Search:

Bad girls / by Sosa Villada, Camila,author.; Maude, Kit,translator.; translation of:Sosa Villada, Camila.Malas.English.;
"Gritty and unflinching, yet also tender, fantastical, and funny, a trans woman's coming-of-age tale about finding a community among fellow outcasts. Born in the small Argentine town of Mina Clavero, Camila is designated male but begins to identify from an early age as a girl. She is well aware that she's different from other children and reacts to her oppressive, poverty-stricken home life, with a cowed mother and abusive, alcoholic father, by acting out-with swift consequences. Deeply intelligent, she eventually leaves for the city to attend university, slipping into prostitution to make ends meet. And in Sarmiento Park, in the heart of Córdoba, she discovers the strange, wonderful world of the trans sex workers who dwell there. Taken under the wing of Auntie Encarna, the 178-year-old eternal whose house shelters this unconventional extended family, Camila becomes a part of their stories-of a Headless Man who fled his country's wars, a mute young woman who transforms into a bird, an abandoned baby boy who brings a twinkle to your eye. Camila Sosa Villada's extraordinary first novel is a rich, nuanced portrait of a marginalized community: their romantic relationships, friendships and squabbles, difficulties at work, aspirations and disappointments. It bears witness to these lives constantly haunted by the specter of death-by disease or more violent means at the hands of customers, boyfriends, or the police-yet full of passion, empathy, and insight"--
Subjects: Bildungsromans.; Magic realist fiction.; Novels.; Sex workers; Transgender women; Gender nonconformity;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
unAPI

I know why the caged bird sings / by Angelou, Maya,author.;
This book is part of our Book Sanctuary collection. A Book Sanctuary is a physical or digital space that actively protects the freedom to read. It provides shelter and access to endangered books. Launched by Chicago Public Library in 2022, The Book Sanctuary initiative brings attention to challenged titles, and commits to making these books accessible. Innisfil ideaLAB & Library's Book Sanctuary Collection represents books that have been challenged, censored or removed from a public library or school in North America. More than 50 adult, teen, and children's books are in our collection and are available for browsing and borrowing in our branches and online. Explore the collection to learn more about why these books were challenged.
Subjects: Biographies.; Angelou, Maya; Angelou, Maya; Banned book sanctuary.; Classics; Literary; African American women authors; Authors, American; Entertainers; African American authors;
Available copies: 2 / Total copies: 3
unAPI

The comfort of ghosts / by Winspear, Jacqueline,1955-author.;
"London, 1945: Four adolescent orphans with a dark wartime history are squatting in a vacant Belgravia mansion - the owners having fled London under heavy Luftwaffe bombing. Soon after a demobilized British soldier, ill and reeling from his experiences overseas, takes shelter with the group, Maisie Dobbs visits the mansion on behalf of the owners. Maisie is deeply puzzled by the children's reticence. Their stories are evasive and, more mysteriously, they appear to possess self-defense skills one might expect of trained adults in wartime. Her quest to bring comfort and the promise of a future to the youngsters and to the ailing soldier brings to light a decades-old mystery concerning Maisie's first husband, James Compton, who was killed while piloting an experimental aircraft. As Maisie picks apart the threads of her dead husband's life, she is forced to examine her own painful past and question beliefs she has always accepted as true. The award-winning Maisie Dobbs series has garnered hundreds of thousands of followers around the world, readers who are drawn to a woman who is of her time, yet familiar in ours - and who inspires with her resilience and capacity for endurance at the worst of times. This final assignment of her own choosing not only opens a new future for Maisie Dobbs and her family, but serves as a fascinating portrayal of the challenges facing the people of Britain at the close of the Second World War"--
Subjects: Detective and mystery fiction.; Novels.; Dobbs, Maisie (Fictitious character); Orphans; Reflection (Philosophy); Women private investigators; World War, 1939-1945;
Available copies: 2 / Total copies: 2
unAPI

Death of an avid reader / by Brody, Frances,author.;
"The search for a daughter. Lady Coulton gave up the baby that would have ruined her marriage, born when Lord Coulton was abroad. Now that her husband is dying, she asks Kate to find Sophia. A haunted library. It is forty years since the ghost of a dead librarian haunted the old library, yet the stories have begun again. Kate does not believe in ghosts but obligingly takes part in a ceremony to expel the restless spirit. Shockingly, there is a body in the basement, strangled, and covered in dusty volumes from a fallen bookcase. It is Dr. Potter, a mathematician. A killer on the loose. Dr Potter's body is taken away. The police find a sick man sheltering in the basement. He is an Italian, Umberto, an organ grinder and owner of a lively Capuchin monkey. Umberto becomes the prime suspect and will be charged with murder. Kate goes with Umberto to the infirmary. But he is too weak to be a suspect. And now Kate must set out to find the real culprit ... "--Provided by publisher.
Subjects: Detective and mystery fiction.; Murder; Women private investigators;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
unAPI

