Here are just a few ideas if you need some help finding titles to check off a specific category. All of the listed titles are available in the UFV Library collection. Be sure to come out to our Book Social events and add your own recommendations to our community reading list.
Looking for a specific title? Try using the library search box below.
"With winter looming, a small northern Anishinaabe community goes dark. Cut off, people become passive and confused. Panic builds as the food supply dwindles. While the council and community members struggle to maintain order, an unexpected visitor arrives, escaping the crumbling society to the south. Soon after, others follow. Frustrated by the building chaos, a group of young friends and their families turn to the land and Anishinaabe tradition in hopes of helping their community thrive again. Guided through the chaos by an unlikely leader, they endeavour to restore order while grappling with a grave decision." -Syndetics Summary
*Available in Print or as an eBook
"Doctor Zhivago is the story of the life and loves of a poet-physician during the turmoil of the Russian Revolution. Taking his family from Moscow to what he hopes will be shelter in the Ural Mountains, Zhivago finds himself instead embroiled in the battle between the Whites and the Reds. Set against this backdrop of cruelty and strife is Zhivago's love for the tender and beautiful Lara: pursued, found, and lost again, Lara is the very embodiment of the pain and chaos of those cataclysmic times." -Syndetics Summary
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"The Lamp at Noon and Other Stories , an original New Canadian Library collection, Ross reveals further dimensions of his fictional universe. A woman's impulsive infidelity leads to tragedy. A sudden hailstorm destroys hope. A boy learns to conquer a beautiful wild horse. A little girl dreams about a circus. Against the isolated, haunting landscapes of summer droughts and winter blizzards, the men and women of Ross' stories grapple with fate against almost impossible odds." -Syndetics Summary
*Print Book
"It's been a hard year for Maisie Cannon, ever since she hurt her leg and could not keep up with her ballet training and auditions. Her blended family is loving and supportive, but Maisie knows that they just can't understand how hopeless she feels. With everything she's dealing with, Maisie is not excited for their family midwinter road trip along the coast, near the Makah community where her mother grew up. But soon, Maisie's anxieties and dark moods start to hurt as much as the pain in her knee. How can she keep pretending to be strong when on the inside she feels as roiling and cold as the ocean?" -Syndetics Summary
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"One of Shakespeare's later plays, best described as a tragi-comedy, the play falls into two distinct parts. In the first Leontes is thrown into a jealous rage by his suspicions of his wife Hermione and his best-friend, and imprisons her and orders that her new born daughter be left to perish. The second half is a pastoral comedy with the "lost" daughter Perdita having been rescued by shepherds and now in love with a young prince. The play ends with former lovers and friends reunited after the apparently miraculous resurrection of Hermione." -Syndetics Summary
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"The four March sisters couldn't be more different. But with their father away at war, and their mother working to support the family, they have to rely on one another. Whether they're putting on a play, forming a secret society, or celebrating Christmas, there's one thing they can't help wondering- Will Father return home safely?" -Syndetics Summary
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"Dickens's A Christmas Carol has gripped the public imagination since it was first published in 1843, and it is now as much a part of Christmas as mistletoe or plum pudding. It is a ghost story set at Christmastime in which a bad-tempered skinflint learns the error of his ways. Ebenezer Scrooge hates Christmas and all it stands for, but a ghostly visitor foretells three apparitions who will thaw Scrooge's frozen heart." -Syndetics Summary
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"Four adventurous siblings--Peter, Susan, Edmund, and Lucy Pevensie--step through a wardrobe door and into the land of Narnia, a land frozen in eternal winter and enslaved by the power of the White Witch. But when almost all hope is lost, the return of the Great Lion, Aslan, signals a great change . . . and a great sacrifice. Journey into the land beyond the wardrobe! The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe is the second book in C. S. Lewis's classic fantasy series, which has been captivating readers of all ages for over sixty years." -Syndetics Summary
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"Hordes of bloodthirsty wolves are slaughtering the arctic caribou, and the government's Wildlife Service assigns naturalist Farley Mowat to investigate. Mowat is dropped alone onto the frozen tundra, where he begins his mission to live among the howling wolf packs and study their ways. Contact with his quarry comes quickly, and Mowat discovers not a den of marauding killers but a courageous family of skillful providers and devoted protectors of their young. As Mowat comes closer to the wolf world, he comes to fear with them the onslaught of bounty hunters and government exterminators out to erase the noble wolf community from the Arctic. Never Cry Wolfis one of the brilliant narratives on the myth and magic of wild wolves and man's true place among the creatures of nature." -Syndetics Summary
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"A beloved classic reissued for contemporary readers. Experience a year in the life of Thoreau at Walden Pond in this classic work. Visit the bean-field, the village, and the ponds; learn about our brute neighbors, the higher laws of nature and humankind, and the benefits of reading and solitude. Henry David Thoreau was an American author, poet, abolitionist, naturalist, tax resister, development critic, surveyor, historian, philosopher and leading transcendentalist. His writings on natural history and philosophy have become two sources of modern-day environmentalism." -ProQuest Description
*ebook
"As a botanist, Robin Wall Kimmerer has been trained to ask questions of nature with the tools of science. As a member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation, she embraces the notion that plants and animals are our oldest teachers. In Braiding Sweetgrass, Kimmerer brings these two lenses of knowledge together to take us on “a journey that is every bit as mythic as it is scientific, as sacred as it is historical, as clever as it is wise” (Elizabeth Gilbert)." - Description
*ebook
"The Uninhabitable Earth is also an impassioned call to action. For just as the world was brought to the brink of catastrophe within the span of a lifetime, the responsibility to avoid it now belongs to a single generation--today's." - Syndetics Summary
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"The most important book yet from the author of the international bestseller The Shock Doctrine, a brilliant explanation of why the climate crisis challenges us to abandon the core "free market" ideology of our time, restructure the global economy, and remake our political systems. In short, either we embrace radical change ourselves or radical changes will be visited upon our physical world. The status quo is no longer an option." - Syndetics Summary
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"From the roots to the crown and back to the seeds, Richard Powers's twelfth novel unfolds in concentric rings of interlocking fables that range from antebellum New York to the late twentieth-century Timber Wars of the Pacific Northwest and beyond. There is a world alongside ours--vast, slow, interconnected, resourceful, magnificently inventive, and almost invisible to us. This is the story of a handful of people who learn how to see that world and who are drawn up into its unfolding catastrophe." - Syndetics Summary
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"In The Back of the Turtle, Gabriel returns to Smoke River, the reserve where his mother grew up and to which she returned with Gabriel's sister. The reserve is deserted after an environmental disaster killed the population, including Gabriel's family, and the wildlife. Gabriel, a brilliant scientist working for Domidion, created GreenSweep, and indirectly led to the crisis." - Syndetics Summary
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Entries for this category can be fiction or non-fiction titles. Do your own research to find reading lists of titles that may interest you and browse the library collection. The link will take you to Goodreads 'Environmental Books' list.
