Blaze Island

"For those who loved Barbara Kingsolver's Flight Behavior comes a new climate-themed, Shakespeare-inspired novel from bestselling author Catherine Bush. The time is now or an alternate near now, the world close to our own. A mammoth Category Five hurricane sweeps up the eastern seaboard of North America, leaving devastation in its wake, its outer wings brushing over tiny Blaze Island in the North Atlantic. Just as the storm disrupts the present, it stirs up the past: Miranda's memories of growing up in an isolated, wind-swept cove and the events of long ago that her father will not allow her to speak of. In the aftermath of the storm, she finds herself in a world altered so quickly and so radically that she hardly knows what has happened. As Miranda says, change is clear after it happens."--

Elizabeth Morgan didn't intend to abandon her very proper life. But that's the best way to find her true—and less proper—self. So here she is in Australia, standing in front of a man who's clad only in a towel. Nathan Jones is so tempting he could be the ideal candidate to help this good girl be very bad! Sure enough, thanks to Nathan's talented hands, Elizabeth is living all her sensual fantasies. And while the sex is great, something more is developing. She trusts him, and wants to share her secrets with him, and… Suddenly this feels more like a real relationship than some fun in the sun. Luckily, there's a cure for too much commitment—more wickedness!

"In Dundas' assured hands, one man's search for answers makes for a lyrical, riveting meditation on memory."--EW One man knows the connection between two extraordinary acts of arson, fifteen years apart, in his Montana hometown--if only he could remember it. Having lost much of his memory from a traumatic brain injury sustained in Iraq, army veteran Matthew Rose is called back to Montana after his father's death to settle his affairs, and hopefully to settle the past as well. It's not only a blank to him, but a mystery. Why as a teen did he suddenly become sullen and vacant, abandoning the activities and people that had meant most to him? How did he, the son of hippy activists, wind up enlisting in the first place? Then on his first night back, Matthew sees a house go up in flames, and it turns out a local college student has died inside. And this event sparks a memory of a different fire, an unsolved crime from long ago, a part of Matthew's past that might lead to all the answers he's been searching for. What he finds will connect the old fire and the new, a series of long-unsolved mysteries, and a ruthless act of murder.

When 14-year-old Ruby Carson takes a tumble through the ice she nearly drowns. Coming to, she has a vision of her town under water that she shares with the assembled crowd. Already something of an oddity, the vision solidifies her status as an outcast. But as it turns out she was right ...

At one moment, a pure abstraction; at the next, an incontrovertible presence of hooves, antlers, and fur. The beating heart of this assured debut by Richard Kelly Kemick is the Porcupine caribou herd of the western Arctic. In Caribou Run, Richard Kelly Kemick orchestrates a suite of poems both encyclopedic and lyrical, in which the caribou is both metaphor and phenomenon -- text and exegesis. He explores what we share with this creature of blood and bone and what is hidden, alien, and ineffable. Following the caribou through their annual cycle of migration, Kemick experiments with formal and thematic variations that run from lyric studies of the creature and its environment, to found poems that play with the peculiar poetry of scientific discourse, to highly personal poems that find resonance in the caribou as a metaphor and a guiding spirit. Running the gamut from long-lined free verse and ghazal form to tightly controlled tankas and interwoven rhyme schemes, Caribou Run serves notice that a formidable new talent has been let loose on the terrain of Canadian poetry.

The ninth incisive issue of a digital literary journal born out of self-isolation. During this trying time, the journal aims to lift spirits and engage minds with stimulating poetry, works of fiction, and art, while also publishing opinion pieces, personal essays, and cultural commentary.

After his astounding 12,000-mile canoe trip from Winnipeg down to the Amazon (recounted in his bestseller Paddle to the Amazon on page 48), Don Starkell decided to paddle a kayak from Hudson Bay 3,000 miles through the Northwest Passage. This is Don's diary of this journey from Churchill, Manitoba, to Tuktoyaktuk, close to Alaska, a voyage by kayak (paddled on water or dragged on a sled over the ice) that took him three Arctic summers and almost cost him his life. Through this compelling book we find ourselves sharing his blazing, driving determination to reach his goal, as he closes in on his destination, with his supplies running out and his ocean highway freezing over, making death a near certainty. Armchair travel at its best.

The sensitive, suspenseful story of a family coping with a life-changing tragedy, told in stunning verse. Is it wrong to grieve for someone who is still alive? Claire’s mom and dad don’t talk to each other much anymore. And they definitely don’t laugh or dance the way they used to. Their tense, stilted stand offs leave thirteen-year-old Claire, an only child, caught in the middle. So when the family takes their annual summer vacation, Claire sticks her nose in a book and hopes for the best. Maybe the sunshine and ocean breeze will fix what’s gone wrong. But while the family is away, Claire’s mother has a ruptured brain aneurysm—right after she reveals a huge secret to Claire. Though she survives the rupture, it seems like she is an entirely different person. Claire has no idea if her mom meant what she said, or if she even remembers saying it. With the weight of her mom’s confession on her shoulders, Claire must navigate fear, grief, and prospects for recovery. Will her mom ever be the same? Will her parents stay together? And if the answer to either question is yes, how will Claire learn to live with what she knows? This beautifully written novel speaks to kids’ fears and credits their strength, and stems from the author’s incredible experience surviving two ruptured aneurysms.