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 five branches.
Title/Author |
Available at: |
The Abstinence Teacher - Tom Perrotta
Teaching human sexuality from a perspective that information and pleasure are top priorities, divorced mom Ruth Ramsey butts heads with the local soccer coach, a divorced former addict who became an evangelical Christian after hitting rock bottom.
Single copies available in Audiobook
|
Barbara Frum |
The Accidental - Ali Smith
An enigmatic con artist insinuates herself into the lives of the Smart family one summer in Norfolk.
Single copies available in Large Print |
North York Central |
Ahab's Wife, or The Star Gazer - Sena Jeter Naslund
Inspired by a brief mention in Melville's Moby Dick, this is the story of Una, the wife of the captain of the Pequod, a complex and sophisticated woman who personifies the exciting and pivotal times of mid-nineteenth century New England.
Single copies available in Audiobook (cassettes) |
North York Central |
The Alchemist - Paulo Coehlo
A fable about following one's dream, listening to one's heart, and reading life's omens, featuring dialogue between a boy and an unnamed being.
Single copies available in Audiobook, eBook |
North York Central |
American Wife - Curtis Sittenfeld
Loosely based on the life of Laura Bush, this novel follows the trajectory of bookish, naïve Alice Lindgren, who later becomes First Lady.
Single copies available in eAudiobook, Large Print |
Northern District |
Any Known Blood - Lawrence Hill
Spanning five generations, this accaimed and unexpectedly funny novel is the story of a man seeking himself in the mirror of his family's past. By the author of The Book of Negroes. |
S. Walter Stewart |
Are you Somebody: the Accidental Memoir of a Dublin Woman - Nuala O'Faolain
"I'm not anybody in terms of the world, but then, who decides what a somebody is?" The answer can be found in the journalist's moving and honest memoir. |
North York Central |
Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress - Sijie Dai
During the Cultural Revolution, two boys are sent to the country for re-education where their lives take an unexpected turn when they stumble upon a forbidden stash of Western literature.
Single copies available in Audiobook, eAudiobook, Large Print |
Barbara Frum, Northern District, North York Central |
Bel Canto - Ann Patchett
Inspired by a real incident, this novel depicts a hostage-taking in which music alters the lives of everyone involved.
Single copies available in Audiobook, eAudiobook, Large Print |
Albert Campbell, Northern District |
The Birth House - Ami McKay
In early 20th century Nova Scotia, Dora Rare becomes an apprentice midwife/healer. Her story is told against the backdrop of the arrival of modern medicine (promising sterile, painless births) and the role of women. |
Barbara Frum |
Birth of Venus - Sarah Dunant
In this tale of art, love and betrayal, a young girl seeks freedom in marriage only to find she may have bought liberty at the price of love and artistic fulfillment.
Single copies available in Large Print |
Northern District |
Bits and Pieces - Henia Reinhartz
The story of a teenaged Pole, who must hide in a secret room with her family during WWII. Winner Canadian Jewish Book Award and Canadian Society for Yad Vashem Holocaust Memoir. 89 pages. |
Barbara Frum |
Black Bird - Michel Basilieres
A delightful, macabre Montreal novel, full of impossible happenings - violent one moment, hilarious the next. |
Albert Campbell |
Blessings - Anna Quindlen
A baby left on Lydia Blessing's doorstep transforms her life and that of her handyman, Skip, when they decide to raise the baby, keeping the situation secret - for a time.
Single copies available in Large Print |
Richview |
The Book of Negroes - Lawrence Hill
Abducted from her African village, Aminata Diallo is sent to live as a slave in America. This novel follows her on a brutal, incredible journey including her eventual return to Sierra Leone. |
Northern District |
The Book Thief - Marcus Zusak
Trying to make sense of the horrors of World War II, Death relates the story of Liesel--a young German girl whose book-stealing and story-telling talents help sustain her family and the Jewish man they are hiding, as well as their neighbors.
Single copies available in Audiobook, eAudiobook |
Albert Campbell |
Bookseller of Kabul - Anne Seierstad
A Norwegian journalist documents the life of an Afghani bookseller.
