National Network for Equitable Library Service

The year is 1927, and the Merril children are once again in school – but one that’s unlike any other. For 10 months out of the year their school, set up in a Northern Ontario railway care that also serves as their home, is on the move. Theirteen-year-old Jenny Merrill loves life on the tracks, but she has a secret wish. She’s fallen in love with a violin on page 244 of the Eaton’s catalogue. But how will she get the money to pay for it?

This psychological mystery introduces David Morgan and Miranda Quin, two maverick and culturally sophisticated Toronto police detectives. When a man is found dead in a garden pond in the wealthy heart of Toronto’s Rosedale neighbourhood Morgan is lead into speculations about Japanese ornamental koi fish, and Quin into a chilling sequence of revelations that could destroy her. But the real mystery begins not with the deceased but with a woman who walks onto the crime scene and without emotion declares herself to be the victim’s mistress.

2007 Canadian Children’s Book Centre Our Choice Selection It is 1838, and in the wake of the rebellion in Lower Canada, Sophie’s and Luc’s worlds are falling apart. Luc is powerless as his only brother stands trial for treason, while Sophie searches for clues to her father’s mysterious disappearance. Meanwhile, her scheming brothers threaten to rip away Sophie’s inheritance.

Short-listed for the Chocolate Lily Book Award, 2005 It’s summer 1950, and for 11-year-old French Canadian Sophie LaGrange, Camp Latona on British Columbia’s Gambier Island promises to be pure bliss. But then Sophie has to buddy up with a strange, unfriendly Jewish refugee girl named Ginette and things go sour. Soon Sophie learns that Ginette has her own secrets and anxieties, worries that explain the girl’s seemly bizarre behaviour.

Winner of the British Columbia Year 2000 Book Award Star Girl is a pint-sized superhero with gigantic appeal for 10-year-old Sophie, a French Canadian girl about to make a cross-Canada move with her family. In 1949, the year Newfoundland joins Confederation, Sophie soars over flooded prairies, dinosaur badlands, and the peaks of the Rockies. Each chapter is a snapshot of provincial history and an adventure in which she flies her cape, and the flag, in the name of Stars everywhere!

Short-listed for the 2005 CLA Young Adult Canadian Book Award Sixteen-year-old Simon has always been considered odd. Three years ago, a skateboarding accident caused some minor brain damage and made him a little stranger. His career-driven parents mostly leave him alone, and he spends much of his time living in his imagination. When Andrea, whom no one else can see, appears to Simon in class, he is fascinated by her and strikes up a friendship, even though he knows she may be pure hallucination - he's had imaginary friends before.

Short-listed for the 2004 Commonwealth Writers Prize Best Book Award, Caribbean and Canada Region A man of innate taste and discrimination, Edward has become an art dealer and collector of fine antiques and paintings. During his first six idyllic years he was the centre and focus of his mother's existence. Betrayals and unhappiness in subsequent years have led him to form almost fetishistic attachments to beautiful objects, as a substitute for the human relationships that have invariably failed him.

For Sylvie, Ragged Island - and the whales who swam around it - is the only world she has ever known. It is the place where she was born and raised, where she lived with her four late husbands, and where she plans to live out her remaining years. It is also the home to a community whose love for the island is immense. But when the Nova Scotia government decides to shut down the ferry service that is the lifeblood of Ragged Island, the residents see their world beginning to disappear. Sea of Tranquility is the lyrical and moving story of an island struggling to survive.

Short-listed for the 2005 Snow Willow Award and for the 2006 Manitoba Young Readers’ Choice Award Cole Fennety doesn’t know it, but he is about to have the strangest summer of his life. His little sister, Jessie, is driving him crazy, his mother is too wrapped up in the world of daytime soaps to intervene, and his best friend, Wayne, is out of control. Worst of all, his boss, Sam Kerrigan, is the meanest man in town. But beneath Sam’s crusty exterior lies a kind heart – as well as a terrible secret that forces Cole to face questions to which there are no easy answers.

A translator, fed up with translating paperback romances, undertakes the translation of the autobiography of a sadistic serial killer, Leonard Ming. She travels from Canada to Spain to do her work, encountering love and death in the seaside Andalusian town of Almunecar.