-
-
-- Thirteen ways of looking at a fat girl.By Awad, Mona2016., Adult, Penguin Canada Call No: Fic Awa Availability:1 of 1 At Your Library Summary Note: "Growing up in the suburban hell of Misery Saga (a.k.a. Mississauga), Lizzie has never liked the way she looks--even though her best friend Mel says she's the pretty one. She starts dating guys online, but she's afraid to send pictures, even when her skinny friend China does her makeup: she knows no one would want her if they could really see her. So she starts to lose. With punishing drive, she counts almonds consumed, miles logged, pounds dropped. She fights her way into coveted dresses. She grows up and gets thin, navigating double-edged validation from her mother, her friends, her husband, her reflection in the mirror. But no matter how much she loses, will she ever see herself as anything other than a fat girl?"--From publisher.
-
-
2016., Adult, House of Anansi Call No: Fic Bla Availability:1 of 1 At Your Library Summary Note: "What anxiety grips Petites Cendres as he runs towards the sea in the sunshine on a warm tropical morning? Shouldn't he be reassured by the thought that he now lives at the Acacia Gardens, a comfortable home where all find care, understanding, and healing? How can Fleur, the young musical prodigy, listen to the diabolical confessions of Wrath, the fugitive priest, without shuddering? And, can Daniel the writer finish his novel, the one he has been working on for twenty years, despite his sensitivity and empathy for all creatures, even if they are the most humble, like the lizard he inadvertently crushed under his sandal? With this latest novel, Marie-Claire Blais once again gives us a vibrant portrait that embraces the span of life--from birth to death and beyond. Her characters question their purpose and what will come after, as they are confronted by evil that lives and that has taken root."--From publisher.
-
-
c2011., Adult, Doubleday Canada Call No: Fic Bar Availability:1 of 1 At Your Library Summary Note: "No one shines the suspense spotlight into the darkest corners of American homes brighter than Linwood Barclay. In this tautly written novel of suspense, Glen Carver is left with a daughter to raise and a head full of questions when his wife dies in a drunk-driving accident--one that she caused. Sheila wasn't a drinker. Sheila wasn't even supposed to be on the road where she died. A conspiracy is forming around Glen, one that involves virtually everyone he knows, and makes him wonder how well he knew the woman he married. If Carver is going to find out what really happened to his wife, he's going to have to seek a truth that could get him killed. If he's going to protect their daughter, he'll have to go even further."--Fantastic Fiction website.
-
-
c2015., Adult, Freehand Books Call No: Fic Phi Availability:1 of 1 At Your Library Summary Note: Henry Jett's life is slowly going nowhere. His girlfriend recently left, and his job in a local garage is uninspiring, considering that he doesn't particularly like cars. Henry finds solace in his eccentric passion, rebuilding the skeletons of birds and animals. Meanwhile Henry's brother, Dan, is disappearing into an obsession of his own. Without Dan to rely on, Henry begins to engage in new ways with the people around him in his Prairie city: the 80-year-old Russian émigré who delights in telling stories; the very pregnant former employee of his mother's; the lawyer who may or may not be his brother's ex-girlfriend. Gradually they demand that Henry become a participant in his own story, and Henry must forge his own way of living in the world.
-
-
c2014., Adult, Alfred A. Knopf Canada Call No: Fic Toe Availability:1 of 1 At Your Library Summary Note: Elfrieda, a world-renowned pianist, glamorous, wealthy, happily married: she wants to die. Yolandi, divorced, broke, sleeping with the wrong men as she tries to find true love: she desperately wants to keep her older sister alive. But Elf's latest suicide attempt is a shock: she is three weeks away from the opening of her highly anticipated international tour. Can she be nursed back to "health" in time? Does it matter? As the situation becomes ever more complicated, Yoli faces the most terrifying decision of her life.
-
-
c2011., Adult, Broadview Press Call No: Fic Den Availability:1 of 1 At Your Library Summary Note: Ruth has a medical condition causing her to grow too fast. Her ongoing struggle to conceal the physical and mental symptoms of her rapid growth is complicated by her desire to connect with other children and appease her concerned parents. Not knowing what to do about Ruth, her parents Elspeth and James turn away from one another and their marriage begins to falter.
