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A Hero of Our Time: A Novel
By Naben Ruthnum. 2022
A wry comic novel with an acerbic wit, A Hero of Our Time is a vicious takedown of superficial diversity…
initiatives and tech culture, with a beating heart of broken sincerity.Osman Shah is a pitstop on his white colleague Olivia Robinson’s quest for corporate domination at AAP, an edutech startup determined to automate higher education.Osman, obsessed by Olivia’s ability to successfully disguise ambition and self-interest as collectivist diversity politics, is bent on exposing her. Aided by his colleague turned comrade-in-arms Nena, who loathes and tolerates him in equal measure, Osman delves into Olivia's twisted past. But at every turn, he's stymied by his unfailing gift for cruel observation, which he turns with most ferocity on himself, without ever noticing what it is that stops him from connecting to anyone in his past or present. As Osman loses his grip on his family, Nena, and everything he thought was essential to his identity, he confronts an enemy who may simply be too good at her job to be defeated. A Hero of Our Time cracks the veneer of well-intentioned race conversations in the West, dismantles cheery narratives of progress through tech and “streamlined” education, and exposes the venomous self-congratulation and devouring lust for wealth, power, and property that lurks beneath.The Prairie Chicken Dance Tour
By Dawn Dumont. 2021
The hilarious story of an unlikely group of Indigenous dancers who find themselves thrown together on a performance tour of…
Europe The Tour is all prepared. The Prairie Chicken dance troupe is all set for a fifteen-day trek through Europe, performing at festivals and cultural events. But then the performers all come down with the flu. And John Greyeyes, a retired cowboy who hasn't danced in fifteen years, finds himself abruptly thrust into the position of leading a hastily-assembled group of replacement dancers. A group of expert dancers they are not. There's a middle-aged woman with advanced arthritis, her nineteen-year-old niece who is far more interested in flirtations than pow-wow, and an enigmatic man from the U.S. -- all being chased by Nadine, the organizer of the original tour who is determined to be a part of the action, and the handsome man she picked up in a gas-station bathroom. They're all looking to John, who has never left the continent, to guide them through a world that he knows nothing about. As the gang makes its way from one stop to another, absolutely nothing goes as planned and the tour becomes a string of madcap adventures. The Prairie Chicken Dance Tour is loosely based -- like, hospital-gown loose -- on the true story of a group of Indigenous dancers who left Saskatchewan and toured through Europe in the 1970s. Dawn Dumont brings her signature razor-sharp wit and impeccable comedic timing to this hilarious, warm, and wildly entertaining novel.The Vinyl Cafe Celebrates
By Stuart McLean. 2021
NATIONAL BESTSELLER From Canada's much-missed, nationally bestselling storyteller, a must-have collection featuring ten never-before-published stories and ten classic favourites, perfect…
for old fans and Vinyl Cafe newcomers alike.From the unforgettable Christmas classic “Dave Cooks the Turkey” to the tender tribute to ice-cream-loving, potato-sitting Arthur the dog in “Morte d’Arthur”; from the joys and challenges of marriage in “The Canoe Trip” to the celebration of childhood adventure in “The Waterslide.” From the beginning of life (the hilarious “Labour Pains”) to the end (the touching “Love Never Ends”) and all the moments—big and small—in between, these stories remind us that there are occasions to celebrate every day.For more than two decades, Stuart McLean entered the hearts and homes of Canadians via The Vinyl Cafe radio show, his many tours across the country, and multiple nationally bestselling books. His charming, humane, and side-splitting stories brought the trials and triumphs of Dave, Morley, Sam, and Stephanie to life, and made their memorable circle of friends, family, and neighbours as real as our own.This collection is both timely and timeless, a rich celebration of Stuart McLean's inimitable voice, and of the importance of love, community, kindness, and the healing power of laughter.Charming as a Verb
By Ben Philippe. 2020
From the award-winning author of The Field Guide to the North American Teenager comes a whip-smart and layered romantic comedy.…
Perfect for fans of Nicola Yoon and Jenny Han. Henri “Halti” Haltiwanger can charm just about anyone. He is a star debater and popular student at the prestigious FATE academy, the dutiful first-generation Haitian son, and the trusted dog walker for his wealthy New York City neighbors. But his easy smiles mask a burning ambition to attend his dream college, Columbia University. There is only one person who seems immune to Henri’s charms: his “intense” classmate and neighbor Corinne Troy. When she uncovers Henri’s less-than-honest dog-walking scheme, she blackmails him into helping her change her image at school. Henri agrees, seeing a potential upside for himself. Soon what started as a mutual hustle turns into something more surprising than either of them ever bargained for. . . . This is a sharply funny and insightful novel about the countless hustles we have to keep from doing the hardest thing: being ourselves.Murder at the Hotel Hopeless (Orca Soundings)
By John Lekich. 2022
Sneaks
By Catherine Egan. 2022
Men in Black meets middle school! A school project takes an alien turn when three kids uncover a secret society…