Their eyes were watching God / by Hurston, Zora Neale,author.; Gates, Henry Louis, Jr.; Danticat, Edwidge,1969-;
Includes bibliographical references (pages [207]-210).This book is part of our Book Sanctuary collection. A Book Sanctuary is a physical or digital space that actively protects the freedom to read. It provides shelter and access to endangered books. Launched by Chicago Public Library in 2022, The Book Sanctuary initiative brings attention to challenged titles, and commits to making these books accessible. Innisfil ideaLAB & Library's Book Sanctuary Collection represents books that have been challenged, censored or removed from a public library or school in North America. More than 50 adult, teen, and children's books are in our collection and are available for browsing and borrowing in our branches and online. Explore the collection to learn more about why these books were challenged.Set in Florida in the early twentieth century, this is the story of Janie Crawford, a black woman in her forties, as told to her friend Phoeby. The granddaughter of a woman born in slavery, independent Janie evolves through poverty, trials, and three marriages.
Subjects: Banned book sanctuary.; Classics; Literary; African American women; Self-realization;
Available copies: 2 / Total copies: 2
unAPI

The Irish boarding house / by Taylor, Sandy(Fiction writer),author.;
"24 Merrion Square. The house stands empty, the old stone steps overgrown with thorny rose bushes. But Mary Kate feels a deep connection to the neglected, silent rooms. Could this be the place to help her heal? Dublin 1952. When Mary Kate Ryan receives a surprise inheritance from the woman who abandoned her as a tiny baby, she's stunned. All her life, she has longed to know why her mother disappeared, and now she's devastated to realise that every lonely night she spent without a home or family of her own, her mother knew exactly where she was. Mary Kate is about to refuse the money when she sees a beautiful, deserted house for sale and something sparks in her heart. She will reawaken it, as the Dublin Boarding House for Single Ladies, and provide a shelter for others as lost and alone as her. Can she help the two young girls left at the local orphanage, desperate for a home of their own? Or the pregnant teenager on the run, who only wants to keep her baby safe? The boarding house brings Mary Kate love and friendships she never dreamed of, but just as her heart is about to burst with joy, a new guest arrives. The stern older woman won't speak about her past, but when Mary Kate uncovers her story, it reveals a devastating secret about her mother. With her life in turmoil once more, can Mary Kate draw on the strength of the women in the house to help her face her past, or will the tragedy she uncovers spell disaster for them all ... ?"--
Subjects: Domestic fiction.; Historical fiction.; Novels.; Boardinghouses; Family secrets; Inheritance and succession; Mothers and daughters; Nineteen fifties; Young women;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
unAPI

The last fire season : a personal and pyronatural history / by Martin, Manjula,author.;
Includes bibliographical references."H Is for Hawk meets Joan Didion in the Pyrocene in this arresting combination of memoir, natural history, and literary inquiry that chronicles one woman's experience of life in Northern California during the worst fire season on record. Told in luminous, perceptive prose, The Last Fire Season is a deeply incisive inquiry into what it really means--now--to live in relationship to the elements of the natural world. When Manjula Martin moved from the city to the woods of Northern California, she wanted to be closer to the wilderness that she had loved as a child. She was also seeking refuge from a health crisis that left her with chronic pain, and found a sense of healing through tending her garden beneath the redwoods of Sonoma County. But the landscape that Martin treasured was an ecosystem already in crisis. Wildfires fueled by climate change were growing bigger and more frequent: each autumn, her garden filled with smoke and ash, and the local firehouse siren wailed deep into the night. In 2020, when a dry lightning storm ignited hundreds of simultaneous wildfires across the West and kicked off the worst fire season on record, Martin, along with thousands of other Californians, evacuated her home in the midst of a pandemic. Both a love letter to the forests of the West and an interrogation of the colonialist practices that led to their current dilemma, The Last Fire Season, follows her from the oaky hills of Sonoma County to the redwood forests of coastal Santa Cruz, to the pines and peaks of the Sierra Nevada, as she seeks shelter, bears witness to the devastation, and tries to better understand fire's role in the ecology of the West. As Martin seeks a way to navigate the daily experience of living in a damaged body on a damaged planet, she comes to question her own assumptions about nature and the complicated connections between people and the land on which we live"--
Subjects: Biographies.; Autobiographies.; Personal narratives.; Martin, Manjula.; Human beings; Wildfires; Women authors, American;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
unAPI

