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Night of power / by Ali, Anar,author.;
Inlcudes bibliographical references.A portrait of a Muslim family--from the heady days in Uganda to hard times in a new country, and the tragic accident that forces them to confront the ghosts of the past. It's 1998. And Mansoor Visram has lived in Canada for 25 years, ever since dictator Idi Amin expelled South Asians from Uganda. As a refugee with a wife and child, Mansoor has tried his best to recreate the life they once had, but starting over in Canada has been much harder than he expected. He's worked as a used car salesman, as a gas station attendant, and now he runs a small dry cleaner in suburban Calgary. But he's hatching plans for a father and son empire that will bring back the wealth and status the Visrams enjoyed in Uganda. The problem is, his son Ashif does not share his dreams, and he's moved across the country to get away from his father. He's a rising star at a multi-national corporation in Toronto, on the cusp of a life-changing promotion, but he can't seem to forget his girlfriend from long ago. Mansoor's wife, Layla, has spent the past decade running her own home cooking business and trying to hold her family together. But Ashif rarely comes home to visit and Mansoor's pride has almost ruined their marriage. As the fissures that began generations ago--and continents away--reappear, Mansoor, Ashif, and Layla drift further and further apart. On the Night of Power, a night during Ramadan when fates are decided for the next year, a terrible accident occurs. Will the Visrams survive this latest tragedy?
Subjects: Domestic fiction.; Refugees; Refugees; Ugandans; Life change events; Families; Muslims;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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Capital of Dreams, The [electronic resource] : by O'Neill, Heather.aut; McKinney, Paige.nrt; cloudLibrary;
A breathtaking dark fairy tale of survival and betrayal from the vivid imagination of Heather O’Neill Fourteen-year-old Sofia Bottom lives in a small country that Europe has forgotten. But inside its borders, the old myths of trees that come alive and fairies who live among their roots have given way to an explosion of the arts and the consolations of philosophy. No one, from the clarinetists to the cabaret singers, is as revered as Sofia’s brilliant mother, the writer Clara Bottom. How can Sofia, with a tin ear and an enduring love of the old myths, ever hope to win her mother’s love? When the country’s greatest enemy invades, and the Capital is under threat, at last Clara turns to her daughter. Sofia must smuggle her new manuscript to safety on the last train evacuating children from the city. But the train draws to a suspicious halt in the middle of a forest, and Sofia runs for her life, losing her mother’s most prized possession. Frightened and alone in a country at war, Sofia must find a way to reclaim what she has lost. On an epic journey through woods and razed towns, colliding with soldiers, survivors and other lost children, Sofia must make the choice between kindness and survival. In this stunning dark fairy tale of a novel, Heather O’Neill reveals once again her mastery of language that is as delicious as cake and as serious as a gunshot.
Subjects: Audiobooks.; Literary; Contemporary Women;
© 2024., HarperCollins,
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A living remedy : a memoir / by Chung, Nicole,author.;
"From the bestselling author of ALL YOU CAN EVER KNOW comes a searing memoir of class, inequality, and grief--a daughter's search to understand the lives her adoptive parents led, the life she forged as an adult, and the lives she's lost. In this country, unless you attain extraordinary wealth, you will likely be unable to help your loved ones in all the ways you'd hoped. You will learn to live with the specific, hollow guilt of those who leave hardship behind, yet are unable to bring anyone else with them. When Nicole Chung graduated from high school, she couldn't hightail it out of her overwhelmingly white Oregon hometown fast enough. As a scholarship student at a private university on the East Coast, no longer the only Korean she knew, she found a sense of community she had always craved as an Asian American adoptee--and a path to the life she'd long wanted. But the middle class world she begins to raise a family in--where there are big homes, college funds, nice vacations--looks very different from the middle class world she thought she grew up in, where paychecks have to stretch to the end of the week, health insurance is often lacking, and there are no safety nets. When her father dies at only sixty-seven, killed by diabetes and kidney disease, Nicole feels deep grief as well as rage, knowing that years of financial instability and lack of access to healthcare contributed to his premature death. And then the unthinkable happens--less than a year later, her beloved mother is diagnosed with cancer, and the physical distance between them becomes insurmountable as COVID descends upon the world. Exploring the enduring strength of family bonds in the face of hardship and tragedy, A Living Remedy examines what it takes to reconcile the distance between one life, one home, and another--and sheds needed light on some of the most persistent and tragic inequalities in American society"--