whose aim is to keep sneaks--mischievous interdimensional sprites--from slipping into our universe!When Ben Harp sees his teacher's watch crawling across the hallway, he thinks he must be dreaming. But no, he’s just seen his first Sneak—an interdimensional mischief-maker that can borrow the form of any ordinary object. He figured this school year would be bad—his best friend moved away, the class bully is circling, and he’s stuck doing a group project with two similarly friendless girls, Charlotte and Akemi. Still, he wasn’t expecting aliens! And he certainly wasn’t expecting that the woman he and Charlotte and Akemi are assigned to interview for their “living local history” project would be a Sneak expert. Or that she’d foist an old book on them to keep safe . . . and then disappear. Now Ben, Charlotte, and Akemi are trying to understand a book that seems to contain a coded map while being pursued by violent clothes hangers, fire-spitting squirrels, and more. The Sneaks want that book! And they want something else, too: to pull a vastly more dangerous creature into the world with them. Can three misfit kids decode the book in time to stop an alien takeover? And if they do, will they get extra credit on their group project?Jameela Green Ruins Everything
By Zarqa Nawaz. 2022
“I think we got off on the wrong foot, with you telling me I had to be killed and then…
me getting all upset about it. Let’s start again. My name is Jameela, and I’m a writer. What do you do, besides . . . assassinations? Is that a hobby or more of a full-time thing?” Jameela Green has only one wish: to see her memoir on the New York Times bestseller list. When that doesn’t work out, she decides that her best next step is to make a deal with God, so she heads over to her local mosque. The idealistic new imam, Ibrahim Sultan, is appalled by Jameela’s shallowness but agrees to assist her, on one condition—that she perform a good deed. Jameela reluctantly accepts his terms, kicking off a series of unfortunate events. The homeless man they try to help gets recruited by a terrorist group, causing federal authorities to become suspicious of Ibrahim. When the imam mysteriously disappears, Jameela is certain that the CIA has captured her new friend for interrogation and possibly torture. Despite having no talent for this sort of thing, Jameela decides to set off on a one-woman operation to rescue him. Her quest soon lands her at the center of an international plan targeting the leader of the terrorist organization—a scheme that puts Jameela and count-less others, including her hapless husband and clever but disapproving daughter, at risk. A no-holds-barred satire about the international cost of the American Dream, Jameela Green Ruins Everything is a compulsively readable, darkly comedic, yet unexpectedly touching story of one woman’s search for meaning and connection.Mindful of Murder: A Novel
By Susan Juby. 2022
Meet Helen Thorpe. She’s smart, preternaturally calm, deeply insightful and a freshly trained butler. On the day she is supposed…
to start her career as an unusually equanimous domestic professional serving one of the wealthiest families in the world, she is called back to a spiritual retreat where she used to work, the Yatra Institute, on one of British Columbia’s gulf islands. The owner of the lodge, Helen’s former employer Edna, has died while on a three-month silent self-retreat, leaving Helen instructions to settle her affairs. But Edna’s will is more detailed than most, and getting things in order means Helen must run the retreat for a select group to determine which of Edna’s relatives will inherit the institute. Helen’s classmates, newly minted butlers themselves, decide they can’t let her go it alone and arrive to help Helen pull things off. After all, is there anything three butlers can’t handle? As Helen carries out the will’s instructions, she begins to think that someone had reason to want Edna dead. A reluctantly suspicious investigator, Helen and her band of butlers find themselves caught up in the mystery.Jones
By Neil Smith. 2022
From the award-winning author of Bang Crunch and Boo, Jones is the harrowing, funny, utterly unforgettable story of a pair…
of siblings attempting to survive the horror show of their family.Abi and Eli share a special bond. Eli looks up to his sister Abi, two years older, who knows how to inhabit the souls of animals, and sometimes even the soul of her brother. They share jokes, codes, and an obsession with impressive feats of word power—such are the survival tricks for growing up Jones. Pal, their alcoholic father, is haunted by demons from the Korean War, and their less-than-nurturing mother Joy hasn’t got the courage to leave him. Always moving to where Pal gets work, the Joneses go from Montreal to Boston, Salt Lake City, Chicago, and back to Montreal. No matter where they go, though, they can never get away from Jones Town. And then, on Eli’s twelfth birthday, the darkness deepens when he stumbles on something he doesn’t understand—an episode that represents the beginning of Abi’s unraveling, although no one knows it yet. Over the years, Eli and Abi lurch towards and into adulthood on separate paths that sometimes cross, negotiating the world through sexual experimentation, drugs and alcohol, art and language. Searing, affecting and often darkly funny, Jones explores the treacherous intersection between love and violence, and the extreme measures Abi and Eli must take to escape the legacy of a toxic inheritance.The Superteacher Project
By Gordon Korman. 2023
