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All Our Broken Pieces
By L. D. Crichton. 2019
You can't keep two people who are meant to be together apart for long . . . Lennon Davis doesn't…
believe in much, but she does believe in the security of the number five. If she flicks the bedroom light switch five times, maybe her new LA school won't suck. But that doesn't feel right, so she flicks the switch again. And again. Ten more flicks of the switch and maybe her new stepfamily will accept her. Twenty-five more flicks and maybe she won't cause any more of her loved ones to die. Fifty more and then she can finally go to sleep. Kyler Benton witnesses this pattern of lights from the safety of his tree house in the yard next door. It is only there, hidden from the unwanted stares of his peers, that Kyler can fill his notebooks with lyrics that reveal the true scars of the boy behind the oversize hoodies and caustic humor. But Kyler finds that descriptions of blond hair, sad eyes, and tapping fingers are beginning to fill the pages of his notebooks. Lennon, the lonely girl next door his father has warned him about, infiltrates his mind. Even though he has enough to deal with without Lennon's rumored tragic past in his life, Kyler can't help but want to know the truth about his new muse.Keep This to Yourself
By Tom Ryan. 2019
"Breathtakingly chilling...eerie and wholly immersive...A tightly plotted mystery.” Kirkus Reviews starred review It's been a year since the Catalog Killer…
terrorized the sleepy seaside town of Camera Cove, killing four people before disappearing without a trace. Like everyone else in town, eighteen-year-old Mac Bell is trying to put that horrible summer behind him—easier said than done since Mac's best friend Connor was the murderer's final victim. But when he finds a cryptic message from Connor, he's drawn back into the search for the killer—who might not have been a random drifter after all. Now nobody—friends, neighbors, or even the sexy stranger with his own connection to the case—is beyond suspicion. Sensing that someone is following his every move, Mac struggles to come to terms with his true feelings towards Connor while scrambling to uncover the truth.The Beguiling
By Zsuzsi Gartner. 2020
“One of the best reads of the year.”—Toronto Star An electrifying debut novel from the Giller Prize-shortlisted author of Better…
Living Through Plastic Explosives that takes readers for a wild ride with urban-gothic flair and delectably wicked humour. Lucy is a lapsed-Catholic whose adolescent pretensions to sainthood are unexpectedly revived. It all starts when her cousin Zoltan, in hospital following a bizarre incident at a party, offers her a disturbing deathbed confession. Lucy's grief takes an unusual turn: Zoltan's death appears to have turned her into a magnet for the unshriven. Lucy is transformed into a self-described "flesh-and-blood Wailing Wall" as strangers unburden themselves to her. She becomes addicted to the dark stories, finds herself jonesing for hit after hit.As the confessions pile up, Lucy begins to wonder if Zoltan's death was as random and unscripted as it appeared. She clutches at alarming synchronicities, seeks meaning in the stories of strangers. Why do the stories seem connected to each other or eerily echo elements of her life? Could it be because Lucy has her own transgressions to acknowledge? And then there is that stubbornly resurfacing past, like a tell-tale ribbon of hair snagged on a fish hook. With ruthless wit and dizzying energy, The Beguiling explores blessings and curses, sainthood and sin, mortality and guilt in all its guises. Weaving together tales of errant mothers, vengeful plants, canine wisdom, and murder, it lays bare the flesh and blood sacrifices people are willing to make to get what they think they desire.Sara and the Search for Normal
By Wesley King. 2020
“Readers will appreciate [Sara] as good literary company even as they develop sympathy for her struggles.” —BCCB “It’s the vivid,…
insightful depiction of Sara’s internal struggles that readers will remember.” —Booklist “A must-buy.” —School Library Journal (starred review) In this prequel to the Edgar Award–winning OCDaniel, fan-favorite Sara quests for “normal” and finds something even better along the way.Sara’s Rules to be Normal 1. Stop taking your pills 19. Make a friend 137. Don’t put mayonnaise on peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. Sara wants one thing: to be normal. What she has instead are multiple diagnoses from Dr. Ring. Sara’s constant battle with False Alarm—what she calls panic attacks—and other episodes cause her to isolate herself. She rarely speaks, especially not at school, and so she doesn’t have any friends. But when she starts group therapy she meets someone new. Talkative and outgoing Erin doesn’t believe in “normal,” and Sara finds herself in unfamiliar territory: at the movies, at a birthday party, and with someone to tell about her crush—in short, with a friend. But there’s more to Erin than her cheerful exterior, and Sara begins to wonder if helping Erin will mean sacrificing their friendship.Memoirs and Misinformation: A novel
By Dana Vachon, Jim Carrey. 2020
NATIONAL BESTSELLERNEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER"None of this is real and all of it is true." --Jim CarreyFrom movie star Jim…
