Book Club Sets L-Z
To order a set, please call the branch that owns the Book Club Set you are interested in. Staff will be pleased to reserve the set for your book club and arrange for pick-up at any of the six branches.
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The last crossing
Two Englishmen travel to the Canadian west to search for their lost brother, hiring the Metis guide, Jerry Potts, to assist them.
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Late nights on air
Accepting a position at a northern Canadian radio station in 1975, Dido Paris disarms a hard-bitten broadcaster with her beauty and vocal talents before controversy surrounding a proposed gas pipeline triggers call-in-listener debates on the air.
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The little stranger
A gripping haunted house tale and a chilling novel of psychological suspense, set in a crumbliing mansion in post-war England.
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The lost garden
In 1941, Gwen Davis leaves war-torn London to supervise a food-growing effort in Devon and ends up falling in love with a Canadian soldier billeted nearby.
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The lovely bones : a novel
Susie, having been raped and murdered, looks down from heaven to keep watch over her grieving family and friends. Oddly affecting.
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Loving Frank : a novel
This debut historical novel centering on the love affair between Frank Lloyd Wright and Mamah Cheney, told fromCheney's feminist, educated perspective, has been lauded as compassionate without being sentimental, intelligent , a brilliant weave of fact and fiction. Both the period and the characters come alive in this tribute.
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Loyalty management
Like a sculptor finding the image trapped within the stone, Glen Downie shapes the shards of history and humanity into arresting poetry in his newest collection.
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Luck
A man's sudden death affects the three women in his life (his wife the sculptor, her model and the housekeeper) in surprising ways that bring secrets to light.
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Mme. Proust and the kosher kitchen
Stretching between turn-of-the-century Paris and contemporary Canada, the stories of three women are intertwined: Marcel Proust's mother, a young bilingual Canadian, and the mother of her ex-lover, a Holocaust survivor.
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The Madonna of Excelsior
Twisted mores and personal relationships that cross the colour line feature in this novel of Apartheid-era South Africa. Based on a real story.
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Major Pettigrew's last stand : a novel
When retired Major Pettigrew strikes up an unlikely friendship with Mrs. Ali, the Pakistani village shopkeeper, he is drawn out of his regimented world and forced to confront the realities of life in the twenty-first century.
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The man from Beijing
In the small Swedish hamlet of Hesjövallen, a horrific scene is discovered: nineteen people have been tortured and massacred and the only clue is a red silk ribbon found at the scene.
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A map of glass
After the frozen body of Alzheimer patient Andrew Woodman is found, his lover Sylvia and the young man who discovered the body seek to find out what happened.
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The marriage bureau for rich people
Driving his wife crazy after his retirement, Mr. Ali is persuaded to open a marriage bureau, and when his business becomes a success he decides to hire an assistant, Aruna, who is hiding a tragic past.
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March : a novel
The father in Louisa May Alcott's Little Women leaves behind his family to aid the Union cause. The experience changes his marriage and shakes his ardently-held beliefs to the core.
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The memory keeper's daughter
A doctor delivers his newborn twins and rashly deciding to protect his wife from their baby daughter's affliction with Down Syndrome, turns her over to a nurse, who secretly raises the child.
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Midnight at the Dragon Café
A girl growing up in the 1950s finds herself shouldering her mother's hopes and dreams as her immigrant family tries to forge a new life for themselves in a small Ontario town.
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The midwife of Venice
At midnight, the dogs, cats, and rats rule Venice. The Ponte di Ghetto Nuovo, the bridge that leads to the ghetto, trembles under the weight of sacks of rotting vegetables, rancid fat, and vermin. Shapeless matter, perhaps animal, floats to the surface of Rio di San Girolamo and hovers on its greasy waters. Through the mist rising from the canal the cries and grunts of foraging pigs echo. Seeping refuse on the streets renders the pavement slick and the walking treacherous. It was on such a night that the men came for Hannah.
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Mister Pip
This is a book about the power of reading, set against the rebellion and subsequent blockade of the tiny south Pacific island of Bougainville. Matilda is able to escape the hardships of her life by immersing herself in Victorian England along with Pip of Great Expectations.
