Welcome
Welcome to Braille Books Acquired. This quarterly newsletter contains a list of Braille books recently acquired by the Centre for Equitable Library Access (CELA).
In this issue:
- Announcements
- Uncontracted braille
- Fiction for young adults
- Fiction for adults
- Non-fiction for adults
Announcements
Although the majority of these books have been published within the last 5 years, there may be some books listed here which are older, but which were only recently added to our collection. To make this clearer for you, we include the date of the print version of each book at the end of its annotation.
Letter from our Executive Director
I am pleased to announce that we have implemented search preferences on our website. We know this is a feature you have been waiting for, and one we hope will make it easier to find the books you want to read. We also continue to work on securing more newspapers for our readers. We know, particularly now, how important it is to stay informed and we hope to have a positive update soon.
I want to acknowledge the current events and social changes that are happening in Canada and the United States. Like many of you, we at CELA are listening and learning, and seeking ways that we can play a role in building a more inclusive society. As readers, many of us turn to books to help us make sense of the world. One of our immediate commitments is to ensure that our promotions include a balance of perspectives, including authors with different backgrounds, identities and experiences. We will continue to have these important conversations with our board, staff, colleagues and patrons and we look forward to sharing more about our plans in the coming months.
And on a personal note, I wanted to share with you that in the fall I will be returning to my position with the Greater Victoria Public Library. I have loved my time working with CELA and am grateful to the GVPL for allowing me a year’s leave to devote to this opportunity. My work here has been incredibly rewarding and alongside our ongoing work on the platform, there are still many exciting projects and partnerships I am working on with the CELA team. In the course of my work thus far, I have been grateful for the support of CELA patrons, our board, and particularly the CELA team whose dedication and commitment to our users and this work has been unwavering. I am working with our Board of Directors to develop a transition plan which includes bringing the new executive director on board before I leave. It is important to me to leave you and our team in good hands, and I have every confidence that the next Executive Director will be an excellent addition to the CELA team and a passionate advocate for accessible library services. In the meantime, I look forward to what we will accomplish for you in the coming months.
Stay safe and happy reading,
Rina Hadziev
Executive Director, Centre for Equitable Library Access
Canada Reads Winner announced
Originally slated to run in March, Canada Reads took place in late July. After much anticipation, five defenders of the chosen titles gathered in person and virtually to discuss and defend the books they believed would be the one book to bring Canada into focus. The conversations were at times quite passionate and covered a wide range of topics, moving from intersectionality of various identities in We have always been here, to the types of Indigenous stories that need to be told and why.
The program streamed live and is available as a recording or via podcast on the CBC website. In the end, We have always been here by Samra Habib, defended by Amanda Brugell, came out on top. Samra Habib’s memoir traces her journey as a young, queer, Muslim woman of colour through her immigration to Canada from Pakistan, to her resistance against an arranged marriage and her international travels as she tries to find her place in the world.
Find We have always been here and the other contenders in our collection.
3032660 We have always been here by Samra Habib: Winner!
Read the contenders:
- 2851995 Small game hunting at the local coward gun club by Megan Coles
- 3042481 Son of a trickster by Eden Robinson
- 2956946 Radicalized by Cory Doctorow
- 3032990 From the ashes Jesse Thistle
Pulitzer Prize Winner Colson Whitehead wins Orwell Prize
Congratulations to Colson Whitehead who recently won the Orwell Prize for Political Fiction for his novel The Nickel boys. The Orwell Prize aims to encourage good writing and thinking about politics with the goal of encouraging authors to meet Orwell’s own ambition ‘to make political writing into an art.'
Before winning this year’s Orwell Prize for Political Fiction, The Nickel boys also won the Pulitzer Prize, making Whitehead only the fourth writer ever to win the Pulitzer Prize for fiction twice. The Nickel boys is the story of two boys sentenced to a hellish reform school in Jim Crow-era Florida. One takes the words of Dr Martin Luther King to heart, the other feels the world is inherently bad and the only way to survive is to scheme your way through and avoid trouble. Based on the real story of a reform school in Florida that operated for one hundred and eleven years and warped the lives of thousands of children, The Nickel boys is a devastating, driven narrative that showcases a great American novelist writing at the height of his powers. Book number 2684322.
Prinbraille returns
We are pleased to announce that our full collection of printbraille books, included more than 50 recently added titles, will be available again in the coming weeks. As we all work together to combat the spread of COVID-19, we want to inform you about the measures we are taking to ensure your safety.
Our safety measures:
- Based on medical and scientific advice and the best practices being implemented in public libraries, we have taken a number of measures to ensure safety for you and for the staff handling printbraille books. Staff are equipped with personal protective equipment, are not permitted to work if sick, are trained in practicing proper hygiene, and their workspaces and processes have been re-arranged to ensure physical distancing.
- In addition, printbraille books will be quarantined in our facility for a minimum of 96 hours before being recirculated.
What you can do to help:
- Please do not try to wash, wipe or disinfect the books. Disinfection is not necessary and you may damage the books permanently.
- If you are concerned about any possible contamination via the postal system, as an added safety measure you may wish to quarantine these materials in your home for 24 hours before handling them.
To find and place holds on printbraille books, you can use the search function on our website and filter to select only printbraille titles. For those who don’t use our website, our Contact Centre will be able to help.
If you have any questions or wish to make changes to your account, please contact us at help@celalibrary.ca or call 1-855-655-2273.
Designate someone to help with your CELA account
If you or someone you know would like some additional assistance managing their CELA account, there is the option to appoint a designate. A designate can:
- Get books for a patron through celalibrary.ca
- Submit a Proof of Disability for a patron within My Account
- Make changes to a patron's account or service by calling Contact Centre.
Patrons can name a designate by emailing the Contact Centre at help@celalibrary.ca or by calling 1-855-655-2273. When declaring a designate, please provide the designate's name, email address and phone number.
Braille Books Acquired is now available by e-mail. If you would like to receive it in this format, please get in touch with the CELA Contact Centre at 1-855-655-2273, or by e-mail at help@celalibrary.ca. Thank you.
Uncontracted braille
Animal stories
3299201 Sloth at the Zoom by Helaine Becker
1 volume. One day, a sloth accidentally gets delivered to the Zoom! She was supposed to be dropped off at the Zzzzzoo, a much more laid-back, slow-paced place. She had been looking forward to long, languorous naps while the sun gently warmed her belly. But at the Zoom, the zebras gallop so fast they leave their stripes in puddles. The monkeys climb so fast they forget to stop at the treetops. And the parrots fly so fast their tails draw rainbows across the sky. When the sloth tries to make friends, nobody has any time - until the sloth meets a creature who’s a little more her speed, and everyone stops to notice. This is a surprising, delightful, and funny picture book about slowing down to enjoy the little things and making time for what matters. Grades K-3. 2018.
Disabilities fiction
3299199 A plan for Pops by Heather Smith
1 volume. Lou spends every Saturday with Grandad and Pops. They walk to the library hand in hand, like a chain of paper dolls. Grandad reads books about science and design, Pops listens to rock and roll, and Lou bounces from lap to lap. But everything changes one Saturday. Pops has a fall. That night there is terrible news: Pops will need to use a wheelchair, not just for now, but for always. Unable to cope with his new circumstances, he becomes withdrawn and shuts himself in his room. Hearing Grandad trying to cheer up Pops inspires Lou to make a plan. Using skills learned from Grandad, and with a little help from their neighbors, Lou comes up with a plan for Pops. Grades K-3. 2019.
Friendship stories
3299202 Giraffe and Bird together again by Rebecca Bender
1 volume. Bird lives for adventure. He wants to swoop, soar, and explore. Giraffe is perfectly happy right where he is, thank you very much. He never worries when Bird flits off for a while. But one afternoon his friend fails to return. Giraffe has a bad feeling that something has happened to Bird. Giraffe dreads the wide world full of tangly forests, craggy mountains, and mysterious plains. But he doesn't hesitate. If Bird is in trouble, then Giraffe will find and rescue him. Grades K-3. Sequel to "Giraffe meets bird". 2018.
3299198 The magic boat by Kit Pearson, illustrated by Katherine Farris
1 volume. Every summer morning, Ellie and her Nonna go to the beach. They swim and build sandcastles, and while Nonna reads, Ellie watches the other children play. One day Ellie builds up the courage to approach an older girl playing on her own in a beached rowboat. Piper has a gift, an imagination so great that she whisks Ellie off on grand adventures, going high in the air, deep below the ocean and everywhere in between in their little blue boat, their magic boat. When Piper has to leave, Ellie discovers she has her own vivid imagination. Grades K-3. 2019.
3299200 The Reptile Club by Maureen Fergus
1 volume. There are lots of clubs for Rory to join at his new school, but none seem quite right for him. So when his parents suggest he start his own club about something he loves, Rory knows exactly what it will be: a Reptile Club! He's positive that there are other kids out there who share his passion. He sets up his first meeting and then waits and waits for students to show up. Just as he is about to give up, Rory hears whispering in the hallway and hurries over to see who it is. To his astonishment, it's not his schoolmates who have arrived to attend the first meeting, but a crocodile, an anaconda and a gecko! Grades K-3. 2018.
