The Linnet Bird

'For you, I will write of it all - part truth, part memory, part nightmare - my life, the one that started so long ago, in a place so far from here...' India, 1839: Linny Gow, a respectable young wife and mother, settles down to write her life story. To outside appearances Linny is the perfect Colonial wife: beautiful, gracious, subservient. But appearances can be very deceptive ... An unforgettable book, richly descriptive and mesmerising from the start, The Linnet Bird is the spellbinding story of the journey of Linny Gow - child prostitute turned social climber turned colonial wife turned adventuress. Frequently disturbing, often moving and always enthralling, it is that rare thing: a once-in-a-lifetime read.

Evicted from their Highland croft, Jamie and Flora Lennox, with their baby daughter and other families of the township, go to Nova Scotia to start a new life. The leaving of the glen is heart-rending, and soon more disasters strike, on the voyage and as they move westwards to find suitable land. Can they survive in this new, raw country? Will they find happiness in their new lives?

A spellbinding story of loss, romance and betrayal set in 18th-century Portugal, from internationally bestselling Canadian historical fiction author Linda Holeman. Diamantina is 13 when her father, a Dutch sailor who washed up on the Portuguese island of Porto Santo, abandons her and her African-born mother and sets off for the New World. Unbaptized, tainted by her mother's witchcraft and her foreign blood, the girl is an outcast who seems doomed in her struggle to survive. Diamantina refuses to accept her destiny and vows to escape her circumstances and forge a life of her own, no matter the cost. But as the price of her desires rises, can she live with the choices she has made? Diamantina's odyssey to change her life is a sweeping narrative of starvation and plenty, cruelty and love, disaster and triumph.

The Moonlit Cage is the spellbinding story of Darya, a young Afghan girl, cursed, worthless and despised by her husband and her family, who embarks on the journey of a lifetime - one that takes her from the unforgiving valleys and mountains of her homeland to 1850s London, the heart of the mighty British Empire.

Mercy's life is spinning out of control. Her mother seems to be shrinking as she retreats more and more to the security of her bedroom. Her aunt is growing larger as she retreats into tarot cards, and alcohol. While Mercy tries to keep up at school and with her job, she lives in fear of the day that Barry, her aunt's boyfriend, comes back to live with them all.

Included in one of the 2004 YALSA Popular Paperbacks for Young Adults lists Nominated for the White Pine Reading Program of the Durham District School Board Gentle Emmaline loves nothing more than books and flowers and her little brother Tommy. Sadly, her idyllic country life in Victorian England comes to an abrupt end when her father dies of cholera. The family is forced to move to a mill town, where Emmaline’s mother is dreadfully injured in a factory accident. To ease her pain she takes laudanum and is soon addicted, craving the drug so badly that she sells Tommy into servitude as a chimney sweep in London. Emmaline knows that a sweep’s life is short and awful. Small boys as young as five are forced to climb naked into dark chimneys, their bare feet prodded by nail-studded sticks to keep them working. If Tommy is to survive, it is up to Emmaline to find him. Linda Holeman brings a bygone period to life in a book of serious historical fiction for young adults.

A young American woman's journey to track down her missing lover becomes an enthralling adventure of mystery, passion, danger and self-discovery set against the spellbinding backdrop of 1930s Marrakech. Sidonie O'Shea enjoys the quiet life she shares with fiancé Etienne Duverger in upstate New York. But when Etienne suddenly disappears without word, she finds a letter amongst his belongings that turns her world upside down. Refusing to believe that Etienne would abandon her, Sidonie travels to Morocco in search of him, determined to know the truth. But nothing can prepare her for what she is about to discover, both about the man she thought she loved and an unknown world of dangerous secrets in a country steeped in mystery...

Downy the Woodpecker, Spooky the Screech Owl, and other winged creatures tell Peter Cottontail about their migration patterns, calls, nesting habits, and more in this blend of fact and fiction. 32 black-and-white illustrations.