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DAISY audio (CD), DAISY audio (Direct to player), DAISY audio (Zip)
General fiction, Romance, Humourous fiction
Human-narrated audio
A sparkling second-chance romance inspired by Jane Austen's Persuasion Nada Syed is stuck. On the cusp of thirty, she's still…
living at home with her brothers and parents in the Golden Crescent neighbourhood of Toronto, resolutely ignoring her mother's unsubtle pleas to get married already. While Nada has a good job as an engineer, it's a far cry from realizing the start-up dreams for her tech baby, Ask Apa, the app that launched with a whimper instead of a bang because of a double-crossing business partner. Nothing in her life has turned out the way it was supposed to, and Nada feels like a failure. Something needs to change, but the past is holding on too tightly to let her move forward. Nada's best friend, Haleema, is determined to pry her from her shell . . . and what better place than at the giant annual Muslim conference downtown, where Nada can finally meet Haleema's fiancé, Zayn? And did Haleema mention Zayn's brother Baz will be there? What Haleema doesn't know is that Nada and Baz have a past—some of it good, some of it bad, and all of it secret. At the conference, that past all comes hurtling back at Nada, bringing new complications and a moment of reckoning. Can she truly say goodbye to what once was, or should she hold tight to her dreams and find their new beginnings?
DAISY audio (CD), DAISY audio (Direct to player), DAISY audio (Zip)
Serious and literary fiction, Family stories, General fiction
Human-narrated audio
Gorgeous and compelling, The Afterpains is a heartbreaking portrait of two families trying to cope with grief, isolation, and living…
far from one's homeland—told in the voices of four distinct narrators.Nearly twenty years after the death of her infant daughter, Rosy is still reeling from all that she's lost. Desperate to repair the connections to the family she does have—her husband, Desmond, and her eighteen-year-old son, Eddie—she's determined to lay her grief to rest by the twentieth anniversary of her daughter’s death.At the same time, Isaura dreads what may be coming for her teenage daughter, Mivi. For centuries in her homeland of Honduras, the young women in Isaura's family have been subjected to a curse of teenage motherhood and the untimely death of the men they loved. But even after moving thousands of miles away from Pespire to Toronto, Isaura fears that her daughter will not be spared.Soon, Rosy and Isaura, essentially strangers, become connected in a way neither of them could predict. As they try to look to their future and their children’s, they struggle to put the past behind them—all while Eddie and Mivi contend with the weight of their mothers’ pain and guilt.Tender and compassionate, The Afterpains is a moving debut novel on motherhood, grief, identity, and belonging.
DAISY audio (CD), DAISY audio (Direct to player), DAISY audio (Zip)
Multi-cultural fiction, Family stories
Human-narrated audio
Inspired by the work of Souvankham Thammavongsa, Catherine Hernandez and Wayson Choy, this unforgettable novel follows the reunification of Filipino…
caregiver families over one Canadian winter—and the mysterious progress of Monolith, who appears and disappears in their lives. When five-year-old Monolith is taken from the Philippines to live with his mother in Canada, he immediately lashes out. Unable or unwilling to speak, he attacks her and destroys his new home.Everyone wants to know why—and everyone has a theory. But unlike the solid certainty his name suggests, the answer isn’t so simple.From a cliffside town in the Tagaytay highlands of the Philippines, to the Filipino communities in the desert of Osoyoos, the Arctic world of Iqaluit, the suburbs of southern Ontario, Sarnia's Chemical Valley, Montréal’s Côte-des-Neiges, and Toronto’s Little Manila, Austria-Bonifacio takes readers into the kaleidoscope of the Filipino diaspora, uncovering the displacement, estrangement, resilience and healing that happen behind closed doors.As each chapter unfolds, truths are revealed in humorous, joyful, devastating and surprising ways: through an incisive caregiver's instruction manual, a custody battle over texts and e-mails, a disarmingly direct self-help guide, a series of desperate résumés, a kundiman songbook, and more.Monolith appears again and again, as a misbehaving boy in a store, the subject of town gossip, a face in a fundraising campaign, a client in questionable care, a dying man’s beacon of hope—and an unlikely new friend.Compellingly readable, incisive and resonant, Jennilee Austria-Bonifacio’s stunning debut opens a window into the homes and hearts of the Filipino-Canadian community.
DAISY audio (CD), DAISY audio (Direct to player), DAISY audio (Zip)
General fiction, Multi-cultural fiction, Serious and literary fiction
Human-narrated audio
A troubled Delia Ellis returns to her old neighbourhood, Don Mount Court, to retrieve a beloved childhood diary. While the…
entries uncover significant revelations around her mother’s past, it's Delia’s return home that leads to a true understanding of the circumstances that forged her identity.