Single copies available in Audiobook, Large Print |
Northern District |
The Brain That Changes Itself - Norman Doidge
An astonishing new science is overthrowing the centuries-old notion that the human brain is immutable. Dr. Norman Doidge travels the country to meet both the brilliant scientists championing neuroplasticity and the people whose lives they've transformed. |
S. Walter Stewart |
Brick Lane - Monica Ali
After many difficulties in her early life, a young Bangladeshi woman finds herself married off to a man twice her age and living in multiethnic London.
Single copies available in Large Print |
Barbara Frum, Northern District |
Can you Hear the Nightbird Call? - Anita Rau Badami
Set against the background of late 20th century India, and moving back and forth between India and Canada, this novel charts the interweaving stories of 3 Indian women each in search of home amid rapidly changing personal and political landscapes. |
Northern District |
The Cellist of Sarajevo - Steven Galloway
A cellist commemorates the deaths of 22 friends and neighbours in a mortar attack by playing at the site for 22 days, while a sniper, fighting against the occupation, is charged with keeping him alive. |
North York Central, S. Walter Stewart |
Clara Callan - Richard Bruce Wright
The correspondence between sisters Clara and Nora, the former a thoughtful small-town teacher and the latter a worldly, dramatic New Yorker, provides the center of this acclaimed novel set in the 1930s.
Single copies available in Audiobook |
Richview |
Cold Mountain - Charles Frazier
Ada struggles to survive on her father's rundown farm during the Civil War, while her lover Inman, a wounded Confederate soldier, struggles to return home.
Single copies available in eAudiobook, Large Print |
Albert Campbell |
The Colony of Unrequited Dreams - Wayne Johnston
A fictional biography of Joey Smallwood's early years and his relationship with (invented character) journalist Sheilagh Fielding.
Single copies available in Audiobook (cassettes) |
Richview |
A Complicated Kindness - Miriam Toews
Rage and deep sadness, mixed with dark humour and irony, run throughout Nomi's telling of her teenage life in a strict Manitoba Mennonite village.
Single copies available in Audiobook |
Barbara Frum |
Consolation - Michael Redhill
Marianne Hollis sets out to prove her late husband's claim that there is a treasure trove of missing glass negatives represening the earliest pictures ever taken of Toronto. |
Albert Campbell, Barbara Frum, North York Central, Northern District, Richview |
Coventry - Helen Humphreys
World War II, 1940, and Coventry is being bombed. In the ensuing chaos Harriet, a middle-aged widow, bonds with another firewalker, 22 yr. old Jeremy, as they try to find his mother, Maeve. High drama, loss and reconnection. |
Richview |
Crow Lake - Mary Lawson
A family reunion is the catalyst for zoologist Kate Morrison to look back on her childhood, which was marked by the death of her parents in an automobile accident.
Single copies available in Large Print |
Barbara Frum, Northern District |
Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
A fresh and touching tale about a gifted, autistic teenager who investigates the murder of a neighbour’s dog, and in the process uncovers secrets about his own family.
Single copies available in Audiobook, Large Print |
Albert Campbell, Northern District, Richview |
De Niro's Game - Rawi Hage
Best friends, Bassam and George each confront a choice between staying in war-torn Lebanon or seeking safety in exile abroad, alienated from everything they know. |
North York Central |
Deaf Sentence - David Lodge
Frustrated by hearing loss and his messy personal life, retired linguistics professor Desmond Bates reluctantly journeys to London to check up on his elderly father. There he finds his hearing problems have resulted in an unintended relationship with a young woman. |
Albert Campbell |
Desirable Daughters - Bahrati Mukherjee
Three Brahmin women follow divergent paths from their home in Calcutta and a rigid Indian society, to new lives for themselves on two separate continents.
Single copies available in Large Print |
Albert Campbell, Barbara Frum |
The Dress Lodger - Sheri Holman
In early 19th century England a prostitute forms an unlikely alliance with a doctor in order to help her young child who was born with an unusual condition. |
North York Central |
Eat, Pray, Love - Elizabeth Gilbert
Traces the author's decision to quit her job and travel the world for a year after suffering a midlife crisis and divorce, a journey that took her to three places in her quest to explore her own nature and learn the art of spiritual balance.