Photo by Jessica Mangano on Unsplash
"Ghost World is the story of Becky and Enid, two teenaged girls and best friends facing the prospect of not only growing up, but growing apart from each other. Clowes paints a tender picture of this intellectually precocious, sexually adventurous (despite a mutual lack of experience), and formative period in their lives, filtered through a blue hue echoing a world lit by the cathode rays of a television -- a perfect metaphor for their post- nuclear existence. Both naturalistic and nostalgic, Ghost World carves a layered narrative out of the daily existence of these fully-realized young women." -Syndetics Summary
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"Horror master Junji Ito explores a new frontier with a grand cosmic horror tale in which a mysterious woman has her way with the world! A woman walks alone at the foot of Mount Sengoku. A man appears, saying he's been waiting for her, and invites her to a nearby village. Surprisingly, the village is covered in hairlike volcanic glass fibers, and all of it shines a bright gold. At night, when the villagers perform their custom of gazing up at the starry sky, countless unidentified flying objects come raining down on them--the opening act for the terror about to occur!" -Syndetics Summary
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"Bechdel's groundbreaking, bestselling graphic memoir that charts her fraught relationship with her late father. Distant and exacting, Bruce Bechdel was an English teacher and director of the town funeral home, which Alison and her family referred to as the "Fun Home." It was not until college that Alison, who had recently come out as a lesbian, discovered that her father was also gay. A few weeks after this revelation, he was dead, leaving a legacy of mystery for his daughter to resolve." -Syndetics Summary
*Print book
"On a trip to visit his older sister, who has moved away from the family home on the reserve to Salt Lake City, a young boy and his mother are posed a simple question with a not-so-simple answer. Are you Canadian, the border guards ask, or American? "Blackfoot." And when border guards will not accept their citizenship, mother and son wind up trapped in an all-too-real limbo between nations that do not recognize who they are." -Syndetics Summary
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"Heroic. Iconic. Unstoppable. Armed with her Lasso of Truth and imbued with the power of the gods themselves, Princess Diana of Themyscira-known to the world as Wonder Woman-is one of the greatest superheroes in history. But who is she... really? Not even Wonder Woman herself knows for sure. Diana's links to both the Amazons and the Gods of Olympus have been severed. Her memories are a tangle of contradictions that even her lie-detecting lasso cannot untangle. To solve the riddle of her origin, she must embark on her greatest quest of all- finding a way back to her vanished home. To get there, she must team up with her greatest enemy, the feral beast-woman, Cheetah. Will this unlikely alliance shine the light of truth on Diana's darkest secrets, or bury them-and her-forever?" -Syndetics Summary
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"How does one survive when all hope is lost? In the middle of the night in 1997, Doctors Without Borders administrator Christophe André was kidnapped by armed men and taken away to an unknown destination in the Caucasus region. For three months, André was kept handcuffed in solitary confinement, with little to survive on and almost no contact with the outside world. Close to twenty years later, award-winning cartoonist Guy Delisle ( Pyongyang , Jerusalem , Shenzhen , Burma Chronicles ) recounts André's harrowing experience in Hostage , a book that attests to the power of one man's determination in the face of a hopeless situation." -Syndetics Summary
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"Chester Brown reinvents the comic-book medium to create the critically acclaimed historical biography Louis Riel, winning the Harvey Awards for best writing and best graphic novel for his compelling, meticulous, and dispassionate retelling of the charismatic, and perhaps insane, nineteenth-century Métis leader. Brown coolly documents with dramatic subtlety the violent rebellion on the Canadian prairie led by Riel, who some regard a martyr who died in the name of freedom, while others consider him a treacherous murderer." -Amazon Summary
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"Join the most iconic character in comics as he embarks on extraordinary adventures and solves thrilling mysteries!" -Amazon Summary
*Print books
"Set in Kuttanad, a below-sea-level farming region on the south-west coast of Kerala, the novel is as much a story of this land as it is of Vavachan and its other inhabitants. As they navigate the intricate waterscape, stories unfold in which ecology, power dynamics and politics become key themes." -Amazon Summary
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Short stories by South Asian Canadian authors such as Lakshmi Gill, Rohinton Mistry and M. G. Vassanji.
