Books published by publisher Red Deer Press

As he approaches his 18th birthday, Brandon DeWolf knows he is not the sharpest knife in the drawer. He failed a grade in an undistinguished school career, and is contemplating spending two more years in school when most of his friends will be graduating at the end of the academic year. He tends to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, has no real ambitions, and seems to be at a dead end. Among the few happy moments of his life are the ones he spends with his good friend Kayla, a girl he's known from childhood, another misfit. Two days before his birthday, however, everything changes for Brandon. First of all he falls out of a tree - and survives intact. On his birthday, savouring his lucky break, he picks up a lottery ticket, and discovers he's won three million dollars. Suddenly everyone's his good friend, and his parents - a discontented frequently squabbling pair - rejoice in anticipating all that this sudden bonanza will buy them. The school's hottest girl becomes Brandon's coach in this new unaccustomed life he has to adapt to. His old friend Kayla realizes their friendship is withering, and Brandon doesn't have the capacity to do much about that. Plunged into a world that is completely new to him - and without any real moral compass to follow - Brandon flounders and eventually is brought down in disgrace, spending a night in jail after being caught drinking and driving. There is no happy ending for Brandon, just a solemn understanding that he cannot recover his old life and needs to find the integrity to map out a new one.

A boy maybe twelve years old, on a bike, stopped next to Dooley, looked at the kid sprawled on the pavement and said, "Is he dead?""Yeah, I think so," Dooley said. In fact, he was sure of it because there was no air going into or coming out of the lungs of the kid on the pavement. Also, the kid's open eyes were staring at nothing, and his head was twisted, as if he had turned to look at something just before he made contact with the hard surface of the path.Right away, Dooley knows he's in trouble. For one thing he's got a record. For another, the dead kid isn't exactly a stranger - and he's no friend. So slowly the net begins to close around 17-year-old Dooley, a troubled lone wolf who has a couple of strikes against him already. Not many are on Dooley's side; in fact at times he even wonders whether his uncle - a retired cop - thinks he's guilty again. There's a big question of trust in their uneasy relationship, and his uncle is the only one standing between Dooley and big time disaster. The dead kid's sister Beth is someone Dooley would like to have think better of him as well - but she also suspects he's involved in the crime. And all around him are other teenagers at school and in the world he's drawn into who would like to pin him with responsibility for a growing number of murders that swirl through the city.Norah McClintock, five-time winner of the Arthur Ellis juvenile crime award, has now moved into a different realm with a richly detailed novel aimed at older teens. Gritty, hard-edged, Dooley Takes the Fall is the first in a trilogy of mysteries about a troubled teenager struggling to free himself from the tentacles of his past and the implications of the present conspiracies that surround him.

The 1919 Winnipeg General Strike was a key moment in Canadian history, when demands of workers and returning soldiers all played out in the bloody streets of Winnipeg. The governing elite condemned the strike organizers as "Bolsheviks" and unleashed waves of violence. The country hasn't fully healed since. City on Strike is a riveting middle grade-fiction focusing on a 13-year-old boy and his younger sister, part of a poor but hardworking immigrant family in Winnipeg's North End. And like so many others, it's a family that gets drawn into the chaos that terrible spring. "History often repeats itself," author Harriet Zaidman says. "In 1919 more than 30,000 people in Winnipeg went on strike. Those in authority wanted to maintain their power and profits, so they spread lies and stirred up racism to create divisions in society. Today there are still those who make harmful statements about different groups. These negative comments prevent society from being united and making advances."

Free as the Wind is Jamie Bastedo's and Susan Tooke's re-creation of one of the most fascinating episodes in the history of the wild horses of Sable Island: the moment in the early 1960s when it was decided the horses would be removed and auctioned off, many of them slaughtered for dog food. School children across the country wrote to the Prime Minister pleading to have the horses returned to the island, to save them from certain death. This fictional account of that pivotal moment in Canada's history follows young Lucas Beauregard, son of the retiring superintendent of Sable Island, as he befriends and then plots to save Gem, one of the horses.

