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Returning to Ontario’s northern lakes as an adult to bury his father, Ray Carrier is taken back not only to a tangled romance in that green paradise but also to the forests and lonesome swamps that have haunted his dreams. As a teenager, Ray was enchanted by the grace and privilege of the Miller family on Providence Island, part of the wealthy resort community up the road from the farm where Ray and his widowed father spent their summers. Ray’s father had always said that he was too impressed by money. But it was more than that.

Short-listed for the 2012 SYRCA Snow Willow Award Lexie Malton is an average Vancouver teen with fairly typical issues. Her stepmother is far from her favourite person, she has a sister with special needs, and life outside the home is the usual mix of school, friends, and social events. But Lexie has a secret. Her ex-boyfriend, Devlin Mather, is now a heroin addict living on the street, and only Lexie knows that shes the one who put him there. Guilt makes her give in to Devlins demands for money time and time again, even though she knows how dangerous his drug use is.

Winner of the 2012 LAMBDA Literary Award for Best Lesbian Fiction and of the 2011 Rainbow Awards Ismail Boxwala made the worst mistake of his life one summer morning twenty years ago: he forgot his baby daughter in the back seat of his car. After his daughter’s tragic death, he struggles to continue living. A divorce, years of heavy drinking, and sex with strangers only leave him more alone and isolated.

In 1910, while twelve-year-old Addy McLeod waits in a cabin in the Kootenay wilderness of southeastern British Columbia for her brother, Cask, to send for her, she fends off the unwanted advances of her alcoholic stepfather. When tragedy strikes, she is forced to flee and disguise herself as a boy. Addy’s determined search for Cask becomes a journey of self-discovery as she encounters a tough trapper woman who cares for her when she’s ill, works in a hotel in the silver town of Kaslo on Kootenay Lake, and meets her first love, Ian.

2012 Manitoba Young Reader’s Choice Award — Shortlisted 2010 Cybils Award — Shortlisted A Victorian garden, a fishing lure, and a ghost named John Absolutely nothing is going right for Max Green. His parents have just uprooted their family from Vancouver to the bleak suburbs of Toronto, he has no friends, and everybody at his new high school is ignoring him. To make matters worse, he’s in love with an older girl who’s completely out of his league. When Max discovers a local library rumoured to be haunted by ghosts, he’s immediately drawn to it.

First published as Whiteoaks in 1929, in Whiteoaks of Jalna, the saga of the Whiteoak family continues, with more rivalries, tangled relationships, and secret love affairs. The colourful matriarch Adeline Whiteoak dies at 101. Each book is a complete and satisfying story in its own right, but the Jalna series has proven itself to be addictive to generations of readers around the world. This is book 8 of 16 in The Whiteoak Chronicles. It is followed by Finch’s Fortune.

Visiting Elizabeth follows a friendship that begins and ends with a needle. Elizabeth teaches Ariane to speak her mind. So when Elizabeth is struck and killed by a car, Ariane vows to speak for two. Soon, a hybrid language rolls off her tongue. Elizabeths English and Arianes native French are woven so fine they can no longer be separated. Just like the clothes Ariane alters and sews by hand, changing form and function, she discovers irresistible connections between her two languages and cultures, charging them with new energy and rhythms.

During a camping trip, 11-year-old Lee finds herself on a rough trail in a Vancouver Island forest. Halfway to an abandoned homestead, Lee trips and is knocked unconscious. She awakens in a world unfamiliar -- all the usual landmarks have disappeared and the terrain is unpopulated except for a strange trailer and a herd of dogs. Lee investigates only to find an ornery woman at an easel who says she's Emily Carr, and a family from the Depression-torn Prairies illegally logging the island's mighty cedars.

With exceptional power, Robinson exposes both the gravity and levity of relationships — formed in duty, in fear, in need — and the subtle ways we attempt to escape their persistent pull. At turns humourous, chilling and tender, Robinson's fiction displays a versatility in tone and subject that mirrors the stories of our lives, real or imagined, domestic or exotic. His writing elevates the "What If?" to new imaginary heights.

In Repeat This and You’re Dead, celebrated dramatist Lawrence Russell ventures for the first time into fiction. With gritty and unforgiving realism, these "short short stories" cast a harsh eye on the Ireland of the last half of this century, a country brutally divided while fiercely loyal to an ambiguous past and an even more turbulent future.