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The blind mechanic: the amazing story of Eric Davidson, survivor of the 1917 Halifax Explosion
By Marilyn Elliott, Janet Kitz. 2018
Eric Davidson was a beautiful, fair-haired toddler when the Halifax Explosion struck, killing almost 2,000 people and seriously injuring thousands…
of others. Eric lost both eyes-a tragedy that his mother never fully recovered from. Eric, however, was positive and energetic. He also developed a fascination with cars and how they worked, and he later decided, against all likelihood, to become a mechanic. Assisted by his brothers who read to him from manuals, he worked hard, passed examinations, and carved out a decades-long career. Once the subject of a National Film Board documentary, Eric Davidson was, until his death, a much-admired figure in Halifax. Written by his daughter Marilyn, this book gives new insights into the story of the 1917 Halifax Explosion and contains never-before-seen documents and photographs. Winner of the 2019 The Robbie Robertson Dartmouth Book Award (Non-Fiction). 2018.Son of a trickster (Trickster trilogy. #1.)
By Eden Robinson. 2017
Everyone knows a guy like Jared: the burnout kid in high school who sells weed cookies and has a scary…
mom who's often wasted and wielding some kind of weapon. Jared does smoke and drink too much, and he does make the best cookies in town, and his mom is a mess, but he's also a kid who has an immense capacity for compassion and an impulse to watch over people more than twice his age, and he can't rely on anyone for consistent love and support, except for his flatulent pit bull, Baby Killer, and now she's dead. Bestseller. 2017.Let darkness bury the dead: a Murdoch mystery / (Detective Murdoch mystery. #8.)
By Maureen Jennings. 2017
November 1917. The Great War is grinding on. Initially, Canadians are mostly eager to fight for the Empire, but the…
carnage is horrendous and with enforced conscription, the enthusiasm for war is dimming. William Murdoch is a widower, a senior detective who, thanks to the new temperance laws, spends his time tracking down bootleggers and tipplers. His wife, Amy, died giving birth to their second child, a girl who lived only a few hours more. Murdoch, racked by grief, withdrew from his four-year-old son Jack, which he deeply regrets. Now, Jack is twenty-one and has returned from France after being wounded. It is soon apparent that he is deeply troubled and bound by shared secrets to another soldier, Percy McKinnon. The night after Jack and McKinnon arrive home, a young man is found beaten to death in the impoverished area of Toronto known as the Ward. Soon after, Murdoch has to deal with a tragic suicide, also a young man. Two more attacks follow in quick succession. The only common denominator is that all of the men were exempted from conscription. Increasingly worried that Jack knows more than he is letting on, Murdoch must solve these crimes before more innocents lose their lives. Sequel to "A journeyman to grief". 2017.Counting on Katherine: How Katherine Johnson Saved Apollo 13
By Helaine Becker. 2018
You've likely heard of the historic Apollo 13 [mission]. But do you know about the mathematical genius who made sure…
that Apollo 13 returned safely home? As a child, Katherine Johnson loved to count. She counted the steps on the road, the number of dishes and spoons she washed in the kitchen sink, everything! Boundless, curious, and excited by calculations, young Katherine longed to know as much as she could about math, about the universe. From Katherine's early beginnings as a gifted student to her heroic accomplishments as a prominent mathematician at NASA, this is the story of a groundbreaking American woman who not only calculated the course of moon landings but, in turn, saved lives and made enormous contributions to history. Grades K-3. 2018.Sweep: the story of a girl and her monster
By Jonathan Auxier. 2018
Nineteenth-century England. After her father's disappearance Nan Sparrow, ten, works as a "climbing boy," aiding chimney sweeps, but when her…
most treasured possessions end up in a fireplace, she unwittingly creates a golem. Winner of the 2018 Governor General’s Award for Young People's Literature. Grades 4-7. 2018.Immigrant city: stories
By David Bezmozgis. 2019
In the title story, a father and his young daughter stumble into a bizarre version of his immigrant childhood. A…
mysterious tech conference brings a writer to Montreal where he discovers new designs on the past in "How it Used to Be." A grandfather's Yiddish letters expose a love affair and a wartime secret in "Little Rooster." In "Roman's Song," Roman's desire to help a new immigrant brings him into contact with a sordid underworld. At his father's request, Victor returns to Riga, the city of his birth, and has his loyalties tested by the man he might have been in "A New Gravestone for an Old Grave." And, in the noir-inspired "The Russian Riviera," Kostya leaves Russia to pursue a boxing career only to find himself working as a doorman in a garish nightclub in the Toronto suburbs.Frying Plantain: stories /
By Zalika Reid-Benta. 2019
Kara Davis is a girl caught in the middle -- of her Canadian nationality and her desire to be a…