-
-
2011., Adult, Recorded Books/Maple Leaf Audio Call No: CD Fic Win Availability:1 of 1 At Your Library Summary Note: Born a boy and a girl but raised as a boy, Wayne or "Annabel" struggles with his identity growing up in a small Canadian town and seeks freedom by moving to the city.
![Annabel [CD]](/Library/images/~imageCT73895.JPG "Annabel [CD]")
-
-
By Gruen, Sarac2010., Adult, Bond Street Books Call No: Fic Gru Availability:1 of 1 At Your Library Summary Note: "Sara Gruen's WATER FOR ELEPHANTS has become one of the most beloved and bestselling novels of our time. Now Gruen has moved from a circus elephant, to a family of bonobo apes, whose kidnapping from a language laboratory and mysterious appearance on a reality TV show calls into question our assumptions about the relations between apes and humans, and humans' relationships to each other."--Publisher.
-
-
c2011., Adult, Knopf Canada Call No: IND Fic Bar Edition: 1st ed. Availability:1 of 1 At Your Library Summary Note: "The novel begins at the age of six, Martha is taken from her family and their home in the Cat Lake First Nation in northern Ontario and flown to a residential school on James Bay. It's not a good experience. She doesn't speak English but is punished for speaking her Native language; most terrifying and bewildering, she is also "fed" to the school's attendant priest with an attraction to little girls. Ten years later, it is an emotionally devastated sixteen-year-old who finds her way home again, barely able to speak the only language her mother knows. Martha hangs out with other young people, and gives birth to a little boy, whom she calls Spider, because of a web-shaped birthmark on his forehead. She loves him but has little knowledge or experience of good parenting. She seeks comfort and forgetfulness in alcohol, and Chidlren's Aid authorities in Toronto, a place she has only heard of, take Spider away from her. When she later gives birth to Raven, a daughter, Martha's mother insists on keeping her in Cat Lake when Martha decides to move to Toronto to find Spider. When Raven turns thirteen, she feels hopeless, rejected by her mother and not sure what, if anything, life has in store for her. She enters a suicide pact with three other teens and is eventually the only one of the group still alive."--Inside front cover.
-
-
2021., Adult, McClelland & Stewart Call No: Fic Bow Availability:0 of 1 At Your Library Summary Note: Raised on a remote BC commune by a neglectful father, Astra Brine eventually leaves for Calgary, where she struggles to find her way in the world, her life becoming a study of the thin line between dependence and love, need and desire. As her path intersects with others-- often only briefly, but always intensely-- she will encounter people who, by turns, want to rescue, control, become, change, and escape her, revealing difficult yet shining truths about who they are and what they yearn for. There is the childhood playmate who comes to fear Astra's unpredictable ways; the stranger who rescues her from homelessness and then has to wrestle with his own demons; the mother who hires Astra as a babysitter even as her own marriage goes off the rails; the man who takes a leap of faith and marries her. Even as Astra herself remains the elusive yet compelling axis around which these narratives turn, her story reminds us of the profound impact that an individual can have on those around her, and the power struggles at play in all our relationships, no matter how intimate. A beautifully constructed and revelatory novel, Astra explores what we're willing to give and receive from others, and how well we ever really know the people we love the most.
-
-
c1993., McClelland & Stewart Inc. Call No: Fic URQ Edition: Paperback ed. Availability:1 of 1 At Your Library Series Title: Canada reads Volume: 2013.Summary Note: "A stunning, evocative novel set in Ireland and Canada, Away traces a family's complex and layered past. The narrative unfolds with shimmering clarity, and takes us from the harsh northern Irish coast in the 1840s to the quarantine stations at Grosse Isle and the barely hospitable land of the Canadian Shield; from the flourishing town of Port Hope to the flooded streets of Montreal; from Ottawa at the time of Confederation to a large-windowed house at the edge of a Great Lake during the present day. Graceful and moving, Away unites the personal and the political as it explores the most private, often darkest corners of our emotions where the things that root us to ourselves endure. Powerful, intricate, lyrical, Away is an unforgettable novel."--Publisher.
