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Born with Down syndrome, Ruby Jean Sharp comes from a time when being a developmentally disabled person could mean growing up behind locked doors and barred windows and being called names like "retard" and "moron." When Ruby Jean's caregiver and loving grandmother dies, her mother takes her to Woodlands School in New Westminster, British Columbia, and rarely visits. As Ruby Jean herself says: "Can't say why they called it a school -- a school's a place you go for learnin an then after you get to go home.

In 1755, on the eve of the Seven Years’ War, fifteen-year-old Nola and her Acadian parents face expulsion from Grand Pry the British. Nola, her friends Hector and Jocelyne, Nola’s grandfather, and a band of bold teenagers manage to flee by boat only to encounter challenges tougher than their wildest imaginings. Their destination is French-occupied Fort Louisbourg, but along the way hostile soldiers, a harsh environment, enigmatic Mi’kmaq, and superpowers at war turn their journey into a series of hair-raising adventures.

Disgraced city cop Ray Tate and outcast state trooper Djuna Brown track down a wealthy sexual sadist and a depressed career criminal flooding a Midwestern U.S. city with killer ecstasy pills. Mismatched and mutually suspicious of each other, Tate and Brown hunt the mythic Captain Cook and his henchman, the homicidal Phil Harvey.

Commended for the 2011 Best Books for Kids and Teens Robin Starveling, aka Noah Vaile, is scooped off the streets of seventeenth-century Bristol, England, and dragged onboard a ship bound for Virginia by the murderous William Thatcher, who needs a servant with no past and no future to aid him in a nefarious plot to steal gold. Starveling fits the bill perfectly since he lives nowhere and has no parents. Aboard the ship, Starveling makes friends with a young cabin boy, Peter Fence.

First published in 1946, in Return to Jalna, the Whiteoak family reunites after a year of separation. Piers, Renny, and Wakefield return in 1943 during the Second World War. Finch has been off on a concert tour, and Maurice has come home from Ireland. Fifteen-year-old Adeline returns from school and is now the stunning reflection of her namesake. It's a time of change and strain, but the family remains united against all others. This is book 13 of 16 in The Whiteoak Chronicles. It is followed by Renny's Daughter.

First published in 1953, in The Whiteoak Brothers, the Jalna household is electric with secrecy and excited expectation. It is now 1923, and while young love blossoms between Pheasant and Piers, Aunt Augusta's friend, Dilly Warkworth, arrives at Jalna and tries to snare the heart of Renny. Eden, meets a persuasive mining broker whose new venture promises miracles. One by one, Eden persuades the other Whiteoaks to part with their savings - even old Adeline. This is book 6 of 16 in The Whiteoak Chronicles. It is followed by Jalna.

Originally published in 1941, Wakefield’s Course begins in the spring of 1939 at Jalna. Renny Whiteoak is keen to sail for Ireland with his small daughter, Adeline, to buy a racehorse, but he’s more eager to see his younger cousins, Finch and Wakefield, who have been living in London. On his arrival in England, Renny becomes entangled in his cousins’ affairs of the heart. This is book 12 of 16 in The Whiteoak Chronicles. It is followed by Return to Jalna.

First published in 1936, Whiteoak Harvest chronicles the 1930s saga of Renny Whiteoak and his wife, Alayne. Finch Whiteoak and wife, Sarah, return from their honeymoon to upset the Jalna household with Eden Whiteoak’s love child. Meanwhile Wakefield Whiteoak is engaged to Pauline Lebraux but is tormented by religious doubts.This is book 11 of 16 in The Whiteoak Chronicles. It is followed by Wakefield’s Course.

Commended for the 2011 Best Books for Kids and Teens Living in grim Depression-era Toronto with her actress mother, Frannie, Ivy Chalmers has never met her father. In 1931, Frannie sends twelve-year-old Ivy to stay with her paternal grandmother in Larkin, Ontario, while she seeks stardom in New York City. When Ivy’s father, Alva, arrives unexpectedly in Larkin, he turns out not to be the Prince Charming she imagined, but an illiterate peddler.

Eleven-year-old Danny Ryan and 19-year-old Wendy Marshall think their friendship is only about looking after two baby raccoons that Danny has rescued. But when a bank holdup upsets Wendy so much that she can hardly stand to be around people, she leaves her job as a teller, retreats to a farm, and surrounds herself with injured and orphaned wildlife.