Single copies available in Audiobook, eBook, eAudiobook, Large Print |
Albert Campbell, North York Central |
The Emperor's Children - Claire Messud
A funny, highly observant examination of all manner of pretensions, this novel
portrays the lives of 3 smart, sophisticated, anxious young people who think of
themselves as the "cultural elite."
Single copies available in eAudiobook, Large Print |
Northern District |
Everything is Illuminated - Jonathan Safran Foer
A young writer travels to Eastern Europe on a quest to find Augustine, the woman who saved his grandfather from the Nazis.
Single copies available in Audiobook, eAudiobook |
Barbara Frum |
Exit Lines - Joan Barfoot
Four residents of a retirement home become friends and pursue their own agendas in this engaging and insightful story about aging. |
Richview |
The Eyre Affair - Jasper Fforde
In an alternate world where fictional characters and real-life people can go in and out of books, Thursday Next, a Special Operative in literary detection, tries to stop the world's Third Most Wanted criminal from kidnapping Jane Eyre.
Single copies available in Large Print |
Barbara Frum |
The Flying Troutmans - Miriam Toews
A funny, engaging novel in which a trio of aunt, neice and nephew embark on a road trip to find the children's father.
Single copies available in Audiobook |
Albert Campbell , Northern District |
Frozen Thames - Helen Humphreys
"In its long history, the River Thames has frozen forty times.These are the stories of that frozen river." A breathtaking, genre-bending, original novel. |
Northern District |
Fugitive Pieces - Anne Michaels
After witnessing his Jewish parents' murder during WWII and being rescued by Athos, a geologist who smuggles him out of Poland to Greece and then to Toronto, Jakob Beer looks back on his life as a fugitive. |
Northern District |
Garbo Laughs - Elizabeth Hay
In this potent family drama, Harriet becomes so enmeshed in old movies that she no longer fits into the real world. |
Albert Campbell |
The Gargoyle - Andrew Davidson
After being terribly burned in a car accident, the cynical narrator of this story is visited in hospital by a strange sculptress who tells him that they had once been lovers in medieval Germany.
Single copies available in Audiobook, eAudiobook |
North York Central |
The Gathering - Anne Enright
As members of the Hegarty clan gather for the wake of their drowned brother Liam, his sister Veronica remembers the secret he shared with her about what happened in their grandmother's house thirty years ago, a betrayal that spans three generations.
Single copies available in eAudiobook, Large Print |
North York Central |
Getting Out Alive - Tommy Dick
A story of how one young man survived Nazi Hungary through the courageous acts of others, firm friendships and his own quick wit. Holocaust Survivor Memoirs Program. 67 pages. |
Barbara Frum |
Gilead - Marilynne Robinson
As the Reverend John Ames approaches death, he writes a letter to his son chronicling three previous generations of his family, stretching back to the American Civil War.
Single copies available in Audiobook, eAudiobook |
Northern District |
Girl With a Pearl Earring - Tracy Chevalier
A servant girl knows her place in the household of the painter Johannes Vermeer, but when he begins to paint her, nasty whispers and rumours circulate throughout the town. |
North York Central |
The Girls - Lori Lansens
At 29 years, Rose and Ruby, the world's oldest twins conjoined at the head, decide they should write their autobiographies. |
Richview |
The Glass Castle: A Memoir - Jeannette Walls
Walls chronicles her upbringing at the hands of eccentric, nomadic parents - Rose Mary, her frustrated artist mother, and Rex, her brilliant, alcoholic father.
Single copies available in Audiobook, Large Print |
Albert Campbell, S. Walter Stewart |
The Glenwood Treasure - Kim Moritsugu
Having returned to her parents' home in a posh Toronto neighbourhood after a failed marriage, Blithe takes on a local history research project, thereby uncovering truths about a long-rumoured buried treasure. |
Barbara Frum |
The God of Small Things - Arundhati Roy
Fraternal twins Rahel and Estha try to survive the tragic and evil forces which come together to destroy their once influential family in India.