"true" Jamaican, of her mother and grandmother's rages and life lessons, of having to avoid being thought of as too "faas" or too "quiet" or too "bold" or too "soft." Set in "Little Jamaica," Toronto's Eglinton West neighbourhood, Kara moves from girlhood to the threshold of adulthood, from elementary school to high school graduation, in these twelve interconnected stories. We see her on a visit to Jamaica, startled by the sight of a severed pig's head in her great aunt's freezer; in junior high, the victim of a devastating prank by her closest friends; and as a teenager in and out of her grandmother's house, trying to cope with the ongoing battles between her unyielding grandparents. A rich and unforgettable portrait of growing up between worlds, Frying Plantain shows how, in one charged moment, friendship and love can turn to enmity and hate, well-meaning protection can become control, and teasing play can turn to something much darker. In her brilliantly incisive debut, Zalika Reid-Benta artfully depicts the tensions between mothers and daughters, second-generation Canadians and first-generation cultural expectations, and Black identity and predominately white society.Dream Sequence: A Novel
By Adam Foulds. 2019
Adam Foulds, the award-winning author of The Quickening Maze, pens a stunning and terrifying vision of the damage done between…
a fan and a celebrity in Dream Sequence--where the borders between inner and outer life have been made porous in a world full of flickering screens large and small. Henry became famous starring in The Grange, a television drama beloved by mothers and wives, and whose fans speak about the characters as though they were real people . . . yet Henry dreams of escaping the small screen. An audition for a movie directed by a highly respected Spanish auteur holds the promise of a way forward. Whether holed up in his apartment eating monkish meals of rice and steamed vegetables or snorting cocaine at desert parties in Doha, Henry's awareness of his own image, of his relative place in the world, is acute and constant. But Henry has also--unwittingly--become an important part of the life of recently divorced Kristin. He appears repeatedly on the television in her beautiful, empty Philadelphia house, and her social media feeds bring news of his London home, his family. What Kristin wants is simply to get as close to him in real life as she has in her fandom.Small Game Hunting at the Local Coward Gun Club
By Megan Coles. 2019
February in Newfoundland is the longest month of the year. Another blizzard is threatening to tear a strip off downtown…
St. John’s, while inside The Hazel restaurant a storm system of sex, betrayal, addiction, and hurt is breaking overhead. Iris, a young hostess from around the bay, is forced to pull a double despite resolving to avoid the charming chef and his wealthy restaurateur wife. Just tables over, Damian, a hungover and self-loathing server, is trying to navigate a potential punch-up with a pair of lit customers who remain oblivious to the rising temperature in the dining room. Meanwhile Olive, a young woman far from her northern home, watches it all unfurl from the fast and frozen street. Through rolling blackouts, we glimpse the truth behind the shroud of scathing lies and unrelenting abuse, and discover that resilience proves most enduring in the dead of this winter’s tale.By turns biting, funny, poetic, and heartbreaking, Megan Gail Coles’ debut novel rips into the inner lives of a wicked cast of characters, building towards a climax that will shred perceptions and force a reckoning. This is blistering Newfoundland Gothic for the twenty-first century, a wholly original, bracing, and timely portrait of a place in the throes of enormous change, where two women confront the traumas of their past in an attempt to overcome the present and to pick up a future.Days by moonlight
By André Alexis. 2019
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. Bestseller.Eye (Essential Prose Ser. #149)
By Marianne Micros. 2018
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, an ancient temple uncovered during the construction of a church, a betrayed woman lost in a labyrinth, a wise woman confronting changes to her position when modern technology comes to her village. Some stories show that people still seek refuge in myth and folk beliefs; the ways of the past are not gone. The paving of a village does not destroy the power of the evil eye or the ability to repel it. A temple in honour of the old gods comes again to the surface. An unfinished musical composition for piano magically completes itself whenever it is played. Magic is not dead but rises again in unexpected ways.Sea Trial: Sailing After My Father
By Brian Harvey. 2019
An adventure story set against the backdrop of a son trying to understand his fatherAfter a 25-year break from boating,…
Brian Harvey circumnavigates Vancouver Island with his wife, his dog, and a box of documents that surfaced after his father’s death. John Harvey was a neurosurgeon, violinist, and photographer who answered his door a decade into retirement to find a sheriff with a summons. It was a malpractice suit, and it did not go well. Dr. Harvey never got over it. The box contained every nurse’s record, doctor’s report, trial transcript, and expert testimony related to the case. Only Brian’s father had read it all — until now.In this beautifully written memoir, Brian Harvey shares how after two months of voyaging with his father’s ghost, he finally finds out what happened in the O.R. that crucial night and why Dr. Harvey felt compelled to fight the excruciating accusations.Tiny lights for travellers (Wayfarer Ser.)