General fiction
3042874 Kiddo by Cynthia Nugent
5 volumes. Katherine Wisteria Warble (otherwise known as Kiddo) knows her family depends on her for information. Kiddo devours the Town Crier Newspaper for the news, contests, community events, Caring Carol's advice column and the annoying opinions of the Junior Journalist. When she grows up she is going to be the publisher, but first she needs to wrest the title of Junior Journalist away from the irritating Jeremy ("Germ") Marroon. Can Kiddo get enough community points, improve her spelling, and stay out of trouble long enough to become the next Junior Journalist? Definitely! But first she has to find a boyfriend for her sister Pat, fix a little misunderstanding that lands her in jail, nab the real thief, and help Ma win a talent contest. Grades 4-7. 2019.
School stories
3157918 Me and Banksy by Tanya Lloyd Kyi
6 volumes. Dominica's private school is covered in cameras, and someone is hacking into them and posting embarrassing moments for the whole school to see. Like Ana picking her nose. When Dominica quickly changes her shirt from inside out in what she thinks is the privacy of a quiet corner in the library, she's shocked - and embarrassed - to discover a video has captured this and is currently circulating amongst her schoolmates. So mortifying, especially since over the past three years, they've had a half-dozen school talks about social media safety. Who has access to the school security cameras and why are they doing this? Dominica and her best friends, Holden and Saanvi, are determined to find out, and in the process start an art-based student campaign against cameras in the classroom. Grades 5-8. 2020.
Fiction for young adults
Fantasy
3033843 Northern lights by Philip Pullman
11 volumes. When Lyra's friend Roger disappears, she and her daemon, Pantalaimon, determine to find him. The quest leads them to the bleak splendour of the North, where armoured bears rule the ice and witch-queens fly through the frozen skies - and where a team of scientists is conducting vile experiments. Lyra overcomes these strange terrors, only to find something yet more perilous waiting for her. Followed by "The subtle knife". For junior and senior high readers. 1995.
3158324 Given by Nandi Taylor
9 volumes. Yenni has never been this far from home. With only her wits, her strength, and her sacred runelore, the fierce Yirba warrior princess is alone in the Empire of Cresh. It's a land filled with strange magics and even stranger people - all of whom mistrust anyone who's different. But Yenni will prove herself, and find the cure for her father's wasting illness. She will not fail. No one warned her about the dragons. Especially not about him. Yet there is something powerful and compelling about the violet-black dragon known as Weysh. In human form he's muscular, beautiful - and completely infuriating. What kind of arrogant creature claims a stranger as his Given; as his destined mate? Yenni is no man's - or dragon's - plaything. But other magics must be at work here, because Weysh might just be her best hope at finding the answers she seeks. Only now Yenni can't tell if she's fighting an attraction to a dragon... or fighting fate itself. For junior and senior high readers. 2020.
Fiction for adults
Family stories
2859003 Greenwood: a novel by Michael Christie
10 volumes. It’s 2038 and Jacinda (Jake) Greenwood is a storyteller and a liar, an overqualified tour guide babysitting ultra-rich vacationers in one of the world’s last remaining forests. It’s 2008 and Liam Greenwood is a carpenter, sprawled on his back after a workplace fall, calling out from the concrete floor of an empty mansion. It’s 1974 and Willow Greenwood is out of jail, free after being locked up for one of her endless series of environmental protests: attempts at atonement for the sins of her father’s once vast and violent timber empire. It’s 1934 and Everett Greenwood is alone, as usual, in his maple-syrup camp squat, when he hears the cries of an abandoned infant and gets tangled up in the web of a crime, secrets, and betrayal that will cling to his family for decades. A magnificent generational saga that charts a family’s rise and fall, its secrets and inherited crimes, and the conflicted relationship with the source of its fortune - trees. Bestseller. 2019.
Fantasy
3237722 Acorna's people by Anne McCaffrey
7 volumes. With the help of her "uncles" and the thousands of humans who love and admire her, Acorna has found her true people, the peaceful, telepathic Linyaari. But Acorna still has much to do before she can enjoy her new home. The legendary resting place of the lost Linyaari ancestors has yet to be found. And with the help of a rogue spacetrader and his feline sidekick, Acorna must strive to right an unspeakable wrong and defeat an enemy even crueler than the Khleevi. Along the way, she will at last uncover the Universe's most carefully guarded secret - the true nature of the ancient link between the Linyaari and the space-faring humans she has also come to think of as her "people." Sequel to "Acorna's quest", followed by "Acorna's world". 2000.
Friendship stories
3158254 The lost sister: a novel by Andrea Gunraj
6 volumes. Partially inspired by the real-life experiences of a former resident of the Nova Scotia Home for Colored Children. Alisha and Diana are young sisters living at Jane and Finch, a Toronto suburb full of immigrants trying to build new lives in North America. Diana, the eldest, is the light of the little family, the one Alisha longs to emulate more than anyone else. But when Diana doesn't come home one night and her body is discovered in the woods, Alisha becomes haunted. She thinks she knows who did it, but can't tell anyone about it. Unable to handle the loss of their daughter and unaware of Alisha's secret guilt, the family unravels. It's only through an unusual friendship with Paula, an older woman who volunteers at her school, that Alisha finds reprieve. Once an orphan in the Nova Scotia Home for Coloured Children and estranged from her own sister, Paula helps Alisha understand that the chance for redemption and peace only comes with facing difficult truths. 2019.
General fiction
2420988 The biographer's moustache by Kingsley Amis
12 volumes of Braille. Gordon Scott-Thompson, a struggling hack, gets commissioned to write the biography of veteran novelist, Jimmie Fane. Fane, an unashamed snob, has many pet hates, including younger men with moustaches and trendy pronunciation. Fane's wife Joanna is undecided about moustaches, but has definite views on younger men. So, will Gordon have to part with his most distinctive facial feature? Or will amorous advances lead him into more dangerous complications? 1995.
3157915 Recipe for a perfect wife: a novel by Karma Brown
6 volumes. When Alice Hale reluctantly leaves a promising career in publicity, following her husband to the New York suburbs, she is unaccustomed to filling her days alone in a big, empty house. However, she is determined to become a writer - and to work hard to build the kind of life her husband dreams of, complete with children. At first, the old house seems to resent Alice as much as she resents it, but when she finds an old cookbook buried in a box in the basement, she becomes captivated by the cookbook's previous owner: 1950s housewife Nellie Murdoch. As Alice cooks her way through the past, she begins to settle into her new surroundings, even as her friends and family grow concerned that she has embraced them too fully: wearing vintage dresses and pearls like a 1950s housewife, making elaborate old-fashioned dishes like Baked Alaska, and drifting steadily away from her usual pursuits. Alice justifies the changes merely as research for her novel, but when she discovers that Nellie left clues about her own life within the cookbook's pages - and in a mysterious series of unsent letters penned to Nellie's mother - she quickly realizes that the housewife's secrets may have been anything but harmless. As she uncovers a more sinister side to Nellie's marriage and with pressure mounting in her own relationship, Alice realizes that to protect herself she must harbour and hatch a few secrets of her own. Bestseller. 2019.
3032699 Albatross: a novel by Terry Fallis
6 volumes. 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.
2851976 Dream sequence: a novel by Adam Foulds
3 volumes. 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. 2019.
2447056 Remember me? by Sophie Kinsella
12 volumes of Braille. Lexi wakes up in a hospital bed after a car accident, thinking it's 2004 and she's a twenty-five-year old with crooked teeth and a disastrous love life. But, to her disbelief, she learns it's actually 2007 - she's twenty-eight, her teeth are straight, she's the boss of her department - and she's married! To a good-looking millionaire! How on earth did she land the dream life? She can't believe her luck - especially when she sees her stunning new home. She's sure she'll have a fantastic marriage once she gets to know her husband again. He's drawn up a 'manual of our marriage', which should help. But as she learns more about her new self, chinks start to appear in the perfect life. 2008.
2448882 The blessing by Nancy Mitford
8 volumes of Braille. It isn't just Nanny who finds it difficult in France when Grace and her young son Sigi are finally able to join her dashing aristocratic husband Charles-Edouard after the war. For Grace is out of her depth among the fashionably dressed and immaculately coiffured French women, and shocked by their relentless gossiping and bedhopping. When she discovers her husband's tendency to lust after every pretty girl he sees, it looks like trouble. And things get even more complicated when little Sigi steps in. First published in 1951. 2015.
3033515 The farm: a novel by Joanne Ramos
8 volumes. 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.