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"A brave, soulfully written feminist novel about inheritance and resistance that tests the balance between kinship and the fight against customs that harm us. When Sharifa accompanies her husband on a marriage-saving trip to India in 2016, she thinks that she's going to research her great-great-grandfather, a wealthy business leader and philanthropist. What captures her imagination is not his rags-to-riches story, but the mystery of his four wives, missing from the family lore. She ends up excavating much more than she had imagined. " - Syndetics Summary
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"Sikh American women do the lion's share of organizing and executing the business of the Sikh community, and they straddle multiple lives and worlds-cross-cultural, interreligious, intergenerational, occupational, and domestic-yet their experiences of faith, family, and community are virtually invisible in the North American milieu and have yet to be understood, documented, or shared. " - Syndetics Summary
*eBook
"From the leader of Canada's New Democratic Party--Jagmeet Singh--comes a personal and heartfelt story about family and overcoming adversity. In October 2017, Jagmeet Singh was elected as the first visible minority to lead a major federal political party in Canada. The historic milestone was celebrated across the nation. About a month earlier, in the lead up to his election, Jagmeet held community meet-and-greets across Canada. At one such event, a disruptive heckler in the crowd hurled accusations at him. Jagmeet responded by calmly calling for all Canadians to act with "love and courage" in the face of hate. That response immediately went viral, and people across the country began asking, "Who is Jagmeet Singh? And why 'love and courage'?" " - Syndetics Summary
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"When the dust settled after the restructuring of the Canadian forest industry at the beginning of the 21st century and many of the major players such as MacMillan Bloedel, Doman Industries and Slocan Forest Products vanished into memory, one feisty player remained standing, stronger than ever: Terminal Forest Products. Remarkably, Terminal was privately owned by one man, a Sikh immigrant and former labourer named Asa Singh Johal. Who was he and how did he succeed so brilliantly in a field where so many others failed?" - Syndetics Summary
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"A woman's dream of poetic solitude turns out to be a recipe for loneliness. A retiree is convinced that his silence is the only thing that will prevent a deadly sinkhole. An emerging academic wakes up and chooses institutional violence. A young woman finds sisterhood in a strange fertility ritual, and an enigmatic empath is on a cleanse. Baker's characters are both wildly misguided and a product of the misguided times in which we live." -Syndetics Summary
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"This superb bilingual anthology highlights the posthumous legacy of Pablo Neruda, the great Chilean poet and Nobel laureate, who left a vast body of unpublished work when he died in 1973." -Syndetics Summary
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"Told with compassion and wry humour, these stories honour characters struggling to find their bearings far from home, even as they do the necessary "grunt work of the world." A young man painting nails at the local salon. A woman plucking feathers at a chicken processing plant. A father who packs furniture to move into homes he'll never afford. A housewife learning English from daytime soap operas. In her stunning Giller Prize-winning debut book of fiction, Souvankham Thammavongsa focuses on characters struggling to make a living, illuminating their hopes, disappointments, love affairs, acts of defiance, and above all their pursuit of a place to make their own." - Syndetics Summary
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"In the twelve unforgettable tales of Lesser Known Monsters of the 21st Century , the strange is made familiar and the familiar strange, such that a girl growing wings on her legs feels like an ordinary rite of passage, while a bug-infested house becomes an impossible, Kafkaesque nightmare. Each story builds a new world all its own: a group of children steal a haunted doll; a runaway bride encounters a sea monster; a vendor sells toy boxes that seemingly control the passage of time; an insomniac is seduced by the Sandman. These visions of modern life wrestle with themes of death and technological consequence, guilt and sexuality, as they unmask the contradictions that exist within all of us." - Syndetics Summary
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"A vibrant and transcendent journey about growth and healing. Ancestry and honoring one's roots. Expatriation and rising up to find a home within yourself. Divided into five chapters and illustrated by Kaur, the sun and her flowers is a journey of wilting, falling, rooting, rising, and blooming. A celebration of love in all its forms. this is the recipe of life said my mother as she held me in her arms as i wept think of those flowers you plant in the garden each year they will teach you that people too must wilt fall root rise in order to bloom." - Syndetics Summary
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"Set among the cities and suburbs of Florida, each story in Milk Blood Heat delves into the ordinary worlds of young girls, women, and men who find themselves confronted by extraordinary moments of violent personal reckoning. These intimate portraits of people and relationships scour and soothe and blast a light on the nature of family, faith, forgiveness, consumption, and what we may, or may not, owe one another." - Syndetics Summary
*eBook
"Set on five continents and spanning nearly a century, We Two Alone traces the long arc and evolution of the Chinese immigrant experience. A young laundry boy risks his life to play organized hockey in Canada in the 1920s. A Canadian couple gets caught in the outbreak of violence in Shanghai during the Second Sino-Japanese War. The consul general of China attempts to save lives following Kristallnacht in Vienna. A family aspires to buy a home in South Africa, during the rise of apartheid. An actor in New York struggles to keep his career alive while yearning to reconcile with his estranged wife. From the vulnerable and disenfranchised to the educated and elite, the characters in this extraordinary collection embody the diversity of the diaspora at key moments in history and in contemporary times." - Syndetics Summary
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"A brilliant new collection of stories from one of the most acclaimed and beloved writers of our time. Alice Munro's peerless ability to give us the essence of a life in often brief but always spacious and timeless stories is once again everywhere apparent in this brilliant new collection. In story after story, she illumines the moment a life is forever altered by a chance encounter or an action not taken, or by a simple twist of fate that turns a person out of his or her accustomed path and into a new way of being or thinking. " - Syndetics Summary
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"Anthology of Contemporary American Poetry, Second Edition, contains poems by more than 115 poets born in 1910 or later, including many who have not been anthologized before. Editor Cary Nelson introduces students to a diverse selection of vital poetry, presenting both canonical andlesser-known selections by women, minority, and progressive writers only rediscovered in the past two decades." - Syndetics Summary
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"A dazzlingly accomplished debut collection explores the ties that bind parents and children, husbands and wives, lovers and friends to one another and to the places they call home. In "Who Will Greet You at Home," a National Magazine Award finalist for The New Yorker , A woman desperate for a child weaves one out of hair, with unsettling results. In "Wild," a disastrous night out shifts a teenager and her Nigerian cousin onto uneasy common ground. In "The Future Looks Good," three generations of women are haunted by the ghosts of war, while in "Light," a father struggles to protect and empower the daughter he loves. And in the title story, in a world ravaged by flood and riven by class, experts have discovered how to "fix the equation of a person" - with rippling, unforeseen repercussions. " - Syndetics Summary
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Review this guide (by region) to browse collections of short stories and poetry by Canadian authors.
