Spring/Summer 2021

A beautifully told and intriguing mystery about two generations of Scottish women united by blood, an obsession with the past, and a long-hidden body, from the author of The House Between Tides. Libby Snow has always felt the pull of Ullaness, a headland on Scotland’s sea-lashed western coast where a legend has taken root. At its center is Ulla, an eighth-century Norsewoman whose uncertain fate was entangled with two warring brothers and a man who sought to save her. Libby first heard the stories from her grandmother, who had learned it from her own forebear, Ellen, a maid at Sturrock House. The Sturrocks have owned the land where Ulla dwelled for generations, and now Libby, an archaeologist, has their permission to excavate a mysterious mound, which she hopes will cast light on the legend’s truth. But before she can begin, storms reveal the unexpected: the century-old bones of an unidentified man. The discovery triggers Libby’s memories of family stories about Ellen, of her strange obsession with Ulla, and of her violent past at Sturrock House. As Libby digs deeper, she unravels a recurring story of love, tragedy, and threads that bind the past to the present. And as she learns more of Rodri Sturrock, the landowner’s brother, she realizes these forces are still at work, and that she has her own role to play in Ulla’s dark legend.

A New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice Selection Longlisted for the Southern Independent Booksellers Alliance Book Prize “[A] terrific first novel. . . . Why worry about labeling a book this good? Just read it.” —Laurie Muchnick, New York Times Book Review Jess is fifteen years old and waiting for the world to end. Her evangelical father has packed up the family to drive west to California, hoping to save as many souls as possible before the Second Coming. With her long-suffering mother and rebellious (and secretly pregnant) sister, Jess hands out tracts to nonbelievers at every rest stop, Waffle House, and gas station along the way. As Jess’s belief frays, her teenage myopia evolves into awareness about her fracturing family. Selected as a Barnes & Noble Discover pick and an Indie Next pick, Mary Miller’s radiant debut novel reinvigorates the literary road-trip story with wry vulnerability and savage charm.

Poetry. Literary Nonfiction. Women's Studies. LGBTQIA Studies. Disability Studies. Movement Studies. Dance. '"[I]n the slow gestures / of a person adjusting / to too much light' and with the faith of a chemist, Stephanie Heit sets fire inside her own dark and offers 'light someone not yet arrived/will understand.' THE COLOR SHE GAVE GRAVITY is a breathtaking (which is to say, life-giving) book that both stills and energizes by breaking and reforming the unseen bonds of DNA, language, geography, and history."--TC Tolbert "Stephanie Heit's THE COLOR SHE GAVE GRAVITY is a sonorous force field calling on tenderness, care, vigilance and abandon. An all-encompassing clarity saturates mind, spirit, movement and emotion. To locate the blind spot and unburden experience of the horizon's relentless pressure--this is what the text does tenfold, imparting and dispelling the inexplicable along peripheries and in intimately centered frames of movement: gorgeously evocative and intensely realized capacious psychic flows."--Brenda Iijima "Stephanie Heit has choreographed, in her first full-length poetry collection, a deeply engaging articulation of the interplay between mental illness and the creative instinct, history and destiny, and limitation and willful boundary. Here, we have an author brave enough to say 'I suffer' and talented enough to excavate the lyrical beauty of that suffering. THE COLOR SHE GAVE GRAVITY offers the reader a textured view of a graceful body torn between trying to remember and trying to forget."--Airea D. Matthews "In these fierce, moving poems, we witness a self as it seeks its right path through those landscapes we call world. We are taken along, wandering through urban streets or across beaches that once were lakes, sometimes dreamily, sometimes searingly awake, digging through stories and years. These poems enact one of our most potent human gifts: our ability to find ourselves tumbling, falling down, standing up--in proprioceptive relation to everything in our earthly realm."--Eleni Sikelianos THE COLOR SHE GAVE GRAVITY traces longing for connection between women. An ecopoetics of the bodymind, these poems take us inside a dance inside an imaginary city inside sculpted spaces inside the insomniac body inside sister grief inside she. The work emerges from a landscape of somatic engagement and by experiences of psychiatric systems and multiple hospitalizations. Cover Photo: "Crossing Visible," by Gwynneth VanLaven