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The mistress of nothing
Based on the true story of Victorian Lady Duff Gordon, but with her maid Sally Naldrett at its center, this is a novel of romance, and biting social commentary, set against the backdrop of Egypt.
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More
Idora Morrison, originally from Barbados, is worried sick about her teenaged son who is missing. Winner of the City of Toronto Book Award, this is a haunting tale of hope and redemption.
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Mrs Woolf and the servants
A mix of social history, biography and literary criticism, this is a provocative look at the relationships between Virginia Woolf and her domestic servants.
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My sister's keeper : a novel
Created to donate body parts to keep her mortally-ill sister alive, 13-year-old Anna sues her parents for the right to make decisions about her own body. Perspectives from multiple characters reveal the complex, moral consequences of such biological tampering.
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No great mischief
Alexander MacDonald narrates the story of his ancestors back two centuries, from their life in Scotland to that in Cape Breton.
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The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency
Botswanian sleuth Precious Ramotswe investigates local mysteries, including a missing boy and a clinic doctor with different personalities for different days of the week.
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Olive Kitteridge
Told in a series of linked stories, this is a deeply penetrating portrait of ordinary people in small town Maine, with a redoubtable school teacher at its center.
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Oryx and Crake
Atwood's fears of environmental disaster, runaway social inequality, and genetic technology are the catalysts for this dystopia, which features only male protagonists.
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The other side of the bridge
In this follow-up to Crow Lake, the author again explores the moral quandaries of life in the Canadian north during the Depression, WWII and the coming of television.
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The outlander
In 1903 nineteen-year-old Mary Boulton, widowed by her own hand, flees alone across the west, one quick step ahead of the law and her husband's two brothers.
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Over the edge of the world : Magellan's terrifying circumnavigation of the globe
This tenacious adventurer and his crew endure a harrowing three-year journey trying to find a water route to the Spice Islands.
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The particular sadness of lemon cake : a novel
Being able to taste people's emotions in food may at first be horrifying. But young, unassuming Rose Edelstein grows up learning to harness her gift as she becomes aware that there are secrets even her taste buds cannot discern.
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Peony in love : a novel
Based on a true story, this novel uses the richness and magic of the Chinese afterlife to transcend and explore the many manifestations of love.
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Persepolis
An autobiographical graphic novel of a young Iranian girl's life during the Islamic revolution.
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The piano tuner
A piano tuner leaves London for the jungles of Burma to repair a piano for a British army officer who uses music to help establish peace.
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The places in between
In 2002, the author, accompanied by a large toothless mastiff, walked across Afghanistan, staying in small villages and recording his adventures along the way.
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Pompeii
In 79 A.D., a Roman engineer heads to the slopes of Mount Vesuvius to investigate the failure of an aquaduct, and comes face to face with an impending disaster.
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Pope Joan : a novel
Berated for being intelligent and scholarly, a 12th century German girl dons her dead brother's clothes, assumes a man's identity, and gains respect and authority as well as the title of Pope.
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The postmistress
It is 1940. France has fallen. Bombs are dropping on London and President Roosevelt is promising he won't send our boys to fight in "foreign wars." American radio gal Frankie Bard, the first woman to report from the Blitz in London, wants nothing more than to bring the war home, imploring listeners to pay attention - as the Nazis bomb London nightly, and Jewish refugees stream across Europe. Frankie is convinced that if she can just get the right story, it will wake Americans to action and they will join the fight.
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The pull of the moon
Nan, unhappy with her life and marriage, turns 50 and embarks on a back-road odyssey to discover how her life can be reshaped.
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Purple hibiscus
Set in Nigeria during a time of political unrest, Kambili's coming-of-age story is a microcosm of the positive and negative effects of colonial rule.
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The reader
A young German man becomes involved with an older woman, later leading him to consider the nature of love, guilt, and moral responsibility.
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Reading Lolita in Tehran : a memoir in books
A true story of eight women in revolutionary Iran who discover the power and joy of literature when they secretly study the greats of Western literature at their teacher's home.
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The reluctant fundamentalist
A young Pakistani-American lives the American dream until the events of September 11 force him to reassess his personal allegiances.
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Remarkable creatures
A fictionalized account of the life of Mary Anning whose extraordinary gift for finding fossils led to some of the most important discoveries of the nineteenth century.