Historical fiction
3042817 The only woman in the room by Marie Benedict
5 volumes. Hedy Kiesler is lucky. Her beauty leads to a starring role in a controversial film and marriage to a powerful Austrian arms dealer, allowing her to evade Nazi persecution despite her Jewish heritage. But Hedy is also intelligent. At lavish Vienna dinner parties, she overhears the Third Reich's plans. One night in 1937, desperate to escape her controlling husband and the rise of the Nazis, she disguises herself and flees her husband's castle. She lands in Hollywood, where she becomes Hedy Lamarr, screen star. But Hedy is keeping a secret even more shocking than her Jewish heritage: she is a scientist. She has an idea that might help the country and that might ease her guilt for escaping alone - if anyone will listen to her. Based on the incredible true story of the glamour icon and scientist whose groundbreaking invention revolutionized modern communication. Bestseller. 2019.
2387989 Fall of giants by Ken Follett
36 volumes of Braille. This novel follows five families through the world-shaking dramas of the First World War, the Russian Revolution, and the struggle for votes for women. It is 1911. The Coronation Day of King George V. The Williams, a Welsh coal-mining family, are linked by romance and enmity to the Fitzherberts, aristocratic coal-mine owners. Lady Maud Fitzherbert falls in love with Walter von Ulrich, a spy at the German Embassy in London. Their destiny is entangled with that of an ambitious young aide to U.S. President Woodrow Wilson and to two orphaned Russian brothers, whose plans to emigrate to America fall foul of war, conscription and revolution. Followed by "Winter of the world". 2010.
2450473 The taming of the queen by Philippa Gregory
16 volumes of Braille. Kateryn Parr, a 30-year-old widow in a secret affair with a new lover, has no choice when a man old enough to be her father who has buried four wives, King Henry VIII, commands her to marry him. A leader of religious reform and the first woman to publish in English, Kateryn stands out as an independent woman with a mind of her own. But she cannot save the Protestants, under threat for their faith, and Henry's dangerous gaze turns on her. The traditional churchmen and rivals for power accuse her of heresy; the punishment is death by fire and the king's name is on the warrant. Sequel to "The Boleyn inheritance", followed by "The queen's fool". 2016.
3042712 Aria by Nazanine Hozar
8 volumes. It is the mid-1950s in a democratic but restless Iran, a country newly powerful with oil wealth but unsettled by class and religious divides and by the politics of a larger world hungry (especially the West) for its resources. One night, a humble driver in the Iranian army is walking through a rough area of Tehran when he hears a small, pitiful cry. Curious, he searches for the source, and to his horror, comes upon a newborn baby abandoned by the side of the road and encircled by ravenous dogs. He snatches up the child - and forever alters his own destiny and that of the little girl, whom he names Aria. Bestseller. 2019.
3033871 Under a pole star by Stef Penney
12 volumes. Flora Mackie was twelve when she first crossed the Arctic Circle on her father's whaling ship. Now she is returning to the frozen seas as the head of her own exploration expedition. Jakob de Beyn was raised in Manhattan, but his yearning for new horizons leads him to the Arctic as part of a rival expedition. When he and Flora meet, all thoughts of science and exploration give way before a sudden, all-consuming love. Then Jakob joins his leader on an extended trip into the interior, with devastating results. 2017.
Humorous fiction
3032661 Bunny by Mona Awad
7 volumes. Samantha Heather Mackey couldn't be more different from the other members of her master's program at New England's elite Warren University. A self-conscious scholarship student who prefers the company of her imagination to that of most people, she is utterly repelled by the rest of her fiction writing cohort - a clique of unbearably twee rich girls who call each other Bunny, and are often found entangled in a group hug so tight it seems their bodies might become permanently fused. But everything changes when Samantha receives an invitation to the Bunnies' exclusive monthly Smut Salon, and finds herself drawn as if by magic to their front door - ditching her only friend, Ava, an audacious art school dropout, in the process. As Samantha plunges deeper and deeper into Bunny world, and starts to take part in the off-campus Workshop where they devise their monstrous creations, the edges of reality begin to blur, and her friendships with Ava and the Bunnies are brought into deadly collision. 2019.
2447057 Shopaholic abroad by Sophie Kinsella
12 volumes of Braille. For Rebecca Bloomwood, life is peachy. She has a job on morning TV, telling people how to manage their money - a subject on which she is an expert. Her bank manager is actually being nice to her, despite being just a tad overdrawn. And the icing on the brioche is that her boyfriend is moving to New York and has asked her to go with him. New York! The Museum of Modern Art! The Guggenheim! The Metropolitan Opera House! And Becky does mean to go to all these. Honestly. It's just that it seems silly not to check out a few other places first. Like Bloomingdales. And Saks. And that amusing little place she's been told about where you can sometimes get a Prada dress for 10 dollars. Or was it 100 dollars? Sequel to "Confessions of a shopaholic", followed by "Shopaholic ties the knot". 2001.
Multi-cultural fiction
2383238 Arrow of God by Chinua Achebe
4 volumes of Braille. Ezeulu, chief priest of the Ulu, finds his authority under threat. He has rivals in the tribe, in the white government, even in his own family. Surrounded by trouble, he adopts an increasingly cosmic view of events: surely in the battle of the deities, he is merely an arrow in the bow of his God? Armed with such ideas Ezeulu is prepared to lead his people on, to destruction and annihilation if necessary. 1964.
3228877 There has to be a knife by Adnan Khan
4 volumes. Omar Ali is a ticking time bomb. A phone call from his ex-girlfriend Anna's father plunges him into darkness when he learns that she's committed suicide. Clueless and hurting, Omar turns to violence and petty crime to cope. His nefarious activities catch the attention of the RCMP, who pressure him into becoming an informant at a mosque they suspect harbours a terrorist cell. Unravelling from insomnia, sorrow, and rage, Omar grasps at his last shred of hope, embarking on a quest to find the note he's convinced Anna left for him. "There has to be a knife" examines expectations - both intimate and political - on brown men, exploring ideas of cultural identity and the tropes we use to represent them. 2019.
Mysteries and crime stories
3042819 The New Iberia blues: a Dave Robicheaux novel by James Lee Burke
10 vols. Detective Dave Robicheaux's world isn't filled with too many happy stories, but Desmond Cormier's rags-to-riches tale is certainly one of them. Robicheaux first met Cormier on the streets of New Orleans, when the young, undersized boy had foolish dreams of becoming a Hollywood director. Twenty-five years later, when Robicheaux knocks on Cormier's door, it isn't to congratulate him on his Golden Globe and Academy Award nominations. Robicheaux has discovered the body of a young woman who's been crucified, wearing only a small chain on her ankle. She disappeared near Cormier's Cyrpemort Point estate, and Robicheaux, along with young deputy, Sean McClain, are looking for answers. Neither Cormier nor his enigmatic actor friend Antoine Butterworth are saying much, but Robicheaux knows better. Sequel to "Robicheaux", followed by "A private cathedral". 2019.
2451514 Billie Jo by Kimberley Chambers
14 volumes of Braille. Billie Jo is the adored only child of wealthy villain, Terry, and Michelle, the drunken wife he hates. Knowing how much Billie Jo dreads her parents’ fights, Terry imagines that she’ll understand when he tells her he is going to leave Michelle to marry his pregnant secretary. But fate is about to deal a terrible hand and change everything in a way Terry has not planned for, leaving Billie Jo’s protected world in tatters. 2009.
2447270 Without fail by Lee Child
16 volumes of Braille. Jack Reacher takes aim at the White House. Skilled, cautious, and anonymous, Jack Reacher is perfect for the job: to assassinate the vice president of the United States. Theoretically, of course. A female Secret Service agent wants Reacher to find the holes in her system, and fast, because a covert group already has the vice president in their sights. They’ve planned well. There’s just one thing they didn’t plan on: Reacher. Sequel to "Echo burning", followed by "Persuader". 2002.
2450357 Dead water by Ann Cleeves
12 volumes of Braille. When the body of journalist Jerry Markham is found in a traditional Shetland boat, young Detective Inspector Willow Reeves is drafted in from the Hebrides to head up the investigation. Since the death of his fiancée, Inspector Jimmy Perez has been out of the loop, but his interest in this new case is stirred and he decides to help the inquiry. Willow and Jimmy are soon led to Sullum Voe, the heart of Shetland's North Sea oil and gas industry. It emerges that Markham was chasing a story in his final days, one that must have been significant enough to warrant his death. Sequel to "Blue lightning", followed by "Thin air". 2013.
3158105 American dirt: a novel by Jeanine Cummins
10 volumes. Lydia Quixano Pérez runs a bookstore in Acapulco, Mexico, where she lives with her husband, Sebastián, who is a journalist, and their son, Luca. When a man starts visiting her store, buying books and striking up a friendship, she has no idea initially that he will be responsible for turning her life upside down. But Lydia and Luca will have to flee Acapulco, setting them on a journey they will share with countless other Central and South Americans-turned migrants. Bestseller. 2019.