It’s The Unteachables meets I, Robot in another funny middle school tale from Gordon Korman!It’s the start of a new…
school year and Oliver is looking forward to a seventh-grade year full of spitballs, jokes and pranks with his friend Nathan. And their new homeroom teacher, Mr. Aidact, looks like a prime target. He’s an odd duck with a weird, stilted vocabulary, an unusual way of looking at things, and a strangely old student teacher constantly in tow. He also has a seemingly superhuman ability to detect and defuse almost every one of Oliver’s schemes.But that’s not all of it. Mr. Aidact seems to be teaching pretty much every subject. He’s willing to take over jobs no other teacher will, like supervising detention and coaching the field hockey team. Oliver and Nathan are determined to find out what is up with this guy.What they uncover is out of this world!Mr. Aidact is, in fact, superhuman — he’s an android, a secret project of the Department of Education. And when the secret leaks out, the school and the PTA are in an uproar, and calls for his “deactivation” are loud and clear.Can Oliver and his friends turn this plan around and save the teacher they’ve grown to love and appreciate?Simon Sort of Says
By Erin Bow. 2023
For fans of Kate DiCamillo and Jack Gantos, a hilarious, wrenching, hopeful novel about finding your friends, healing your heart,…
and speaking your truth.Simon O’Keeffe’s biggest claim to fame should be the time his dad accidentally gave a squirrel a holy sacrament. Or maybe the alpaca disaster that went viral on YouTube. But the story the whole world wants to tell about Simon is the one he’d do anything to forget: the story in which he’s the only kid in his class who survived a school shooting. Two years after the infamous event, twelve-year-old Simon and his family move to the National Quiet Zone—the only place in America where the internet is banned. Instead of talking about Simon, the astronomers who flock to the area are busy listening for signs of life in space. And when Simon makes a friend who’s determined to give the scientists what they’re looking for, he’ll finally have the chance to spin a new story for the world to tell. From award-winning author Erin Bow, Simon Sort of Says is a breathtaking testament to the lasting echoes of trauma, the redemptive power of humor, and the courage it takes to move forward without forgetting the past.On Thin Ice (Hockey Super Six)
By Kevin Sylvester. 2020
Will the Hockey Super Six thwart their enemy’s plans for world domination in book two of this action-packed series?In the…
second book pitting six ordinary kids with super hockey skills against the forces of evil, Jenny, Benny, Mo, Starlight, DJ and Karl desperately need to stay out of Crosscheck’s grasp!Their last run-in revealed to evil scientist (and former mediocre goalie) Clarence Crosscheck the scope of some of their secret powers — powers he can use in his never-ending quest for world domination. Hard at work on a robot army to do his bidding, Crosscheck underestimates how strong the Super Six can be when they work together as a team.Get ready for high-stakes ice battles, non-stop hijinks and never-before-seen hockey action (it’s kids vs robots, and some giant lizards too)!Curtains for Roy
By Aaron Bushkowsky. 2014
Alex is a playwright suffering from writer’s block and harsh reviews. His best friend, Roy, is a theatre director with…
lung cancer and six months left to live. In pursuit of fresh air and great wine, they go on a road trip to the Okanagan Valley, where Roy rediscovers his passion for theatre. But when he decides to stage a production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream at a winery, disaster ensues: the woman cast in the lead is the winery owner’s wife and has no talent; wildfires encroach upon the surrounding forest; and Roy slips closer to death, one cigarette at a time. Curtains for Roy is a hilarious peek into the world of theatre, where the greatest drama is offstage and the best performances take place behind the curtain.The Spirits Up: A Novel
By Todd Babiak. 2021
Warm, witty, and unsettling all at once, here is an unforgettable story of a family desperate for something to believe…
in.Benedict is an inventor whose life’s work is a clean energy machine. It has just made him an overnight sensation and his family is suddenly wealthy. Benedict’s wife, Karen, and his teenage daughters, Charlotte and Poppy, are proud of him. But there are problems Benedict is too busy to see: Karen is deeply unhappy in the marriage and contemplating an affair, Charlotte, who is dealing with a chronic illness, is growing more and more distant, and Poppy is cracking under the pressures of her social circle. And there’s another problem. Benedict holds a rather terrible secret about his clean energy machine. Then, on Halloween night, an accident threatens to make everything far worse for the family. The accident kicks off a series of hauntings in their beautiful, historic home in affluent Belgravia, and the ghosts make it clear that they want something from them. Karen has to save her daughters — and herself. Meanwhile, Benedict is consumed by the knowledge that he has to achieve the impossible by Christmas. As time ticks ever closer to the revelation of his secret, he spirals further into despair . . . The Spirits Up is the story of a family haunted by the charmlessness of middle age and the cruelties of modern teenage life. Part social satire and part contemporary ghost story (with a hint of Dickens’s A Christmas Carol), it is an exploration of a timeless question: what happens when there’s nothing to believe?Vanity Fair
By William Makepeace Thackeray.
