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November 2001

Before There Was Harry Potter

So you’ve read everything by J.K. Rowling, you know all there is to know about Harry Potter, you know more than any Muggle. Then maybe you’re ready to read about some fantastical journeys that began long before there was a Harry Potter.

Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone by J.K. Rowling

On orphaned Harry Potter's eleventh birthday, mysterious missives begin arriving for him, culminating eventually in the arrival of a giant named Hagrid. Harry learns that his parents died saving him from an evil sorcerer and that he himself is destined to be a wizard of great power. And so begin the adventures of Harry, and his friends Ron and Hermione.

And once you have read everything in the Harry Potter series why not try some of these wonderful titles, great for reading or sharing by families.

The Chronicles of Narnia by C. S. Lewis

This is one of those very few sets of books that should be read three times: in childhood, early adulthood, and late in life. This is the story of four children who travel repeatedly to a world in which they are far more than mere children and everything is far more than it seems. This world is populated with fascinating characters; the detailing and pacing of plot are very real. Lewis uses the timeless themes of good and evil, faith and hope.

Philip Pullman – His Dark Materials Series

In an epic trilogy, Pullman unlocks the door to a world parallel to our own, but with a mysterious slant all its own. Dæmons and winged creatures live side by side with humans, and a mysterious entity called Dust just might have the power to unite the universes--if it isn't destroyed first. Join Lyra, Pantalaimon, Will, and the rest as they embark on the most breathtaking, heartbreaking adventures of their lives. The fate of the universe is in their hands.

The Golden Compass (Book 1)

The Subtle Knife (Book 2)

The Amber Spyglass (Book 3)

J. R. R. Tolkien – The Hobbit (a prelude to The Lord of the Rings)

Bilbo Baggins, the hobbit, is a peaceful sort who lives in a cozy hole in the Shire, a place where adventures are uncommon—and rather unwanted. So when the wizard Gandalf whisks him away on a treasure-hunting expedition with a troop of rowdy dwarves, he's not entirely thrilled.

Encountering ruthless trolls, beastly orcs, gigantic spiders, and hungry wolves, Bilbo discovers within himself astonishing strength and courage. And at the ultimate confrontation with the fearsome dragon Smaug, the hobbit will brave the dangers of the dark and dragon fire alone and unaided.

The Lord of the Rings

The trilogy is the saga of a group of sometimes reluctant heroes who set forth to save their world from consummate evil. Its many worlds and creatures draw their life from Tolkien's extensive knowledge of philology and folklore. At 33, the age of adulthood among hobbits, Frodo Baggins receives magic Ring of Invisibility from his uncle Bilbo. A Christ-like figure, Frodo learns that the ring has the power to control the entire world and, he discovers, to corrupt its owner. A fellowship of hobbits, elves, dwarfs, and men is formed to destroy the Ring by casting it into the volcanic fires of the Crack of Doom where it was forged. They are opposed on their harrowing mission by the evil Sauron and his Black Riders.

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October 2001

Spine tingling tales for Halloween

Classic Horror Stories

Frankenstein by Mary Shelley

Dr. Frankenstein creates a creature from old bones and gives it life. Endowed with supernatural strength and size, the revolting-looking Creature commits murder, and the doctor resolves to destroy his creation.

Dracula by Bram Stoker

Mysterious, gloomy castles and open graves at midnight are just two of the Gothic devices used to chilling effect in this 19th-century horror classic that turned an obscure figure from Eastern European folklore into a towering icon of film and literature

New Tales of Horror

999: New Stories of Horror and Suspense edited by Al Sarrantonio

Here's a gruesomely great collection of 29 horror tales from some of today's greatest writers -- even a few you didn't know wrote scary stories. You'll find Stephen King, Joyce Carol Oates, Neil Gaiman, Eric Van Lustbader, and many others. Winner of the 1999 Bram Stoker Award for Best Anthology.

Naomi by Douglas Clegg

This deliciously creepy tale of serpents, witches, and a subterranean world beneath Manhattan's busy streets is a tragic love story about fate, destiny, and the sometimes-awful truths behind our human existence.

The Living Blood by Tananarive Due

Blending the supernatural with a thrilling vision of our times, this is a powerful and sweeping tale of love, horror, immortality, and redemption from an astounding storyteller.