Follow the link to go to our Indigenous Literatures Guide to browse by clans and literature types.
Check out our 2SLGBTQAI+ Library Guide for titles from UFV Library grouped into the following categories: fiction, Indigenous Lit, Graphic Novels, and Poetry.
Image by congerdesign from Pixabay
"In the ruins of a place once known as North America lies the nation of Panem, a shining Capitol surrounded by twelve outlying districts. The Capitol is harsh and cruel and keeps the districts in line by forcing them all to send one boy and one girl between the ages of twelve and eighteen to participate in the annual Hunger Games, a fight to the death on live TV. Sixteen-year-old Katniss Everdeen regards it as a death sentence when she steps forward to take her sister's place in the Games. But Katniss has been close to dead before-and survival, for her, is second nature. Without really meaning to, she becomes a contender. But if she is to win, she will have to start making choices that weigh survival against humanity and life against love." -Syndetics Summary
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"A groundbreaking work of science fiction, The Left Hand of Darkness tells the story of a lone human emissary's mission to Winter, an unknown alien world whose inhabitants can choose--and change--their gender. His goal is to facilitate Winter's inclusion in a growing intergalactic civilization. But to do so he must bridge the gulf between his own views and those of the completely dissimilar culture that he encounters." - Syndetics Summary
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"Adapted by celebrated academics and comics artists Damian Duffy and John Jennings, this graphic novel powerfully renders Butler's mysterious and moving story, which spans racial and gender divides in the antebellum South through the 20th century. Butler's most celebrated, critically acclaimed work tells the story of Dana, a young black woman who is suddenly and inexplicably transported from her home in 1970s California to the pre-Civil War South." - Description
*eBook
"Mary conceived of her magnum opus, Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus, when she was only nineteen when Lord Byron suggested they tell ghost stories at a house party. The resulting book took over two years to write and can be seen as the brilliant creation of a powerful but tormented mind. The story of Frankenstein has endured nearly two centuries and countless variations because of its timeless exploration of the tension between our quest for knowledge and our thirst for good." - Author Notes from Syndetics
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"The premise of the stories is that in the waning days of a future Galactic Empire, the mathematician Hari Seldon spends his life developing a theory of psychohistory, a new and effective mathematics of sociology. Using statistical laws of mass action, it can predict the future of large populations. Seldon foresees the imminent fall of the Empire, which encompasses the entire Milky Way, and a Dark Age lasting 30,000 years before a second empire arises." - Wikipedia
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"A father and his son walk alone through burned America. Nothing moves in the ravaged landscape save the ash on the wind. It is cold enough to crack stones, and when the snow falls it is gray. The sky is dark. Their destination is the coast, although they don't know what, if anything, awaits them there." - Syndetics Summary
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"Oryx and Crake is at once an unforgettable love story and a compelling vision of the future. Snowman, known as Jimmy before mankind was overwhelmed by a plague, is struggling to survive in a world where he may be the last human, and mourning the loss of his best friend, Crake, and the beautiful and elusive Oryx whom they both loved." - Syndetics Summary
*Print book
You can find a variety of lists for dystopian fiction, hardcore or softcore sci-fi. Here is a list of the 100 most popular sci-fi books according to goodreads.
