Vaughan City Hall will be hosting two FIFA World Cup viewing parties in their parking lot on Friday June 12th and Wednesday June 24th. Visitors to Civic Centre Resource Library may experience reduced available parking during this time. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause.
DYSTOPIAN FICTION - FEMALE FRIENDSHIP Deep underground, thirty-nine women live imprisoned in a cage. Watched over by guards, the women have no memory of how they got there, no notion of time, and only a vague recollection of their lives before. As the burn of electric light merges day into night and numberless years pass, a young girl--the fortieth prisoner--sits alone and outcast in the corner. Soon she will show herself to be the key to the others' escape and survival in the strange world that awaits them above ground. Jacqueline Harpman was born in Etterbeek, Belgium, in 1929, and fled to Casablanca with her family during WWII. Informed by her background as a psychoanalyst and her youth in exile, I Who Have Never Known Men is a haunting, heartbreaking post-apocalyptic novel of female friendship and intimacy, and the lengths people will go to maintain their humanity in the face of devastation. Back in print for the first time since 1997, Harpman's modern classic is an important addition to the growing canon of feminist speculative literature
(15 copies)
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ROMANCE FICTION - COLLEGE STUDENTS Anastasia Allen has worked her entire life for a shot at Team USA. She has a planner that would most people weep, and a drive that few can match. A competitive figure skater since she was five years old and with a full college scholarship thanks to her place on the Maple Hills skating team, Stassie comes to win. No exceptions. Nathan Hawkins has never had a problem he couldn't solve. As captain of the Maple Hills Titans, he knows the responsibility of keeping the hockey team on the ice rests on his shoulders. But when a misunderstanding results in the two teams sharing a rink, Nate and Stassie find themselves forced together, their two coaches vying for time and attention. Stassie's hatred for hockey players immediately surfaces at the rink. But when Stassie's skating partner faces an uncertain future, Nate looks like her best option to advance in competiton. The pair become stuck together in more ways than one, but it's fine, because Stassie is sure she doesn't like hockey players...right?
(10 copies)
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DOMESTIC FICTION - FAMILIES If you knew the date of your death, how would you live your life?
It's 1969 in New York City's Lower East Side, and word has spread of the arrival of a mystical woman, a traveling psychic who claims to be able to tell anyone the day they will die. The Gold children--four adolescents on the cusp of self-awareness--sneak out to hear their fortunes.
The prophecies inform their next five decades. Golden-boy Simon escapes to the West Coast, searching for love in '80s San Francisco; dreamy Klara becomes a Las Vegas magician, obsessed with blurring reality and fantasy; eldest son Daniel seeks security as an army doctor post-9/11; and bookish Varya throws herself into longevity research, where she tests the boundary between science and immortality.
A sweeping novel of remarkable ambition and depth, The Immortalists probes the line between destiny and choice, reality and illusion, this world and the next. It is a deeply moving testament to the power of story, the nature of belief, and the unrelenting pull of familial bonds.
(15 copies)
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BILDUNGROMANS - GRIEF In 1987, Miri Ammerman returns to her hometown of Elizabeth, New Jersey, to attend a commemoration of the worst year of her life. Thirty-five years earlier, when Miri was fifteen, and in love for the first time, a succession of airplanes fell from the sky, leaving a community reeling. Against this backdrop of actual events that Blume experienced in the early 1950s, when airline travel was new and exciting and everyone dreamed of going somewhere, she paints a vivid portrait of a particular time and place Nat King Cole singing "Unforgettable," Elizabeth Taylor haircuts, young (and not-so-young) love, explosive friendships, A-bomb hysteria, rumors of Communist threat. And a young journalist who makes his name reporting tragedy. Through it all, one generation reminds another that life goes on
(15 copies)
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HISTORICAL FICTION - FUGITIVE SLAVES Young Lensinda Martin is a protegee of a crusading Black journalist and activist in mid-18th century southwestern Ontario. One night, a neighbouring farmer summons Lensinda after a slave hunter is shot dead on his land by an old woman recently arrived via the Underground Railroad. When the old woman, whose name is Cash, refuses to flee before the authorities arrive, the farmer urges Lensinda to gather testimony from her before Cash is condemned. But Cash doesn't want to confess--instead she proposes a barter: A story for a story. And so begins an extraordinary exchange of life stories that reveal the interwoven history of Canada and the United States. As Cash's time runs out, Lensinda realizes she knows far less than she believed not only about the complicated tapestry of her people's ancestry, but also of her own family history. And it seems that Cash may carry a secret that could shape Lensinda's destiny. These two women's life stories weave together love, tragedy, and survival, to map their own unexpected interconnections onto the history of North America in an entirely new and resonant way