Single copies available in Audiobook (cassettes) |
Richview |
Gods Behaving Badly - Marie Phillips
A humourous look at what life would be like for the ancient Greek gods if they lived in modern-day London. |
North York Central |
A Good House - Bonnie Burnard
The fortunes of the Chambers family of Stonebrook, Ontario, are chronicled through life's tragedies and triumphs over fifty years. |
Albert Campbell |
The Good Women of China: Hidden Voices - Xinran
During the 1990s the author hosted a radio program in which women from all over China shared their life stories. A revealing portrait of revolutionary and contemporary China. |
North York Central |
Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society - Mary Ann Shaffer
In 1946 a writer looking for inspiration corresponds with Guernsey islanders who write to her about their book club which was formed as an excuse to break curfew while they were living under German occupation.
Single copies available in Audiobook, eAudiobook |
Barbara Frum, North York Central, S. Walter Stewart |
Half of a Yellow Sun - Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
The turbulent events in 1960s Nigeria (independence, a military coup, secession by Biafra and a civil war) are reflected through the intertwined lives of several characters.
Single copies available in eAudiobook |
Barbara Frum |
The Hiding Place - Trezza Azzopardi
In a seedy dockside community in 1960s Wales young Dolores Gauci watches as her father gambles away the family's money and eventually their lives. |
North York Central |
The History of Love - Nicole Krauss
Sixty years after a book's publication, the author remembers his lost love and missing son, while a teenage girl named for one of the book's characters seeks her namesake.
Single copies available in Audiobook, eAudiobook |
Barbara Frum |
House of Sand and Fog - Andre Dubus
Two very different people clash over a modest house in a San Francisco suburb.
Single copies available in Audiobook (cassettes), Large Print |
North York Central |
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings - Maya Angelou
Angelou's autobiography explores the isolation and loneliness she faced in her early years, and describes how she was able to cope with childhood rape, racism, and sexism.
Single copies available in Audiobook |
Barbara Frum |
The Icarus girl - Helen Oyeyemi
Jessamy "Jess" Harrison, a racially-mixed child, grows up feeling that she is caught between two different worlds, until she is sent to visit relatives in Nigeria, where she comes face to face with a mysterious new friend. |
Albert Campbell |
Infidel - Ayaan Hirsi
This unflinchingly courageous memoir begins with Hirsi's childhood in Somalia, where she experienced the repression and bigotry of her Islamic society, and it becomes an account of the intellectual journey she took to become both a spokeswoman for Muslim women and a bold feminist critic of Islam. |
Richview |
The Inheritance of Loss - Kiran Desai
Moving between a tiny Himalayan village and the streets of New York City, this novel explores the consequences of colonialism, and the global conflicts of religion, race and nationalism.
Single copies available in Audiobook, Large Print |
Northern District |
The Island Walkers - John Bemrose
Living among the other mill workers in the Island, a working-class neighbourhood based on Paris, Ontario, the Walker family faces new challenges as the threat of a mill closure looms. |
Richview |
The Jade Peony - Wayson Choy
Three Chinese-Canadian siblings growing up in Vancouver in the 1930s remember their conflicts with the traditions and values of the old world and the new. |
Northern District, Richview |
The Jane Austen Book Club - Karen Joy Fowler
As six Californians gather to discuss the books of Jane Austen, events in their lives seem to bear some resemblance to the plots of the novels. |
North York Central |
Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
A plain young governess falls in love with her thorny employer; she has integrity, and he, secrets.
Single copies available in Audiobook, Large Print |
Richview |
Keeping the World Away - Margaret Foster
Gwen, a bold and spirited young English artist, defies convention and sets out to study in Paris, where she has a tumultuous affair with the sculptor Rodin. Gwen creates a painting of a quiet corner of her attic room -- a painting that is lost, found, sold, stolen and fought over, and that changes the lives of all who possess it. |
S. Walter Stewart |
The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
Having fled Afghanistan with his family, Amir, now a successful doctor in America, returns to atone for his betrayal of a childhood friend.