Subjects: Autobiographies.; Biographies.; Chung, Nicole.; Adoptees; Adoptive parents; Equality; Grief; Income distribution; Interracial adoption;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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Geoff Dixon: Portraits of Us. by O'Leary, Clare,film director.; Giles, Glenis,film director.; Ronin Films (Firm),dst; Kanopy (Firm),dst;
Originally produced by Ronin Films in 2022.Geoff Dixon’s art reflects his vision for our future unless we take immediate action – he was working as a conservationist long before the word became part of our everyday vocabulary. His paintings are rich with colour, commentary, and a challenge to all of us to wake up and think about the future of our wildlife, our flora and fauna, our country and our planet. New Zealand-born and now living and working in Australia, in north Queensland, Geoff grew up and found/discovered his sexuality in the conservative Christchurch of the early seventies. The film introduces us to the people who influenced him and who believed in him over the years. We find out about his travels, his ups and downs, what led to his strong sense of the environment and why the symbols of bird life have come to inhabit his paintings. Geoff’s work celebrates the birds we have around us, as well as those that are on the verge of extinction in Australasia, and reflects on the state of our ecology. He says that the paintings are, at the same time, ‘portraits of us’. The film also explores his close relationship over many years with the late Australian Indigenous artist, Arone Meeks.Mode of access: World Wide Web.
Subjects: Documentary films.; Art.; Arts.; Science.; Australians.; Foreign study.; Zoology.; Documentary films.; Artists.;
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An Irish country practice / by Taylor, Patrick,1941-author.;
Once, not too long ago, there was just a single Irish country doctor tending to the lively little village of Ballybucklebo: Doctor Fingal Flahertie O'Reilly. Now his thriving practice is growing by leaps and bounds. Not only has O'Reilly taken a new trainee under his wing, Doctor Connor Nelson, he's also added a spirited Labrador puppy to his ever-expanding household at Number One Main Street. Meanwhile, his trusted partner, young Doctor Barry Laverty, finds himself wondering if he's truly ready to settle down and start a family with his lovely fiancée, Sue. As the doctors cope with domestic and professional challenges, they also look after their patients and their ailments, including a mysterious cough, a housewife whose frequent "accidents" may have a disturbing cause, and a respected colleague who might be succumbing to an old vice. All is not sickness and worry, however. There's plenty of joy and merriment to be found as well, from a visiting circus to racing to sailing ... and maybe even a happy ending or two.
Subjects: Domestic fiction.; Pastoral fiction.; Country life; Physicians;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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In winter I get up at night / by Urquhart, Jane,author.;
Includes bibliographical references.In the early morning dark, Emer McConnell rises for a day of teaching music in the schools of rural Saskatchewan. While she travels the snowy roads in the gathering light, she begins another journey, one of recollection and introspection, and one that, through the course of Jane Urquhart's brilliant new novel, will leave the reader forever changed. Moving as effortlessly through time as the drift of memory itself, In Winter I Get Up at Night brings Emer and her singular story to life. At the age of 11, she is terribly injured in an enormous prairie storm--the "great wind" that shifts her trajectory forever. As she recovers, separated from her family in a children's ward, Emer gets to know her fellow patients, a memorable group including a child performer who stars in a travelling theatre company, the daughter of a Dukhobor community, and the son of a leftist Jewish farm collective. The children are tended to by three nursing sisters and two doctors, whom the ever-imaginative Emer comes to call Doctor Angel and Doctor Carpenter. Emer's tale grows outwards from that ward, reaching through time and space in a dreamlike fashion, recounting the stories of her mother's entanglement with a powerful yet mysterious teacher; her brother's dawning spirituality, which eventually leads him to the priesthood; the remarkable lives of the nuns who care for her; and the passionate yet distant love affair of Emer and an enigmatic man she calls Harp--a brilliant scientist whose great discovery has forever altered millions of lives around the world. In luminous prose, and with exhilarating nuance and depth, Jane Urquhart charts an unforgettable life, while also exploring some of the grandest themes of the twentieth century--colonial expansion, scientific progress, and the sinister forces that seek to divide societies along racial and cultural lines. In Winter I Get Up at Night is a major work of imagination and self-exploration from one of the greatest writers of our time.
