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It takes only two little steps to uncover a couple of digital treasures of Romanian origin in the publicly available digital archive at the Toronto Public Library.

They are free children books published in … 1896.

Here is how to get them.

TPL search1
1. Go to http://www.tpl.ca and follow the Digital Archive link.

 

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As a Canadian immigrant genuinely interested in his adoptive country culture and history, I find The Orenda (see it on Amazon.ca The Orenda) thoroughly entertaining.

the orenda

 

An epic worthy of Herodotus or Sima Qian, and by its ardour and high seriousness The Orenda declares it an equal to any ancient Greek or Chinese account of empires rising and falling… (THE GLOBE AND MAIL)

The story (taking place in late 1600s in Ontario along the Lake Huron and Ottawa river shores) is captivating, the book is meticulously researched while its author Joseph Boyden is an award winning Canadian of Irish, Scottish and Anishinaabe heritage (Joseph Boyden on Amazon.ca)

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First published in 2005, the book is a fascinating, scholarly historic tour – up to modern times – exploring vanished civilizations.

On lonely Easter Island, humans ignored nature, built astonishing monuments to themselves, and guaranteed their own demise. Other civilizations have done, and are doing, much the same thing. In this wonderfully researched and written book, Jared Diamond details the forces that lead to collapse and shows us what we must do to avert crisis. Our grandchildren are counting on us to read and understand it. (Robert H. Waterman, coauthor of In Search of Excellence)

Click on the picture to buy the book on Amazon Canada

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Child 44 – by Tom Rob Smith

 

Set in the Soviet Union in 1953, this stellar debut from British author Smith offers appealing characters, a strong plot and authentic period detail. When war hero Leo Stepanovich Demidov, a rising star in the MGB, the State Security force, is assigned to look into the death of a child, Leo is annoyed, first because this takes him away from a more important case, but, more importantly, because the parents insist the child was murdered. In Stalinist Russia, there's no such thing as murder; the only criminals are those who are enemies of the state. After attempting to curb the violent excesses of his second-in-command, Leo is forced to investigate his own wife, the beautiful Raisa, who's suspected of being an Anglo-American sympathizer. Demoted and exiled from Moscow, Leo stumbles onto more evidence of the child killer. The evocation of the deadly cloud-cuckoo-land of Russia during Stalin's final days will remind many of Gorky Park and Darkness at Noon, but the novel remains Smith's alone, completely original and absolutely satisfying. Rights sold in more than 20 countries. (May)
Set in the Soviet Union in 1953, this stellar debut from British author Smith offers appealing characters, a strong plot and authentic period detail. When war hero Leo Stepanovich Demidov, a rising star in the MGB, the State Security force, is assigned to look into the death of a child, Leo is annoyed, first because this takes him away from a more important case, but, more importantly, because the parents insist the child was murdered. In Stalinist Russia, there’s no such thing as murder; the only criminals are those who are enemies of the state. After attempting to curb the violent excesses of his second-in-command, Leo is forced to investigate his own wife, the beautiful Raisa, who’s suspected of being an Anglo-American sympathizer.

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Buy the book here (Amazon Canada):
Child 44 and The Secret Speech: Digital Omnibus Edition (The Child 44 Trilogy)

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