Setting Fire To Water

Shifting restlessly from dark to light and back again, written in lithe, precise prose, the stories in Phoebe Tsang's Setting Fire to Water illuminate the lives of those who exist inside otherness. A young Asian woman, an artistic over-achiever turned drifter, endures a mind-bending night of reckoning as she struggles to find her way "home," careening between flirtation and thievery, dream and memory. A reality TV star obsesses about the real stain that blemishes the set of her fake, made-for-TV life. A modern fairytale is told from the point of view of a fox having an argument with its enemy, hunger. A heart-broken accountant goes on a pilgrimage to India to get his fire back, and his attempt to ask for mercy from the most holy of rivers fizzles like his former fiancée's tepid devotion. These seventeen stories unfold outside the Canadian mainstream, where longing--for home, for love, for artistic achievement, for spiritual fulfillment--is a given, and acceptance--of self, of the knowability of others, of the limits to knowing--is always in question. Using unconventional storylines and slippages in time and space, these stories explore the mystical possibilities inherent in contemporary life.

When Robert Haddick wrote Fire on the Water, first published in 2014, most policy experts and the public underestimated the threat China’s military modernization posed to the U.S. strategic position in the Indo-Pacific region. Today, the rapid Chinese military buildup has many policy experts wondering whether the United States and its allies can maintain conventional military deterrence in the region, and the topic is central to defense planning in the United States. In this new edition, Haddick argues that the United States and its allies can sustain conventional deterrence in the face of China's military buildup. However, doing so will require U.S. policymakers and planners to overcome institutional and cultural barriers to reforms necessary to implement a new strategy for the region. Fire on the Water, Second Edition also presents the sources of conflict in Asia and explains why America's best option is to maintain its active forward presence in the region. Haddick relates the history of America's military presence in the Indo-Pacific and shows why that presence is now vulnerable. The author details China's military modernization program, how it is shrewdly exploiting the military-technical revolution, and why it now poses a grave threat to U.S. and allied interests. He considers the U.S. responses to China's military modernization over the past decade and discusses why these responses fall short of a convincing competitive strategy. Detailing a new approach for sustaining conventional deterrence in the Indo-Pacific region, the author discusses the principles of strategy as they apply to the problems the United States faces in the region. He explains the critical role of aerospace power in the region and argues that the United States should urgently refashion its aerospace concepts if it is to deter aggression, focusing on Taiwan, the most difficult case. Haddick illustrates how the military-technical revolution has drastically changed the potential of naval forces in the Indo-Pacific region and why U.S. policymakers and planners need to adjust their expectations and planning for naval forces. Finally, he elucidates lessons U.S. policymakers can apply from past great-power competitions, examines long-term trends affecting the current competition, summarizes a new U.S. strategic approach to the region, describes how U.S. policymakers can overcome institutional barriers that stand in the way of a better strategy, and explains why U.S. policymakers and the public should have confidence about sustaining deterrence and peace in the region over the long term.

A novel based on a true tale of heroism and invention in the tunnels beneath Lake Erie in 1916 This original graphic novel imagines the lives of blue-collar workers involved in the real-life Lake Erie tunnel disaster of 1916 in Cleveland. Author Scott MacGregor and illustrator Gary Dumm tell the intersecting stories of a brilliant African American inventor, Ben Beltran (based on the real-life Garrett Morgan, Sr.), desperate immigrants tunneling beneath Lake Erie, and corrupt overseers who risk countless lives for profit. As historical fiction, Fire on the Water sheds light not only on one of America’s earliest man-made ecological disasters but also on racism and the economic disparity between classes in the Midwest at the turn of the century.

Recipient of the Independent Publishers Award for Historical Fiction (Gold Medal), the Foreword Book of the Year Award for Historical Fiction (Bronze Medal), and an honorable mention in the category of General Fiction for the Eric Hoffer Award. Luis de Santángel, chancellor to the court and longtime friend of the lusty King Ferdinand, has had enough of the Spanish Inquisition. As the power of Inquisitor General Tomás de Torquemada grows, so does the brutality of the Spanish church and the suspicion and paranoia it inspires. When a dear friend’s demise brings the violence close to home, Santángel is enraged and takes retribution into his own hands. But he is from a family of conversos, and his Jewish heritage makes him an easy target. As Santángel witnesses the horrific persecution of his loved ones, he begins slowly to reconnect with the Jewish faith his family left behind. Feeding his curiosity about his past is his growing love for Judith Migdal, a clever and beautiful Jewish woman navigating the mounting tensions in Granada. While he struggles to decide what his reputation is worth and what he can sacrifice, one man offers him a chance he thought he’d lost…the chance to hope for a better world. Christopher Columbus has plans to discover a route to paradise, and only Luis de Santángel can help him. Within the dramatic story lies a subtle, insightful examination of the crisis of faith at the heart of the Spanish Inquisition. Irresolvable conflict rages within the conversos in By Fire, By Water, torn between the religion they left behind and the conversion meant to ensure their safety. In this story of love, God, faith, and torture, fifteenth-century Spain comes to dazzling, engrossing life.

A Sámi woman studying Alaska fish populations sees our past and future through their present signs of stress and her ancestral knowledge. A teenager faces a permanent drought in Australia and her own sexual desire. An unemployed man in Wisconsin marvels as a motley parade of animals makes his trailer their portal to a world untrammeled by humans. Featuring short fiction from authors around the globe, Fire & Water: Stories from the Anthropocene takes readers on a rare journey through the physical and emotional landscape of the climate crisis--not in the future, but today. By turns frightening, confusing, and even amusing, these stories remind us how complex, and beautiful, it is to be human in these unprecedented times.

You are Lone Wolf - last of the Kai Lords. Bitter war rages through your homeland as the evil Darklords of the west lay seige to the capital. The King has sent you on a desperate journey to retrieve the only power that can save your people: The Sommerswerd, the sword of the sun. Ahead of you lie terribe dangers - ferocious seastorms, the tunnel of Tarnalin, and the ghostly dearth-hulks of Vonotar the traitor. Use your skills wisely for only you can save your land from the devastation of the Darklords.

Sacred chants are Ada Franklin’s power and her medicine. By saying them, she can remove warts, stanch bleeding, and draw the fire from burns. At age twenty, her reputation as a faith healer defines her in her rural Pennsylvania community. But on the day in 1953 that her family’s barn is consumed by flame, her identity as a healer is upended. The heat, the roar of the blaze, and the bellows of the trapped cows change Ada. For the first time, she fears death and—for the first time—she doubts God. With her belief goes her power to heal. Then Ada meets an agnostic named Will Burk and his pet raven, Cicero. Fire Is Your Water is acclaimed memoirist Jim Minick’s first novel. Built on magical realism and social observation in equal measure, it never gives way to sentimentality and provides an insider’s glimpse into the culture of Appalachia. A jealous raven, a Greek chorus of one, punctuates the story with its judgments on the characters and their actions, until a tragic accident brings Ada and Will together in a deeper connection.