"On the surface, Alice is exactly where she should be. She's just given birth to a beautiful baby girl, Dawn; her charming husband, Steve, is nothing but supportive; and they've recently moved to a wealthy neighborhood in Toronto. And yet, Alice feels like an imposter. She isn't connecting with Dawn, a struggle made even more difficult by the recent loss of her mother, and every waking moment is spent hiding her despair from her watchful white neighbors. Her growing self-doubt hinders the one vestige of her old life she has left: her goal of writing a modern retelling of the Haudenosaunee creation story. At first, Alice is convinced her discomfort is of her own making, but then strange things start happening. She finds herself losing bits of time, hearing voices she can't explain, and speaking with things that should not be talking back to her, all while her neighbors' passive-aggressive behavior begins to morph into something far more threatening. Though Steve assures her this is all in her head, Alice cannot fight the feeling that something is very, very wrong, and that in her creation story lies the key to her and Dawn's survival. . . . She just has to finish it before it's too late." -Syndetics Summary
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"When Evangeline Hollis spent a night of passion with the darkly seductive Alec Cain, she had no idea that she'd be punished for it years later. Branded with the Mark of Cain, Eve was thrust into a life of hunting demons as penance. Living with the Mark--and the two sexy brothers who come with it--was trouble enough. But then Eve ran over Satan's hellhound during training. Now Satan, incensed at the loss of his pet, has put a bounty on Eve's head, and every demon in the country wants to be the one to deliver her. Meanwhile, Eve's formerly insatiable one-night stand is acting distant. Cain says he still wants Eve, and she believes him, but scorching hot sex isn't enough. Not after knowing what it was like to have more. As Cain's role in Eve's life becomes more and more uncertain, Abel doesn't hesitate to step in." -Syndetics Summary
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"All Noemi Broussard wanted was a fresh start. With a new boyfriend who actually treats her right and a plan to move from the reservation she grew up on - just like her beloved Uncle Louie before her - things are finally looking up for Noemi. Until the news of her boyfriend's apparent suicide brings her world crumbling down. But the facts about Roddy's death just don't add up, and Noemi isn't the only one who suspects that something menacing might be lurking within their tribal lands. After over a decade away, Uncle Louie has returned to the reservation, bringing with him a past full of secrets, horror, and what might be the key to determining Roddy's true cause of death. Together, Noemi and Louie set out to find answers...but as they get closer to the truth, Noemi begins to question whether it might be best for some secrets to remain buried." -Syndetics Summary
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"The Turn of the Screw is probably the most famous of ghostly tales and certainly the most eerily equivocal. This new edition includes three rarely reprinted ghost stories from the 1890s, "Sir Edmund Orme," "Owen Wingrave," and "The Friends of the Friends," as well as relevant extracts from James's notebooks and journals." -Syndetics Summary
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"With Duke out of commission following his wife's tragic death, Thumps is appointed temporary deputy sheriff, a role that makes him doubly eager for Duke's swift recovery. First, a myopic private investigator dies while in custody. The autopsy concludes that he died of natural causes; then an assault rifle is found in the trunk of the dead man's rental car, and the mystery woman he was investigating disappears. Meanwhile, Thumps contends with a couple of horse-thieving octogenarians and a large, slobbery dog acquired in the line of duty. As the rest of Chinook comes together to cheer on golf novice Wutty Youngbeaver, who is competing in the US Open qualifying tournament up at Shadow Ranch, Claire and Ivory decamp to Alberta, leaving Thumps to contemplate the simplicity of a life lived alone. If he can't manage something as simple as a dog or a couple of cats, how can he be responsible for another human being? Two human beings? The plot thickens when ninja assassin Cisco Cruz returns to Chinook, and Thumps finds himself knee-deep in a complicated web of deceit spun by a nefarious collective known as Black Ice." -Syndetics Summary
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"A disturbing call from her great aunts Astrid and Jeannette sends seventeen-year-old Francie far from her new home in New York into a tangle of mysteries. Ditching an audition in a Manhattan theater, Francie travels to a remote lake in the northwoods where her aunts' neighbors are "dropping like flies" from strange accidents. But are they accidents? On the shores of Enchantment Lake in the woods of northern Minnesota, something ominous is afoot, and as Francie begins to investigate, the mysteries multiply: a poisoned hotdish, a puzzling confession, eerie noises in the bog, and a legendary treasure said to be under enchantment--or is that under Enchantment, as in under the lake? At the center of everything is a suddenly booming business in cabin sales and a road not everyone wants built." -Syndetics Summary
*eBook
"Feel Better has an approach to mental and emotional health that is both relatable and refreshing. This is not just another mental health book, it is a testament and a tribute to the incredible grit, resilience, and courage faced by our young people today." -Syndetics Summary
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"From the bestselling author of Station Eleven and Sea of Tranquility, an exhilarating novel set at the glittering intersection of two seemingly disparate events--the exposure of a massive criminal enterprise and the mysterious disappearance of a woman from a ship at sea Vincent is a bartender at the Hotel Caiette, a five-star glass-and-cedar palace on the northernmost tip of Vancouver Island." - Syndetics Summary
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"Rooted within the British Columbia landscape, and with an almost tactile representation of being on the land and water, Spíləx̣m explores resilience, reconnection, and narrative memory through stories. Captivating and deeply moving, this story basket of memories tells one Indigenous woman's journey of overcoming adversity and colonial trauma to find strength through creative works and traditional perspectives of healing, transformation, and resurgence." - Syndetics Summary
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"This Unlikely Soil, the sophomore collection from Lambda Literary Award finalist Andrea Routley, is a quintet of linked novellas exploring the failures of kindness and connection among a rural west-coast community of queer women." Syndetics Summary
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"A powerfully emotional story of four people touched by a teen's death, award-winning author Gurjinder Basran's Help! I'm Alive is a clear-eyed exploration of meaningful connection in the modern era After video footage of Jay's death is shared on social media, a suburban Vancouver community is left to try to make sense of what happened to Jay and whether his death was an accident or a suicide. " - Syndetics Summary
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"Award-winning Nisga'a poet Jordan Abel's second collection of poetry, Un/inhabited , maps the terrain of the public domain to create a layered investigation of the interconnections between language and land. Abel constructed the book's source text by compiling in their entirety ninety-one western novels found on the website Project Gutenberg, an online archive of works whose copyright has expired. Using his word processor's Ctrl-F function, he searched the compilation for words that relate to the political and social aspects of land, territory, and ownership." - Syndetics Summary
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" Jared Martin, seventeen, has quit drugs and drinking. But his troubles are not over: the temptation to slip is constant (thanks to his enabling, ever-partying mom, Maggie). He's being stalked by David, his mom's ex--a preppy, khaki-wearing psycho with a proclivity for rib-breaking. And Maggie, a witch as well as a badass, can't protect him like she used to because he's moved from Kitimat to Vancouver for school." - Syndetics Summary
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"An intimate and poignant memoir about the family of Alan Kurdi--the young Syrian boy who became the global emblem for the desperate plight of millions of Syrian refugees--and of the many extraordinary journeys the Kurdis have taken, spanning countries and continents. Alan Kurdi's body washed up on the shore of the Mediterranean Sea on September 2, 2015, and overnight, the political became personal, as the world awoke to the reality of the Syrian refugee crisis. Tima Kurdi first saw the shocking photo of her nephew in her home in Vancouver, Canada. " - Syndetics Summary
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"On his 18th birthday, Ryan Knighton was diagnosed with Retinitis Pigmentosa (RP), a congenital, progressive disease marked by night-blindness, tunnel vision and, eventually, total blindness. In this penetrating, nervy memoir, which ricochets between meditation and black comedy, Knighton tells the story of his fifteen-year descent into blindness while incidentally revealing the world of the sighted in all its phenomenal peculiarity." - Syndetics Summary
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This page on our Canadian Literature Guide contains lists of authors, fiction, non-fiction, plays, and more resources related to BC lit.