Carrey and novelist Dana Vachon, a fearless and semi-autobiographical novel about acting, Hollywood, agents, celebrity, privilege, friendship, romance, addiction to relevance, fear of personal erasure, destruction of persona, our "one big soul," Canada, and apocalypses within and without.Meet Jim Carrey. Sure, he's an insanely successful and beloved movie star drowning in wealth and privilege--but he's also lonely. Maybe past his prime. Maybe even...getting fat? He's tried diets, gurus, and cuddlin' with his military-grade Israeli guard dogs, but nothing seems to lift the cloud of emptiness and ennui. Even the advice of his best friend, actor and dinosaur skull collector, Nicolas Cage, isn't enough to pull Carrey out of his slump.Then Jim meets Georgie: ruthless ingénue, love of his life. And thanks to auteur screenwriter Charlie Kaufman, he has a role to play in a boundary-pushing new picture that may help him uncover a whole new side to himself. Finally, his Oscar vehicle! Things are looking up. But the universe has other plans.Memoirs and Misinformation is a fearless semi-autobiographical novel, a deconstruction of persona. In it, Jim Carrey and Dana Vachon have fashioned a story about acting, Hollywood, agents, celebrity, privilege, friendship, romance, addiction to relevance, fear of personal erasure, our "one big soul," Canada, and a cataclysmic ending of the world--apocalypses within and without.Duck Days (Slug Days Stories #3)
By Sara Leach, Rebecca Bender. 2020
The third title in the collection that began with USBBY Outstanding International Book Slug Days. Lauren, a third-grade student who…
has Autism Spectrum Disorder, takes on the challenges of sharing her best friend and persevering when a classmate mocks her bicycle’s training wheels. Irma is Lauren’s best friend. Irma knows all the strategies Lauren uses when her Autism Spectrum Disorder makes it hard to “go with the flow.” Lauren helps Irma learn English words and understand unfamiliar customs. So why does Irma suddenly want to introduce Lauren to her mountain-biking, litter-dropping neighbor Jonas? Why is Irma calling Jonas her friend? As if sharing Irma weren’t bad enough, Lauren also has an alarming new problem at school. Their teacher has announced a mountain biking day when the students will learn to ride their bikes on an obstacle course. But Lauren still uses training wheels. She just can’t face the teasing she will get when her classmates see them. She isn’t brave like Irma. She can’t go with the flow like Dad. How can she possibly face this challenge? From author Sara Leach and illustrator Rebecca Bender comes an honest and warm-hearted successor to the critically acclaimed Slug Days and Penguin Days. With straightforward text and frequent black-and-white illustrations, Duck Days is an accessible chapter book for any young reader with mountains of their own to climb.Break in Case of Emergency: A Novel
By Brian Francis. 2019
Finalist for the Governor General’s Literary Award for Young People’s Literature–Text Dads can be such a drag Life has been…
a struggle for Toby Goodman. Her mother died by suicide five years ago, and her father left their small town before Toby was born. Now a teenager living on her grandparents’ dairy farm, Toby has trouble letting people in. She keeps even her closest friend, the brash but endearing Trisha, at arm’s length, and recently ended her first relationship, with Trisha’s burnout brother, Mike. Convinced that she is destined to follow her mother’s path, Toby creates a plan to escape her pain. But after learning the news that her father is coming home and finally wants to meet her, Toby must face the truth of her family’s story. Not only is her father gay, but he’s also a world-famous female impersonator—and a self-absorbed, temperamental man-child who is ill-prepared to be a real parent. When Toby’s careful plans go awry, she is forced to rebuild the life she thought she knew from the ground up. While she may not follow an expected path, through the support of a quirky but lovable circle of friends and family, Toby may finally be able to put together the many different pieces that make up her past, her present and her future.I Am Ariel Sharon
By Yara El-Ghadban. 2020
A bold and innovative novel, I Am Ariel Sharon dives into the tortured mind of the controversial Israeli prime minister…
as he lies comatose and faces an ultimate reckoning.Award-winning Palestinian Canadian novelist Yara El-Ghadban imagines the confrontation at death’s door between Ariel Sharon, the “King of Israel,” and the women closest to him — his mother, his wives, and the mysterious nurse Rita. Like latter-day Greek furies, they lament the brutality of his life and maltreatment of the Palestinian people and demand he face up to his part in the bloodshed of Israel’s wars.Here is an extraordinary, magical, and impassioned story of nearly impossible empathy, the singular work of a novelist in full flight.Book of Wings
By Tawhida Tanya Evanson. 2021
In this sweeping, allusive novel, the celebrated poet, dervish, and oral storyteller Tawhida Tanya Evanson comes to terms with what…
it means to stand on one's own two feet in an uncertain world. The acclaimed Antiguan-Canadian artist traces a global journey from Vancouver to the United States, Caribbean, Paris, and Morocco as a relationship with her lover and travel partner disintegrates and she finds herself on a path toward personal discovery and spiritual fulfillment that leads her deep into the North African landscape.Noopiming: The Cure for White Ladies