2450339 The ides of April by Lindsey Davis
12 volumes of Braille. Flavia Albia is the adopted daughter of a famous investigating family. In defiance of tradition, she lives alone on the colourful Aventine Hill, and battles out a solo career in a male-dominated world. As a woman and an outsider, Albia has special insight into the best, and worst, of life in ancient Rome. When a female client dies in mysterious circumstances. Albia investigates and discovers there have been many other strange deaths all over the city, yet she is warned off by the authorities. Followed by "Enemies at home". 2013.
3032633 The guardians: a novel by John Grisham
7 volumes. In a small Florida town, a young lawyer, Keith Russo, is shot to death as he works late. A young black man, a former client, named Quincy Miller is charged and convicted. For 22 years, Miller maintains his innocence from inside prison. Finally, Guardian Ministries takes on Miller's case, but Cullen Post, the Episcopal minister in charge, gets more than he bargained for. Powerful people murdered Russo - they do not want Miller exonerated, and will kill again without a second thought. Bestseller. 2019.
3032698 Let darkness bury the dead: a Murdoch mystery by Maureen Jennings
6 volumes. 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.
2445379 I found you by Lisa Jewell
10 volumes of Braille. East Yorkshire. Single mum Alice Lake finds a man on the beach outside her house. He has no name, no jacket, no idea what he is doing there. Against her better judgement she invites him in to her home. Surrey. Twenty-one-year-old Lily Monrose has only been married for three weeks. When her new husband fails to come home from work one night she is left stranded in a new country where she knows no one. Then the police tell her that her husband never existed. 2017.
3158106 The silent patient by Alex Michaelides
6 volumes. Alicia Berenson's life is seemingly perfect. A famous painter married to an in-demand fashion photographer, she lives in a grand house overlooking a park in one of London's most desirable areas. One evening, her husband, Gabriel, returns home late from work, and Alicia shoots him five times in the face and then never speaks another word. Alicia's refusal to talk, or give any kind of explanation, turns a domestic tragedy into something far grander, a mystery that captures the public imagination and casts Alicia into notoriety. The price of her art skyrockets, and she, the silent patient, is hidden away from the tabloids and spotlight at the Grove, a secure psychiatric unit in North London. Criminal psychotherapist Theo Faber is captivated by Alicia's story and jumps at the opportunity to work with her. His determination to get her to talk and unravel the mystery of why she shot her husband takes him down a path more unexpected, more terrifying than he ever imagined - a search for the truth that threatens to consume him. Bestseller. 2019.
3158165 Never forget: a Victor Lessard thriller by Martin Michaud
11 volumes. When a homeless man jumps to his death in Old Montreal, the police discover two wallets in his possession: one belonging to a retired psychiatrist who was murdered in a bizarre ritual, the other to a powerful corporate lawyer who has vanished. As Montreal police detective Victor Lessard and his partner, Jacinthe Taillon, work to solve the separate mysteries, a dark conspiracy begins to emerge. While the pressure builds and the bodies accumulate, disturbing secrets come to light about a pivotal moment in political history. But will Lessard and Taillon crack the case in time to stop the killer from striking again? Sequel to "The devil's choir", followed by "Violence within". 2020.
2558421 Behind closed doors by B.A. Paris
10 volumes of Braille. Everyone knows a couple like Jack and Grace. He has looks and wealth, she has charm and elegance. You'd like to get to know Grace better. But it's difficult, because you realise Jack and Grace are never apart. Some might ask why Grace never answers the phone. Or how she can never meet for coffee, even though she doesn't work. And why there are bars on one of the bedroom windows. Sometimes, the perfect marriage is the perfect lie. 2016.
2436636 Winter in Madrid by C.J. Sansom
18 v. of Braille. The year is 1940. The Spanish Civil War is over. Britain now stands alone, as General Franco considers whether to abandon neutrality and enter the war. Into this uncertain world comes Harry Brett: ex-public schoolboy, traumatised veteran of Dunkirk and, now, reluctant spy for the British Secret Service. Sent to gain the confidence of Sandy Forsyth, an old schoolfriend turned shady Madrid businessman, he finds himself involved in a dangerous game. 2006.
2057262 Those in peril by Wilbur Smith
16 volumes of Braille. Hazel Bannock is the heir to the Bannock Oil Corp, one of the major oil producers with global reach. Hazel's private yacht is hijacked by African pirates. Hazel is not on board at the time, but her nineteen year old daughter, Cayla, is kidnapped and held for ransom. The pirates demand a crippling twenty billion dollar ransom for her release. Hazel calls on Hector Cross. the owner and operator of Cross Bow Security, to help her rescue her daughter. Followed by "Vicious circle". 2011.
2445162 The ashes of London by Andrew Taylor
12 volumes of Braille. London,1666. The Great Fire rages through the city. In the aftermath of the fire, the body of a man is discovered in the ashes of St. Paul’s with a stab wound to his neck. Acting on orders, James Marwood, a reluctant government informer, hunts the killer though London’s devastated streets. Before too long a second murder is uncovered. At a time of dangerous internal dissent, Marwood’s investigation will lead him into treacherous waters and across the path of a determined and vengeful young woman. 2016.
Romance
2444787 Breaking the rules by Barbara Taylor Bradford
16 volumes of Braille. Following a terrifying encounter in the quiet English countryside, a dark beauty flees to New York in search of a new life. Adopting the initial M as her name, she embarks on a journey that will lead her to the catwalks of Paris where she becomes the muse and star model to France's iconic top designer Jean-Louis Tremont. When M meets charming and handsome actor Larry Vaughan, they fall instantly in love with one another. With a successful career and a perfect marriage, M believes she has truly put the demons of her past to bed. But M's fortunes are about to take another dramatic turn when a dark figure from her past is back and determined to shatter M's world forever. 2009.
3032638 The matchmaker's list by Sonya Lalli
6 volumes. One devoted modern girl + a meddlesome, traditional grandmother = a heartwarming multicultural romantic comedy about finding love where you least expect it. Raina Anand may have finally given in to family pressure and agreed to let her grandmother play matchmaker, but that doesn't mean she has to like it - or that she has to play by the rules. Nani always took Raina's side when she tried to push past the traditional expectations of their tight-knit Indian-immigrant community, but now she's ambushing Raina with a list of suitable bachelors. Is it too much to ask for a little space? Besides, what Nani doesn't know won't hurt her... As Raina's life spirals into a parade of Nani-approved bachelors and disastrous blind dates, she must find a way out of this modern-day arranged-marriage trap without shattering her beloved grandmother's dreams. 2017.
3033853 The next always by Nora Roberts
7 volumes. The historic hotel in Boonsboro is getting a major facelift from the Montgomery brothers and their eccentric mother. Beckett is the architect of the family, and he's got his eye on the girl he's been waiting to kiss since he was fifteen. After losing her husband and returning to her hometown, Clare Brewster soon settles into her life as the mother of three young sons while running the town's bookstore. Clare is drawn across the street by Beckett's transformation of the old inn, wanting to take a closer look at the building and the man behind it. Followed by "The last boyfriend". 2011.
2449065 Sleeping arrangements by Madeleine Wickham
8 v. of Braille. Chloe needs a holiday. She's sick of making wedding dresses, her partner Philip has troubles at work, the whole family wants a break. Her wealthy friend Gerard has offered the loan of his luxury villa in Spain - perfect. Hugh is not a happy man. His immaculate wife Amanda seems more interested in her new kitchen than in him, and he works so hard to pay for it, he barely has time for his children. Maybe he'll have a chance to bond with them on holiday. His old friend Gerard has lent them a luxury villa in Spain - perfect. Both families arrive at the villa and realise the awful truth - Gerard has double-booked. What no-one else realises is that Chloe and Hugh have a history, and as tensions rise within the two families, old passions resurface. It seems that Gerard's 'accidental' double booking may not be an accident after all. 2001.
Science fiction
3032732 Radicalized by Cory Doctorow
6 volumes. Four novellas are connected by social, technological, and economic visions of today - and what America could be in the near, near future. It's a world in which "smart" kitchen appliances will only work with certain manufacturers' ingredients. In which a Superman-like figure attempts to rectify the corruption of police forces he previously assisted. In which a man vents his anger against insurance companies that won't fund his wife's experimental drugs. And in which, to survive the coming economic collapse, a man creates a desert retreat in which nothing could possible go wrong. Canada Reads 2020. 2019.
3032635 The dreamers: a novel by Karen Thompson Walker
6 volumes. One night in an isolated college town in the hills of Southern California, a first-year student stumbles into her dorm room, falls asleep, and doesn't wake up. She sleeps through the morning, into the evening. Her roommate, Mei, cannot rouse her. Neither can the paramedics, nor the perplexed doctors at the hospital. When a second girl falls asleep, and then a third, Mei finds herself thrust together with an eccentric classmate as panic takes hold of the college and spreads to the town. A young couple tries to protect their newborn baby as the once-quiet streets descend into chaos. Two sisters turn to each other for comfort as their survivalist father prepares for disaster. Those affected by the illness, doctors discover, are displaying unusual levels of brain activity, higher than has ever been recorded before. They are dreaming heightened dreams, but of what? 2019.