This classic story of two nineteenth-century social climbers is the basis for countless films and TV series, and one of…
the UK’s “Best-Loved Novels.” Before the Real Housewives, there were Becky Sharp and Amelia Sedley. Ruthless and cunning, Becky may have been born in a lower class, but now that she’s graduated from school, she’s ready to climb up to a better life—and do whatever it takes to get there. Her friend Emmy, however, is the opposite. She may have mastered music, dancing, and embroidery like any young woman of her class, but she utterly lacks a backbone. Together these friends navigate the perils of Regency society as they search for love and happiness. Social battles are waged against the backdrop of the Napoleonic Wars, and when the smoke finally clears, there’s no telling who will come out victorious. A satirical masterpiece, Vanity Fair was #14 on The Guardian’s list of the 100 Best Novels and #122 in the BBC’s “Big Read” poll for the UK’s best-loved novel. It has inspired numerous adaptations, from early silent films to a 2004 movie by Mira Nair starring Reese Witherspoon as Becky.A Festival of Ghosts
By Kelly Murphy, William Alexander. 2018
National Book Award winner William Alexander conjures up a spooky adventure full of excitement in this entertaining sequel to A…
Properly Unhaunted Place.Rosa Ramona Diaz, the ghost appeasing assistant librarian, has unleashed all the ghosts who were previously shut out of the small town of Ingot. Now ghosts are everywhere, and the town’s living residents are either learning to cope or trying to do the one thing no one can successfully do—banish the ghosts. At school, something supernatural is stealing kids’ voices and leaving them speechless. And it’s Rosa’s job to solve the mystery and set things right. Meanwhile her best friend Jasper is dealing with what remains of the Renaissance Festival, where ghosts from Ingot’s past are now battling it out with the ghosts of the Renaissance reenactors. And Rosa is experiencing a haunting of her own—could her father’s ghost have followed her here? Somehow Rosa and Jasper are going to have to find a way to bring Ingot back to normal—in a world where the living are now residing side-by-side with the dearly departed.Fink's Funk (Boyds Will Be Boyds #4)
By Sarah Weeks. 2004
Nat Boyd and Boyd Fink love making up crazy games to play. In their latest, Faboo Facts, the two Boyds…
go head-to-head, battling to out-faboo each other with the more impressive fact. But this crash of craniums is destined for disaster. It's not long before the competition has gone too far, and Fink starts to change. He's not the same Fink any more... now he's Fink in a funk! Nat had better find a way to break Fink's funk. If he doesn't, he'll lose more than just the game. He'll lose his best friend!Mascot Madness! (Schooling Around #3)
By Andy Griffiths. 2009
The Academy's mascot is a pit bull, and its students have taken its lead when it comes to fierceness, strength,…
and desire to win. But never, ever underestimate the power of a banana. A banana? Yes Northwest Southeast Central's new mascot is a banana. And it's about to show the pit bull and its owners a thing or two. If it can only figure out where the field day is being held.... Once again, Andy Griffiths brings his laugh-a-minute sensibility to the corridors of grade school in a winning combination of super storytelling and hilarious humor.I Was a Sixth Grade Alien
By Bruce Coville. 1999
Life is not easy for Pleskit Meenom, the son of the first ambassador from another planet to arrive on Earth.…
Not only does he have to worry about just fitting in, but now he's shrunk his teacher and lost his grandfather's brain!!Treasure Fever! (Schooling Around #1)
By Andy Griffiths. 2008
Meet Henry McThrottle, a fifth-grader with an extremely active imagination. His flights of fancy lead to adventures of the sort…
only Andy Griffiths could dream up, in the first entry of a hilarious new series.