Single copies available in Audiobook, eAudiobook, Large Print |
Barbara Frum, North York Central |
The Known World - Edward P. Jones
Henry Townsend, born a slave, is purchased and freed by his father, yet later ends up owning his own slaves. A look at American slavery and human nature.
Single copies available in Audiobook, Large Print |
Barbara Frum |
The Last Crossing - Guy Vanderhaeghe
Two Englishmen travel to the Canadian west to search for their lost brother, hiring the Métis guide, Jerry Potts, to assist them.
Single copies available in Audiobook |
North York Central |
Late Nights on Air - Elizabeth Hay
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.
Single copies available in Audiobook, eBook |
Albert Campbell |
The Lost Garden - Helen Humphreys
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. |
Northern District |
The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
Susie, having been raped and murdered, looks down from heaven to keep watch over her grieving family and friends. Oddly affecting.
Single copies available in Audiobook, eAudiobook, Large Print |
North York Central, Richview |
Loving Frank - Nancy Horan
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.
Single copies available in eAudiobook |
Richview |
Loyalty Management - Glen Downie
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. |
Albert Campbell, Barbara Frum, North York Central, Northern District, Richview |
Luck - Joan Barfoot
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. |
Richview |
Madame Proust and the Kosher Kitchen - Kate Taylor
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. |
Albert Campbell, Barbara Frum |
The Madonna of Excelsior - Zakes Mda
Twisted mores and personal relationships that cross the colour line feature in this novel of Apartheid-era South Africa. Based on a real story. |
North York Central |
A Map of Glass - Jane Urquhart
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. |
Richview |
A Map of the World - Jane Hamilton
On a dairy farm in the Midwest Alice is watching her neighbour's daughter when she drowns. A haunting book which deals with the aftermath of a tragedy. |
Albert Campbell |
March - Geraldine Brooks
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.
Single copies available in Audiobook |
North York Central, Richview |
The Memory Keeper's Daughter - Kim Edwards
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.
Single copies available in Audiobook, Large Print |
Albert Campbell |
Mister Pip - Lloyd Jones
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.
Single copies available in eAudiobook |
Barbara Frum |
More - Austin Clarke
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.
Single copies available in Audiobook
|
Albert Campbell, Barbara Frum, Northern District, North York Central, Richview, S. Walter Stewart |
My Sister's Keeper - Jodi Picoult
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.
Single copies available in Large Print |
Richview |
No Great Mischief - Alistair Macleod
Alexander MacDonald narrates the story of his ancestors back two centuries, from their life in Scotland to that in Cape Breton.
Single copies available in Large Print |
Richview |
No Logo - Naomi Klein
Readable yet well-researched criticism of company branding, and the negative effect this economic globalism has on both workers and consumers. |
Richview |
No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency - Alexander McCall Smith
Botswanian sleuth Precious Ramotswe investigates local mysteries, including a missing boy and a clinic doctor with different personalities for different days of the week.
Single copies available in Audiobook, eAudiobook, Large Print |
Barbara Frum, North York Central |
Olive Kitteridge - Elizabeth Strout
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.
Single copies available in Audiobook, eAudiobook |
Northern District |
Oryx and Crake - Margaret Atwood
Atwood's fears of environmental disaster, runaway social inequality, and genetic technology are the catalysts for this dystopia, which features only male protagonists.
Single copies available in Audiobook, eAudiobook |
North York Central |
Other Side of the Bridge - Mary Lawson
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. |
Albert Campbell |
The Outlander - Gil Adamson
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. |
North York Central, S. Walter Stewart |
Over the Edge of the World: Magellan's Terrifying Circumnavigation of the Globe - Laurence Bergreen
This tenaceous adventurer and his crew endure a harrowing three-year journey trying to find a water route to the Spice Islands. |
North York Central |
Peony in Love - Lisa See
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. |
Northern District |
People of the Book - Geraldine Brooks
In 1996, Australian rare-book expert Hanna Heath is asked to restore the legendary Sarajevo Haggadah. Thus begins a fictional history of this Hebrew codex, an extremely precious illuminated manuscript originally from medievel Spain.