Short stories
3158253 Use your imagination! by Kris Bertin
5 volumes. A woman becomes obsessed with a story about her family from 1890 - when a naked, mute girl stumbled onto their property - and whether or not it really happened. A self-help guru and his chief strategist take their most affluent and unstable clients on a harrowing nature hike that destroys their company. A young convict in a prison creative writing class chronicles the rise and fall of his cellblock's resident peacemaker. A rural neighbourhood becomes obsessed by the coming of a strange and powerful new homeowner who is in the middle of reinventing herself. The stories of "Use your imagination!" are about stories, about the way we define and give shape to ourselves through all kinds of narratives, true or not. In six long stories, Kris Bertin examines the complex labyrinth of lies, delusions, compromise, and fabrication that makes up our personal history and mythology. 2019.
3032681 Translated from the gibberish: seven stories and one half truth by Anosh Irani
4 volumes. In these stories we meet: a swimming instructor determined to re-enact John Cheever's iconic short story "The swimmer" in the pools of Mumbai; a famous chef who, overcome by a devastating childhood memory, melts down during an appearance on a New York talk show; a gangster's wife who is convinced she's found the reincarnation of a lost loved one in a penguin from the Mumbai zoo; an illegal immigrant in North Vancouver who is drawn into a pick-up cricket game that may decide his fate. These are just some of the extraordinary characters that animate this wildly imaginative collection of tales about people caught between two worlds: India and Canada. 2019.
War
3033512 The tattooist of Auschwitz: a novel by Heather Morris
4 volumes. In April 1942, Lale Sokolov, a Slovakian Jew, is forcibly transported to the concentration camps at Auschwitz-Birkenau. When his captors discover that he speaks several languages, he is put to work as a Tätowierer (the German word for tattooist), tasked with permanently marking his fellow prisoners. Imprisoned for more than two and a half years, Lale witnesses horrific atrocities and barbarism - but also incredible acts of bravery and compassion. Risking his own life, he uses his privileged position to exchange jewels and money from murdered Jews for food to keep his fellow prisoners alive. One day in July 1942, Lale, prisoner 32407, comforts a trembling young woman waiting in line to have the number 34902 tattooed onto her arm. Her name is Gita, and in that first encounter, Lale vows to somehow survive the camp and marry her. A vivid, harrowing, and ultimately hopeful re-creation of Lale Sokolov's experiences as the man who tattooed the arms of thousands of prisoners with what would become one of the most potent symbols of the Holocaust. Bestseller. 2018.
Westerns
2422949 The Dakota deal by Dan Claymaker
2 volumes of Braille. For John McCallam, escaped prisoner on the run, the discovery of the deserted cabin and the dead body of a man seemed just the lucky break he needed. Here was his chance to assume a whole new identity, become another person, even down to a change of clothing. But little did McCallam realise the nature and character of the man he became. He could not have bargained for being mistaken by the good folk of North Bend for the notorious gunman Frank Chapter, hired by the leading town men to rid them of the threat and growing menace of Royce Chisholm and his sadistic side-kicks. Had he exchanged one prison for another? Could he escape both, or was he finally trapped? 2008.
Non-fiction for adults
Biography
3158110 What it takes: to live and lead with purpose, laughter, and strength by Zahra Al-harazi and Sarah J. Robbins
7 volumes. The trajectory of Zahra Al-harazi’s life defies expectations. In this electrifying book that travels from a small village in Yemen to a small town in Minnesota to a Calgary suburb, Al-harazi describes surviving two civil wars; her years as a young, stay-at-home immigrant mother with little education; and how she became one of Canada’s most successful businesswomen. Navigating two worlds, Al-harazi has struggled to find her own way between East and West, religion and belief, freedom and obligation, family and desire, love and honour, despair and gratitude, war and war again. With warmth and courageous honesty, she recounts how it is only through gratitude and persistence that we can find happiness and the courage to build the life we want. 2020.
2451425 Call me Dave: the unauthorised biography of David Cameron by Michael Ashcroft & Isabel Oakeshott
26 volumes of Braille. After a decade as Conservative Party leader, David Cameron remained an enigma to those outside his tight-knit inner circle. Now, in the wake of his dramatic resignation following the sensational EU referendum campaign, this updated edition revisits the real David Cameron, bringing the story of his premiership to its final chapter. This biography of Britain's youngest Prime Minister for nearly 200 years provides a fascinating insight into the man only those closest to him know. Based on hundred of interviews, with everyone from Westminster insiders to intimate friends, this book reveals the real David Cameron. 2016.
3042824 The book of gutsy women: favorite stories of courage and resilience by Chelsea Clinton, Hillary Clinton
11 volumes. Hillary Rodham Clinton and her daughter, Chelsea, share the stories of the gutsy women who have inspired them - women with the courage to stand up to the status quo, ask hard questions, and get the job done. Ensuring the rights and opportunities of women and girls remains a big piece of the unfinished business of the twenty-first century. While there's a lot of work to do, we know that throughout history and around the globe women have overcome the toughest resistance imaginable to win victories that have made progress possible for all of us. So how did they do it? The answers are as unique as the women themselves. Civil rights activist Dorothy Height, LGBTQ trailblazer Edie Windsor, and swimmer Diana Nyad kept pushing forward, no matter what. Writers like Rachel Carson and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie named something no one had dared talk about before. Historian Mary Beard used wit to open doors that were once closed, and Wangari Maathai, who sparked a movement to plant trees, understood the power of role modeling. Harriet Tubman and Malala Yousafzai looked fear in the face and persevered. Nearly every single one of these women was fiercely optimistic - they had faith that their actions could make a difference. 2019.
3228870 Maybe you should talk to someone: a therapist, HER therapist, and our lives revealed by Lori Gottlieb
10 volumes. Gottlieb, a therapist with a Los Angeles practice, faced a crisis that caused her world to come crashing down. Enter Wendell, the quirky but seasoned therapist who seems to have come straight from Therapist Central Casting. Yet he will turn out to be anything but. Now Gottlieb invites us into her world as both clinician and patient, examining the truths and fictions we tell ourselves and others as we teeter on the tightrope between love and desire, meaning and mortality, guilt and redemption, terror and courage, hope and change. Bestseller. 2019.
3157919 Hello I want to die please fix me: depression in the first person by Anna Mehler Paperny
8 volumes. Anna Mehler Paperny is a young journalist from Toronto. In her early twenties, while thriving in her dream job, enjoying warm familial support and a strong social network of friends and colleagues, Anna found herself trapped by feelings of failure and despair. In September 2011, she made her first attempt to kill herself by ingesting a deadly mix of sleeping pills and antifreeze, landing her in the ICU followed by weeks of enforced detention in two different big-city psych wards. This was Anna's entry point into the labyrinthine psychiatric care system - one that is nominally responsible for providing the best reasonable care to millions of Canadians suffering from severe, life-threatening mental illness. Her first stay in the psych ward - at times horrifying, other times boring, hilarious and absurd - was just the beginning of a long recovery and a journey towards understanding, first-hand, the myriad ways our systems and medical practitioners treat - and fail to treat - a disease that afflicts a full fifth of the population. While trying to be a good patient, Anna cannot help but turn her intrepid journalist's eye on the world around her - in the psych ward, as an outpatient, as a survivor enduring the gruelling ordeal of facing concerned family, friends and co-workers; of finding the right meds, the right therapist; of staying insured and employed. Anna's personal account of life in the shadow of self-obliteration explores in searing detail her individual experience of depression, close encounters with fatal self-harm, and the trials and errors of treatment. It is at the same time an illuminating, profound, and utterly original analysis of how we approach mental illness in North America; the novel hypotheses specialists are putting forward to tackle it; and the truth about how primitive our methods of healing sick brains still are. 2019.
3293509 47 days: a journey back home: learning to trust yourself, even after you've failed by Amanda Perrot
4 volumes. What happens when you make all the "responsible" choices, and you still feel like a miserable failure? For Grounded Goodness founder Amanda Perrot, the answer is to get outta town. She crammed her business into a Subaru nicknamed Vladamir to spend 47 days discovering her home province, and what life could look like after her marriage failed. It started as a way to see new parts of Saskatchewan and sell some stuff along the way, but seven weeks later she'd learned more about herself and the power of community than she ever expected. Amanda offers a glimpse of hope for women who know they would be happier if they left their marriage but don’t have an obvious or clear reason to point to when they explain why they want a divorce. This is a first-hand story of transformation that reassures us of the goodness and positivity that can come out of making the terrifying leap back into single life, and inspired to have our own difficult conversations. This is a story for every woman who is tired of questioning herself and wants the unvarnished truth of what happens when we learn to honour ourselves; be confident about what we want and need; commit to our own happiness; stop beating ourselves up; and let our intuition take the lead. 2019.