-
-
2018., Adult, Doubleday Canada Call No: Fic Fie Availability:1 of 1 At Your Library Summary Note: "A voice mail from her estranged sister, Melanie, sends Robin's heart racing and her mind spiraling in a full-blown panic attack. Melanie's message is dire: Their father, his second wife, and his twelve-year-old stepdaughter have been shot--likely in a home invasion--and lie in the hospital in critical condition. It's been more than five years since Robin turned her back on her father when he married her best friend. Five years since she said goodbye to her hometown of Red Bluff, California, and became a therapist. More than two years since Robin and Melanie have spoken. Yet even with all that distance and time and acrimony, the past is always with Robin. Now she must return to the family she left behind. As she attempts to mend fences while her father clings to life, Robin begins to wonder if there is more to the tragedy than a botched burglary attempt. It seems that everyone--Robin's mercurial sister, her less-than-communicative nephew, her absent brother, and even Tara, her father's wife--has something to hide. And someone may have put them all in grave danger."--From publisher.
-
-
2012., Skyhorse Publishing, Inc. Edition: eBook ed. Summary Note: "The Bay of Love and Sorrows is an unflinching story of ambition and betrayal. The novel begins as the once-strong friendship between Michael Skid, the privileged young son of a judge from town, and farmhand Tommie Donnerel collapses under the weight of a bitter misunderstanding. As Michael sets out to prove something to himself and others, he becomes drawn into the company of the beautiful and determined Madonna Brassaurd and her brother, Silver, and together the three are soon seduced by the glamour of Everette Hutch, a charismatic but violent man. Bridging the decent world of Tommie Donnerel and the darker realm of the Brassaurds and Everette Hutch is Karrie Smith, whose deep longing for a more exciting life makes her especially vulnerable to a world she does not completely understand."--Random House Canada.
![The bay of love and sorrows [eBook]](/Library/images/~imageCT75004.JPG "The bay of love and sorrows [eBook]")
-
-
c2014., General, Doubleday Canada Call No: Fic Cam Availability:1 of 1 At Your Library Summary Note: Told from the point of view of a six-year-old child, 'The Bear' is the story of Anna and her little brother, Stick--two young children forced to fend for themselves in Algonquin Park after a black bear attacks their parents. A gripping and mesmerizing exploration of the child psyche, this is a survival story unlike any other, one that asks what it takes to survive in the wilderness and what happens when predation comes from within.
-
-
2015., Adult, Nightwood Editions Call No: IND Fic Dan Availability:1 of 1 At Your Library Summary Note: Raw and honest, Bearskin Diary gives voice to a generation of First Nations women who have always been silenced, at a time when movements like Idle No More call for a national inquiry into the missing and murdered Aboriginal women. Carol Daniels adds an important perspective to the Canadian literary landscape. Taken from the arms of her mother as soon as she was born, Sandy was only one of over twenty thousand Aboriginal children scooped up by the federal government between the 1960s and 1980s. Sandy was adopted by a Ukrainian family and grew up as the only First Nations child in a town of white people. Ostracized by everyone around her and tired of being different, at the early age of five she tried to scrub the brown off her skin. But she was never sent back into the foster system, and for that she considers herself lucky. From this tragic period in her personal life and in Canadian history, Sandy does not emerge unscathed, but she emerges strong--finding her way by embracing the First Nations culture that the Sixties Scoop had tried to deny. Those very roots allow Sandy to overcome the discriminations that she suffers every day from her co-workers, from strangers and sometimes even from herself."--From publisher.
-
-
c2011., Adult, McClelland & Stewart Call No: MYS Fic Rob Availability:1 of 1 At Your Library Summary Note: "Through the years of success in Hollywood composing film scores, Chris always promised his wife they'd return to the Yorkshire Dales one day. Now a widower, Chris feels he must not forget his promise. Back in the Dales, he rents an isolated house that will allow him the space to grieve and the peace to compose his piano sonata. But when he finds that the house was the scene of a murder in the 1950s, and the convicted murderer was one of the last women hanged in England, he finds himself increasingly distracted by the events of sixty years before..."--Publisher.
