Fiction 2

Akemi's gift for drawing allows her to move to Tokyo to study medical illustration. Sayako is the first roommate to pay Akemi attention, and they quickly become inseparable. As Akemi begins to model for Sayako, their connection deepens. Together, they begin to attend "happenings," encounters arranged by two enigmatic artists in random locations, intended to free them from their worldly attachments. Following a devastating betrayal, Sayako disappears, and Akemi becomes determined to find her - and in the process, must newly face herself.

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Alma is a Filipina woman who works as a film editor for a cheesy True Crime series featuring the most notorious killers of the 20th century called Infamous. When an Infamous' episode features the Scarborough Stalker, she remembers coming of age while the serial rapist and killer was attacking women and girls in Scarborough in the late 80s and early 90s. What unfolds are two storylines: in the past, young Alma watches an entire city become consumed with a manhunt. In the present, adult Alma must come to terms with her own ideas of consent to stop her son's dangerous behaviour towards his girlfriend.

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"For the past five years, Ryan Richardson has relived that terrible night. The car door ripping open. The crushing blow to the head. The hands yanking him from the vehicle. His girlfriend Ali's piercing scream as she is taken. With no trace of Ali or the car, a cloud of suspicion hangs over Ryan. But with no proof and a good lawyer, he's never charged, though that doesn't matter to the podcasters and internet trolls. Now, Ryan has changed his last name, and entered law school. He's put his past behind him. Until, on a summer trip abroad to Italy with his law-school classmates, Ryan gets a call from his father: Ali's car has finally been found, submerged in a lake in his hometown. Inside are two dead men and a cryptic note with five words written on the envelope in Ali's handwriting: If something happens to me... Then, halfway around the world, the unthinkable happens: Ryan sees the man who has haunted his dreams since that night. As Ryan races from the rolling hills of Tuscany, to a rural village in the UK, to the glittering streets of Paris in search of the truth, he has no idea that his salvation may lie with a young sheriff's deputy in Kansas working her first case, and a mobster in Philadelphia who's experienced tragedy of his own."-- Provided by publisher.

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Set during the dramatic Red River Resistance of 1869-1870 and the birth of Manitoba. The novel is told through the perspective of a young Irish-Canadian journalist, Conor O'Dea. Under mysterious circumstances, after working for the assassinated politician D'Arcy McGee, O'Dea is sent West, and to Sir John A. Macdonald's horror befriends Louis Riel. Macdonald never understood Louis Riel and never really tried to. The story also includes the little known Fenian attack in Manitoba. If Louis Riel had supported his fellow Catholics, it could have been what the lieutenant governor called a rough time of it. But he didn't. He supported Canada. Equal parts spy thriller and love triangle and, in a time of reconciliation, this poignant novel contributes to the complicated story of Canada. Henderson and Bouchard have managed the magnificent feat of starting a very important conversation about this great land for all of those who call it home.

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As a child in Beijing in the 1970s, Lai lives with her family in a lively, working-class neighborhood near the heart of the city. Only Lai's grandmother, a formidable and colorful maverick, seems to really see Lai and believe that she can blossom beyond their circumstances. But Lai is quickly awakened to the harsh realities of the Chinese state. As she enters adolescence, Lai meets a mysterious and wise bookseller who introduces her to great works -- Hemingway, Camus, and Orwell, among others -- that open her heart to the emotional power of literature and her mind to thrillingly different perspectives. Along the way, she experiences the ebbs and flows of friendship, the agony of grief, and the first steps and missteps in love.

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