3042734 A grander vision: my life in the labour movement by Sid Ryan
7 volumes. Sid Ryan, one of Canada's most courageous and progressive union leaders, draws on the experience of his varied and colourful life to show what is right with the labour movement, what is wrong, and what has to change if it is to avoid becoming irrelevant. He calls for the adoption of Social Movement Unionism, in which labour forges an alliance with other progressive elements in civil society, taking up the cause of young people, precarious workers, and immigrants. He demands a renewed commitment to the NDP, the party that was built by unions, and he argues that the LEAP Manifesto should become the pillars of the movement in Canada. 2019.
2449960 Stark choices: a surgeon's story by Jaroslav F Stark
10 volumes of Braille. Czechoslovakia, 1968. Jarda Stark had a promising career as a heart surgeon ahead of him. His future seemed assured. But all was to change abruptly as the Russian tanks rolled in to crush the Prague Spring of 1968 and the family had a skin-of-their-teeth escape from the Communist authorities as they fled to the West. He soon found a place as a paediatric cardiac surgeon in the world-famous Great Ormond Street Hospital in London. He saved countless lives, received international honours and co-wrote a textbook regarded as a bible of paediatric cardiac surgery. 2016.
3158111 The art of leaving: a memoir by Ayelet Tsabari
7 volumes. This collection opens with the death of Ayelet Tsabari's father when she was a nine-year-old girl. His passing left her feeling rootless, devastated, and driven to question her complex identity as an Israeli of Yemeni descent in a country that suppressed and devalued her ancestors' traditions. In "The art of leaving", Ayelet tells her story, from her early love of writing and words, to her rebellion during her mandatory service in the Israeli army. She travels from Israel to New York, to Canada, Thailand, and India, falling in and out of love with countries, men and women, drugs and alcohol, running away from responsibilities and refusing to settle in one place. She recounts her first marriage; her struggle to define herself as a writer in a new language; her decision to become a mother; and finally her rediscovery and embrace of her family history - a history marked by generations of headstrong women who struggled to choose between their hearts and their homes. Eventually, she realizes that she must come to terms with the memories of her father, the sadness of her past, and overcome her fears if she is ever going to come to terms with herself. With fierce, emotional prose, Tsabari crafts a beautiful meditation about the lengths we will travel to try to escape our grief; the universal search to find a place where we belong; and the sense of home we eventually find within ourselves. Winner of the Canadian Jewish Literary Award for Memoir. 2019.
2879959 Fryderyk Chopin: a life and times by Alan Walker
23 volumes. A comprehensive look at the life and work of Fryderyk Chopin. Based on ten years of research and a vast cache of primary sources located in archives in Warsaw, Paris, London, New York, and Washington, D.C., this is a corrective work intended to dispel the many myths and legends that continue to surround Chopin, and an intimate look into a dramatic life. Of particular focus are Chopin's childhood and youth in Poland, which are brought into line with the latest scholarly findings; his oftentimes troubled romantic life with George Sand, with whom he lived for nine years; and his untimely death at age thirty-nine, which inspired three thousand people to flock to the Madeleine Church in Paris for his funeral. 2018.
3042723 Older sister. Not necessarily related.: a memoir by Jenny Heijun Wills
3 volumes. Jenny Heijun Wills was born in Korea and adopted as an infant into a white family in small-town Canada. In her late twenties, she reconnected with her first family and returned to Seoul where she spent four months getting to know other adoptees, as well as her Korean mother, father, siblings, and extended family. At the guesthouse for transnational adoptees where she lived, alliances were troubled by violence and fraught with the trauma of separation and of cultural illiteracy. Unsurprisingly, heartbreakingly, Wills found that her nascent relationships with her family were similarly fraught. Ten years later, Wills sustains close ties with her Korean family. Her Korean parents and her younger sister attended her wedding in Montreal, and that same sister now lives in Canada. Remarkably, meeting Jenny caused her birth parents to reunite after having been estranged since her adoption. Little by little, Jenny Heijun Wills is learning and relearning her stories and those of her biological kin, piecing together a fragmented life into something resembling a whole. Winner of the 2020 Eileen McTavish Sykes Award for Best First Book. Winner of the 2019 Hilary Weston Writers' Trust Prize for Nonfiction. 2019.
Food and drink
2448069 Nigellissima: instant Italian inspiration by Nigella Lawson
8 volumes of Braille. Italian food now plays a familiar role in our everyday eating but "Nigellissima" goes beyond bolognese to bring to our table 120 inspired recipes, from the crustless meatzza to long fusilli with a no-cook Sicilian sauce. 2012.
General non-fiction
3033531 The moment of lift: how empowering women changes the world by Melinda Gates
5 volumes. For the last twenty years, Melinda Gates has been on a mission to find solutions for people with the most urgent needs, wherever they live. Throughout this journey, one thing has become increasingly clear to her: If you want to lift a society up, you need to stop keeping women down. In this moving and compelling book, Melinda shares lessons she's learned from the inspiring people she's met during her work and travels around the world. She provides an unforgettable narrative backed by startling data as she presents the issues that most need our attention - from child marriage to lack of access to contraceptives to gender inequity in the workplace. And, for the first time, she writes about her personal life and the road to equality in her own marriage. Throughout, she shows how there has never been more opportunity to change the world - and ourselves. Bestseller. 2019.
2868153 To the river: losing my brother by Don Gillmor
3 volumes. In the spring of 2006, Don Gillmor travelled to Whitehorse to reconstruct the last days of his brother, David, whose truck and cowboy hat were found at the edge of the Yukon River just outside of town the previous December. David's family, his second wife, and his friends had different theories about his disappearance. Some thought David had run away; some thought he'd met with foul play; but most believed that David, a talented musician who at the age of 48 was about to give up the night life for a day job, had intentionally walked into the water. Just as Don was about to paddle the river looking for traces, David's body was found, six months after he'd gone into the river. And Don's canoe trip turned into an act of remembrance and mourning. At least David could now be laid to rest. But there was no rest for his survivors. As his brother writes, "When people die of suicide, one of the things they leave behind is suicide itself. It becomes a country. At first I was a visitor, but eventually I became a citizen." In this tender, probing, surprising work, Don Gillmor brings back news from that country for all of us who wonder why people kill themselves. And why, for the first time, it's not the teenaged or the elderly who have the highest suicide rate, but the middle aged. Especially men. 2018.
2865581 Tiny lights for travellers by Naomi Lewis
6 volumes. 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.
Health and medicine
3033523 The ghost garden: inside the lives of schizophrenia's feared and forgotten by Susan Doherty
7 volumes. For the past ten years, some of the people who cycle in and out of the severely ill wards of the Douglas Institute in Montreal, have found a friend in Susan, who volunteers on the ward, and then follows her friends out into the world as they struggle to get through their days. With their full cooperation, she brings us their stories, which challenge the ways we think about people with mental illness on every page. The spine of the book is the life of Caroline Evans (not her real name), a woman in her early sixties whom Susan has known since she was a bright and sunny school girl. Caroline has given Susan complete access to her medical files and her court records; through her, we experience what living with schizophrenia over time is really like. She has been through it all, including the way the justice system treats the severely mentally ill: at one point, she believed that she could save her roommate from the devil by pouring boiling water into her ear... Susan interleaves Caroline's story with vignettes about her other friends, human stories that reveal their hopes, their circumstances, their personalities, their humanity. She's found that if she can hang in through the first ten to fifteen minutes of every coffee date with someone in the grip of psychosis, then true communication results. Their "madness" is not otherworldly: instead it tells us something about how they're surviving their lives and what they've been through. Winner of the 2019 Mavis Gallant Prize for Non-Fiction (QWF). 2019.
History
3042872 They call me George: the untold story of black train porters and the birth of modern Canada by Cecil Foster
9 volumes. A historical work of non-fiction that chronicles the little-known stories of black railway porters - the so-called "Pullmen" of the Canadian rail lines. The actions and spirit of these men helped define Canada as a nation in surprising ways, effecting race relations, human rights, North American multiculturalism, community building, the shape and structure of unions, and the nature of travel and business across the US and Canada. Drawing on the stories and legends of several of these influential early black Canadians, this book narrates the history of a very visible, but rarely considered, aspect of black life in railway-age Canada. These porters, who fought against the idea of Canada as White Man's Country, open only to immigrants from Europe, fought for and won a Canada that would provide opportunities for all its citizens. Bestseller. 2019.
3157914 The mosquito: a human history of our deadliest predator by Timothy C. Winegard
14 volumes. Why was gin and tonic the cocktail of choice for British colonists in India and Africa? What does Starbucks have to thank for its global domination? What has protected the lives of popes for millennia? Why did Scotland surrender its sovereignty to England? What was George Washington's secret weapon during the American Revolution? The answer to all these questions, and many more, is the mosquito. Across our planet since the dawn of humankind, this nefarious pest, roughly the size and weight of a grape seed, has been at the frontlines of history as the grim reaper, the harvester of human populations, and the ultimate agent of historical change. As the mosquito transformed the landscapes of civilization, humans were unwittingly required to respond to its piercing impact and universal projection of power. The mosquito has determined the fates of empires and nations, razed and crippled economies, and decided the outcome of pivotal wars, killing nearly half of humanity along the way. She (only females bite) has dispatched an estimated 52 billion people from a total of 108 billion throughout our relatively brief existence. As the greatest purveyor of extermination we have ever known, she has played a greater role in shaping our human story than any other living thing with which we share our global village. Imagine for a moment a world without deadly mosquitoes, or any mosquitoes, for that matter, and our history and the world we know, or think we know, would be completely unrecognizable. 2019.