(15 copies)
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NON-FICTION - FIRST NATIONS IN TORONTO A collection of narratives by and about Indigenous Toronto, past, present, and future. Beneath every major city in North America lies a deep and rich Indigenous history that has been paved over, and ignored. Toronto has seen 12,000 years of different peoples, including the Haudenosaunee, the Anishinaabe, the Huron-Wendat, and the Mississaugas of the New Credit, and a vibrant culture and history that thrives to this day. With original contributions by Indigenous elders, scholars, journalists, artists, activists, and historians about art, food, health, and more, this unique anthology explores the poles of erasure and cultural continuity that have come to define a crossroads city-region that was known as a meeting place long before the arrival of European settlers. Contributors include political scientist Hayden King, artist and curator Wanda Nanibush, chief Johl Whiteduck Ringuette, poet and broadcaster Duke Redbird, playwright Drew Hayden Taylor, educator Kerry Potts, writer/journalist Miles Morrisseau and photographer Nadya Kwandibens
(8 copies)
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NON-FICTION - NEUROBIOLOGY Throughout the world, mental capacity is declining, especially among young people, while depression rates are rising dramatically. Meanwhile, one in forty men and women suffers from Alzheimer's, and the age of onset is falling rapidly. But the causes are not being eliminated, quite the opposite. Can this just be coincidence? The Indoctrinated Brain introduces a largely unknown, powerful neurobiological mechanism whose externally induced dysfunction underlies these catastrophic developments. Michael Nehls, medical doctor and internationally renowned molecular geneticist, lays out a shattering chain of circumstantial evidence indicating that behind these numerous negative influences lies a targeted, masterfully executed attack on our individuality. He points out how the raging wars against viruses, about climate change, or over national borders are -- more likely intended than not -- fundamentally providing the platform for such an offensive against the human brain that is steadily changing our being and is aimed at depriving us of our ability to think for ourselves. But it is not too late. By exposing these brain-damaging processes and describing countermeasures that anyone can take, Nehls brings light and hope to this fateful chapter in human history. Nothing less will be decided than the question of whether our species can retain its humanity and its creative power or whether it will lose them irretrievably
(10 copies)
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NON-FICTION - REFUGEES IN NETHERLANDS This is an account of the life of the Somali-born Ali and her struggle with her Muslim faith. In it she discusses how her experiences in the poitical chaos of Somalia shaped her views. She was born into a family of desert nomads, subjected to circumcision and educated by radical imams. Later she was forced into marriage in Canada. On her way there, in the transit hall of Schiphol, she decided to ask for asylum in the Netherlands.
(13 copies)
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In the middle of the night intruders silently murder Luke Ellis' parents and load him into a black SUV. Luke will wake up at The Institute, in a room that looks just like his own, except there's no window. And outside his door are other doors, behind which are other kids with special talents - telekinesis and telepathy - who got to this place the same way Luke did. They are all in Front Half. Others, Luke learns, graduated to Back Half, "like the roach motel," Kalisha says. "You check in, but you don't check out." In this most sinister of institutions, the director, Mrs. Sigsby, and her staff are ruthlessly dedicated to extracting from these children the force of their extranormal gifts. If you go along, you get tokens for the vending machines. If you don't, punishment is brutal. As each new victim disappears to Back Half, Luke becomes more and more desperate to get out and get help. But no one has ever escaped from The Institute.
(10 copies)
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HISTORICAL FICTION - WOMAN VIOLINISTS Inspired by true events, The Instrumentalist tells the story of Anna Maria della Pietà --orphan, musical prodigy and favourite student of Antonio Vivaldi. Anna Maria is on a mission: to become Venice's greatest violinist and composer. In her remarkable world of colour and sound, it seems as if nothing can stop her. But it is 1704 and she is, after all, a girl. The pursuit of her ambition will test everything Anna Maria holds dear. With echoes of internationally renowned historical fiction such as Tuscan Daughter by Lisa Rochon, Hamnet by Maggie O'Farrell and Perfume by Patrick Süskind, The Instrumentalist brings to life the remarkable story of one of classical music's most important yet overlooked figures. It is guaranteed to transport even the most unmusical of readers into a whole other realm.
(15 copies)
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