Black House by Stephen King and Peter Straub

King and Straub reunite to write the sequel to Talisman. When a series of gruesome murders occur in western Wisconsin that are reminiscent of those committed several decades earlier by a real-life madman named Albert Fish, the killer is dubbed "The Fisherman" and Jack's buddy, the local chief of police, begs Jack to help his inexperienced force find him.

The Last Vampire by Whitley Strieber

Strieber offers up a sequel to his very popular horror novel, The Hunger. Here he features Miriam Blaylock, the beautiful, powerful and rapacious vampire. Miriam plans to attend various conclaves of the Keepers, as vampires refer to themselves. What none of them anticipates, however, is that their human prey has discovered their existence and, what is worse, has the means to eradicate them. Horror at its chillingly finest.

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May 2001

Dagmar's Daughter by Kim Echlin

Publisher Comments:

Dagmar's Daughter follows three generations of passionate and powerful women.

Norea Nolan emerges from the destitute Irish village of her upbringing by stealing the boots from her mother's coffin, walking to Dublin, and stowing herself on a ship bound for a remote island in the Gulf of St. Lawrence. Norea's daughter, Dagmar, is born with an uncanny ability to control the weather and a remarkable gift for gardening. As she develops into a striking woman she is wooed and won by Colin Cane, a musician who loves her fiercely, but is unfaithful.

Dagmar's daughter Nyssa is as musically brilliant as her father and as struck with wanderlust. She runs off with one of her father's oldest friends, a musician who has returned to the island after a long self-imposed exile, and loses herself in his dark world. Dagmar is undone by her daughter's disappearance and her wrath invokes an icy rain, which envelops the landscape in a thick layer of ice.

Mystical, seductive, and brimming with music and magic, Dagmar's Daughter draws upon the ancient myths of Inanna, conqueror of the underworld, and Demeter and Persephone, a mother's quest for her lost daughter.

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April 23, 2001

Canada Book Day 2001: Part of a world-wide celebration of books and authors.

In 1995, UNESCO-the United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organization-designated April 23 as World Book Day; a symbolic date for world literature when prominent authors including Shakespeare, Miguel de Cervantes, Inca Garcilaso de la Vega, Maurice Druon, K. Laxness, Vladimir Nabokov, Josep Pla and Manuela Mejia Vallejo were either born or died.

UNESCO's Director-General Koïchiro Matsuura suggests that "at a time when new information technologies are replacing or complementing traditional methods of production and dissemination, the future of the book remains in the hands of the readers.

"The production and acquisition of books alone is not enough. We are deeply convinced that the greater the number of people that have access to reading, the greater the possibility for self-expression, for exposure to the ideas and cultures of others. Only then would the conditions for tolerance, mutual understanding and peace be created in the minds of human beings. Hope should be something we can write and read."

Canada joins more than 80 countries, millions of people-publishers, booksellers, librarians, teachers, writers and readers-to pay tribute to books, symbols of hope and life.

Objectives of Canada Book Day:

• To celebrate the important role of literature in Canada's past, present and future;

• To nurture a love of reading in Canada's youth, thereby solidifying the next generation of readers;

• To celebrate the international success of Canadian literature and honour Canada's literary heroes;

• To promote Canadian books and the people who write them, and to encourage Canadians from all walks of life to buy Canadian books.

Red is Best by Kathy Stinson

This title is especially made for the lap audience. "My Mom doesn't understand about red. I like my red stockings best. My Mom says, "Wear these. Your white stockings look good with that dress. But I can jump higher in my red stockings. I like my red stockings best". This is a great deal of fun to read with pre-schoolers.

Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood

Stories weave through each other, creating a spellbinding web in The Blind Assassin, the original novel from internationally renowned Canadian author Margaret Atwood. Iris Chase is a lonely old woman who reflects on her long-deceased sister, Laura. Laura’s novel — The Blind Assassin— won a cult following in the pre-war years with its sexual frankness and story-within-a-story. Spanning over decades, through war, turmoil and loss, the interconnected narratives spin a tale of devotion and deceit. This captivating work demonstrates all the stylistic panache that has contributed to Atwood’s international reputation.

