Adult Fiction
The Fraud
Zadie Smith
https://catalogue.tracpac.ab.ca/polaris/search/title.aspx?ctx=1.1033.0.0.3&pos=1&cn=2057972
It is 1873. Mrs. Eliza Touchet is the Scottish housekeeper - and a woman of many interests. Andrew Bogle grew up enslaved on the Hope Plantation, Jamaica. When Bogle finds himself in London, star witness in a celebrated case of imposture, he knows his future depends on telling the right story. The "Tichborne Trial" - wherein a lower-class butcher from Australia claimed he was in fact the rightful heir of a sizable estate and title - captivates Mrs. Touchet and all of England. In a world of hypocrisy and self-deception, deciding what is real proves a complicated task.
Godkiller
Hannah Kaner
https://catalogue.tracpac.ab.ca/polaris/search/title.aspx?ctx=1.1033.0.0.3&pos=1&cn=2046179
As a child, Kissen saw her family murdered at the whim of a fire god. Now, Kissen makes a living killing gods, and she enjoys it. That is until she discovers a god she cannot kill: Skedi, a small god of white lies, has somehow bound his life to that of a young noble girl, and they desperately need Kissen's help. Joined by a disillusioned knight on a secret quest, the trio must travel to the ruined city of Blenraden, where the last of the wild gods reside, to each beg a favour. Something is rotting at the heart of their world, and they are the only ones who can stop it.
Adult Nonfiction
Blood on the Coal : the True Story of the Great Springhill Mine Disaster
Ken Cuthbertson
https://catalogue.tracpac.ab.ca/polaris/search/title.aspx?ctx=1.1033.0.0.3&pos=1&cn=2046422
They said it was the world’s deepest and most dangerous coal mine. Those who made that claim were probably correct. What is certain is that in October 1958, the Dominion Steel and Coal Corporation’s No. 2 colliery at Springhill, Nova Scotia, was a leading candidate for both those dubious distinctions. The mine was the proverbial “disaster waiting to happen.” And it did. On the night of October 23, 1958, a “bump” in the mine—actually a small earthquake—shook the ground beneath the town. Seventy-five miners died and scores more were injured in what remains one of Canada’s worst underground disasters. The lives of the survivors were shattered, and Springhill would never be the same again. In compelling detail, Ken Cuthbertson tells the stories of three of the miners and one of the doctors who cared for them following the disaster.
The Definition of Beautiful : a Memoir
Charlotte Bellows
https://catalogue.tracpac.ab.ca/polaris/search/title.aspx?ctx=1.1033.0.0.3&pos=1&cn=2046395
A stunning memoir of coming of age and recovering from anorexia in the 2020s. Charlotte Bellows wrote The Definition of Beautiful between the ages of fifteen and seventeen, in the wake of lockdown and in recovery from anorexia. In the tradition of Sylvia Plath in The Bell Jar and Françoise Sagan in Bonjour Tristesse, Bellows writes with deceptively straightforward urgency, pushing through society's constraints on the bodies and minds of girls and women to offer a story both achingly familiar and devastatingly new.