By Leanne Betasamosake Simpson. 2020
Award-winning Nishnaabeg storyteller and writer Leanne Betasamosake Simpson returns with a bold reimagination of the novel, one that combines narrative…
and poetic fragments through a careful and fierce reclamation of Anishinaabe aesthetics. Mashkawaji (they/them) lies frozen in the ice, remembering a long-ago time of hopeless connection and now finding freedom and solace in isolated suspension. They introduce us to the seven main characters: Akiwenzii, the old man who represents the narrator’s will; Ninaatig, the maple tree who represents their lungs; Mindimooyenh, the old woman who represents their conscience; Sabe, the giant who represents their marrow; Adik, the caribou who represents their nervous system; Asin, the human who represents their eyes and ears; and Lucy, the human who represents their brain. Each attempts to commune with the unnatural urban-settler world, a world of SpongeBob Band-Aids, Ziploc baggies, Fjällräven Kånken backpacks, and coffee mugs emblazoned with institutional logos. And each searches out the natural world, only to discover those pockets that still exist are owned, contained, counted, and consumed. Cut off from nature, the characters are cut off from their natural selves. Noopiming is Anishinaabemowin for “in the bush,” and the title is a response to English Canadian settler and author Susanna Moodie’s 1852 memoir Roughing It in the Bush. To read Simpson’s work is an act of decolonization, degentrification, and willful resistance to the perpetuation and dissemination of centuries-old colonial myth-making. It is a lived experience. It is a breaking open of the self to a world alive with people, animals, ancestors, and spirits, who are all busy with the daily labours of healing — healing not only themselves, but their individual pieces of the network, of the web that connects them all together. Enter and be changed.The King of Jam Sandwiches
By Eric Walters. 2020
“Tug at the heartstrings and tickle the funny bone…This warm tale is definitely one for the keeper shelves. Highly recommended.”—School…
Library Journal, starred review Thirteen-year-old Robbie leads a double life. It's just Robbie and his dad, but no one knows that his dad isn't like most parents. Sometimes he wakes Robbie up in the middle of the night to talk about dying. Sometimes he just leaves without telling Robbie where he’s going. Once when Robbie was younger, he was gone for more than a week. Robbie was terrified of being left alone but even more scared of telling anyone in case he was put into foster care. No one can know. Until one day when Robbie has to show the tough new girl, Harmony, around school. Their first meeting ends horribly and she punches Robbie in the face. But eventually they come to realize that they have a lot more in common than they thought. Can Robbie's new friend be trusted to keep his secret?The Son of the House
By Cheluchi Onyemelukwe-Onuobia. 2021
Pulsing with vitality and intense human drama, Cheluchi Onyemelukwe-Onuobia’s debut is set against four decades of vibrant Nigeria and celebrates…
the resilience of women as they navigate and transform what remains a man’s world.Meranda and the Legend of the Lake
By Meagan Mahoney. 2021
Eleven-year-old Meranda thought her life was complicated enough with physical challenges (she uses crutches to walk) and her helicopter parents.…
But when her great-uncle Mark dies, Meranda and her family visit Cape Breton, Nova Scotia, where her parents grew up and where she hasn’t been since the age of three. Soon, secrets begin to unfold: Why does the newspaper headline say her great-uncle Mark’s death was suspicious? Why do strangers keep calling Meranda “miracle baby”? Why does her usually calm mother seem so panicky and scared? And what on earth does all this have to do with mermaids? Meranda and her new friend, Claire, decide to investigate on their own. But as Meranda begins to separate fact from fiction, she finds herself in very real danger.Birdspell
By Valerie Sherrard. 2021
Corbin Hayes has felt alone for as long as he can remember. His mom’s illness means lost jobs, constant moves,…
new schools and friendships that never get to grow. There’s a gap in his life that’s been waiting to be filled. So, when a classmate offers Corbin the talking bird she can no longer keep, he’s stoked. But when things begin to spiral out of control, Corbin can no longer get his mom – or himself – through the dark period. At his lowest moment, he’s forced to do the one thing he fears the most.The One-Eyed Chevrolet: Stories From Cougar Lake
By Kathryn Hartley. 2021
Nestled in the rolling foothills, where the prairie climbs to meet the Rocky Mountains, lies the small town of Cougar…
Lake. You know these towns. You've driven through them. Maybe even stopped for a bite at the Copper Kettle café. In this book all the doors in town swing quietly open. Each inhabitant's life and story intersects with others like overlapping ripples in the water. Each story stands alone but each story reaches tendrils into others. The residents form a cast of beguiling, sometimes eccentric, characters. As the book progresses, we gradually discover their loves and longings, their histories and their dreams. We learn what brought them to Cougar Lake and, more importantly, what keeps them here. In the end the town stands together to survive. Here are the stories, the dramas, the heartbreak and the glories of the town and the people of Cougar Lake.Her First Palestinian