Humour
3033514 Rick Mercer final report by Rick Mercer
4 volumes. Rick Mercer can always be relied on to provoke a strong reaction - but what he said one fall day in 2017 truly shocked the nation. In a rant posted on social media, he announced that the current season of the Rick Mercer Report would be the last. After more than 250 episodes, 250 rants and countless miles spent travelling the length and breadth of Canada to do everything from bungee jumping with Rick Hansen to whale watching with Measha Brueggergosman, it was time to move on. What he will do next is still unknown, and Canada eagerly awaits future developments. But meanwhile, we have this book to keep us going. This volume brings together never-before-published rants from the last five seasons of the show, plus a selection of the very best rants from earlier years. Rick also shares his hilarious, moving and at times hair-raising memories from the past fifteen years. Bestseller. 2018.
Law and crime
3032899 The Forest City Killer: a serial murderer, a cold-case sleuth, and a search for justice by Vanessa Brown
7 volumes. Fifty years ago, a serial killer prowled the quiet city of London, Ontario, marking it as his hunting grounds. As young women and boys were abducted, raped, and murdered, residents of the area held their loved ones closer and closer, terrified of the monster - or monsters - stalking the streets. Homicide detective Dennis Alsop began hunting the killer in the 1960s, and he didn't stop searching until his death 40 years later. For decades, detectives, actual and armchair, and the victims' families and friends continued to ask questions: Who was the Forest City Killer? Was there more than one person, or did a depraved individual commit all of these crimes on his own? Combing through the files Detective Alsop left behind, researcher Vanessa Brown reopens the cases, revealing previously unpublished witness statements, details of evidence, and astonishing revelations. And through her investigation, Vanessa posits the unthinkable: is it possible that the Forest City Killer is still alive and, like the notorious Golden State Killer, a simple DNA test could bring him to justice? 2019.
3293515 Furious hours: murder, fraud, and the last trial of Harper Lee by Casey N. Cep
7 volumes. Reverend Willie Maxwell was a rural preacher accused of murdering five of his family members for insurance money in the 1970s. With the help of a savvy lawyer, he escaped justice for years until a relative shot him dead at the funeral of his last victim. Despite hundreds of witnesses, Maxwell's murderer was acquitted - thanks to the same attorney who had previously defended the Reverend. Sitting in the audience during the vigilante's trial was Harper Lee, who had traveled from New York City to her native Alabama with the idea of writing her own "In cold blood", the true-crime classic she had helped her friend Truman Capote research seventeen years earlier. Lee spent a year in town reporting, and many more working on her own version of the case. Now Casey Cep brings this nearly inconceivable story to life, from the shocking murders to the courtroom drama to the racial politics of the Deep South. At the same time, she offers a deeply moving portrait of one of the country's most beloved writers and her struggle with fame, success, and the mystery of artistic creativity. Bestseller. 2019.
3032663 The billionaire murders: the mysterious deaths of Barry and Honey Sherman by Kevin Donovan
7 volumes. Barry and Honey Sherman seemed to lead a charmed life, but the world was shocked in late 2017 when their bodies were found together in their elegant Toronto home. First described as murder-suicide, it was a grisly scene: the two were positioned side-by-side on the deck of their basement swimming pool, suspended from belts tied to a railing. The violent deaths of the founder of one of the world's largest pharmaceutical companies and his wife - their net worth has been estimated at 4.6 billion dollars - rocked the intersecting worlds of business, politics, and philanthropy. The Shermans were charity royalty, donating millions to hospitals and universities, and fixtures on the gala circuit where Honey, in particular, was beloved. But there was another side to the story. A strategic genius who built a large generic drug company - Apotex Inc. - Barry Sherman was a self-described workaholic, renowned risk-taker, and disruptor during his fifty-year career. Regarded as a generous friend by many, Sherman was also feared by others. He was criticized for stifling academic freedom and using the courts to win at all costs. Upset with building issues at his mansion, he sued and recouped millions from tradespeople. At the time of his death, Sherman had just won a decades-old legal case involving four cousins who wanted 20 percent of his fortune. Toronto Star investigative journalist Kevin Donovan chronicles the unsettling story from the beginning, interviewing family members, friends, and colleagues, and sheds new light on the Shermans' lives and the disturbing double murder. 2019.
Literature
3158316 Braille rainbow: poems by Mike Barnes
1 volume. These poems, organized in four sections, engage first with infant appetites, others, and social justice, before turning inward to traverse the perilous heights and depths of the mind, drawing on Barnes' own experience of mental illness and his years of caring for his mother in her dementia. The latter half of the book addresses shifts in ways of thinking and feeling that allow contraries to meet and inform one another, and concludes with poems of peace and nourishing meditative connection. 2019.
3093773 Disfigured: on fairy tales, disability, and making space by Amanda Leduc
5 volumes. Challenges the ableism of fairy tales and offers new ways to celebrate the magic of all bodies. In fairy tales, happy endings are the norm - as long as you're beautiful and walk on two legs. After all, the ogre never gets the princess. And since fairy tales are the foundational myths of our culture, how can a girl with a disability ever think she'll have a happy ending? By examining the ways that fairy tales have shaped our expectations of disability, Disfigured will point the way toward a new world where disability is no longer a punishment or impediment but operates, instead, as a way of centering a protagonist and helping them to cement their own place in a story, and from there, the world. Through the book, Leduc ruminates on the connections we make between fairy tale archetypes - the beautiful princess, the glass slipper, the maiden with long hair lost in the tower - and tries to make sense of them through a twenty-first-century disablist lens. From examinations of disability in tales from the Brothers Grimm and Hans Christian Andersen through to modern interpretations ranging from Disney to Angela Carter, and the fight for disabled representation in today's media, Leduc connects the fight for disability justice to the growth of modern, magical stories, and argues for increased awareness and acceptance of that which is other - helping us to see and celebrate the magic inherent in different bodies. Bestseller. 2020.
3042713 Murder: and other essays by David Richards
5 volumes. This new collection of essays by David Adams Richards is rich with revelations and insights, deepening our appreciation for this major talent and offering a provoking thought on every page. Murder is one of David's great subjects. In his novels, in the Russian classics he loves and in his life, murder has been a shaping force. The title of this volume refers to a suite of essays on the subject: a hitchhiker with whom David strikes up an unnerving philosophical debate; the killers of the Miramichi and their victims; Caligula; the villains of Russian literature; and, forever in David's mind as he examines this grim topic, the self-deception involved in the allure of evil. But in this wide-ranging collection there is much to delight in too: married love; family; travel; the beauty of the natural world; even Wayne Gretzky is invited to the party. David's principled outlook and spirituality inform his thinking throughout. And he draws many of his favourite writers into the discussion - from Tolstoy to Dostoevsky, Mary Shelley to Alden Nowlan - revelling in their work, as we do in David's, as sources of ideas, inspiration and sheer literary pleasure. The book also contains a slim but substantial collection of David's poetry. 2019.
Native peoples
3157875 Highway of Tears: a true story of racism, indifference and the pursuit of justice for missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls by Jessica McDiarmid
8 volumes. A searing and revelatory account of the missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls of Highway 16, and an indictment of the society that failed them. For decades, Indigenous women and girls have gone missing or been found murdered along an isolated stretch of highway in northwestern British Columbia. The highway is known as the Highway of Tears, and it has come to symbolize a national crisis. Journalist Jessica McDiarmid investigates the devastating effect these tragedies have had on the families of the victims and their communities, and how systemic racism and indifference have created a climate where Indigenous women and girls are over-policed, yet under-protected. Through interviews with those closest to the victims - mothers and fathers, siblings and friends - McDiarmid offers an intimate, first-hand account of their loss and relentless fight for justice. Examining the historically fraught social and cultural tensions between settlers and Indigenous peoples in the region, McDiarmid links these cases to others across Canada - now estimated to number up to 4,000 - contextualizing them within a broader examination of the undervaluing of Indigenous lives in this country. "Highway of Tears" is a powerful story about our ongoing failure to provide justice for missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls, and a testament to their families and communities' unwavering determination to find it. 2019.
3158070 From where I stand: rebuilding Indigenous Nations for a stronger Canada by Jody Wilson-Raybould
6 volumes. An Indigenous leader who has dedicated her life to Indigenous Rights, Jody Wilson-Raybould has represented both First Nations and the Crown at the highest levels. And she is not afraid to give Canadians what they need most – straight talk on what has to be done to move beyond our colonial legacy and achieve true reconciliation in Canada. In this powerful book, drawn from speeches and other writings, she urges all Canadians – both Indigenous and non-Indigenous – to build upon the momentum already gained or risk hard-won progress being lost. The good news is that Indigenous Nations already have the solutions. But now is the time to act and build a shared postcolonial future based on the foundations of trust, cooperation, recognition, and good governance. 2019.
