Mountain Tales

Winner of the Sheila A. Egoff Children's Literature Prize, the IODE Violet Downey Book Award and the IODE National Chapter Award Drawing on the real background of the Chinese role in the gold rush, the building of the railway and the settling of the west coast in the nineteenth century, noted historian and children’s author Paul Yee has created eight original stories that combine the rough-and-tumble adventure of frontier life with the rich folk traditions that these immigrants brought from China. These tales are funny, sad, romantic and earthy, but ultimately, as a collection, they reflect the gritty optimism of the Chinese who overcame prejudice and adversity to build a unique place for themselves in North America.

Since moving to the Rockies of western Canada in 1984, Lynn Martel has spent countless hours and days exploring the mountain wilderness with her many experienced friends as well as some of the best known and well-informed professional guides in the outdoor adventure business. Waking up in tents and backcountry huts; hiking and skiing up valleys, over passes and across glaciers; rock climbing; mountain biking; caving; paddling and horseback riding have all become integral parts of Martel's life in the Mountain West. Since the mid-1990s, Martel has shared the beauty and the magic of the region's inspiring wilderness destinations through finely crafted tales of her own adventures and also those of the Rockies' most colourful and iconic adventure personalities. Her vast amount of experience and insight into the most popular activities available to tourists, locals and the most skilled and competent weekend warriors infuse this collection of 20 of her best adventure stories. Complete with colour photographs and maps, difficulty ratings, seasonal details and general information, these stories will inspire those seeking to experience adventures at their own level in and around Kananaskis Country, Canmore, Lake Louise and Banff, Yoho and Jasper national parks.

These 57 tales (with seven variants) gathered between 1931 and 1936 include major cycles dealing with Creation and Coyote, minor tales, and additional stories derived from Spanish and Mexican tradition. The tales are of two classes: holy tales said by some to expalin the origin of ceremonies and holy powers, and tales which have to do with the creation of the earth, the emergence, the flood, the slaying of monsters, and the origin of customs. As Goodwin was the first anthropologist to work with the White Mountain Apache, his insights remain a primary souce on this people.

Stories of the supernatural, set in Vermont. One is on a haunted police academy, another on a ghost ship, a third on a creature with a man's body and the face of a pig.

"Orville Hicks has enthralled audiences beyond the porches of Beech Mountain, North Carolina, for more than two decades. Jack Tales and Mountain Yarns captures the voice of the master storyteller in more than twenty transcribed stories, paired with lively pencil sketches. Having grown up in a hollow, he knows the mountain setting and his clever character Jack"--Provided by publisher.

For several weeks in February, the eyes of the world will be on Whistler, BC, as it hosts the 2010 Olympic Winter Games and the appetite for a story to go with the place will be extreme. Stephen Vogler has that story, and in this book he tells it fully for the first time. Vogler is one of those rare Whistlerites who actually grew up in Whistler and he has for some years been running a one-man crusade as writer, broadcaster and author of books to prove his hometown is not only a bona fide community, but a uniquely interesting one. Whistler begins in the days when the town had a mere 500 year-round residents who referred to weekend visitors as "turkeys" or "gorbies." His parents were old-school European alpinists who had given up a comfortable life in Vancouver so they could teach their children how to yodel and schuss in an appropriate setting. People like them, with names like Ples and Wilhelmsen, had developed the ski hill in the 1960s and together formed one of Whistler's founding cultures. The other founding culture was a swarming, partying mass of snow-hippies who lived rent-free in rough squatters' shacks and liked marijuana as much as they didn"t like wearing clothes. Their "high" spirits melded with the soberer tradition of the transplanted Tyroleans to produce a hybrid "only in Whistler" character that is equally devoted to serious skiing and unserious living. It was no accident that the first Whistlerite to win an Olympic gold medal also tested positive for cannabis, and successfully defended himself by arguing that just breathing the air in his hometown was enough to put him over the limit. If anybody doubts that story, they won't after reading Only in Whistler: Tales of a Mountain Town.