Half-Blood Blues, winner of the 2011 Scotiabank Giller Prize is a story set in Paris about music, race, love and loyalty.

(15 copies)  Reserve

An examination of Chinese restaurants with a focus on the chefs, entrepreneurs, labourers, and dreamers who can be found in Chinese kitchens worldwide. This non-fiction book charts a living atlas of the global Chinese migration, revealing the synergies of politics, culture and family.

(12 copies)  Reserve

Guileless and refreshingly honest, Terese Mailhot's debut memoir chronicles her struggle to balance the beauty of her Native heritage with the often desperate and chaotic reality of life on the reservation. Heart Berries is a powerful, poetic memoir of a woman's coming of age on the Seabird Island Indian Reservation in British Columbia. Having survived a profoundly dysfunctional upbringing only to find herself hospitalized and facing a dual diagnosis of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and Bipolar II; Terese Mailhot is given a notebook and begins to write her way out of trauma. The triumphant result is Heart Berries, a memorial for Mailhot's mother, a social worker and activist who had a thing for prisoners; a story of reconciliation with her father--an abusive drunk and a brilliant artist--who was murdered under mysterious circumstances; and an elegy on how difficult it is to love someone while dragging the long shadows of shame. Mailhot "trusts the reader to understand that memory isn't exact, but melded to imagination, pain and what we can bring ourselves to accept." Her unique and at times unsettling voice graphically illustrates her mental state. As she writes, she discovers her own true voice, seizes control of her story and, in so doing, reestablishes her connection to her family, to her people and to her place in the world.

(15 copies)  Reserve

Love isn't blind, it's just little blurry. Sadie Montgomery never saw what was coming . . . Literally! One minute she's celebrating the biggest achievement of her life--placing as a finalist in the North American Portrait Society competition--the next she's lying in a hospital bed diagnosed with a "probably temporary" condition known as face blindness. She can see, but every face she looks at is now a jumbled puzzle of disconnected features. Imagine trying to read a book upside down and in another language. This is Sadie's new reality. But, as she struggles to cope, hang on to her artistic dream, work through major family issues, and take care of her beloved dog, Peanut, she falls in love--not with one man but two. The timing couldn't be worse. Making judgment calls on anything right now is a nightmare. If only her life were a little more in focus, Sadie might be able to have it all.

(10 copies)  Reserve

The setting is racially divided Jackson, Mississippi and the story involves three women who team up for a clandestine project.

(15 copies)  Reserve

Seventeen-year-old Lakshmi escapes an abusive marriage and makes her way to the vibrant 1950s pink city of Jaipur. She becomes the best and most requested henna artist -- and confidante -- to wealthy women of upper class. But keeping the secrets of the wealthy means she can never reveal her own. She is startled when she is confronted by her husband, with a young girl in tow -- a sister Lakshmi never knew about. Suddenly the life she has carefully cultivated is threatened. Still she applies her talents and lifts up those around her as she does.

(9 copies)  Reserve

The phenomenal true story of the black female mathematicians at NASA whose calculations helped fuel some of America's greatest achievements in space.

(14 copies)  Reserve

Shares the story of the author's family and upbringing, describing how they moved from poverty to an upwardly mobile clan that included the author, a Yale Law School graduate, while navigating the demands of middle class life and the collective demons ofthe past.

(15 copies)  Reserve

Hitman Anders, recently out of prison, is doing small jobs for the big gangsters. Then his life takes an unexpected turn when he meets a female Protestant vicar (who also happens to be an atheist), and a homeless receptionist at a former brothel which is now a one-star hotel. The three join forces and concoct an unusual business plan based on Hitman Anders' skills and his fearsome reputation. The vicar and receptionist will organize jobs for a group of gangsters, and will attract customers using the tabloids' love of lurid headlines.

(15 copies)  Reserve

The story of a young unwed mother who is forcibly separated from her daughter at birth and the lengths to which they go to find each other.

(15 copies)  Reserve