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Advice For Italian Boys$29.95 add to cart

In this quiet, reflective novel, Nicolo, the middle son of Italian Canadian immigrants, struggles to figure out what he should be doing with his life. Will he be drawn into an early, working-class marriage to a young Italian woman who is committed to motherhood and her Catholic faith? Or should he be striving towards a more professional life like his younger brother who is in law school? With his Nonna's traditional sayings echoing in his ears, Nicolo works as a trainer at the local gym, observing his family, his clients, and the larger Italian community as he tries to build a future on the framework of his parents' culture. Giardini's point of view slides back and forth effortlessly between the main characters as they recall the past and try to cope with modern Canadian life. Nicolo, a product of his parents' faith and steadfast hopes, is a powerful protagonist for whom the reader will be cheering at the end, an end that promises success and happiness.

 

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The Knife of Never Letting Go$12.00 add to cart

Tweeting, texting, email and cell phones: we are surrounded by and enmeshed with the lives of others. Their noise can overwhelm us. In this can't-put-it-down novel, 13-year-old Todd Hewitt and his faithful dog Manchee are on the run from Prentissetown, a pioneer space colony where everyone can hear other people's thoughts - a grim, vicious place submerged in secrets surrounding the absence of women, cut off from other pioneer towns. Then Todd meets Viola Eade, whose parents have died when their advance ship has crash landed. Together they scramble towards safety, relentlessly pursued by the cold men of Prentissetown. Teens interested in the persistence of evil, the position of women in society, and what it means to be a man will be glued to this riveting novel.

 

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Reading by Lightning$22.95 add to cart

In Lily Piper's narrow, confined girlhood on the Canadian prairies during the 1930's, her father's love is the only warm, bright spot. Her mother's fierce, relentless watchful eye keeps the devil at bay. Then Lily is sent to England to care for her father's aging mother. Welcomed by energetic open-minded cousins and adored by her aunt, Lily's world explodes with possibilities. As she falls in love with her adopted cousin George, World War II creeps into their lives. When her father suddenly dies, Lily returns home to look after her mother who has developed MS. But everything has changed for Lily - how can she squeeze herself back into her mother's life? With a little help from a generous, kind man.

Both the harsh, prairie farmyard and the civilized English town besieged by war glow with scenes that ache with pain and loss, filled with people whose persistent hope and love held families together. If you're from the prairie you should place this book on the top of the book pile beside the chair.

 

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One Morning Like a Bird$24.95 add to cart

In the intellectual circles of middle class Tokyo during the beginning of WW II, a young man named Yuji struggles to understand if his destiny will be to write poems or to fight as a soldier. Japan is invading China and the threat of military conscription is very real. Unexpectedly, Yuji finds himself allied with the Feneon family, silk traders from France, in whose home he and his friends polish their French. For today's reader, who knows of the thousands of deaths resulting from the bombing of Tokyo, the sad dramatic irony of how war affects the lives of ordinary people is overwhelming. Andrew Miller's rich, sensuous descriptions set against Yuji's angst and inner turmoil open up another way to view the chaos of the time.