Single copies available in Audiobook |
Barbara Frum |
Persepolis - Marjane Satrapi
An autobiographical graphic novel of a young Iranian girl's life during the Islamic revolution. |
Northern District |
The Piano Tuner - Daniel Mason
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.
Single copies available in Large Print |
Albert Campbell, Northern District |
The Places in Between - Rory Stewart
In 2002, the author, accompanied by a large toothless mastiff, walked across Afghanistan, staying in small villages and recording his adventures along the way.
Single copies available in Audiobook |
North York Central |
The Poisonwood Bible - Barbara Kingsolver
The family of a fierce evangelical Baptist missionary begins to unravel after they
embark on a mission to the Belgian Congo. The novel is narrated in turns by the four
daughters, who find their lives transformed in different ways.
Single copies available in eAudiobook, Large Print |
Richview |
Pompeii - Robert Harris
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.
Single copies available in Audiobook, Large Print |
Northern District, Richview |
Pope Joan: a Novel - Donna Woolfolk Cross
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. |
North York Central |
The Pull of the Moon - Elizabeth Berg
Nan, unhappy with her life and marriage, turns 50 and embarks on a back-road odyssey to discover how her life can be reshaped.
Single copies available in eAudiobook |
Albert Campbell |
Purple Hibiscus - Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
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.
Single copies available in eAudiobook |
Barbara Frum |
The Reader - Bernhard Schlink
A young German man becomes involved with an older woman, later leading him to consider the nature of love, guilt, and moral responsibility.
Single copies available in Audiobook, eAudiobook, Large Print |
North York Central |
Reading Lolita in Tehran - Azar Nafisi
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.
Single copies available in Audiobook, eBook, Large Print |
Barbara Frum, Northern District, Richview |
The Reluctant Fundamentalist - Mohsin Hamid
A young Pakistani-American lives the American dream until the events of September 11 force him to reassess his personal allegiances.
Single copies available in Audiobook, eAudiobook, Large Print |
North York Central |
The Road - Cormac McCarthy
In this bleak dystopia a man and his son struggle to survive in a desolate, post-apocalyptic world, and on the road they travel cannibals are more apt to be encountered than food.
Single copies available in Audiobook, eAudiobook, Large Print |
Richview |
The Road Home - Rose Tremain
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? |
S. Walter Stewart |
A Round-Heeled Woman - Jane Juska
A frank memoir of an older woman's search for romance and sexual pleasure.
Single copies available in Large Print |
Northern District |
Runaway - Alice Munro
From the particular lives of ordinary women to universal, psychological insights, Alice Munro gives us another superlative collection of short stories.
Single copies available in Audiobook |
Richview |
Rush Home Road - Lori Lansens
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. |
Barbara Frum |
The Salt Roads - Nalo Hopkinson
This story transports readers across centuries and civilizations as it fearlessly explores the relationships three Caribbean slave women have with their lovers, and their people. |
Albert Campbell |
Saturday - Ian McEwan
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.
Single copies available in Audiobook, Large Print |
Barbara Frum |
The Secret Life of Bees - Sue Monk Kidd
A young girl, whose mother has been killed, travels toward healing after being taken in by an eccentric trio of black beekeeping sisters.
Single copies available in Audiobook, eAudiobook, Large Print |
Barbara Frum |
The Secret Mitzvah of Lucio Burke - Steven Hayward
A novel about youth, passion, family, and baseball: a richly imagined chapter of Toronto's history in the 1930s. |
Northern District |
Seduction - Catherine Gildiner
A psychological thriller: part murder mystery, part discussion of Freudian analysis. |
Northern District |
Septembers of Shiraz - Dalia Sofer
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.
Single copies available in eAudiobook |
Barbara Frum |
A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian - Marina Lewycka
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. |
Richview |
Small Island - Andrea Levy
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.
Single copies available in Large Print |
North York Central |
The Sound of Language - Amulya Malladi
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. |
Barbara Frum |
The Sparrow - Mary Doria Russell
A hand-picked group consisting of professionals travel to the planet of Rakhat, with both enlightening and disastrous results.