Follow the link to see a list of UFV Writers in Residence with links to books we have available in the UFV Library Collection.
"Sixteen-year-old Starr Carter moves between two worlds: the poor neighborhood where she lives and the fancy suburban prep school she attends. The uneasy balance between these worlds is shattered when Starr witnesses the fatal shooting of her childhood best friend Khalil at the hands of a police officer. Khalil was unarmed. Soon afterward, his death is a national headline. Some are calling him a thug, maybe even a drug dealer and a gangbanger. Protesters are taking to the streets in Khalil's name. Some cops and the local drug lord try to intimidate Starr and her family. What everyone wants to know is: what really went down that night? And the only person alive who can answer that is Starr. But what Starr does--or does not--say could upend her community. It could also endanger her life." -Syndetics Summary
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"The son of a Brahmin ascetic and his lower-caste wife, Willie Chandran grows up sensing the hollowness at the core of his father's self-denial and vowing to live more authentically. That search takes him to the immigrant and literary bohemias of 1950s London, to a facile and unsatisfying career as a writer, and at last to a decaying Portugese colony in East Africa, where he finds a happiness he will then be compelled to betray. Brilliantly orchestrated, at once elegiac and devastating in its portraits of colonial grandeur and pretension, Half a Life represents the pinnacle of Naipaul's career." -Syndetics Summary
*Print Book
"When Sri Lankan photographer Maali Almeida wakes up dead amid the country's bloody civil war, he is not surprised. A disillusioned photojournalist, gambler, and closeted gay man in repressive 1980s Colombo, his murder at the hands of unknown persons is less a shocking mystery than a personal hassle after his life full of lies, trauma, and violence. Now, faced with an afterlife as full of confusion, politics, and bureaucracy as the one he just exited, Maali has only seven moons to help his living loved ones fulfill his final purpose." - Syndetics Summary
*Print book
The official website for the Booker Prizes, includes authors and books on the longlists, shortlists, and prize winners.
"Corbin College, not quite upstate New York, winter 1959-1960: Ruben Blum, a Jewish historian--but not an historian of the Jews--is co-opted onto a hiring committee to review the application of an exiled Israeli scholar specializing in the Spanish Inquisition. When Benzion Netanyahu shows up for an interview, family unexpectedly in tow, Blum plays the reluctant host to guests who proceed to lay waste to his American complacencies. Mixing fiction with nonfiction, the campus novel with the lecture, The Netanyahus is a wildly inventive, genre-bending comedy of blending, identity, and politics that finds Joshua Cohen at the height of his powers." - Syndetics Summary
*Print book
The official website for the Pulitzer Prize. Includes resources on the winners, stories, news, events and more.
"When a mudslide strands a train, Baxter, a queer Black sleeping car porter, must contend with the perils of white passengers, ghosts, and his secret love affair The Sleeping Car Porter brings to life an important part of Black history in North America, from the perspective of a queer man living in a culture that renders him invisible in two ways. Affecting, imaginative, and visceral enough that you'll feel the rocking of the train, The Sleeping Car Porter is a stunning accomplishment. " - Syndetics Summary
*Print book
The official website for the Giller Prize. Includes titles on the longlists, lists of Canadian literature, video discussions with authors, and more resources.
The official website for the Nobel Prize in Literature. "Alfred Nobel had broad cultural interests. During his early youth, he developed his literary interests which lasted throughout his life. His library consisted of a rich and broad selection of literature in different languages. During the last years of his life, he tried his hand as an author and began writing fiction. Literature was the fourth prize area Nobel mentioned in his will." - Website
Rowling, J. K.
Reasons:
Promotes the occult, is anti-family, and contains violence.
Burgess, Anthony
Reasons:
Violence and objectionable language.
Munro, Alice
Reasons:
Explicit language and descriptions of sex scenes.
Atwood, Margaret
Reasons:
Profanity, offensive to Christians, sexually explicit and sexual degradation.
Richler, Mordecai
Reasons:
Vulgarity, sexual expressions and sexual innuendos.
Guterson, David
Reasons:
Profanity and sexual content.
There are many more banned or challenged books to choose from. For more titles, check out the freedom to read website.