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The road home
In the wake of factory closings and his beloved wife's death, Lev makes his way from Eastern Europe to London, seeking work to support his mother and his little daughter. Homesickness dogs Lev -- but can he really go home again?
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Room : a novel
Through ingenuity and determination, Ma has created a life for herself and her son, but she knows it's not enough for either of them. Jack's curiosity is building alongside Ma's desperation -- and Room can't contain either of them for much longer.
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Runaway : stories
From the particular lives of ordinary women to universal, psychological insights, Alice Munro gives us another superlative collection of short stories.
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Rush Home Road
Volunteering to take in five-year-old Sharla for the summer triggers memories for eighty-year-old Adelaide Shadd of her own childhood in Rusholme, a south-western Ontario town settled by fugitive slaves in the mid-1800s.
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Sarah's key
American journalist Julia Jarmond is asked to write an article on the 60th anniversary of the roundup of Jews in Paris and embarks on investigation that leads her to long-hidden family secrets and to the ordeal of Sarah, a young girl caught up in the raid.
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Saturday
As Henry Perowne, a London neurosurgeon, goes through his day, which includes a squash game, various communications with his family, and an altercation with an aggressive young thug, we are treated to his reflections on the way of the world.
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Secret daughter
Interweaves the stories of a baby girl in India, the American doctor who adopted her, and the Indian mother who gave her up in favor of a son.
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The secret life of bees
A young girl, whose mother has been killed, travels toward healing after being taken in by an eccentric trio of black beekeeping sisters.
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The secret mitzvah of Lucio Burke : a novel
A novel about youth, passion, family, and baseball: a richly imagined chapter of Toronto's history in the 1930s.
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Seduction : a novel
A psychological thriller: part murder mystery, part discussion of Freudian analysis.
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The Septembers of Shiraz
A Jewish family in Iran suffers when the father is arrested as a Zionist spy. Family and political issues raised in the book are timely and ripe for discussion.
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Shanghai girls : a novel
In 1937, Shanghai is the Paris of Asia and thanks to the financial security and material comforts provided by their father's prosperous rickshaw business, twenty-one-year-old Pearl Chin and her younger sister, May, are having the time of their lives ... until the day their father tells them that he has gambled away their wealth and that in order to repay his debts he must sell the girls as wives to suitors who have traveled from California to find Chinese brides.
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A short history of tractors in Ukrainian
Sisters Vera and Nadia set aside their many differences to outwit a new, common foe, their widowed father's gold-digging, much-younger wife, in this comic/tragic story.
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Sing you home : a novel
Ten years of infertility issues culminate in the destruction of music therapist Zoe Baxter's marriage, after which she falls in love with another woman and wants to start a family, but her ex-husband, Max, stands in the way.
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Small island
At the end of World War II the Joseph family arrives in London from Jamaica and Queenie, their white landlady, befriends them, until her racist husband, Bernard, arrives home from the front.
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The sound of language : a novel
Raihana, a young Afghan widow and refugee living in rural Denmark, must try to adapt to her new life. A look at immigration from several points of view.
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The sparrow
A hand-picked group consisting of professionals travel to the planet of Rakhat, with both enlightening and disastrous results.
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State of wonder
Dr. Marina Singh, a research scientist with a Minnesota pharmaceutical company, is sent to Brazil to track down her former mentor, who seems to have all but disappeared in the Amazon while working on what is destined to be an extremely valuable new drug.
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Still Alice : a novel
A compelling novel about a 50-year-old woman's sudden descent into early onset Alzheimer's disease.
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![Book cover of Suite fran�aise [English ed.]](http://syndetics.com/index.aspx?isbn=0676977707/SC.gif)
Suite française [English ed.]
Written mere months after the events they describe, this novel has a rare sense of immediacy about the German invasion of Paris in 1940 and life in occupied France. Nemirovsky's masterful story-telling combines the intimate with the grand.
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The suite life : the magic and mystery of hotel living
Interviews with high-profile celebrities who have chosen hotel living.
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The sweetness at the bottom of the pie
A delightfully dark English mystery, featuring precocious young sleuth Flavia de Luce and her eccentric family.
