National Network for Equitable Library Service

At the centre of this story of a modern-day knight errant is Tully Stamper, a bankrupt, a liar, a tippler of corn juice and a deadbeat husband who has abandoned his wife and child on fraudulent psychiatric grounds. He is also one of the world's last innocents. The setting for Tully's adventure is Gomez Gap, Florida, a sliver of the Old South turned into a Hollywood backdrop for the movie recreation of a famous Civil War battle.

Set on the Niagara frontier in the final days of the American Revolution, The Life and Times of Captain N. sees the revolutionary new world order from the standpoint of the losers. Hendrick Nellis, a Tory guerrilla, has also been a redeemer of whites abducted by Indians. His son Oskar finds himself sometimes allied with the Indians, sometimes at war with them.

A Guide to Animal Behaviour is a stunning collection of stories by an author who is fast becoming one of the great, innovative story writers of his generation. Urbane, stylish, and off-beat, the stories in this collection touch the lives of an astonishing array of characters whose common experience is of a world that is wayward yet full of marvels. This is sophisticated fiction at its best. A maximalist writer of ideas, he packs his sentences with energy, exuberant imagery and amazing turns of thoughts.

Bishop's Road is set in contemporary St. John's and tells the story of a year in the lives of a handful of odd characters, women mostly, shaken out of their pathetic complacency by a teenage delinquent with magic in her eyes. There are bones in the attic, humour, tragedy, joy, a little romance, murder and some madness and the delicious realization that life is best lived out loud.

Set in a 1920s coal-mining town, 13-year-old JW Donaldson is a good student with a bright future. As school ended for the year in 1926, JW was looking forward to summer. His father works in the mine, and there is a lot of talk around town about the mines. JW doesn?t know the details. Slowly JW's parents reveal the truth: his father's hours have been reduced and they face difficult decisions to make ends meet that will impact on the young man?s life.

Colourful characters, subtle satire and social conscience is omnipresent in the hilarious adventures of Cape Breton pals Tinker and Blue in late-sixties San Francisco. It was Blue's idea to drive their fourth-hand 1957 push-button Plymouth out to San Francisco to check out the famed Haight-Ashbury district. Hitchhiking hippies, homespun humour, wit and wisdom, troubles in love and trouble with the law converge to make Tinker and Blue a funny and clever.

Smallish and inelegant, Shean?s postwar, post-industrial economy is in desperate disrepair, and the lengths that some civic leaders will go to in order to do "what?s best" sometimes requires a leap of faith that has unintended consequences. When a global corporation plans a daring scheme to exploit the remaining coal from an improbable source -- and thus to secure Shean?s economic future -- politicians try to marginalize the few voices of dissent. Some voices, however, are not easily silenced.

Alexander Graham Bell, Baddeck's most illustrious resident, and one of the world's greatest inventors, is also famous for the greatness of his compassion. It's 1908, and ten-year-old Eddie MacDonald shares the friendly inventor's passion for solving problems and for taking long walks in the fields above Bras d'Or Lake. But whereas Bell is renowned by many for being the smartest man in the world, Eddie is just a local farm boy who struggles to learn to read and write.

Tina is short, but she packs a wallop. And she knows every move a boxer needs to get to the top. It's 1979, and the glory days of the sport are over. With the family gym about to fold, and her father unwilling to listen to a word she says, Tina explodes and takes off, leaving Sydney's Whitney Pier behind her for good. But it isn't her temper that turns things around, it's a road trip with her sister, and a Mi'kmaw light-heavyweight they meet along the way. Tina's convinced he'll go the distance - with her as Manager.

Descended from one of the three most prominent families in Acadia, Jeanne Dugas (1731-1817) and her family lived for more than thirty years under the threat of capture and deportation by the British militia and attacks by pirates and privateers. The story follows trials and tribulations from Louisbourg to Grand Pré, to Port Toulouse and Mira, Île-Saint-Jean, Remshic, Restigouche and back again -- often more than once. Captured by the British militia, the family was imprisoned, where three of her four children died.