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Dual Citizens: A Novel
By Alix Ohlin. 2019
"Evocative...traces [its] characters over long arcs of time and place with equal amounts grace and wit. Most revelatory is the…
way that each [sister] fights to find her own life as an artist outside the expectations of others and the demands of a male-dominated world."--Vogue A masterful achievement: a joint coming-of-age story and an achingly poignant portrait of the strange, painful, ultimately life-sustaining bonds between sisters. Lark and Robin are half-sisters whose similarities end at being named for birds. While Lark is shy and studious, Robin is wild and artistic. Raised in Montreal by their disinterested single mother, they form a fierce team in childhood regardless of their differences. As they grow up, Lark excels at school and Robin becomes an extraordinary pianist. At seventeen, Lark flees to America to attend college, where she finds her calling in documentary films, and her sister soon joins her. Later, in New York City, they find themselves tested: Lark struggles with self-doubt, and Robin chafes against the demands of Juilliard. Under pressure, their bond grows strained and ultimately is broken, and their paths abruptly diverge. Years later, Lark's life is in tatters and Robin's is wilder than ever. As Lark tries to take charge of her destiny, she discovers that despite the difficulties of their relationship, there is only one person she can truly rely on: her sister. In this gripping, unforgettable novel about art, ambition, sisterhood, motherhood, and self-knowledge, Alix Ohlin traces the rich and complicated lives of two indelible women. Dazzlingly insightful and beautifully crafted, Dual Citizens captures the unique language of sisters and makes visible the imperceptible strings that bind us to the ones we love for good.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.The Innocents
By Michael Crummey. 2019
LONGLISTED FOR THE 2019 SCOTIABANK GILLER PRIZEFrom bestselling, award-winning author Michael Crummey comes a sweeping, heart-wrenching, deeply immersive novel about…
a brother and sister alone in a small world.A brother and sister are orphaned in an isolated cove on Newfoundland's northern coastline. Their home is a stretch of rocky shore governed by the feral ocean, by a relentless pendulum of abundance and murderous scarcity. Still children with only the barest notion of the outside world, they have nothing but the family's boat and the little knowledge passed on haphazardly by their mother and father to keep them.As they fight for their own survival through years of meagre catches and storms and ravaging illness, it is their fierce loyalty to each other that motivates and sustains them. But as seasons pass and they wade deeper into the mystery of their own natures, even that loyalty will be tested.This novel is richly imagined and compulsively readable, a riveting story of hardship and survival, and an unflinching exploration of the bond between brother and sister. By turns electrifying and heartbreaking, it is a testament to the bounty and barbarity of the world, to the wonders and strangeness of our individual selves. Bestseller.The Testaments: A Novel
By Margaret Atwood. 2019
SHORTLISTED FOR THE BOOKER PRIZELONGLISTED FOR THE SCOTIABANK GILLER PRIZEMargaret Atwood's dystopian masterpiece, The Handmaid's Tale, has become a modern…
classic—and now she brings the iconic story to a dramatic conclusion in this riveting sequel. More than fifteen years after the events of The Handmaid's Tale, the theocratic regime of the Republic of Gilead maintains its grip on power, but there are signs it is beginning to rot from within. At this crucial moment, the lives of three radically different women converge, with potentially explosive results. Two have grown up as part of the first generation to come of age in the new order. The testimonies of these two young women are joined by a third voice: a woman who wields power through the ruthless accumulation and deployment of secrets. As Atwood unfolds The Testaments, she opens up the innermost workings of Gilead as each woman is forced to come to terms with who she is, and how far she will go for what she believes. "The literary event of the year." —The Guardian "The international literary event of the season." —Globe and Mail "It’s terrifying and exhilarating." —Judges of the Booker Prize 2019Eye (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.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.The empress of Idaho
By Todd Babiak. 2019
Summer 1989. Fourteen-year-old Adam Lisinski is a star in his small town of Monument, Colorado. He's poised to be a…