-
-
c2011., Adult, Knopf Canada Call No: Fic Hol Edition: 1st ed. Availability:1 of 1 At Your Library Summary Note: "Dr. Ben Wasserman, an organ transplant psychiatrist, is having trouble assessing a would-be kidney donor who may turn out to be a bona fide altruist. But as his interest in the man grows, so do his professional and emotional conflicts. At the same time, Ben's psychologist wife, Renata Moon, is struggling to treat a phobic client whose husband died in a train crash. When the young woman reveals that she is pregnant, Renata's disappointment in her own childless marriage is triggered anew. Ben and Renata work hard all day, then go home to squabble over the nightly take-out. It doesn't help to ease the rising tension in their marriage that Ben's widowed mother, Molly, has made her disapproval of her yet-to-be-pregnant daughter-in-law well known. Nor does it help when Molly takes in a boarder, a man from her past whose secrets threaten to complicate the family dynamics even more. Benevolence is intelligent, amusing and deeply humane, a novel that asks unsettling questions, makes surprising connections and allows room for some unexpected, magical solutions."--Book Jacket.
-
-
2016., Adult, Anansi Call No: Fic Whi Availability:0 of 1 At Your Library Summary Note: "To the shock of his family and community, George Woodbury, an affable teacher and beloved husband and father, is arrested for sexual assault at a prestigious prep school in Connecticut. While he awaits his trial in jail, his family is left to pick up the pieces. His wife, Joan, a trauma nurse, is unable to triage her emotional reactions, and vaults between rage and denial. Daughter Sadie, the consummate overachiever, finds herself paralyzed on her boyfriend's couch with a bong, while a local author attempts to exploit her story. Their son, Andrew, a lawyer in New York, assists in his father's defense while wrestling with the unhappy memories of his own teen years in high school. Unfolding over a one-year period, the novel focuses on the Woodbury family as they struggle to support George while privately grappling with the possibility of his guilt. With exquisite emotional precision, Whittall explores issues of loyalty, truth, and the meaning of happiness through the lens of an all-American family on the brink of collapse."--From publisher.
-
-
c2015., Adult, Alfred A. Knopf Canada Call No: Fic Cla Availability:1 of 1 At Your Library Summary Note: Free-spirited Lily has always played the peacemaker between her fierce, doting sister, Laverne, and her own loving, garrulous husband, Hal, as they competed for her attention. The competition has only grown worse since the three of them moved into a large house in the town of Sussex, New Brunswick. On Lily's 58th birthday, a steamy day in late June, Laverne feels she has bested Hal by winning her sister's company for a gourmet lunch, but it becomes a bitter and short-lived victory when the day's events take an unexpected and tragic turn.
-
-
2016., Adult, Simon & Schuster Call No: IND Fic Cra Availability:1 of 1 At Your Library Summary Note: "Torn from her home and delivered to St. Mark's Residential School for Girls by government decree, young Rose Marie finds herself in an alien universe where nothing of her previous life is tolerated, not even her Blackfoot name. For she has entered into the world of the Sisters of Brotherly Love, an order of nuns dedicated to saving the Indigenous children from damnation. Life under the sharp eye of Mother Grace, the Mother General, becomes an endless series of torments, from daily recitations and obligations to chronic sickness and inedible food. And then there are the beatings. All the feisty Rose Marie wants to do is escape from St. Mark's. How her imagination soars as she dreams about her lost family on the Reserve, finding in her visions a healing spirit that touches her heart. But all too soon she starts to see other shapes in her dreams as well, shapes that warn her of unspoken dangers and mysteries that threaten to engulf her. And she has seen the rows of plain wooden crosses behind the school, reminding her that many students have never left here alive. Set during the Second World War and the 1950s, Black Apple is an unforgettable, vividly rendered novel about two very different women whose worlds collide: an irrepressible young Blackfoot girl whose spirit cannot be destroyed, and an aging yet powerful nun who increasingly doubts the value of her life. It captures brilliantly the strange mix of cruelty and compassion in the residential schools, where young children are forbidden to speak their own languages and given Christian names. As Rose Marie matures, she finds increasingly that she knows only the life of the nuns, with its piety, hard work and self-denial. Why is it, then, that she is haunted by secret visions--of past crimes in the school that terrify her, of her dead mother, of the Indigenous life on the plains that has long vanished? Even the kind-hearted Sister Cilla is unable to calm her fears. And then, there is a miracle, or so Mother Grace says. Now Rose is thrust back into the outside world with only her wits to save her. With a poet's eye, Joan Crate creates brilliantly the many shadings of this heartbreaking novel, rendering perfectly the inner voices of Rose Marie and Mother Grace, and exploring the larger themes of belief and belonging, of faith and forgiveness."--From publisher.