Single copies available in Audiobook |
North York Central |
Spring's End - John Freund
John's boyhood was shattered by the German invasion of his Czechoslovakian homeland. A title in the Holocaust Memoirs Program. 106 pages. |
Barbara Frum |
Still Alice - Lisa Genova
A compelling novel about a 50-year-old woman's sudden descent into early onset Alzheimer's disease.
Single copies available in Large Print |
S. Walter Stewart |
Suite francaise - Irene Nemirovsky
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.
Single copies available in Audiobook, eAudiobook, Large Print |
Barbara Frum |
Sweetness in the Belly - Camilla Gibb
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.
Single copies available in Audiobook |
Albert Campbell, Barbara Frum |
Ten-Year Nap - Meg Wolitzer
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.
Single copies available in eAudiobook |
Albert Campbell |
The Thirteenth Tale - Diane Setterfield
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?
Single copies available in Audiobook, Large Print |
Richview |
Three Cups of Tea - Greg Mortenson
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.
Single copies available in Audiobook, eAudiobook, Large Print |
Northern District |
Three Day Road - Joseph Boyden
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.
Single copies available in Audiobook |
Barbara Frum |
The Time in Between - David Bergen
In search of reconciliation with his past, Charles Boatman returns to Vietnam where he fought 29 years earlier as a young, reluctant soldier.
Single copies available in Audiobook, Large Print |
North York Central, Northern District |
The Time Traveler's Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
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.
Single copies available in Audiobook, eAudiobook, Large Print |
Albert Campbell, Northern District |
The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference - Malcom Gladwell
The moment small successes - products or ideas - turn into phenomena is the "tipping point," and Gladwell has a controversial theory on why some of them 'tip'.
Audiobook, eAudiobook |
Richview |
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn - Betty Smith
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.
Single copies available in Audiobook, Large Print |
Albert Campbell |
Tuesdays with Morrie - Mitch Albom
Sportswriter Albom has weekly conversations with his former college professor and mentor, Morrie Schwartz, who is dying from Lou Gehrig's disease.
Single copies available in Audiobook, Large Print, eAudiobook |
Barbara Frum |
Unaccustomed Earth: Stories - Jhumpa Lahiri
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.
Single copies available in Audiobook, eAudiobook, Large Print |
Richview |
The Uncommon Reader - Alan Bennett
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.
Single copies available in Audiobook, Large Print, eAudiobook |
Richview, S. Walter Stewart |
Unless - Carol Shields
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.
Single copies available in Audiobook (cassettes), eAudiobook |
Northern District |
Villa Fair - Bernadette Dyer
These thirteen short stories set in Jamaica and Canada deal with uprooted characters of various ethnic backgrounds and classes who manage in strange new cultures. |
Albert Campbell |
The Violin/A Child's Testimonial - Rachel & Adam Shitbel
Twin accounts by a now-married couple on how they survived the Nazi years in Poland: Rachel was hidden underground and Adam survived in the forest. Holocaust Survivor Memoirs Program. 236 pages. |
Barbara Frum |
A Wall of Light - Edeet Ravel
The conclusion of Ravel's Israeli Trilogy follows three generations of a family living through the stormy political climate of Israel. |
Barbara Frum, Northern District |
Waltzes I have Not Forgotten - Bernadette Dyer
John Moneague, born into poverty in the backstreets of Kingston, Jamaica, traverses the Caribbean, Europe, America, and China, in this sweeping historical novel set between the World Wars. |
Albert Campbell |
Water for Elephants - Sara Gruen
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.
Single copies available in Audiobook, eAudiobook, Large Print |
Albert Campbell, North York Central |
The Way the Crow Flies - Ann-Marie MacDonald
A family story set on a 1960s air force base, in which the young narrator's father is caught up in military secrets, and a local murder is the cause for a quest for truth 20 years later. |
Albert Campbell, Northern District |
What We All Long For - Dionne Brand
A gripping and, at times, heartrending novel about identity, longing and loss features the overlapping stories of a close circle of second-generation twenty-somethings living in downtown Toronto. |
Albert Campbell |
The White Tiger - Aravind Adiga
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.
Single copies available in Audiobook, Large Print |
North York Central |
Wild Swans - Jung Chang
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. |
Barbara Frum |
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