The lifeguards : a novel / by Ward, Amanda Eyre,1972-author.;
"The bonds between three picture-perfect, viciously protective mothers are tested when their sons uncover a horrible crime in this provocative novel from the New York Times bestselling author of The Jetsetters. In Austin's Zilker Park, vigilance and money are enough to keep one insulated from the world's problems and inconveniences. Here, three mothers-Whitney, Annette, and Liza-have grown thick as thieves, and so have their fifteen-year-old sons. While each of them has their own set of values and backgrounds, they share the belief that they can shelter their boys from an increasingly dangerous world. They've raised their families together, and their three sons are about to begin a carefree summer as lifeguards. Their friendship is unbreakable--as safe as the neighborhood where they've raised their sweet little boys. Until the body is found. One night, the three women have been chatting away, drinking wine, when their boys come back with a harrowing story about finding a young woman dead beside a swimming hole in the Greenbelt, a swath of hiking trails and dim wilderness areas that runs through their neighborhood. They swear they haven't done anything. They agree not to call the police-because who would want to cause a scene, to topple their fragile images and arouse suspicion? What choice do mothers have but to believe their sons? All families harbor secrets. Privately, none of them is sure that the boys are telling the truth. And with each woman questioning her son-and her friends' sons-each wonders how many lies they've told each other. The Lifeguards is a riveting, high-stakes novel about the secrets we tell to protect the ones we love-and how sometimes your closest neighbor and ally can become your most dangerous foe"--
Subjects: Domestic fiction.; Psychological fiction.; Novels.; Family secrets; Female friendship; Mothers and sons; Murder; Secrecy;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
unAPI

Balancing Bountiful : what I learned about feminism from my polygamist grandmothers / by Blackmore, Mary Jayne,1983-author.;
"As the daughter of Mormon leader Winston Blackmore, Mary Jayne Blackmore grew up within the closed-off polygamist community of Bountiful, BC. She spent her younger years riding ponies, raising pet lambs and playing in the hay in the Old Barn, under the constant shadow of religious fanaticism, doomsday preparation and an instilled fear of the world outside of Mormonism. In 2017 her father was charged and convicted of practicing polygamy, splitting the community in two and further inciting the media sensationalism and worldwide criticism that had always surrounded Bountiful. As the world she had always known imploded, Mary Jayne was forced to redefine her faith, family and womanhood for herself. Today, through her work and her personal exploration of feminism, Mary Jayne is helping to heal a broken community, one that she watched turn from safe and loving to angry, arrogant and resentful. She is also building her own place in the world--as a teacher, mother, writer and educated woman--and she has managed to retain loving bonds with her family, including her father. From a childhood in an idyllic but sheltered community to early adulthood in an arranged marriage, ensuing divorce, and eventual return to Bountiful, Bridging Bountiful is Mary Jayne's journey of coming of age and coming to terms with her background as she strives to answer the question: What is the right kind of family, the right kind of woman and the right kind of feminist?"--
Subjects: Biographies.; Autobiographies.; Blackmore, Mary Jayne, 1983-; Mormon women; Mormon fundamentalism; Polygamy; Life change events;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
unAPI

Daughter of the merciful deep / by Penelope, L.,1978-author.;
""Our home began, as all things do, with a wish." Jane Edwards hasn't spoken since she was eleven years old, when armed riders expelled her family from their hometown along with every other Black resident. Now, twelve years later, she's found a haven in the all-Black town of Awenasa. But the construction of a dam promises to wash her home under the waters of the new lake. Jane will do anything to save the community that sheltered her. So, when a man with uncanny abilities arrives in town asking strange questions, she wonders if he might be the key. But as the stranger hints at gods and ancestral magic, Jane is captivated by a bigger mystery. She knows this man. Only the last time she saw him, he was dead. His body laid to rest in a rushing river. Who is the stranger and what is he really doing in Awenasa? To find those answers, Jane will journey into a sunken world, a land of capricious gods and unsung myths, of salvation and dreams made real. But the flood waters are rising. To gain the miracle she desires, Jane will have to find her voice again and finally face the trauma of the past"--
Subjects: Fantasy fiction.; Novels.; African American women; Black towns; Dams; Drowning victims; Gods, African; Imaginary places; Magic; Mute persons; Spirits;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
unAPI