Award Winners
Two trees make a forest : in search of my family's past among Taiwan's mountains and coasts
Lee, Jessica J., 1986- author
2020
At the edge of the haight
Seligman, Katherine, 1953- author
2021
When Maddy Donaldo, a homeless woman who has made a family of sorts in the dangerous spaces of San Francisco's Golden Gate Park, witnesses the murder of a young homeless boy and is seen by the perpetrator, her relatively stable life is upended.
Bush runner : the adventures of Pierre-Esprit Radisson
Bourrie, Mark, 1957- author
2019
"The book is a biography of eccentric French fur trader Pierre Radisson, a man who helped shape the events of his time. Radisson spent his life trying to be an important part of the rather bizarre European beaver hat trade, but was stymied all his life. He lived through fantastic advenures : capture and adoption by the Mohawks in 1652, escape to early New York City, trading partner with the indigenous people of the Great Lakes, defecting from the French and witnessing the Great Plague and Great Fire of London, defecting back to the French, co-founding the Hudson's Bay Company, running with pirates... and so on. A fascinating and remarkable life story that is finally being told." --Provided by publisher.
Five wives : a novel
Thomas, Joan (Sandra Joan), author
2019
In 1956, a small group of evangelical Christian missionaries and their families journeyed to the rainforest in Ecuador intending to convert the Waorani, a people who had never had contact with the outside world. The plan was known as Operation Auca. After spending days dropping gifts from an aircraft, the five men in the party rashly entered the "intangible zone." They were all killed, leaving their wives and children to fend for themselves. Five Wives is the fictionalized account of the real-life women who were left behind, and their struggles -- with grief, with doubt, and with each other -- as they continued to pursue their evangelical mission in the face of the explosion of fame that followed their husbands' deaths.
Frying plantain : stories
Reid-Benta, Zalika, 1990- author
2019
Kara Davis is a girl caught in the middle--of her Canadian nationality and her desire to be a "true" Jamaican, of her mother and grandmother's rages and life lessons, of having to avoid being thought of as too "faas" or too "quiet" or too "bold" or too "soft." Set in "Little Jamaica," Toronto's Eglinton West neighbourhood, Kara moves from girlhood to the threshold of adulthood, from elementary school to high school graduation, in these twelve interconnected stories. We see her on a visit to Jamaica, startled by the sight of a severed pig's head in her great aunt's freezer; in junior high, the victim of a devastating prank by her closest friends; and as a teenager in and out of her grandmother's house, trying to cope with the ongoing battles between her unyielding grandparents. A rich and unforgettable portrait of growing up between worlds, Frying Plantain shows how, in one charged moment, friendship and love can turn to enmity and hate, well-meaning protection can become control, and teasing play can turn to something much darker. In her brilliantly incisive debut, Zalika Reid-Benta artfully depicts the tensions between mothers and daughters, second-generation Canadians and first-generation cultural expectations, and Black identity and predominately white society.
Greenwood : a novel
Christie, Michael, 1976-, author
2020
It's 2034 and Jake Greenwood is an overqualified tour guide in one of the world's last remaining forests. It's 2008 and Liam Greenwood is a carpenter, fallen from a ladder and sprawled on his broken back. It's 1974 and Willow Greenwood is out of jail, free after being locked up for one of her endless series of environmental protests. It's 1934 and Everett Greenwood is alone, as usual, in his maple syrup camp squat when he hears the cries of an abandoned infant and gets tangled up in the web of a crime that will cling to his family for decades. And throughout, there are trees: thrumming a steady, silent pulse beneath Christie's effortless sentences and working as a guiding metaphor for withering, weathering, and survival.
How to pronounce knife : stories
Thammavongsa, Souvankham, 1978- author
2020
In her stunning debut, Souvankham Thammavongsa captures the day-to-day lives of immigrants and refugees in a nameless city, illuminating hopes, disappointments, love affairs, and above all, the pursuit of a place to belong. An ex-boxer turned nail salon worker falls for a pair of immaculate hands; a mother and daughter harvest earthworms in the middle of the night; a country music-obsessed housewife abandons her family for fantasy; and a young girl's love for her father transcends language. Uncannily and intimately observed, written with prose of exceptional precision, the stories in How to Pronounce Knife speak of modern location and dislocation, revealing lives lived in the embrace of isolation and severed history - but not without joy, humour, resilience, and constant wonder at the workings of the world.
Moccasin Square Gardens : short stories
Van Camp, Richard, author
2019
The characters of Moccasin Square Gardens inhabit Denendeh, the land of the people north of the sixtieth parallel. These stories are filled with in-laws, outlaws and common-laws. Get ready for illegal wrestling moves ("The Camel Clutch"), pinky promises, a doctored casino, extraterrestrials or "Sky People", love, lust and prayers for peace. While this is Van Camp's most hilarious short story collection, it's also haunted by the lurking presence of the Wheetago, human-devouring monsters of legend that have returned due to global warming and the greed of humanity.
Ridgerunner
Adamson, Gil, 1961- author
2020
November 1917. After nearly twenty years, William Moreland, the notorious thief known as the Ridgerunner, has returned. And he is determined to steal enough money to secure his son's future. Twelve-year-old Jack Boulton, born in the woods to two outlaws, now finds himself semi-orphaned and left in the care of Sister Beatrice. The boy longs to return to his family's cabin, deep in the Sawback Range. His father is coming for him. The nun won't let him go.
The secret lives of church ladies
Philyaw, Deesha, author
2020
"The Secret Lives of Church Ladies explores the raw and tender places where black women and girls dare to follow their desires and pursue a momentary reprieve from being good. The nine stories in this collection feature four generations of characters grappling with who they want to be in the world, caught as they are between the church's double standards and their own needs and passions."-- Provided by publisher.