By Saeed Teebi. 2022
Elegant, surprising stories about Palestinian immigrants in Canada navigating their identities in circumstances that push them to the emotional brink.…
Saeed Teebi’s intense, engrossing stories plunge into the lives of characters grappling with their experiences as Palestinian immigrants to Canada. A doctor teaches his girlfriend about his country, only for her to fall into a consuming obsession with the Middle East conflict. A math professor risks his family’s destruction by slandering the king of a despotic, oil-rich country. A university student invents an imaginary girlfriend to fit in with his callous, womanizing roommates. A lawyer takes on the impossible mission of becoming a body smuggler. A lonely widower travels to Russia in search of a movie starlet he met in his youth in historical Jaffa. A refugee who escaped violent circumstances rebels against the kindness of his sponsor. These taut and compelling stories engage the immigrant experience and reflect the Palestinian diaspora with grace and insight.Boys and Girls Screaming
By Kern Carter. 2022
When Ever’s father passes away suddenly, she is devastated. Not long after that, her mom has a stroke and Ever’s…
anguish becomes almost too much for her to handle. That’s when she gets the idea to form a group she calls Boys and Girls Screaming. Along with her brother, Jericho, and her best friend, Candace, Ever wants to bring together kids from their school who have suffered trauma so they can share their stories and begin to heal. Although the other teens find solace in the group, Ever tumbles further into depression until she reaches a breaking point. As the group learns the true source of Ever’s pain, they jump into action to help her find a way out. Boys and Girls Screaming tells the story of a generation of teens finding the support they need to process their trauma in their own ways.Some Hellish
By Nicholas Herring. 2022
Herring is a hapless lobster fisher lost in an unexceptional life, bored of thinking the same old thoughts. One December…
day, following a hunch, he cuts a hole in the living room floor and installs a hoist, altering the course of everything in his life. His wife Euna leaves with their children. He buries the family dog in a frozen grave on Christmas Eve. He and his friend Gerry crash his truck into a field, only to be rescued by a passing group of Tibetan monks.During the spring lobster season, Herring and Gerry find themselves caught in a storm front. Herring falls overboard miles from the harbour, is lost at sea for days, and assumed to be drowned. And then, he is found, miraculously, alive. Having come so near to death, he is forced to confront the things he fears the most: love, friendship, belief, and himself.Some Hellish is a story about anguish and salvation, the quiet grace and patience of transformation, the powers of addiction and fear, the plausibility of forgiveness, and the immense capacity of friendship and of love.Flipping Forward Twisting Backward
By Alma Fullerton. 2022
A diagnosis of dyslexia could change everything for an aspiring fifth-grade gymnast struggling at school in this authentic, high-energy novel…
in verse. The print edition of this title is set in a font developed to be easy to read.The gym is where Claire shines and she’s on her way to qualifying for the state championships. But at school, she’s known as a troublemaker—which is fine with her since it helps her hide her reading problem. Claire has never been able to make sense of the wobbling jumble of letters on a page.When a sympathetic principal wonders if she’s acting out because she may have dyslexia, she’s stunned. Claire has always assumed she’s dumb, so she’s eager to get evaluated. But her mother balks. Afraid Claire will be labeled “stupid,” she refuses testing. Can Claire take on both her reading challenges and her mother’s denial? Is it worth jeopardizing her dream of the state championships?Told in clear and poignant verse and featuring black and white illustrations, Claire’s struggle with something that seems to come easily to everyone else will resonate with readers and have them cheering her on.Hotline
By Dimitri Nasrallah. 2022
A vivid love letter to the 1980s and one woman's struggle to overcome the challenges of immigration.It's 1986, and Muna…
Heddad is in a bind. She and her son have moved to Montreal, leaving behind a civil war filled with bad memories in Lebanon. She had plans to find work as a French teacher, but no one in Quebec trusts her to teach the language. She needs to start making money, and fast. The only work Muna can find is at a weight-loss center as a hotline operator.All day, she takes calls from people responding to ads seen in magazines or on TV. On the phone, she's Mona, and she's quite good at listening. These strangers all have so much to say once someone shows interest in their lives-marriages gone bad, parents dying, isolation, personal inadequacies. Even as her daily life in Canada is filled with invisible barriers at every turn, at the office Muna is privy to her clients' deepest secrets.Following international acclaim for Niko (2011) and The Bleeds (2018), Dimitri Nasrallah has written a vivid elegy to the 1980s, the years he first moved to Canada, bringing the era's systemic challenges into the current moment through this deeply endearing portrait of struggle, perseverance, and bonding.