|
|
|
|
Fireflies in Winter
by Eleanor Shearer
1796. Cora, an orphan newly arrived from Jamaica, has never felt cold like this. In the depths of winter, everyone in her community huddles together in their homes to keep warm. So when she sees a shadow slipping through the trees, Cora thinks her eyes are deceiving her. Until she creeps out into the moonlight and finds the tracks in the snow.
Agnes is in hiding. On the run from her former life, she has learned what it takes to survive alone in the wilderness. But she can afford no mistakes. When she first spies the young woman in the woods, she is afraid. Yet Cora is fearless, and their paths are destined to cross.
Deep amongst the cedars, Cora and Agnes find a fragile place of safety. But when Agnes’s past closes in, they are confronted with the dangerous price of freedom—and of love....
|
|
|
|
The Winter Witch
by Jennifer Chevalier
Élisabeth Jossard boards a bride ship to New France with her sister Marthe, forced to start a new life after a scandal in her village in Normandy. She’s harbouring a dark secret and hopes that by coming to Montreal—the holiest place in the world, she’s been told—the saints will hear her pleas and lift the curse that plagues her.
When Élisabeth’s prayers go unanswered and she is unable to banish the spirit she believes is tormenting her, Marthe encourages her to turn to a powerful witch for help, the enigmatic stowaway Jeanne Roy. But Jeanne has secrets of her own, and when she refuses to help, Élisabeth’s resentment kindles a dangerous fire.
|
|
|
|
Good People
by Patmeena Sabit
The Sharaf family is the picture of success. Successful, rich, happy. They came to this country as refugees with nothing more than the clothes on their backs. And now, after years of hard work, they live in the most exclusive neighborhood, their growing family attending the most prestigious schools. Zorah, the eldest daughter, is the apple of her father’s eye.
When an unthinkable tragedy strikes, everyone is left reeling and the family is thrust into the court of public opinion. There is talk that behind closed doors the Sharafs’ happy household was anything but. Did the Sharaf family achieve the American dream? Or was the image of the model immigrant family just a façade?
|
|
|
|
Variations on a Dream
by Angélique LaLonde
Sarah is exhausted from years of carrying the weight of childcare, housework, and emotional labor, leaving little room for her creativity or sense of self. She copes by imagining a better version of her husband, Trevor, while Trevor struggles with his own dissatisfaction and longing for the passion they once had.
When they both discover an artful erotic film inspired by Greek myth, it sparks a growing obsession that begins to blur fantasy and reality. As new temptations enter their lives, their marriage is pulled into a spiraling web of desire, jealousy, and unraveling identity.
|
|
|
|
The Fourth Princess: A Gothic Novel of Old Shanghai
by Janie Chang
Shanghai, 1911. Lisan Liu is thrilled to become secretary to Caroline Stanton, an American newly arrived in China and mistress of the eerie Lennox Manor. But the estate’s troubled history soon begins to affect Lisan, stirring unsettling visions and resurfacing childhood fears.
As Caroline tries to settle into her new life, tensions rise with the appearance of a threatening outsider and growing mysteries within the household. Meanwhile, Lisan is drawn deeper into the manor’s secrets, eventually uncovering shocking truths about her own past.
With strange events escalating, Lisan begins to question what’s real as Lennox Manor tightens its grip, refusing to let her go.
|
|
|
|
|
It's Not You, It's the World: A Mental Health Survival Guide for Us All
by Joanna Cheek
As the world becomes increasingly unstable, it’s no surprise that mental health struggles are so common—so common, in fact, that many symptoms may be less a sign of personal dysfunction and more a normal response to living in a disordered environment. Rather than viewing anxiety, depression, or burnout as evidence that something is wrong with us, psychiatrist Joanna Cheek suggests these reactions can be protective “alarm systems” designed to help us survive.
In It’s Not You, It’s the World, Dr. Cheek argues that self-improvement alone isn’t enough when the root of our distress often comes from larger societal and systemic breakdowns. She offers practical mental health tools to help individuals understand and befriend their internal alarms, while also encouraging collective healing and action to address the wider conditions making so many people unwell.
|
|
|
|
The First Survivor: Life with Canada's Deadliest Mass Shooter
by Maureen Banfield
On April 18, 2020, Lisa Banfield’s life shattered. After nineteen years in a controlling and often abusive relationship, she escaped a violent assault by her partner, Gabriel Wortman–unaware he was about to carry out the deadliest mass shooting in Canadian history. In The First Survivor, Banfield tells her story for the first time: of being groomed and surviving years of intimate partner violence, and of the horrific night she fled barefoot into the freezing woods as Wortman began a murderous rampage that left twenty-two people and an unborn child dead.
Told with raw honesty and courage, Banfield’s memoir is more than a personal account of life with a man she tried to heal–it’s a call to action. With intimate reflections and her own transformation, she exposes the failures in how society sees, supports, and judges survivors of domestic abuse.
This is a powerful story of trauma, survival, and one woman’s journey reclaiming her voice and redefining her life.
|
|
|
|
Cancelling Billionaires Before They Cancel Us: The Urgent Case for a Wealth Tax
by Linda McQuaig
As the ultra-wealthy siphon off an ever-larger share of the world’s wealth, they now dominate us to a degree unimaginable even a decade ago. With their voracious consumption, unbridled resource exploitation, and relentless obstruction of climate action, they are rapidly undermining democracy and destroying the very viability of the earth for human life.
Their staggering power and hoarding of wealth have prompted a number of G20 nations to consider imposing a wealth tax, aimed exclusively at the super-rich. In Canada, such a tax would apply only to those with wealth above $25 million. Yet it could collect $40 billion a year — funding public programs that could immensely improve the lives of millions of Canadians while clipping the wings of the super-rich.
Billionaires would threaten to depart. But as they left the country that had nourished them and enabled them to grow so wildly rich, they’d face a hefty “exit tax” on the way out.
Yes, change is possible.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|