National Network for Equitable Library Service

Emerson Yeung seems to have every reason to be happy-- he gets good marks, has some friends, and has a part time job at his parents' dry cleaning business. But Emerson has been hiding something. The pressure to be the perfect son put on him by his parents that sometimes escalates into abuse from his father. This has led to a depression that leaves him roaming the city in the middle of the night. When his phone is stolen and used to post racist threats toward the vice principal and a teacher at his school, Emerson gets suspended and is investigated by the police.

"1593. Queen Elizabeth reigns from the throne while two rival spymasters--Sir Robert Cecil and the Earl of Essex--plot from the shadows. Their goal? To control succession upon the aged queen's death. The man on which their schemes depend? Christopher Marlowe, a cobbler's son from Canterbury who has defied expectations and become an accomplished poet and playwright. Now that the plague has closed theatres, Marlowe must resume the work for which he was originally recruited: intelligence and espionage.

Daniel Solomon is not having a good day. Somewhere between Bangkok and Tokyo, zipping through the stratosphere, the jetliner on which he's travelling cracks open like an egg, ejecting Daniel and his fellow passengers into the great blue sky. If only that were the worst of it. Thousands of feet above the merciless Earth, still strapped into his seat, his cherished comics fluttering away like freed parrots, Daniel finds out what it means to have your life flash before your eyes.

"Facing the dwindling years of his life, an old man waits for his turn on the auction block, hoping to be sold to a family as decent as the one he is leaving. It is not the first time he has been here, and it may not be the last. Mute in life but loquacious on the page, the old man tells the colourful story of his rootless life. Abandoned by his family and first auctioned off at the age of seven--'Ladies and gentlemen, this boy may not be a rare gem, but he is certainly worth a look'--he moves from one farm to another, taking comfort from the people around him.

A feral girl roams the dense forests of nineteenth-century France. In the village of Freyzus, she is chased by suspicious townspeople to the edge of a gorge, where she jumps and disappears, vanishing into village legend. On the other side of the gorge, in an abandoned estate, Peyre Rouff lives out his self-imposed exile following a horrific hunting accident, focussing all of his attention on intricate taxidermic dioramas. When Peyre encounters the wild girl, they find a link in their mutual estrangement from society and the two achieve an easy coexistence.

In the mid-1970s, tensions simmer beneath the surface of a small town in rural Massachusetts. But sixteen-year-old identical twin sisters April and Pilgrim live happily on their parents' farm. Their father recruits a young Bahamian doctor to minister to the town's residents. While racial prejudice keeps patients away, the idle doctor spends much of his time with the family. When the relationship between the girls and the young doctor comes to light, the family is torn apart.

Set in a small northern town, under the mythical shadow of the Sleeping Giant, Wake the Stone Man follows the complicated friendship of two girls coming of age in the 1960s. Molly meets Nakina, who is Ojibwe and a survivor of the residential school system, in high school, and they form a strong friendship. As the bond between them grows, Molly, who is not native, finds herself a silent witness to the racism and abuse her friend must face each day. In this time of political awakening, Molly turns to her camera to try to make sense of the intolerance she sees in the world around her.

Fish soup is not exactly appetizing to young Victor, so he sets out to spice things up by diving into his bowl. Pelted by peas and carrots, he struggles toward an island of overgrown celery stalks, where he battles a ferocious pepper dragon. Overcoming the onslaught of each dreaded ingredient, Victor finds that he’s hungrier than he thought, and discovers to his surprise that Mom’s fish soup is the best he’s ever tasted. 

For children age 3-5.

The award-winning poet Anne Carson reinvents a genre in Autobiography of Red, a stunning work that is both a novel and a poem, both an unconventional recreation of an ancient Greek myth and a wholly original coming-of-age story set in the present. Geryon, a young boy who is also a winged red monster, reveals the volcanic terrain of his fragile, tormented soul in an autobiography he begins at the age of five.

Every dog deserves a forever home, and after being mistreated and given up several times, Wrigley has finally found his. The good-natured, smart mutt now spends his days as the house dog at SunRidge Assisted Living, comforting and doting on forty-five seniors. Wrigley has free run of the place-going where he senses he's needed-but his preferred spot is beside his favorite resident, Marjorie Thompson. A big shift comes to SunRidge when a cranky curmudgeon named Walter Kepsen moves in across the hall from Marjorie.