National Network for Equitable Library Service

In 1744, at age 15, Jacques and his father leave France for Louisbourg, the capital of Île Royale--a far cry from his books and music and the comforts of his mother's home. In the Acadian forests that surround Louisbourg, a young Mi'kmaw man named Two-feathers watches the strange comings and goings of soldiers and citizens. The two young men follow very different paths--one formally educated and refined, the other curious and skilful--both seeking to understand their father.

"It is the late 1960s, and the world of twelve-year-old Ruth Iverson pretty much revolves around her friends, a boy she likes, The Monkees and spending time with her dad, doing special stuff like watching the Toronto Maple Leafs win the Stanley Cup. But she is soon to realize that her mom's strange behavior, which has become an embarrassment, is a symptom of a disease that will affect her family's life and possibly Ruth's future. While she watches major events like the marriage of John Lennon and Yoko Ono, the assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr.

A moving story of losing family but finding a new one. Thirteen-year-old Rachel is bad news, or so her foster care worker tells her. She's been shuttled from one rotten foster family to another ever since her mother and brother died in a car accident five years ago, and she's running out of options.

In Somewhere I Belong, we meet young P.J. Kavanaugh at North Boston Station. His father has died, the Depression is on, and his mother is moving them back home. They settle in, and P.J. makes new friends. But the P.E.I. winter is harsh, the farm chores endless, and his teacher a drunken bully. He soon wants to go home; the problem is how. A letter arrives from Aunt Mayme announcing a Babe Ruth charity baseball game in the old neighbourhood. But Ma won't let him go. P.J is devastated. The weeks pass, then there is an accident on the farm. P.J. becomes a hero and Ma changes her mind.

It's lobster season at The Shores, a fishing village isolated from The Island in a storm surge. Parker, a collector of antiquities, moved there with his partner Guillaume, a chef just out of rehab. "Hy" McAllister, a writer looking for lobster recipes for a newsletter, also needs a speaker for her Women's Institute meeting. Enter Camilla, founder of the Lobster Liberation Legion. The legion starts freeing lobsters from their traps, angering the villagers and the man who runs Parker's fisheries empire.

A young widow, orphan and mother, Wilhelmina Anne Brown is just beginning to find some stability in her new home in Prince Edward Island when she is forced to deal with the death of her beloved uncle, Bill Darby. Darby, a Charlottetown private investigator, leaves Anne and her fourteen-year-old daughter a small savings account and his business, where Anne has worked as office manager for six years. What follows is Anne's struggle to protect her family, find justice for her clients, and forge a new life for herself.

The Last Wild Boy is a dystopic story about Nora who lives in the walled city of Aahimsa, an idyllic community of girls and women working together to make a peaceful life free of the brutality of the outsiders. Nora and her friend Alice, the mayor's daughter, find an outsider baby abandoned within the city walls, and Nora starts to question whether the outsiders pose as much of a threat to her civilization as she's been taught. With the baby's life in danger, Nora must decide whether she's willing to give up everything she has to save him.

Twelve-year-old Kira loves to swim. But her parents, who adopted her as a baby, have forbidden her to go near the sea where they live on the north Atlantic coast. Frustrated by their rules, Kira decides to rebel and jumps into the icy waters. She is shocked by what she learns about herself. With the help of her friend Cody, Kira begins the search for her original family. She soon discovers why her adoptive parents were afraid to let her go into the sea.

William Andrews' first novel examines life in a small PEI community in the 1940s and 50s as changes, so common in the rest of the world, begin to take hold. Using a road as an allegory, he weaves a lyrical tale of simple country people, their struggles and their joys. The story is told through the eyes of a boy called Jake: he is the witness to life on the Hook Road and the events that change that life forever. In The Grand Change the people and the world they inhabit are richly and meticulously described.