National Network for Equitable Library Service

Originally published in 1941, Wakefield’s Course begins in the spring of 1939 at Jalna. Renny Whiteoak is keen to sail for Ireland with his small daughter, Adeline, to buy a racehorse, but he’s more eager to see his younger cousins, Finch and Wakefield, who have been living in London. On his arrival in England, Renny becomes entangled in his cousins’ affairs of the heart. This is book 12 of 16 in The Whiteoak Chronicles. It is followed by Return to Jalna.

First published in 1936, Whiteoak Harvest chronicles the 1930s saga of Renny Whiteoak and his wife, Alayne. Finch Whiteoak and wife, Sarah, return from their honeymoon to upset the Jalna household with Eden Whiteoak’s love child. Meanwhile Wakefield Whiteoak is engaged to Pauline Lebraux but is tormented by religious doubts.This is book 11 of 16 in The Whiteoak Chronicles. It is followed by Wakefield’s Course.

Commended for the 2011 Best Books for Kids and Teens Living in grim Depression-era Toronto with her actress mother, Frannie, Ivy Chalmers has never met her father. In 1931, Frannie sends twelve-year-old Ivy to stay with her paternal grandmother in Larkin, Ontario, while she seeks stardom in New York City. When Ivy’s father, Alva, arrives unexpectedly in Larkin, he turns out not to be the Prince Charming she imagined, but an illiterate peddler.

Eleven-year-old Danny Ryan and 19-year-old Wendy Marshall think their friendship is only about looking after two baby raccoons that Danny has rescued. But when a bank holdup upsets Wendy so much that she can hardly stand to be around people, she leaves her job as a teller, retreats to a farm, and surrounds herself with injured and orphaned wildlife.

"Africa's Children is a testament to one's heritage, a belief in one's ancestors, and a record of truth ... no told!" – Dr. Henry V. Bishop, chief curator, Black Cultural Centre, Dartmouth, Nova Scotia Chronicling the history of Black families of the Yarmouth area of Nova Scotia, Africa's Children is a mirror image of the hopes and despairs and the achievements and injustices that mark the early stories of many African-Canadians.

Short-listed for the 2011 Shamus Awards Deadly nightshade – the poison plant par excellence – and in historic Quebec City at an important scientific conference concerning the genetic manipulation of trees it means murder! Police, RCMP, and a mysterious FBI agent from Washington converge on the scene. But the sharpest eye belongs to Sam Montcalm, a despised "bedroom snooper" from Ottawa whose primary concern is to clear a First Nations activist of the crime.

"I knew one thing – I wasn’t going to be rotting in that place for the rest of my life. I was getting out of there. That place turned people into the living dead. In that neighbourhood, it was hard to hear anything that didn’t carry the sound of defeat." Sixteen-year-old Porter Delaney has his future figured out, but his nice, neat plans are shaken when a man he believes may be his father suddenly appears in his Toronto neighbourhood.

Self Condemned, originally published in 1954, tells the story of Professor Renarding and his wife, Essie, as they find themselves in Momaco, a fictionalized version of Toronto, following Ren resignation as an academic in London, England. Reduced to a position at the second-rate University of Momaco, Rennd Essie suffer through a bleak and oppressive isolation in a dreary and alien city.

Valancy lives a drab life with her overbearing mother and prying aunt. Then a shocking diagnosis from Dr. Trent prompts her to make a fresh start. For the first time, she does and says exactly what she feels. As she expands her limited horizons, Valancy undergoes a transformation, discovering a new world of love and happiness. One of Lucy Maud Montgomery's only novels intended for an adult audience, The Blue Castle is filled with humour and romance.

Jim Myers is a painfully shy kid living in Toronto's west end Bloorcourt Village. Rarely is he able to muster enough courage to say anything beyond "ya" or "dunno." After school he hangs around with his neighbour and only friend, Oleg Khernofsky, playing basketball against a NO PARKING sign in a laneway. In the evenings, he haunts Nicky's Diner, a restaurant owned by Oleg's uncle. On the first day of junior high, Jim crosses paths with Charlie Crouse, a brash, mouthy kid full of wild stories about his past.