The Strangler Fig And Other Tales

Hood's travel memoir is a lyrical journey to places of great natural beauty and biological importance. Her stories reveal the vulnerability of natural places and the consequences of unsustainable exploitation. This inspiring work will be valuable for those interested in nature or travel memoirs, ethnographic writing, and for all who are concerned with the survival of our broader sense of place in the global environment.

Six previously published short stories, collected from the pages of Mammoth Book of Best New Erotica, Thou Shalt Not (Stories of Dark Crime and Horror), Best of Crossed Genres (Fantasy & Science Fiction with a Twist), South Dakota Review, and others. From New Orleans to Mexico to ancient Hawaii, six sensual, darkly fantastic tales reimagine classics such as Dorian Gray, Helen of Troy, and The Yellow Wallpaper. An obsessed paparazzo stalks his subject-a singer whose photos morph but face remains unchanged. An unborn triplet haunts and taunts its mother for the choice she made. An infertile woman seeks to learn the language of the dead baby she continues to carry.

Seasonal roads are defined as one-lane dirt roads not maintained during the winter. They function as connectors linking farmers to their fields, neighbors to neighbors, or two more well-traveled roads to each other. Some access hunting lands and recreational areas. Some pass by cemeteries, allowing people to visit and honor their dead. They can be abandoned as people move and towns fade. In every incarnation, the seasonal road touches the land in a gentler way than do other roads. Having traveled nearly every seasonal road in Steuben County, New York, Hood finds they provide the ideal vantage to contemplate the meaning of place, offering intimate contact with plant and wildlife and the beauty of a rural landscape. Each road reveals how our land is used, how our land is protected, and how environmental factors have impacted the land. As a literary naturalist, Hood reflects on endangered species and invasive species, as well as on issues of conservation and sustainability. From state forests to potato fields, from development along Keuka Lake to vineyards, from old family cemeteries to logging sites, Walking Seasonal Roads is a celebration and an honoring of the rural and the regionalism of place, illustrating the ways we connect to our home and to each other.

They are trees of life and trees of knowledge. They are wish-fulfillers rainforest royalty more precious than gold. They are the fig trees, and they have affected humanity in profound but little-known ways. Gods, Wasps, and Stranglers tells their amazing story.

"Irresistible" - Literary Review Fig trees have affected humanity in profound but little-known ways: they are wish-fulfillers, rainforest royalty, more precious than gold. Ladders to Heaven tells their incredible story. They fed our pre-human ancestors, influenced diverse cultures and played a key role in the birth of civilisation. More recently, they helped restore life after Krakatoa's catastrophic eruption and proved instrumental in Kenya's struggle for independence. Figs now sustain more species of bird and mammal than any other fruit – in a time of falling trees and rising temperatures, they offer hope. Theirs is a story about humanity's relationship with nature, as relevant to our past as it is to our future.

Combining humor and memorable anecdotes, five famous ecotourist destinations offer a breathtaking backdrop to better understanding climate change. Crossing the far corners of the globe, Tales of an Ecotourist showcases travel, from the hot and humid Amazon jungle to the frozen but dry Antarctic, as a simple yet spellbinding lens to better understand the complex issue of climate change. At its core, climate change is an issue few truly understand, in large part due to its dizzying array of scientific, economic, cultural, social, and political variables. Using both keen humor and memorable anecdotes, while weaving respected scientific studies along the way, Mike Gunter Jr. transports the reader to five famous ecodestinations, from the Galapagos Islands to the Great Barrier Reef, revealing firsthand the increasing threats of climate change. Part travelogue, part current events exposé, with a healthy dose of history, ecology, and politics, these tales of ecoadventure tackle such obstacles head on while fleshing out much-needed personal context to perhaps society’s greatest threat of all. “Gunter takes us to the far corners of the globe to understand the lived experience of climate change. More than a travelogue, Tales of an Ecotourist explains how getting outside—out of our houses, immediate surroundings, and comfort zones—can awaken all of us to the realities and urgency of a warming world. This is a rich, beautifully written, and compelling book.” — Paul Wapner, author of Living Through the End of Nature: The Future of American Environmentalism “In Tales of an Ecotourist Mike Gunter Jr. takes you on a remarkable journey, both figuratively and literally, as he recounts his experiences visiting some of the most amazing places on our planet. As a genuine, true-to-principles ecotourist, he has an important lesson for us: If we are to veer from our current path of global environmental degradation, we will have to come to appreciate firsthand its remarkable wonder and beauty.” — Michael E. Mann, coauthor of The Madhouse Effect: How Climate Change Denial Is Threatening Our Planet, Destroying Our Politics, and Driving Us Crazy

In 1922, on his private island off the coast of Florida, on a calm, lovely evening, Senator Stephen Huntington walked out on the terrace for an after-dinner cigar, and was never seen again. Local superstition has it that he was devoured by the strangler fig, a tropical vine that spreads itself onto other plants and kills again and again, slaying relentlessly and without compunction anything that stands in the path of its growth. Seven years later, Bolivar Brown accepts an invitation to vacation on the island with Huntington's family and some of the Senator's former friends. When a hurricane batters the island, clean-up crews soon find the dead strangler fig vine wrapped around a body dressed in the Senator's clothes. That evening another victim is strangled. Bolivar Brown is compelled to discover the truth buried beneath the passions and ambitions of the Senator's former friends before another falls victim to the strangler fig.