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"Discovered in the attic in which she spent the last years of her life, Anne Frank's remarkable diary has become a world classic--a powerful reminder of the horrors of war and an eloquent testament to the human spirit." -Syndetics Summary
*Print Book
"Samra Habib has spent most of her life searching for the safety to be herself. The men in her life wanted to police her, the women had only shown her the example of pious obedience, and her body was a problem to be solved. A triumphant memoir of forgiveness and family, both chosen and not, We Have Always Been Here is a rallying cry for anyone who has ever felt out of place and a testament to the power of fearlessly inhabiting one's truest self." - Syndetics Summary
*Available as a print book or an eAudiobook
"As Commander of the International Space Station, Chris Hadfield captivated the world with stunning photos and commentary from space. Now, in his first book, Chris offers readers extraordinary stories from his life as an astronaut, and shows how to make the impossible a reality. " - Syndetics Summary
*Print book
"Helen Knott, a highly accomplished Indigenous woman, seems to have it all. But in her memoir, she offers a different perspective. In My Own Moccasins is an unflinching account of addiction, intergenerational trauma, and the wounds brought on by sexual violence. It is also the story of sisterhood, the power of ceremony, the love of family, and the possibility of redemption." - Syndetics Summary
*Available as a print book or as an eBook
In this heartwarming and heartbreaking memoir, Jesse Thistle writes honestly and fearlessly about his painful experiences with abuse, uncovering the truth about his parents, and how he found his way back into the circle of his Indigenous culture and family through education.
*Available in print or as an eBook
"A narrative that amplifies a voice rarely heard--that of the child at the centre of a transracial adoption--and a searing account of being raised by religious fundamentalists Harrison Mooney was born to a West African mother and adopted as an infant by a white evangelical family. Growing up as a Black child, Harry's racial identity is mocked and derided, while at the same time he is made to participate in the fervour of his family's revivalist church. Confused and crushed by fundamentalist dogma and consistently abused for his colour, Harry must transition from child to young adult while navigating and surviving zealotry, paranoia and prejudice." - Syndetics Summary
*Print book
"Lockwood, the new tenant of Thrushcross Grange, situated on the bleak Yorkshire moors, is forced to seek shelter one night at Wuthering Heights, the home of his landlord. There he discovers the history of the tempestuous events that took place years before. What unfolds is the tale of the intense love between the gypsy foundling Heathcliff and Catherine Earnshaw. Catherine, forced to choose between passionate, tortured Heathcliff and gentle, well-bred Edgar Linton, surrendered to the expectations of her class. As Heathcliff's bitterness and vengeance at his betrayal is visited upon the next generation, their innocent heirs must struggle to escape the legacy of the past." -Amazon Summary
*Print Book
"The extraordinary, beloved novel about the ability of books to feed the soul even in the darkest of times. When Death has a story to tell, you listen. It is 1939. Nazi Germany. The country is holding its breath. Death has never been busier, and will become busier still. Liesel Meminger is a foster girl living outside of Munich, who scratches out a meager existence for herself by stealing when she encounters something she can't resist-books. With the help of her accordion-playing foster father, she learns to read and shares her stolen books with her neighbors during bombing raids as well as with the Jewish man hidden in her basement. In superbly crafted writing that burns with intensity, award-winning author Markus Zusak, author of I Am the Messenger, has given us one of the most enduring stories of our time." -Syndetics Summary
*Print Book
"One Ring to rule them all, One Ring to find them, One Ring to bring them all and in the darkness bind them. In ancient times the Rings of Power were crafted by the Elven-smiths, and Sauron, The Dark Lord, forged the One Ring, filling it with his own power so that he could rule all others. But the One Ring was taken from him, and though he sought it throughout Middle-earth, it remained lost to him. After many ages it fell, by chance, into the hands of the hobbit, Bilbo Baggins. From his fastness in the Dark Tower of Mordor, Sauron's power spread far and wide. He gathered all the Great Rings to him, but ever he searched far and wide for the One Ring that would complete his dominion. On his eleventy-first birthday Bilbo disappeared, bequeathing to his young cousin Frodo the Ruling Ring and a perilous quest --- to journey across Middle-earth, deep into the shadow of the Dark Lord, and destroy the Ring by casting it into the Cracks of Doom." -Syndetics Summary
*Print book
"Chronicles the joys and sorrows of the four March sisters as they grow into young ladies in mid-nineteenth-century New England." - Canada Commons summary
*eBook
"The Outsiders is a dramatic and enduring work of fiction that laid the groundwork for the YA genre. S. E. Hinton's classic story of a boy who finds himself on the outskirts of regular society remains as powerful today as it was the day it was first published." - Syndetics Summary
*Print book
"Set in a futurist totalitarian England, a country without freedom or faith, a mysterious man in a white porcelain mask strikes back against the oppressive overlords on behalf of the voiceless. Armed with only knives and his wits, V, as he's called, aims to bring about change in this horrific new world. His only ally? A young woman named Evey Hammond. And she is in for much more than she ever bargained for... " - Syndetics Summary
*Print book
Streaming collection of nearly 2000 different classic, new release, literary adaptation, documentary, animated, foreign and independent feature films. Look here for films that are due to be withdrawn..Please note: These films are for personal use only and cannot be shown at public events or student film nights.
