalties and unimaginable horrors. Batya Lightenberg , a Canadian wife and mother tries to live a normal life in oblivion of her troubled past while carrying a legacy of guilt and buried secrets inherited partly from her father, a successful lawyer, turned Jewish policeman in the Warsaw Ghetto. Compelled by a need to unearth the truth about her family, Batya sets out for Eastern Canada, Italy and Poland on a mission of discovery and healing.