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Domestic fiction

  • Author:
    Théoret, France
    Summary:

    Cette histoire d’oppression, au sein d’une famille catholique bien pensante, met en scène des interdits et des censures. Grandeurs et misères se succèdent. En échange de l’obéissance servile de ses filles, la mère promet de les soutenir contre le père tyrannique. Alors que les ménages s’établissent à Montréal ou dans les banlieues, les parents s’installent dans un hôtel aux quatre chemins d’un village désert. Une forêt impénétrable entoure le commerce où les clients habituels ressemblent aux personnages de Hugo et de Gorki. À l’arrivée, la mère jette aux ordures les livres destinés aux enfants. Le père multiplie ses discours d’arrière-garde condamnant la vie intellectuelle. Les deux sœurs rêvent très tôt d’une idylle, la seule réussite conséquente à Saint-Colomban. La cadette trouve un mari tandis qu’Évelyne, l’aînée, poursuit de longues études contre la volonté de ses parents. « J’avais une obligation de déracinement. Mes interrogations dépassaient ma personne, j’avais à vaincre l’inertie ambiante, la somnolence collective, la pensée qui avait capitulé. »

  • Author:
    McMurtry, Larry
    Summary:

    Cattleman Homer Bannon is a walking advertisement for traditional, old-frontier morals--in contrast to his stepson, Hud. Homer's grandson Lonnie is torn between emotions for his father and grandfather as he struggles to define his own identity.

  • Author:
    John-Kehewin, Wanda
    Summary:

    Fourteen-year-old Eva's life is like her shoes: rapidly falling apart. With Nohkum in the hospital, Eva's mother struggles to keep things together and loses custody of Eva and her little brother. As Eva tries to adjust to living in a group home, can she find forgiveness for her mother within the pages of an old diary?

  • Author:
    Skrypuch, Marsha Forchuk
    Summary:

    Short-listed for the 2004 Rocky Mountain Book Award and for the 2003 Manitoba Young Readers’ Choice Award and long-listed for the 2002 CBC Canada Reads People’s Choice Book Kataryna Baliuk, a gifted fine arts student, is hoping to have a fresh start at Cawthra School for the Arts after a less-than-successful year at the neighbouring Catholic high school. But her hopes for a peaceful Grade 10 are shattered when she comes home from her first day at Cawthra and finds the RCMP interrogating her grandfather, Danylo Feschuk. Kat learns that Danylo is accused of being a policeman for the Nazis in World War II Ukraine, and what’s worse, he is suspected of having participated in atrocities against civilians. When the story is exposed in the local newspaper, Kat and her family become the centre of a media storm. Her grades in school and her relationships with friends suffer. Her only support comes from her family and Ian, a classmate with whom she discovers she has more in common than just artistic promise.

  • Author:
    Page, Patricia
    Summary:

    Brings back the heady days of the late 1960's in a touching journey of the heart.

  • Author:
    Auslander, Shalom
    Summary:

    Relocating his family to an unremarkable rural town in New York in the hopes of starting over, Solomon Kugel must cope with his depressive mother, a local arsonist, and the discovery of a believed-dead historical specimen hiding in his attic.

  • Author:
    Donoghue, Emma
    Summary:

    In the late '70s, convent school teenagers Pen O'Grady and Cara Wall fall in love. They prove themselves to be up to the challenge of a relationship deemed unacceptable in Catholic Ireland'until Cara dies in a car accident. Hood is a bittersweet, complicated love story.

  • Author:
    Umrigar, Thrity
    Summary:

    When Indian American journalist Smita returns to India to write the story of a young widow Meena and the murder of her husband, it's Smita's first time back since her family left when she was a child. Both Smita and Meena were raised in a culture where a woman exercising a basic human right--the right to love and marry whoever she chooses--is met with brutal punishment. While Meena's fate hangs in the balance, Smita must reckon with the privilege that becoming an American has given her, as well as face the trauma that shaped her as a child and led to her family leaving. Dual love stories propel the narrative, as different as the cultures from which they emanate. We follow how Meena fell headfast in love with a person forbidden to her due to his religion and faced the violent consequences of her choice; and Smita's freedom to have a casual love affair and to decide, later, how much it means to her. Moving, perceptive, and heartbreaking, this is a story about two women and what they inspire in each other as they navigate a home where terrible things have occurred, and are allowed to keep occurring, a country that they want, more than anything, to love.

  • Author:
    Brennert, Alan
    Summary:

    When a young Korean girl known as Regret leaves her homeland for a better life in Hawaii, as a "picture bride," she expects to find prosperity and a chance at education. But the rich husband she is promised turns out to be a poor plantation worker with drinking and gambling problems, and the girl now known as Jin is forced to seek her own path. Joining with her fellow picture brides to start a business, Jin must shed her naieveté and overcome prejudice to succeed in this foreign land.

  • Author:
    Akhtar, Ayad
    Summary:

    A deeply personal novel about about finding identity in a nation coming apart at the seams, an American son and his immigrant father search for belonging in post-Trump America and with each other.

  • Author:
    Gyasi, Yaa
    Summary:

    Two half sisters, Effia and Esi, unknown to each other, are born into two different tribal villages in 18th century Ghana. Effia will be married off to an English colonial, and will live in comfort in the sprawling, palatial rooms of Cape Coast Castle, raising half-caste children who will be sent abroad to be educated in England before returning to the Gold Coast to serve as administrators of the Empire. Her sister, Esi, will be imprisoned beneath Effia in the Castle's women's dungeon, and then shipped off on a boat bound for America, where she will be sold into slavery. Stretching from the tribal wars of Ghana to slavery and Civil War in America, from the coal mines in the north to the Great Migration to the streets of 20th century Harlem, Yaa Gyasi's has written a modern masterpiece, a novel that moves through histories and geographies and--with outstanding economy and force--captures the troubled spirit of our own nation.