A sweeping, multifaceted tale of a young Native American pulled between the cherished traditions of a heritage on the brink of extinction and an encroaching white culture, Gardens in the Dunes is the powerful story of one woman’s quest to reconcile two worlds that are diametrically opposed. At the center of this struggle is Indigo, who is ripped from her tribe, the Sand Lizard people, by white soldiers who destroy her home and family. Placed in a government school to learn the ways of a white child, Indigo is rescued by the kind-hearted Hattie and her worldly husband, Edward, who undertake to transform this complex, spirited girl into a “proper” young lady. Bit by bit, and through a wondrous journey that spans the European continent, traipses through the jungles of Brazil, and returns to the rich desert of Southwest America, Indigo bridges the gap between the two forces in her life and teaches her adoptive parents as much as, if not more than, she learns from them.

When the shocking discovery of a murdered woman’s body disturbs the tranquility of tourist season, the police detective in charge of the puzzling case must work alongside the new filmmaker in town to pursue every lead in the new romantic thriller from New York Times bestselling author Laura Griffin. After a scandal derails her television reporting career, Macey Burns comes looking for a change of pace in Lost Beach, Texas. She’s ready to focus on her first passion—documentary filmmaking—and has a new job working for the island’s tourism board, shooting footage of the idyllic beachside community. Her plans for a relaxing rebound are dashed when she realizes the cottage she’s renting belonged to the woman whose body was just found in the sand dunes. Detective Owen Breda is under intense pressure to solve this murder. Violent crimes are rising in his small town, and he can’t stand to see anyone else hurt…especially not the beautiful documentarian who keeps showing up at the precinct. With the clock ticking, cameras rolling, and body count climbing, Macey and Owen must use all their resources to find the killer without getting caught in the crosshairs.

Dunes of Fire was completed in the summer of June 2016, after two years of composing its plot and characters. Just like a vintage wine, this book will draw you into its plot as you turn every page. The book is a fiction, historical, fantasy, and romance-one to put in your personal library for generations. It is also a great gift for the avid readers. It will become a best seller. Who built the Pyramids and the Sphinx in Africa? What if teachers came and taught early humans how to build these huge structures? Obviously, they were advanced and could travel through time. So if they traveled through time to get here, they could also go back. But what if one of these "teachers" remained on earth and never grew old? And what if this "teacher" loved only one man? The truth is the "teachers" came through the portal of the sun, and one stayed on Earth. Dr. Manny Cortez has searched for signs of these teachers all his life. Dr. Cortez is the most famous archaeologist of our time, and he is digging in Africa at a site where King Arumet met the original teachers. Some Egyptians believe that Anubis (a "teacher") walked the earth himself and helped humans as the cave drawings depict in the Great Pyramids. Dr. Cortez is searching for the portal of the sun that is the gateway to another dimension. Mr. Widdal, who is the site dig manager, is a crook and wants to sell it and all the artifacts on the black market for money. Dr. Cortez knows the significance of the portal of the sun and doesn't want Mr. Widdal to find it. Dr. Cortez goes missing and cannot be located, leaving his playboy son Johnny Cortez to uncover clues and locate him. Widdal is watching his every move and waiting to kill him.

There's a mantra that real writers know but wannabe writers don’t. And the secret phrase is this: NOBODY WANTS TO READ YOUR SH*T. Recognizing this painful truth is the first step in the writer's transformation from amateur to professional. From Chapter Four: “When you understand that nobody wants to read your shit, you develop empathy. You acquire the skill that is indispensable to all artists and entrepreneurs—the ability to switch back and forth in your imagination from your own point of view as writer/painter/seller to the point of view of your reader/gallery-goer/customer. You learn to ask yourself with ev­ery sentence and every phrase: Is this interesting? Is it fun or challenging or inventive? Am I giving the reader enough? Is she bored? Is she following where I want to lead her?

A masterful portrait of an essential and unexamined American writer.

For three years, John Weller captured the Great Sand Dunes with his extraordinary photography and vivid stories. Here is his masterly result in a phenominal book to celebrate our nation's newest national park.