Subjects: Domestic fiction.; Psychological fiction.; Novels.; Country life; Families; Interpersonal relations; Life change events; Recollection (Psychology); Women teachers; Women;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 3
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A river in darkness : one man's escape from North Korea / by Ishikawa, Masaji,author.;
"Half-Korean, half-Japanese, Masaji Ishikawa has spent his whole life feeling like a man without a country. This feeling only deepened when his family moved from Japan to North Korea when Ishikawa was just thirteen years old, and unwittingly became members of the lowest social caste. His father, himself a Korean national, was lured to the new Communist country by promises of abundant work, education for his children, and a higher station in society. But the reality of their new life was far from utopian. In this memoir, Ishikawa recounts his tumultuous upbringing and the brutal thirty-six years he spent living under a crushing totalitarian regime, as well as the challenges he faced repatriating to Japan after barely escaping North Korea with his life"--Amazon.com.
Subjects: Autobiographies.; Biographies.; Ishikawa, Masaji.; Racially mixed people; Caste-based discrimination; Totalitarianism.; Repatriation;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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Eighteen : a history of Britain in 18 young lives / by Loxton, Alice,author.;
Includes bibliographical references.At 18, your life is full of possibility. You have everything to look forward to -- unless you've got the plague. In this unconventional and witty history, award-winning writer and broadcaster Alice Loxton delves into Britain's past, exploring the country though 18 notable figures at that most formative of ages -- 18-years-old. From a young Empress Matilda, already changing the fate of nations, to teenage Richard Burton, the rugby-obsessed lad who grew up in a Welsh mining town, each journey unveils a different era of Britain. Irreverent and full of fascinating tidbits (did you know Chaucer began as a scantily clad pageboy?), Loxton reveals what we can learn from the way a society treats its young -- about its values and its foibles.
Subjects: Biographies.; Personal narratives.; Young adults;
Available copies: 0 / Total copies: 1
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True confessions from the ninth concession / by Needles, Dan,author.;
"In 1988, Needles and his wife left the city to start a family in a country community located two hours north of Toronto. Together they stocked their farm with sheep, cattle, chickens, pigs and, eventually, four children. Needles' charming chronicle unfolds in essays dated from 1997 to 2016, offering homespun advice for successful country living--like whether to wave from the elbow or to merely raise one finger from the steering wheel when passing a neighbour in the car. He cautions on rural superstitions, such as when his neighbour hesitated before selling him weaner pigs because every time he does the wife of the farmer who's buying them becomes pregnant--which turned out to be true. Here too is the tale of an unlikely friendship between a "borderline" collie ("he's never bitten anything in his life and the sheep are catching on") and an odd duck named Ferdinand, as well as other hilarious stories involving an assortment of farm animals, including the weapon of choice to properly dispatch a rooster-gone-bad; the risks of giving a name to a potential Sunday dinner entrée; and how to outsmart a free-range pig. With his witty insight, Needles shares the art of neighbouring in the country--a place made for visits, and "where a figure walking across your field is more of a reason to put the kettle on than to call the police." True Confessions from the Ninth Concession is a sesquicentennial crop of antics and aphorisms by Canada's funniest farmer--one that presents a wonderful escape for world-weary city dwellers, and affirmative reading for anyone who is from, or has moved to, rural Canada."--
Subjects: Biographies.; Needles, Dan.; Farmers; Farm life; Farms, Small; Authors, Canadian (English);
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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This Country: S2. by George, Tom,film director.; Cooper, Charlie,actor.; May, Daisy,actor.; Chahidi, Paul,actor.; Cooper, Trevor,actor.; BBC Studios (Firm),dst; Kanopy (Firm),dst;
Charlie Cooper, Daisy May Cooper, Paul Chahidi, Trevor CooperOriginally produced by BBC Studios in 2018.BBC filmmakers return to the sleepy rural village of Northleach, to further document the lives of disaffected youths Kerry and Kurtan Mucklowe. Kerry is now a reformed character, learning to strike a better balance between being feared and being nice. But not too nice, or people might start taking the piss. Not much has changed for Kurtan. But he does have a new girlfriend, who's the best thing that's ever happened to him (bar the time he saw Kerry's mum fall down the stairs). As these feckless cousins drift through life, they find ever more inventive ways of making absolutely no progress. Some things never change.Mode of access: World Wide Web.
Subjects: Feature films.; Television series.; Motion pictures.; Comedy films.;
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