starter on his high school football team, even though he's only a sophomore. He has a part-time job at Eugene's Gas Stop where he works with his best friend, Simon Kinoro. Adam would see his girlfriend, Phoebe Brandt, more if he could, but he makes due with time alone at Monument Lake after her ballet lessons. His mother, Helen, euthanizes sick animals all day at the veterinary clinic. She loves him dearly, but Adam knows she worries. And then Beatrice Cyr arrives in Monument, and Adam is distracted from everything that matters to him. He's mesmerized the second she steps out of his neighbour Marv Walker's truck, and desperate to be around her even if he's confused about what she wants or where she comes from. Soon, Beatrice finds ways to be alone with him--in the change room at Modern You, the clothing store on Second Street, at the movie theatre, in Marv's truck--and Adam's hopelessly caught between wanting to be with her and lying to everyone he loves. And when Beatrice convinces Helen to quit her job and undertake an ambitious real estate venture, Adam's forced to make an impossible choice.My life as a diamond /
By Jenny Manzer. 2018
Albatross: a novel /
By Terry Fallis. 2019
Adam Coryell is your average high-school student--well, except for that obsession with fountain pens--when his life changes forever. Based on…
a study by a quirky Swedish professor that claims that every human being, regardless of athletic inclination, has a body that is suited to excel in at least one sport, it turns out that Adam is good--very good, in fact--at golf. Even though he'd never even picked up a golf club. Almost instantly, and with his coach, hard-nosed Bobbie Davenport by his side, Adam and his new-found talent skyrocket to a prodigy-level stardom that includes tournament titles, sponsorship deals, throngs of fans following his every move, and fodder for tabloids. But here's the catch: Adam doesn't really like golf. And as the life he once knew slips away--including the love of his life, the dream of being a writer, and everyday normalcy--he can't help but wonder if all this success and fame is worth it, or if it's enough for him. Bestseller. 2019.This little light /
By Lori Lansens. 2019
Taking place over 48 hours in the year 2023, this is the story of Rory Ann Miller, on the run…
with her best friend because they are accused of bombing their posh Californian high school during an American Virtue Ball. There's a bounty on their heads, and a social media storm of trolls flying around them, not to mention a posse of law enforcement, attack helicopters and drones trying to track them down. Rory's mom, a social activist and lawyer, has been arrested and implicated in her daughter's "crimes" whereas her dad (who betrayed his wife and daughter in a nasty divorce) is cooperating with the authorities. The story exists in a universe of gated communities, born-again Christians, Probationary Citizens (once known as "Dreamers"), re-criminalized abortion and birth control, teenage virginity oaths and something called the Red Market, which is either a Conservative bogey-man created to further polarize the "base" or a criminal network making money from selling unwanted babies to whomever wants them and fetal tissue to cosmetics and drug companies. Rory is cynical and scared, furious and scathing, betrayed and looking for something or someone to trust. What she has to say about the dads and bosses and politicians lining up to keep women in their place, and about the ways women collaborate in their own undermining, is fierce, and funny, and sad, and true. 2019.In the key of Nira Ghani /
By Natasha Deen. 2019
Nira Ghani has always dreamed of becoming a musician. Her Guyanese parents, however, have big plans for her to become…
a scientist or doctor. Nira's grandmother and her best friend, Emily, are the only people who seem to truly understand her desire to establish an identity outside of the one imposed on Nira by her parents. When auditions for jazz band are announced, Nira realizes it's now or never to convince her parents that she deserves a chance to pursue her passion. As if fighting with her parents weren't bad enough, Nira finds herself navigating a new friendship dynamic when her crush, Noah, and notorious mean-girl, McKenzie "Mac," take a sudden interest in her and Emily, inserting themselves into the fold. So, too, does Nira's much cooler (and very competitive) cousin Farah. Is she trying to wiggle her way into the new group to get closer to Noah? Is McKenzie trying to steal Emily's attention away from her? As Farah and Noah grow closer and Emily begins to pull away, Nira's trusted trumpet "George" remains her constant, offering her an escape from family and school drama. But it isn't until Nira takes a step back that she realizes she's not the only one struggling to find her place in the world. As painful truths about her family are revealed, Nira learns to accept people for who they are and to open herself in ways she never thought possible. Winner of the 2020 Amy Mathers Teen Book Award. For junior and senior high readers. 2019.Adèle /: A Novel
By Leïla Slimani. 2019
She wants only one thing: to be wanted. Adèle appears to have the perfect life: She is a successful journalist…
in Paris who lives in a beautiful apartment with her surgeon husband and their young son. But underneath the surface, she is bored--and consumed by an insatiable need for sex. Driven less by pleasure than compulsion, Adèle organizes her day around her extramarital affairs, arriving late to work and lying to her husband about where she's been, until she becomes ensnared in a trap of her own making. 2019.Proof I was here /
By Becky Blake. 2019
