LITERARY FICTION - COMMUNITIES When Stella, a young Métis mother, looks out her window one evening and spots someone in trouble, she calls the police to alert them to a possible crime. In a series of shifting narratives, people who are connected, both directly and indirectly, with the victim -- police, family, and friends -- tell their personal stories leading up to that fateful night. Through their various perspectives a larger, more comprehensive story about lives of the residents in Winnipeg's North End is exposed.
(14 copies)
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ROMANCE FICTION - REGENCY Book 1 of 8 in the Bridgerton series: Simon Basset is on the verge of proposing to his best friend's sister, Daphne Bridgerton. But the two of them devised an elaborate ruse to keep Simon free from marriage-minded society mothers. But as Daphne waltzes across ballrooms with Simon, it's hard to remember that their courtship is a sham...somehow Daphne is falling for the dashing duke . . . for real! Now she must do the impossible and convince the handsome rogue that their clever little scheme deserves a slight alteration, and that nothing makes quite as much sense as falling in love.
(8 copies)
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ROMANCE FICTION - BASEBALL PLAYERS Nashville Legends second baseman Gavin Scott's marriage is in major league trouble. Four weeks ago, he discovered a humiliating secret: his wife has always faked the Big O. When he blows up and then emotionally checks out, that's the final straw in their strained relationship for Thea, who asks him to move out. Distraught and desperate, Gavin finds help from an unlikely source: a secret romance-reading club of Nashville's top alpha men. With the help of their current read, a steamy Regency titled Courting the Countess, the boys aim to coach Gavin into enticing Thea to give him another chance.
(15 copies)
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BILDUNGSROMANS - COMING OF AGE An intensely beautiful, searingly powerful, tightly constructed novel, Brother explores questions of masculinity, family, race, and identity as they are played out in a Scarborough housing complex during the sweltering heat and simmering violence of the summer of 1991.
Coming of age in The Park, a cluster of town houses and leaning concrete towers in the disparaged outskirts of a sprawling city, Michael and Francis battle against the careless prejudices and low expectations that confront them as young men of black and brown ancestry -- teachers stream them into general classes; shopkeepers see them only as thieves; and strangers quicken their pace when the brothers are behind them. Always Michael and Francis escape into the cool air of the Rouge Valley, a scar of green wilderness that cuts through their neighbourhood, where they are free to imagine better lives for themselves.
Propelled by the pulsing beats and styles of hip hop, Francis, the older of the two brothers, dreams of a future in music. Michael's dreams are of Aisha, the smartest girl in their high school whose own eyes are firmly set on a life elsewhere. But the bright hopes of all three are violently, irrevocably thwarted by a tragic shooting, and the police crackdown and suffocating suspicion that follow.
(14 copies)
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ROMANCE FICTION - INHERTIANCE AND SUCCESSION Juliette Calloway lives in a world of luxury, legacies, and lies. The daughter of Rosebrook Falls' most powerful family, her life is a crafted performance, and she's tired of being polished to perfection. Roman Montgomery doesn't exist. Not officially, anyway He's a shadow, a hidden weapon, the secret heir to an empire soaked in danger and a generations-old feud. When their paths cross, sparks fly. No names. No pasts. Just reckless smiles and a chemistry neither of them can shake. Roman is charming. Mysterious. Infuriatingly flirty. And Juliette? She's simply ... his. When Roman is called back to claim his place in the Montgomery empire, the truth crashes down: Their families are sworn enemies, and Roman's very existence is a threat. Their love isn't just forbidden, it's impossible. Now, every kiss feels like a betrayal. Every stolen moment, a risk. And in a town built on secrets and blood, their passion might just be the most dangerous thing of all
(15 copies)
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BIOGRAPHY - FATHERHOOD Ryan Knighton's humorous and perceptive tales of fatherhood take us inside an unusual new family, one bound by its father's particular darkness and light.
C'mon Papa is Ryan Knighton's heartbreaking and hilarious voyage through the first year of fatherhood. Becoming a father is a stressful, daunting rite of passage to be sure, but for a blind father, the fears are unimaginably heightened. Ryan will have to find novel ways to adapt to nearly every aspect of parenting: the most basic skills are nearly impossible to contemplate, let alone master. And how will Ryan get to know this pre-verbal bundle of coos and burps when he can't see her smile, or look into her eyes for hints of the person to come?
But this is no pity party, and Ryan has no time for sentimentality. Tackling these hurdles with grace and humour, Ryan is determined to do his part - and this is where the fun starts. From holding his daughter as she wails into the night to their first nerve-wracking walk to the cafe, no activity between father and daughter is without its pitfalls. In his struggle to "see" Tess, Ryan reimagines the relationship between father and child during that first chaotic year.
(14 copies)
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ROMANCE FICTION - TEENAGERS Call Me by Your Name is the story of a sudden and powerful romance that blossoms between an adolescent boy and a summer guest at his parents' house, a cliff-side mansion on the Italian Riviera. Unprepared for the consequences of their attraction, at first each feigns indifference to the other. But during the warm, languorous summer weeks that follow, unrelenting buried currents of obsession and fear, fascination and desire, intensify their passion as they test the charged ground between them. What grows from the depths of their spirits is a romance of scarcely six weeks duration and an experience that marks them for a lifetime. For what the two discover on the Riviera and on a sultry evening in Rome is the one thing both already fear they may never truly find again: total intimacy.
(15 copies)
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MYSTERY - BOOKS ABOUT BOOKS Israel Armstrong is a passionate soul, lured to Ireland by the promise of an exciting new career. As he prepares to drive a mobile library around a small, damp Irish town he discovers that the rolling library's 15,000 volumes have mysteriously gone missing. It's up to Israel to discover who would steal them.
(15 copies)
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NON-FICTION - RACE RELATIONS This book provides us a masterful portrait of an unseen phenomenon in America as it explores through an immersive, deeply researched narrative and stories about real people, how America today and throughout its history has been shaped by a hidden caste system, a rigid hierarchy of human rankings. Beyond race, class, or other factors, there is a powerful caste system that influences people's lives and behavior and the nation's fate. Linking the caste systems of America, India, and Nazi Germany, Wilkerson explores eight pillars that underlie caste systems across civilizations, including divine will, bloodlines, stigma, and more. Using riveting stories about people - including Martin Luther King, Jr., baseball's Satchel Paige, a single father and his toddler son, Wilkerson herself, and many others - she shows the ways that the insidious undertow of caste is experienced every day. She documents how the Nazis studied the racial systems in America to plan their out-cast of the Jews; she discusses why the cruel logic of caste requires that there be a bottom rung for those in the middle to measure themselves against; she writes about the surprising health costs of caste, in depression and life expectancy, and the effects of this hierarchy on our culture and politics. Finally, she points forward to ways America can move beyond the artificial and destructive separations of human divisions, toward hope in our common humanity.
(15 copies)
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PSYCHOLOGICAL FICTION - GRIEF Single mother Elise has her world destroyed when her son is killed in a car accident.
(15 copies)
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