This riveting story is about a fifteen-year-old boy who, as the story opens, realizes he has no idea who he is - beyond his first name - or what has led to his loss of memory. From the outset, he's on the run, a street kid thrust out on his own, living by his wits and involved in a quest to find another lost teenager whose First Nations father is desperate for news of his son. In the process, he learns to survive and begins to get a sense of his strengths and character. Winner of the Benjamin Franklin Award in the category of Juvenile-Young Adult Fiction! Winner of the Mr. Christie's Book Award! Shortlist for the 2004 Canadian Library Association Young Adult Canadian Book Award Ontario Library Association's Golden Oak Award winner, 2005

Alberta Children's/Young Adult Book of the Year winner 2007 White Ravens: International Youth Library selection of outstanding books, 2007 ForeWord Magazine Book of the Year Awards Honorable Mention - Young Adult Fiction 2006 Canadian Children's Book Centre Our Choice, 2007 Ashley Anowiak is in search of a murderous polar bear that may be real or mythical. The only thing for certain is that what she discovers will change her life - and her community's - forever. In spite of its name, no one in the tiny troubled hamlet of Nanurtalik "the place with polar bears" can remember seeing a polar bear in decades. But when a teenager's dismembered body is discovered on a nearby ice road, everyone fears polar bears have returned. The community is thrown into chaos as another suspected bear attack sparks a flurry of bullets that whiz through the town during a blinding four-day blizzard. Was it a real or phantom bear? No one can say for sure. Ashley Anowiak is swept into this storm of confusion by her special link with polar bears expressed through the magic of her art and the terror of her dreams. She finds herself on the trail of Nanurluk, a giant bear that has haunted her people for thousands of years. Ashley's bear hunt leads from the frozen catacombs beneath Itkiqtuqjuaq to the jumbled ice fields covering the Arctic Ocean. As she closes in on the bear, Ashley's inner and outer worlds are torn apart, leaving her desperate for any stability she can find. This is the story of a gifted northern youth struggling to find her true home in a fast-changing arctic, where culture, climate and landscape seem to be crumbling all around her.

Canadian Children's Book Centre Our Choice Citation, Starred Selection Mr. Christie's Book Award Nomination Ruth Schwartz Award Nomination Ann Connor Brimer Award for Children's Literature Nomination Amelia Frances Howard–Gibbon Award Nomination Alberta Trade Book of the Year Nomination Alberta Children's Book of the Year Award From Arctic, Bonhomme and Imax to kayak, Ogopogo and zed, Eh? to Zed takes children on an alphabetic, fun–filled tour of Canada. Set in tightly linked rhyming verse, the words for this unique book resonate with classic and contemporary images from every province and territory in the country. Included are place names from Cavendish to Yarmouth and icons that will prompt discussion of Canada's many regions, and its culture, discoveries and heritage. Accompanying the inventive text is a visual feast via the colorful palette of well–known illustrator Alan Daniel. He provides a witty mixture of folk art paintings, toys and models that leap from the page with a whimsical energy that delights the imagination. A treasure for families, a desirable souvenir for visitors to Canada, and a perfect resource for schools and libraries, Eh? to Zed celebrates what makes us truly Canadian, eh.

"For many days, there had been no food in the Inuit camp where Brother and Little Sister lived . . . . They had set out early that morning, hoping to find some food they could bring back to share with their people." Sister Lightning and Brother Thunder are children at play, dancing across the great arctic sky in this touching story about the search for a home. Returning to camp, the children find their people have left without them. Through the long, cold night, they huddle near a fire and talk into the night. Unable to decide which of their animal cousins they should stay with while they wait for the return of their people, the children decide to live amongst the stars instead. Their journey to the sky is a homecoming in which they rediscover the beauty of play. Orphans in the Sky is a moving account of the courage and loyalty experienced by two lonely orphans who find a home in the sky. Awards and Nominations: Canadian Toy Testing Council's Great Books for Children, 2006 2005 Alberta Children's Book Award nominee 2005 Alberta Book Illustration of the Year nominee Shining Willow nominee 2006

Michael Grove was sixteen years old when he was convicted for the murder of Lisa Conroy, the girlfriend he loved very much. The circumstances surrounding her final hours attract considerable media attention, especially because Michael and Lisa had sex just prior to her death. A public outcry against light penalties for young offenders ensures Michael is tried as an adult; he receives a harsh and severe penalty. Six months into his imprisonment, the true murderer confesses. Michael is released but quickly finds that the stigma of imprisonment and the (wrongful) rap for murder is not an easy thing to escape