National Network for Equitable Library Service

A classic feminist novel, resonating in a world of increasing radicalization, featuring a new foreword by Eileen Myles. It's October, 1980, the 10th anniversary of the October Crisis, when a radical Quebec group's actions led to the invocation of the War Measures Act.

In a near-future world ravaged by climate change, who will win in the struggle between humanity and nature? A thick fog rolls in over Shivering Heights. The river overflows, the sky is streaked with toxic green, parasites proliferate in torrential rains and once safely classified species - humans included - are evolving and behaving in unprecedented ways. Against this poetically hostile backdrop, a biologist, Laura, fights to understand the nature and scope of the changes transforming her own body and the world around her.

Botanist Alfred Homer, ever hopeful and constantly surprised, is invited on a road trip through Southwestern Ontario by his parents' friend, Professor Morgan Bruno, who wants company as he tries to unearth the story of the mysterious poet John Skennen. But this is no ordinary road trip. As Alfred and the Professor encounter towns with familiar names but where Black residents speak only in sign language or where there are Indigenous Parades, house burnings, werewolves, and witches, we realize that this is a journey through the psyche of Alfred and, indeed, though the psyche of Canada.

Anaïs Barbeau-Lavalette never knew her mother's mother. Curious to understand why her grandmother, Suzanne, a sometime painter and poet associated with Les Automatistes, a movement of dissident artists that included Paul-Émile Borduas, abandoned her husband and young family, Barbeau-Lavalette hired a private detective to piece together Suzanne's life. This is a fictionalized account of Suzanne's life over eighty-five years, from Montreal to New York to Brussels, from lover to lover, through an abortion, alcoholism, Buddhism, and an asylum.

A little girl with a beard must find herself a home in this contemporary fairy tale. It's 1944, and an eleven-year-old girl lives with her parents in a little village in rural Quebec. Her mother is very sad, and her father has vanished because this little girl has suddenly sprouted a full beard. When townpeople come for her, she escapes into the wintry night.

'In this singular story dedicated to the mother, the narrator creates an avatar to counter her pain of living. Karoline Georges manages to combine the real and the virtual around the complexity of family ties. The author approaches loneliness and representation of the body with astonishing lucidity. The Imago Stage transcends genres in an intelligent and powerful prose.' - Governor General's Literary Award Jury.

A young gymnast crushes on an older, more talented teammate while contending with her overworked mother. A newly queer twenty-something juggles two intimate relationships—with a slippery anarchist lover and an idiosyncratic meals-on-wheels recipient. A queer metal band's summer tour unravels amid the sticky heat of the Northeastern US. A codependent listicle writer becomes obsessed with a Japanese ASMR channel. The stories in PERSONAL ATTENTION ROLEPLAY are propelled by queer loneliness, mixed-race confusion, late capitalist despondency, and the pitfalls of intimacy.

A poverty-stricken, nineteenth-century guitar virtuoso navigates the tricky political landscape of Parisian society as he comes out of retirement for one final concert. A sessional instructor competing for the prestigious Interdisciplinary Chair in Aretha Franklin studies gets sidetracked by her obsession with a mysterious student in a yellow hat. A dying doo-wop DJ and his wife try to bridge the estrangement wrought by illness as they travel in search of the horns, drums, and vocals of highlife.

One Friday, Vancouver lawyer Paul Brenner has dinner with his son, Daniel. They talk about work, health, money, and music, and part ways. The following evening, Paul receives the phone call that is every parent's worst nightmare: Daniel has been killed in Stanley Park. 'Hold Me Now' is an unflinching portrayal of a father's grief, as Paul learns how very different the new world -- a world without his son -- will be for him. The investigation of Daniel's murder, the trial, and the sentencing of the killer test Paul's faith in the legal system.

Universal Disorder is about a young boy growing up on the Canadian Prairies in the 1970s and 1980s; he has developmental disorders -- is on the autism spectrum and has OCD -- and finds solace in the world of numbers. Years later, he's a failed astrophysicist living in Montreal, and he sees a number on his call display that he hasn't seen in ten years, belonging to a woman he assumed dead. On the verge of another breakdown, he searches the streets of Montreal for a lost love -- forced to face a past that he had desperately tried to forget.