Nature
3158073 Cry wolf: inquest into the true nature of a predator by Harold R. Johnson
3 volumes. Turning a blind eye to the dangers of the wild can have deadly consequences. Growing up on a northern trap line, Harold Johnson was taught to keep his distance from wolves. For more than 100 years, one of Canada’s top predators seemed to have absorbed the same lesson about avoiding contact with people, who pose dangers. But this seems to be changing in the twenty-first century. In "Cry wolf", Johnson re-tells the story of the 2005 death of Kenton Carnegie, who was cornered and killed in a wolf attack near his work camp. Johnson draws on his experience as a Crown prosecutor to forensically deconstruct the official reports of the killing. In his telling, the finger of blame points squarely to the lack of respect given to an animal which, as a result, is becoming more dangerous to humans. Johnson believes millennia of Indigenous teaching could have saved a life and rehabilitated the wolf to its honoured place. 2020.
3032682 On [fire]: the burning case for a Green New Deal by Naomi Klein
7 volumes. For more than twenty years, Naomi Klein has been the foremost chronicler of the economic war waged on both people and planet - and the champion of a sweeping environmental agenda with stability and justice at its center. In lucid dispatches from the frontlines - from the ghostly Great Barrier Reef, to the annual smoke-choked skies of the Pacific Northwest, to post-hurricane Puerto Rico, to a Vatican attempting an unprecedented "ecological conversion" - she has penned surging, indispensable lectures and essays for a wide public, with prescient, clarifying information about the future that awaits us and our children if we stick our heads in the sand. They show Klein at her most thoughtful, tracing the evolution of the climate crisis as the key issue of our time, not only as an immediate political challenge but as a spiritual and imaginative one too. Delving into topics ranging from the clash between ecological time and our culture of "perpetual now," to the soaring history of humans' ability to change rapidly in the face of grave threat, to rising white supremacy and fortressed borders as a form of "climate barbarism," this is a rousing call to action for a planet on the brink. Above all, she underscores how we can still rise to the existential challenge of the crisis if we are willing to transform our systems that are producing it, making clear how the battle for a greener world is indistinguishable from the fight for our lives. Bestseller. 2019.
Politics and government
3042839 A warning by Anonymous
5 volumes. On September 5, 2018, the New York Times published a bombshell essay and took the rare step of granting its writer anonymity. Described only as "a senior official in the Trump administration," the author provided eyewitness insight into White House chaos, administration instability, and the people working to keep Donald Trump's reckless impulses in check. With the 2020 election on the horizon, Anonymous is speaking out once again. In this book, the original author pulls back the curtain even further, offering a first-of-its-kind look at the president and his record - a must-read before Election Day. It will surprise and challenge both Democrats and Republicans, motivate them to consider how we judge our nation's leaders, and illuminate the consequences of re-electing a commander in chief unfit for the role. This book is a sobering assessment of the man in the Oval Office and a warning about something even more important - who we are as a people. Bestseller. 2019.
2445484 Failed states: the abuse of power and the assault on democracy by Noam Chomsky
16 volumes of Braille. The United States asserts the right to use military force against 'failed states' around the globe. Noam Chomsky argues that America actually shares features with many of the regimes it insists are failing and constitute a danger to their neighbours. Chomsky shows that this lone superpower - which topples foreign governments, invades states that threaten its interests and imposes sanctions on regimes it opposes - has stretched its own democratic institutions to breaking point. 2007.
Science and technology
3033521 The reality bubble by Ziya Tong
"The reality bubble" provides a vivid picture of what stalks our blind spots and reveals how the way we look at the world has the power to shake civilization. With all of the curiosity and flair that drives her broadcasting, Tong takes us on a journey from the smallest nanoparticle to the very ideas of time and space, pausing along the way to consider the implications of research as diverse as the nature of animal languages, and the consequences of artificial fertilizers on your DNA. She'll explain fascinating science applications, such as the way police linked American nuclear testing to a murder mystery in Vienna. Throughout, what she discovers is that much of what we don't see is deliberately hidden from us. Although we live in a culture of increasingly intrusive surveillance, significant parts of the global system that sustains us are closely guarded secrets: where our food comes from, where our energy comes from, and where our waste goes. 2019.
Self help
3158320 Nobody ever talks about anything but the end: a memoir by Liz Levine
3 volumes. In November of 2016, Liz Levine's younger sister, Tamara, reached a breaking point after years of living with mental illness. In the dark hours before dawn, she sent a final message to her family and committed suicide. In "Nobody ever talks about anything but the end", Liz weaves the story of what happened to Tamara with another significant death - that of Liz's childhood love, Judson, to cancer. This account of life and loss - inventively told in the form of the alphabet - is haunting and bittersweet, heartbreaking yet often hilarious. With appealing honesty, Liz writes about her relationship with Judson, Tamara's increasingly bizarre outbursts, the conflicts that arise in a family of challenging personalities and multiple religions, and how death casts a long shadow. In doing so, she exposes the raw and uncomfortable truths about grief and mourning that we often shy away from - and almost never share with others. And she reveals how, in the midst of death, life - with all its messy complications - must also be celebrated. 2020.
Social issues
3033548 Fear, love, and liberation in contemporary Quebec: a feminist reflection by Alexa Conradi
5 volumes. In response to rapid and unsettling social, economic, and climate changes, fearmongering now features as a main component of public life. Right-wing nationalist populism has become a hallmark of politics around the world. No less so in Quebec. Alexa Conradi has made it her life's work to understand and to generate thoughtful debate about this worrisome trend. As the first president of Québec solidaire and the president of Canada's largest feminist organisation, the Fédération des femmes du Québec, Conradi refused to shy away from difficult issues: the Charter of Quebec Values, religion and Islam, sovereignty, rape culture and violence against women, extractive industries and the treatment of Indigenous women, austerity policy and the growing gap between rich and poor. This determination to address uncomfortable subjects has made Conradi - an anglo-Montrealer - a sometimes controversial leader. Conradi invites us to take off our rose-coloured glasses and to examine Quebec's treatment of women with more honesty. Through her personal reflections on Quebec politics and culture, she dispels the myth that gender equality has been achieved and paves the way for a more critical understanding of what remains to be done. 2019.
2865580 City of omens: search for the missing women of the borderlands by Dan Werb
9 volumes. Despite its reputation as a carnival of vice, Tijuana was, until recently, no more or less violent than neighboring San Diego, its sister city across the border wall. But then something changed. Over the past ten years, Mexico's third-largest city became one of the world's most dangerous. Tijuana's murder rate skyrocketed and produced a staggering number of female victims. Hundreds of women are now found dead in the city each year, or bound and mutilated along the highway that lines the Baja coast. When Dan Werb began to study these murders in 2013, rather than viewing them in isolation, he discovered that they could only be understood as one symptom among many. Environmental toxins, drug overdoses, HIV transmission: all were killing women at overwhelming rates. As an epidemiologist, trained to track epidemics by mining data, Werb sensed the presence of a deeper contagion targeting Tijuana's women. Not a virus, but some awful wrong buried in the city's social order, cutting down its most vulnerable inhabitants from multiple directions. Werb's search for the ultimate causes of Tijuana's femicide casts new light on immigration, human trafficking, addiction, and the true cost of American empire-building. It leads Werb all the way from factory slums to drug dens to the corridors of police corruption, as he follows a thread that ultimately leads to a surprising turn back over the border, looking northward. 2019.
Sports and games
3042721 Scotty: a hockey life like no other by Ken Dryden
10 volumes. Scotty Bowman is universally heralded as the greatest coach in hockey history, and is widely regarded as one of the best coaches in all of sports. He holds the record for most wins and most Stanley Cups as a head coach and is the only NHL coach to lead three different teams to a championship. He has seen all of hockey's great players - from "The Rocket" to Gordie Howe to the young stars that play today - and has witnessed firsthand what makes a team click. However, we know very little about who Scotty Bowman is. Ken Dryden takes us inside the mind of hockey's ultimate coach. We see Scotty as a child in his hometown of Verdun, Quebec, as a teenager racing to a spot in the old Montreal Forum to witness Richard's scoring prowess, and as an up and coming hockey mind, tapped on the shoulder to follow in the footsteps of the legendary Montreal coach Toe Blake. Interwoven through the narrative of Scotty's life story are the profiles of the eight best teams in NHL history in Bowman's eyes, as the coach describes what makes these particular teams stand out from the rest. And, because it's in a coach's competitive nature, these eight teams are pitted against one another in a winner-take-all tournament, where Scotty will determine once and for all which team is the greatest team in NHL history, and why. Bestseller. 2019.