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Permitted Uses for this Database
"Since its original publication in 1960, To Kill a Mockingbird has sold over 30 million copies, won the Pulitzer Prize in 1961, was a New York Times bestseller for more than 40 weeks, and has been translated into 20 languages. This anniversary edition of an American classic features a new Introduction by the author." - Syndetics Summary
*Print book
"The Great Gatsby is widely regarded as one of the masterpieces of American fiction. It tells of the mysterious Jay Gatsby's grand effort to win the love of Daisy Buchanan, the rich girl who embodies for him the promise of the American dream. Deeply romantic in its concern with self making, ideal love, and the power of illusion, it draws on modernist techniques to capture the spirit of the materialistic, morally adrift, post-war era that Fitzgerald dubbed the jazz age." - Syndetics Summary
*Print book
"From the Nobel Prize winning novelist, this epic tale of seven generations of the Buendia family spans a hundred years of Latin American history. The brilliant, bestselling, landmark novel chronicles the irreconcilable conflict between the desire for solitude and the need for love--in rich, imaginative prose that has come to define an entire genre known as "magical realism." "- Syndetics Summary
*Print book
"Experience this amazing reimagining of Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen's classic story of love and misunderstanding—featuring the colorful and contemporary illustrations of Alice Pattullo. Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice has stood the test of time as one of her best novels. Biting commentary, romance, and misunderstanding abound in this classic story." - Description
*eBook
"Marking the 75th anniversary of its original publication, Vintage Canada is proud to publish the first Canadian edition ever of the 1932 classic Brave New World with an original introduction by Margaret Atwood. Far in the future, the World Controllers have created the ideal society. Through clever use of genetic engineering, brainwashing and recreational sex and drugs, all its members are happy consumers." - Syndetics Summary
*Print book
"This Norton Critical Edition includes: -The third-edition text (1848), the last corrected by Charlotte Brontë, accompanied by revised and expanded explanatory footnotes. -"Contexts," highlighting Jane Eyre as a bildungsroman through diary entries and letters by the author about her experiences as a student, teacher, and governess as well as her feelings about friendship, love, and writing." - Syndetics Summary
*Print book
"Rodion Romanovich Raskolnikov lives in a garret in St. Petersburg. Destitute and feeling cut off from humanity, he considers committing a terrible crime--killing a pawnbroker--to steal her money. After hearing people say that society would be better off without the pawnbroker, he murders her--and her sister, who walks in while Raskolnikov is raiding the pawnbroker's wares." - Description
*eBook
"The Call of the Wild is Jack London's most popular book and is considered by many to be his best. Telling the story of Buck, a domesticated dog whose wild instincts begin to kick-in while serving as a sled dog in the treacherous Yukon. The novel's tone is often dark, and despite being considered juvenile literature by some, it portrays much violence and cruelty." - Description
*eBook
"Ishmael joined the crew of the whaling ship Pequod expecting a simple whaling voyage. Little did he know that the captain of the ship is thirsty for revenge against Moby Dick, the great white whale responsible for his missing leg. As the crew sails the ocean, Captain Ahab searches unceasingly for Moby Dick, ignoring warnings and prophecies of doom. When the white whale is finally spotted, a battle ensues that makes this novel by author Herman Melville one of the most epic sea stories of all time." - Description
*eBook
You can find inspiration for classic tales by doing an internet search. Follow this link to see Penguin Publishing's '100 must-read classics'
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"The best-known work by the 19th century Russian novelist about a man who lacks willpower and self-confidence." -Syndetics Summary
*Print book
"To five-year-old Jack, Room is the entire world. It's where he was born and where he and his Ma eat and play and learn. At night, Ma puts him safely to sleep in the wardrobe, in caseOld Nick comes. Room is home to Jack, but to Ma, it's the prison where Old Nick has kept her for seven years, since she was nineteen." - Syndetics Summary
*Print book
"Bernice Meetoos, a Cree woman, leaves her home in Northern Alberta following tragedy and travels to Gibsons, BC. She is on something of a vision quest, seeking to understand the messages from The Frugal Gourmet (one of the only television shows available on CBC North) that come to her in her dreams. She is also driven by the leftover teenaged desire to meet Pat Johns, who played Jesse on The Beachcombers, because he is, as she says, a working, healthy Indian man. Bernice heads for Molly's Reach to find answers but they are not the ones she expected." - Syndetics Summary
*Print book
"Case was the sharpest data-thief in the matrix--until he crossed the wrong people and they crippled his nervous system, banishing him from cyberspace. Now a mysterious new employer has recruited him for a last-chance run at an unthinkably powerful artificial intelligence. With a dead man riding shotgun and Molly, a mirror-eyed street-samurai, to watch his back, Case is ready for the adventure that upped the ante on an entire genre of fiction." - Syndetics Summary
*Print book
"On the hottest day of the summer of 1935, thirteen-year-old Briony Tallis sees her sister Cecilia strip off her clothes and plunge into the fountain in the garden of their country house. Watching her is Robbie Turner, son of the Tallis's cleaning lady, whose education has been subsidized by Cecilia's and Briony's father, and who, like Cecilia, has recently come down from Cambridge. By day's end, their lives will be changed -- irrevocably." - Syndetics Summary
*Print book
"A searing nove, at once sweeping and intimate: a story of love and race centred around a man and woman from Nigeria who seemed destined to be together--until the choices they are forced to make tear them apart. Ifemelu--beautiful, self-assured--left Nigeria 15 years ago, and now studies in Princeton as a Graduate Fellow. Obinze--handsome and kind-hearted--was Ifemelu's teenage love; he'd hoped to join her in America, but post 9/11 America wouldn't let him in. Years later, when they reunite in Nigeria, neither is the same person who left home." - Syndetics Summary
*Print book
"Emma Woodhouse is a privileged young woman whose greatest pleasure in life lies in matchmaking for anyone but herself. Written, by Austen's own admission, as "a heroine whom no one but myself will much like," Emma's charm and wit exist in constant tension with her capacity for selfishness and vanity." - Description
*eBook
Looking for more inspiration? Check out this list of '100 Must-Read Books with One-Word Titles' from Book Riot.