  • Author:
    Dakers, Diane
    Summary:

    Fiona’s dad comes home after sixteen months and eight days in jail. Along with her mother and family friends, she awkwardly welcomes him home. Uncle David is there, because he picked Dad up at jail. Dad’s best friend Simon, his wife May and neighbor Elisabeth are also at the house to greet Dad. He’s been away so long, it’s an uncomfortable reunion for Mom and Fiona, who have suffered financially, emotionally and socially in his absence. Even the dog, Honey, isn’t sure about Fiona’s dad anymore.Fiona’s dad was in jail for a crime he didn’t commit. Or did he? Fiona thought she knew him. Believed he was innocent. But now that he’s home, her friends, her teachers, even her mom, ;everyone is treating him like a criminal. Guilty or not, Fiona’s father has ruined everything. When she starts getting lured into the darker side of life, she discovers who her father really is.

  • Author:
    Lewis, Susan
    Summary:

    Angie Watts, wife and mother of three, expected motherhood to be more straightforward. But her son Liam grows from a sweet-natured boy to a troubled teen suspected of a local murder. Now with her husband gone, Liam missing, and funds running out, Angie must decide how far she will go to survive and to protect her children.

  • Author:
    North, Freya
    Summary:

    Despite their mother having run off with a cowboy from Denver, and having been brought up by their eccentric uncle Django, the McCabe girls actually consider themselves very normal and well-adjusted. Pip is stepmother to 10-year-old Tom, Fen has a young baby and Cat has returned to England to start a family. However, at their uncle's 70th birthday party, an unexpected guest arrives.

  • Author:
    Hannah, Kristin
    Summary:

    "From a distance, Michael and Joleen Zarkades seem to have it all: a solid marriage, two exciting careers, and children they adore. But after twelve years together, the couple has lost their way; they are unhappy and edging toward divorce. Then the Iraq war starts. An unexpected deployment will tear their already fragile family apart, sending one of them deep into harm's way and leaving the other at home, waiting for news. When the worst happens, each must face their darkest fear and fight for the future of their family. An intimate look at the inner landscape of a disintegrating marriage and a dramatic exploration of the price of war on a single American family, HOME FRONT is a provocative and timely portrait of hope, honor, loss, forgiveness, and the elusive nature of love"--

  • Author:
    Shamsie, Kamila
    Summary:

    From an internationally acclaimed novelist, the suspenseful and heartbreaking story of a family ripped apart by secrets and driven to pit love against loyalty, with devastating consequences. Isma is free. After years of watching out for her younger siblings in the wake of their mother's death, an invitation from a mentor in America has allowed her to resume a dream long deferred. But she can't stop worrying about Aneeka, her beautiful, headstrong sister back in London, or their brother, Parvaiz, who's disappeared in pursuit of his own dream, to prove himself to the dark legacy of the jihadist father he never knew. When he resurfaces half the globe away, Isma's worst fears are confirmed. Then Eamonn enters the sisters' lives. Son of a powerful political figure, he has his own birthright to live up to--or defy. Is he to be a chance at love? The means of Parvaiz's salvation? Suddenly, two families' fates are inextricably, devastatingly entwined, in this searing novel that asks: What sacrifices will we make in the name of love?

  • Author:
    Robinson, Marilynne
    Summary:

    Glory Boughton has returned to Gilead to care for her dying father. Soon her brother, Jack comes home too, looking for refuge and trying to make peace with a past littered with tormenting trouble and pain. Brilliant, lovable, and wayward, Jack forges an intense bond with Glory and engages painfully with Ames, his godfather and namesake.

  • Author:
    Gauer, Stephen
    Summary:

    One Friday, Vancouver lawyer Paul Brenner has dinner with his son, Daniel. They talk about work, health, money, and music, and part ways. The following evening, Paul receives the phone call that is every parent's worst nightmare: Daniel has been killed in Stanley Park. 'Hold Me Now' is an unflinching portrayal of a father's grief, as Paul learns how very different the new world -- a world without his son -- will be for him. The investigation of Daniel's murder, the trial, and the sentencing of the killer test Paul's faith in the legal system. As both the media and public protest the overt role homophobia played in Daniel's death, Paul struggles to cope, and begins to form reckless and dangerous habits. But with the love of two people in his life who sustain him -- his mother, Jean, and his daughter, Elizabeth -- he begins to comprehend an incomprehensible tragedy, and forgive an unforgiveable crime.

  • Author:
    Williams, Niall
    Summary:

    Ruthie Swain, the bedridden daughter of a dead poet, tries to find her father through stories -- and through generations of family history in County Clare.

  • Author:
    Gagnon, Marie-Julie, Lakhdari King, Nadia, Leblanc, Mélanie
    Summary:

    3 filles, 3 continents, 3 voyages pour partir à la découverte de soi-même ! Voici trois courts romans mettant en scène trois filles qui partent à l'aventure en mode découverte. Remises en question, aventures improbables, amour ou amitié qui se font ou se défont, tout est possible une fois qu'on a choisi de partir. Suivez nos héroïnes à l'autre bout du monde : que ce soit en Nouvelle-Zélande, au Mexique ou en Thaïlande, leurs expériences respectives les changeront profondément et les marqueront pour la vie ! Laissez-vous divertir, attendrir ou surprendre par trois plumes bien différentes ! Nadia Lakhdari-King, Marie-Julie Gagnon et Mélanie Leblanc s'unissent pour nous faire voyager grâce à leurs mots, au profit d'une cause commune.

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