Books tagged: Narrative Theme: Social Issues
(In)visible
By Ivan Baidak
Diagnosed with Tourette’s syndrome as a teenager, Adam, now a 26-year-old freelance designer, attends his first meeting at a social support group. Here he meets Anna, a charity worker with a face hemangioma, Marta a TV anchor with alopecia, and Eva a make up artist with vitiligo. ... Read more
A Good Name
By Yejide Kilanko
Twelve years in America and Eziafa Okereke has nothing to show for it. Desperate to re-write his story, Eziafa returns to Nigeria to find a woman he can mold to his taste. Eighteen-year-old Zina has big dreams. An arranged marriage to a much older man isn't one of them. Trapped ... Read more
A Handbook for Beautiful People
By Jennifer Spruit
When twenty-two-year-old Marla finds herself unexpectedly pregnant, she wishes for a family, but faces precariousness: an uncertain future with her talented, exacting boyfriend, Liam; constant danger from her roommate, Dani, a sometime prostitute and entrenched drug addict; ... Read more
A Handbook for Beautiful People
By Jennifer Spruit
Winner, 2017 IPPY Bronze Medal for Popular Fiction
When twenty-two-year-old Marla finds herself unexpectedly pregnant, she wishes for a family, but faces precariousness: an uncertain future with her talented, exacting boyfriend, Liam; constant danger from her roommate, Dani, ... Read more
A Matter of Conscience
By James Bartleman
A novel of love and betrayal dealing with the biggest issues facing Canada’s Indigenous peoples today.
In the summer of 1972, a float plane carrying a team of child welfare officials lands on a river flowing through the Yellow Dog Indian reserve. Their mission is to seize ... Read more
Across the Face of the Storm
By Jerome R. Adams
This is an apprenticeship novel, the story of Isabel Cooper, 17, and her 15-year-old brother, Frederick. In early 1911, they leave their Georgetown home after the sudden death of their Mexican mother. They are determined to find their father, a college professor who – like ... Read more
After the Bloom
By Leslie Shimotakahara
A daughter’s search for her mother reveals her family’s past in a Japanese internment camp during the Second World War.
Lily Takemitsu goes missing from her home in Toronto one luminous summer morning in the mid-1980s. Her daughter, Rita, knows her mother has a history ... Read more
Against the Machine
By Brian Van Norman
Mel Buckworth, dependable family man, loses his manufacturing job through recession. Having lost his sense of purpose his pride sidelines him as he discerns his lack of digital skills so apparent in his children’s generation. He is galled by his daughter Dani’s university ... Read more