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Sweetness in the belly
Orphaned in Morocco at the age of eight, British-born Lilly studiously devotes her life to the teachings of the Koran. Having later moved to Ethiopia, she must flee to London when unrest develops.
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The ten-year nap
Ten years after leaving high-powered jobs to raise their children, four New York friends enter their forties struggling with the differences between their past ideals and their present realities.
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The thirteenth tale
The story of her life, which a dying author spins for her biographer, reads like a classic, gothic novel, an homage to Jane Eyre and Rebecca - but how much of it is true?
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Three cups of tea : one man's mission to promote peace-- one school at a time
Moved by the kindness of Pakistani villagers, the author promises to return to build a school. This is the extraordinary story of the outcome of that promise.
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Three day road : a novel
Xavier, the nephew of a Canadian Oji-Cree who is the last of a line of healers and diviners, enlists in the military during World War I with his friend, Elijah, where they are celebrated for their marksmanship yet disdained for their aboriginal heritage.
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The time in between
In search of reconciliation with his past, Charles Boatman returns to Vietnam where he fought 29 years earlier as a young, reluctant soldier.
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The time traveler's wife : a novel
Clare and Henry vow to hold onto each other and their marriage as they struggle with a condition that casts Henry into uncontrollable, spontaneous, time travelling.
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Tinkers
On his deathbed, surrounded by his family, George Washington Crosby's thoughts drift back to his childhood and the father who abandoned him when he was twelve.
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A tree grows in Brooklyn
This richly-plotted narrative of three generations in a poor, but proud American family offers a detailed and unsentimental portrait of urban life at the beginning of the century.
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True confections : a novel
The story, told as an affidavit given during a family feud for control of the company Zip's Candy, recounts Alice's marriage into the Ziplinsky family, herefforts to belong, and her devotion to the company.
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Tuesdays with Morrie : an old man, a young man, and life's greatest lesson
Sportswriter Albom has weekly conversations with his former college professor and mentor, Morrie Schwartz, who is dying from Lou Gehrig's disease.
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Unaccustomed earth : stories
The overriding theme connecting this collection of short stories is the impact of immigration from India to America, and the conflict between generations it produces. Pulitzer-prize winning author.
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The uncommon reader
This hilarious satire asks: "What if the Queen was struck by the power of literature?" Queen Elizabeth II, chasing after her corgis, accidentally discovers the bookmobile by the palace kitchen. She borrows a book, becomes hooked on reading, and, as any good reader knows, she begins questioning many things.
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Unless : a novel
A mother's grief over her daughter's break with the family causes her to revise her feminist outlook and pushes her craft as a writer in a new direction.
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The Very Thought of You.
This novel chronicles the loves and losses that beset the intertwined lives of residents evacuated to an estate in Yorkshire, northern England, during WWII. The life of eight-year-old Anna Sands changes forever when she leaves London for Ashton Park, the home of Elizabeth and Thomas Ashton.
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A wall of light : a novel
The conclusion of Ravel's Israeli Trilogy follows three generations of a family living through the stormy political climate of Israel.
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The wasted vigil
An elderly doctor mourning the death of his Afghani wife and searching for his missing daughter and grandson, opens his home in Afghanistan to different houseguests with clashing ideologies and dangerous ambitions.
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Water for elephants : a novel
Ninety-something Jacob Jankowski remembers his time in the circus as a young man during the Great Depression, and his friendship with Marlena, the star of the equestrian act, and Rosie, the elephant, who gave them hope.
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Wench : a novel
The moral complexities of slavery are examined in this story of four slave women who accompany their masters each year to a resort in the free state of Ohio in the mid-1850s.
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The white tiger : a novel
A lower-caste man awakens to the degradation of his servitude. Balram Halwai tells the story of how he came to be a servant, philosopher, entrepreneur and murderer in modern India.
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Wild swans : three daughters of China
Truly non-fiction which reads like fiction, Chang's account of the lives of three generations of women in her family mirrors the story of China during the twentieth century.
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Wolf Hall
Thomas Cromwell must advise Henry VIII how he can marry Anne Boleyn in spite of two formidable obstacles - the Church is totally opposed and he is already married.
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