Hailing from Toronto, where she has an assault charge waiting, Niki is outside of Canada for the first time. The…
pickpockets, squatters and graffiti artists she meets challenge her to reassess her ideas about luck and art. With the help of a passionate Catalan separatist who dreams of building a new country from the ground up, Niki realizes that starting her life over from scratch could be an opportunity - if she can just find a way to clear her name." 2019.Stand on the Sky
By Erin Bow. 2019
A gripping new read from Erin Bow, acclaimed and bestselling author of Plain Kate and The Scorpion Rules! She had…
always heard that the eagle chooses the eagle hunter. She wanted that. She wanted her eagle to come to her. To choose her. It goes against all tradition for Aisulu to train an eagle, for among the Kazakh nomads, only men can fly them. But everything changes when Aisulu discovers that her brother, Serik, has been concealing a bad limp that risks not just his future as the family's leader, but his life too. When her parents leave to seek a cure for Serik in a distant hospital, Aisulu finds herself living with her intimidating uncle and strange auntie -- and secretly caring for an orphaned baby eagle. To save her brother and keep her family from having to leave their nomadic life behind forever, Aisulu must earn her eagle's trust and fight for her right to soar. Along the way, she discovers that family are people who choose each other, home is a place you build, and hope is a thing with feathers. Erin Bow's lyrical middle grade debut is perfect for fans of original animal-friendship stories like Pax and Because of Winn Dixie.A story about cancer (with a happy ending) /
By India Desjardins. 2017
A teenage girl heads towards the hospital waiting room where the doctors are going to tell her how much time…
she's got to live. As she walks, she thinks about her journey up to this point ... the terrible decor in the hospital, wearing a headscarf, the horrible treatments, but also being with her friends, family, and her new boyfriend Victor. This is a story about cancer with a happy ending. It's about life, love, and especially, hope. Grades 6-9. ©2017.Leila in saffron /
By Rukhsanna Guidroz. 2019
Nikki Tesla and the ferret-proof death ray / (Elements of genius #1)
By Jess Keating. 2019
Nikki Tesla is a genius, so mostly she finds school boring, and amuses herself by inventing things, like her mysterious…
missing father; trouble is most of her inventions have serious, lethal potential (like the death ray, which just blew a hole in her floor); so she and her ferret are hustled off to the special Genius Academy with classmates who are equally exceptional, although she still worries about fitting in--but when her death ray disappears she has something bigger to worry about: who took it and what are they planning to do? Grades 3-6. 2019.Every little piece of me /
By Amy Jones. 2019
Ava Hart is the most reluctant cast member of a reality TV show based on her big city family's (mostly…
staged) efforts to run a B&B in small-town Nova Scotia. Every family has its problems, but Ava has grown up seeing her family's every up and down broadcast on national television, after the show becomes an unexpected success for reasons that will take a heavy toll on the Harts. Mags Kovach is the charismatic lead singer of a struggling Halifax rock band hoping to be the Next Big Thing. For years she's managed to contain her demons and navigate the uglier aspects of being a woman in the music world, but after a devastating loss, she turns her anger on the only person she can: herself. As their private tragedies continue to set social media and tabloid headlines on fire, their every move subjected to an endless stream of public commentary, it will be their unexpected friendship that will save them. They will push back against the roles they've been forced to play, and take back control of something they thought they'd lost forever--the right to their own stories. 2019.The farm: a novel /
By Joanne Ramos. 2019
Nestled in New York's Hudson Valley is a luxury retreat boasting every amenity: organic meals, private fitness trainers, daily massages--and…
all of it for free. In fact, you're paid big money to stay here--more than you've ever dreamed of. The catch? For nine months, you cannot leave the grounds; your movements are monitored, and you are cut off from your former life while you dedicate yourself to the task of producing the perfect baby. Jane, an immigrant from the Philippines, is in desperate search of a better future when she commits to being a Host at Golden Oaks, or the Farm as residents call it. But now pregnant, fragile, consumed with worry for her own family, Jane is determined to reconnect with her life outside. Yet she cannot leave the Farm or she will lose the life-changing fee she'll receive on delivery. 2019.The student
By Cary Fagan. 2019
Set in Toronto, this short novel is a portrait of two pivotal times in the life of Miriam Moscowitz. The…
first section describes her experiences as a bright young university student in the 1950s and recounts the discrimination she faced as a woman; the second section revisits Miriam's life half a century later, exploring the changes in her community and within herself. 2019.