Anil’s Ghost by Michael Ondaatje

The time is our own time. The place is Sri Lanka, the island nation off the southern tip of India, a country formerly known as Ceylon, forced into the late twentieth century by the ravages of civil war and the consequences of a country divided against itself. Into this maelstrom steps a young woman called Anil Tissera. She is a forensic anthropologist sent by an international human rights group to work with local officials to discover the source of the organized campaigns of murder engulfing the island. What follows is a novel about love, family, loss, the unknown enemy and the quest to unlock the hidden past - all propelled by a riveting mystery.

Mercy Among the Children by David Adams Richards

Mercy Among the Children is the story of Sydney Henderson and his son Lyle. As a young man, Sydney, believing he has accidentally killed a friend, makes a pact with God vowing to never harm another if the friend's life is spared and the boy walks away unharmed. Later, tragedy strikes when a small boy is accidentally killed and Sydney is accused of the crime. While Sydney refuses to defend himself and his family, Lyle adopts a more aggressive strategy and it is left to Lyle to decide what the legacy of his father's pact will be. Richards' characters strive for a sense of human dignity that rings with universal truth.

A Student of Weather by Elizabeth Hay

From some accidents of love and weather we never quite recover. At the worst of the Prairie dust bowl of the 1930s, a young man appears out of a blizzard and alters the lives of two sisters. His disarming presence in a family adept at making do throws into relief a rivalry that sets the stage for all that follows in a narrative spanning just over thirty years. Hay's characters are at once eccentric and familiar. Among them, the two sisters: Lucinda, beautiful, fastidious, and reserved; and her younger sister, bold, homely Norma Joyce, tricky and tenacious, at first a strange, dark self-possessed child, later a woman who learns something of the redemptive nature of art.

The Wife Tree by Dorothy Speak

Dorothy Speak’s long-awaited first novel tells the poignant, comic and redemptive story of Morgan Hazzard, caught late in life between a dying husband and the opinions of her rebellious children. Forty years of marriage to a hard, prairie-bred man have frozen Morgan into the semblance of a steadfast wife. But when a stroke silences William Hazzard, Morgan’s feelings and memories begin to thaw. She has always known how to endure: unwanted pregnancy; the deaths of two children; the anger of her husband; the harsh summers and winters of her farm childhood; the indifference of her own mother; decades of lust, lies and betrayals. What she learns in the sudden peace and quiet of her own house and in the somewhat rusty and surprising sound of her own voice is her surprising strength and capacity for joy and change, even on the eve of her seventy-fifth birthday.

More loveable than Margaret Laurence’s prickly and obstinate Hagar Shipley, Morgan Hazzard is as fierce and indelible a character. And her journey, unlike Hagar’s, takes her toward hope and liberation, not compromise and silence.

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February 2001

Getting Over Edgar by Joan Barfoot

Gwen Stone's life takes an abrupt nosedive when Edgar, her husband of twenty years, suddenly decided he isn't suited to marriage and leaves her for freedom and a shiny red convertible. Seven weeks later, though, he and his new car are mowed down by a passenger train, and Gwen, scarcely recovered from the shock of his first abandonment of her, is sent by the second into some life-altering moments of her own. Attending Edgar's funeral, Gwen swings between caustic rage, despair and an unfamiliar sense of possibility.

From there Gwen moves on to her new life, and a few hours solace in the arms of David, a friendly young bartender. David has his own troubles, and the brief encounter between the newly widowed Gwen and the misunderstood (in his opinion) David unexpectedly alters both of their destinies. Gwen's and David's alternating stories, both humorous and surprising, have wonderfully satisfying resolutions.

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January 2001

Afterimage by Helen Humphreys

In the sexually repressed Victorian age, two women explore their dreams and desires together. Annie is hired as a maid at a wealthy country house. Her mistress, Isabelle, longs to become a great photographer, to transcend the limits imposed by her gender and society's expectations. Isabelle produces a stunning series of Romantic portraits of women, using her servants as models. Through the camera's eye, she sees Ophelia, Guinevere and the Virgin Mary as passionate spirits. Poetic, sensual, evocative, Afterimage is a breathtaking examination of human yearning, of the quest for identity and meaning.

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