By Naomi Lewis. 2019
When her marriage suddenly ends, and a diary documenting her beloved grandfather's escape from Nazi-occupied Netherlands in the summer of…
1942 is discovered, Naomi K. Lewis decides to retrace his journey to learn about her family history. Despite suffering from extreme disorientation and a lifetime of anxiety, she travels alone for the first time. Moving from Amsterdam to Lyon--relying on the marvels of GPS--she discovers family secrets and her own narrative as a second-generation Jewish Canadian. With vulnerability, humour, and wisdom, Lewis's memoir asks tough questions about her identity as a secular Jew, the accuracy of family stories, and the impact of the Holocaust on subsequent generations. How do immigrants weave their sense of identity into their chosen countries? Must we be able to locate ourselves within family and cultural geography to belong? 2019.Shut up you're pretty: stories
By Téa Mutonji. 2019
In this story collection, a woman contemplates her Congolese traditions during a family wedding, a teenage girl looks for happiness…
inside a pack of cigarettes, a mother reconnects with her daughter through their shared interest in fish, and a young woman decides to shave her head in the waiting room of an abortion clinic. These punchy, sharply observed stories blur the lines between longing and choosing, exploring the narrator's experience as an involuntary one. Tinged with pathos and humour, they interrogate the moments in which femininity, womanness, and identity are not only questioned but also imposed. 2019.Be my love: a novel
By Kit Pearson. 2019
For as long as she can remember, Maisie has spent her summers on Kingfisher Island. She and her beloved cousin…
Una run wild, and Maisie feels the warm embrace of her big, extended family. This summer Maisie needs that escape more than ever. But now everything on Kingfisher has changed: Una has returned from her mainland school a sophisticated young woman too mature for childish games, and even worse, she has an all-consuming infatuation with David Meyer, both an old friend and an older man. Soon Maisie finds herself playing second fiddle-jealous of Una and David's closeness, and unsure of what those feelings mean. When Maisie's greatest attempt to maintain the special magic of her friendship with Una goes up in smoke, it seems as though all is lost. But with an enormous revelation, and a heartrending intervention, Maisie may finally discover the strength she needs to find the same peace that the island has brought her within herself. Grades 5-8. 2019.Celestial bodies: Sayyidat al-qamar
By Jūkhah Ḥārithī. 2018
In the village of al-Awafi in Oman live three sisters. Mayya Marries after a heartbreak. Asma marries from a sense…
of duty. Khawla rejects all offers while waiting for her beloved, who has emigrated to Canada. Celestial Bodies is the story of the history and people of modern Oman told through one family's losses and loves. 2019.A mind spread out on the ground
By Alicia Elliott. 2019
In an urgent and visceral work that asks essential questions about Native people in North America while drawing on intimate…
details of her own life and experience with intergenerational trauma, Alicia Elliott offers indispensable insight and understanding to the ongoing legacy of colonialism. What are the links between depression, colonialism and loss of language--both figurative and literal? How does white privilege operate in different contexts? How do we navigate the painful contours of mental illness in loved ones without turning them into their sickness? How does colonialism operate on the level of literary criticism? A Mind Spread Out on the Ground is Alicia Elliott's attempt to answer these questions and more. In the process, she engages with such wide-ranging topics as race, parenthood, sexuality, love, mental illness, poverty, sexual assault, gentrification, writing and representation. Elliott makes connections both large and small between the past and present, the personal and political--from overcoming a years-long history with head lice to the way Native writers are treated within the Canadian literary industry; her unplanned teenage pregnancy to the history of dark matter and how it relates to racism in the court system; her childhood diet of Kraft dinner to how systematic oppression is linked to depression in Native communities. With deep consideration and searing prose, Elliott extends far beyond her own experiences to provide a candid look at our past, an illuminating portrait of our present and a powerful tool for a better future. Bestseller. Winner of the 2020 Evergreen Award. 2019.Orange for the sunsets
By Tina Athaide. 2019
In alternating voices, friends Asha and Yesofu, one Indian and one African, find their world turned upside-down when Idi Amin…
decides to expel Asian Indians from Uganda in 1972. Winner of the 2020 Geoffrey Bilson Award for Historical Fiction for Young People. Grades 3-6. 2019.Meet Tom Longboat (Scholastic Canada Biography Ser.)
By Elizabeth MacLeod. 2019
On April 19, 1907, a hundred thousand people lined up to watch the eighth running of the Boston Marathon. At…
the start of the race, more than one hundred runners surged forward, and at the end, Tom Longboat won it in an record-breaking 2 hours, twenty-four minutes, and twenty-four seconds. He became the most famous runner in the world, yet faced scrutiny and criticism of every part of his life, from his revolutionary training techniques to his Indigenous heritage. After the peak of his running career, Tom volunteered for military service in World War I. He survived, and faced further challenges upon his return. But Tom Longboat continued to live his life on his own terms, and his legacy as Canada's foremost distance runner continues to be recognized to this day. Grades K-3. 2019.My River: Cleaning up the LaHave River
By Stella Bowles. 2018
Stella Bowles was a Grade 6 Nova Scotia student when she turned environmental activist to campaign against sewage pipes draining…
straight into the LaHave River. This is the inspirational first person account of Stella's Grade 6 science fair project which caught the eyes of the media, the public and government leaders propelling her into the limelight. Stella details her two and a half year fight to clean up the river, winning numerous awards for her environmental activism along the way. She succeeds in shaming three levels of government and rallying supporters into funding a $$15.7 million cleanup. Today, she continues to campaign for cleaner water and demonstrates to other children how to test water quality in their own backyards, and how to take action if they find their water is polluted too. Grades 3-6.