Winner of ABIA Literary Fiction of the Year Award 2015 Winner of the Indie Book Award for Debut Fiction 2015 Winner of the Victorian Premier's Unpublished Manuscript Award 2013 In Melbourne's western suburbs, in a dilapidated block of flats overhanging the rattling Footscray train lines, a young black mother is working on a collection of stories. The book is called Foreign Soil. Inside its covers, a desperate asylum seeker is pacing the hallways of Sydney's notorious Villawood detention centre, a seven-year-old Sudanese boy has found solace in a patchwork bike, an enraged black militant is on the warpath through the rebel squats of 1960s Brixton, a Mississippi housewife decides to make the ultimate sacrifice to save her son from small-town ignorance, a young woman leaves rural Jamaica in search of her destiny, and a Sydney schoolgirl loses her way. The young mother keeps writing, the rejection letters keep arriving . . . In this collection of award-winning stories, Melbourne writer Maxine Beneba Clarke has given a voice to the disenfranchised, the lost, the downtrodden and the mistreated. It will challenge you, it will have you by the heartstrings. 'Maxine Beneba Clarke is a powerful and fearless storyteller, and this collection - written with exquisite sensitivity and yet uncompromising - will stay with you with the force of elemental truth. Clarke is the real deal, and will, if we're lucky, be an essential voice in world literature for years to come.' - Dave Eggers bestselling author of A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius 'Foreign Soil is a collection of outstanding literary quality and promise. Clarke is a confident and highly skilled writer.' - Hannah Kent, bestselling author of Burial Rites 'An assured and skilful debut' - Weekend Australian

A story of the Soil is a collection of over forty classic Punjabi short stories. Combining a rich oral tradition of kissas with tropes from Western literature, Punjabi short-story writers have developed their own unique way of portraying love, longing, ecstasy and malice. Spanning a century, these stories talk of life in the village and the town. There are haunting tales about Partition like 'A Matter of Faith' by Gulzar Singh Sandhu where a horrible tragedy is viewed through the eyes of a child. Along with sensitive accounts of life from across the border in Pakistan are tales by the Dalits who until recently had been rendered voiceless. Amrita Pritam's 'The Vault', a metaphor for a barren womb, explores the identity of a Punjabi woman while stories like Surjit Birdi's 'Flies' reveals the concerns faced by the Punjabi diaspora. Translated and edited by Nirupama Dutt, these carefully selected stories reflect every aspect of life in the land of five rivers.

There are over one billion organisms in a pinch of soil, yet we know much more about deep space than about the universe below. In Tales from the Underground, Cornell ecologist David Wolfe takes us on a tour through current scientific knowledge of the subterranean world. We follow the progress of discovery from Charles Darwin's experiments with earthworms, to Lewis and Clark's first encounter with prairie dogs, to the use of new genetic tools that are revealing an astonishingly rich ecosystem beneath our feet. Wolfe plunges us deep into the earth's rocky crust, where life may have begun-a world devoid of oxygen and light but safe from asteroid bombardment. Primitive microbes found there are turning our notion of the evolutionary tree of life on its head: amazingly, they represent perhaps a full third of earth's genetic diversity. As Wolfe explains, creatures of the soil can work for us, by providing important pharmaceuticals and recycling the essential elements of life, or against us, by spreading disease and contributing to global climate change. The future of our species may well depend on how we manage our living soil resources. Tales from the Underground will forever alter our appreciation of the natural world around-and beneath-us.

Learn how different cultures around the world set out to live in harmony with the natural world in this popular anthology, now in paperback. The seven folk tales are each followed by a hands-on activity that promotes green living and reinforces the eco-messages of the stories. Gold nautilus Book Award Winner.

Wide-ranging stories offer a glimpse into witchcraft, magic, Crusaders, astrology, alchemy, pacts with the Devil, chivalry, trial by torture, church councils, mercantile life, other elements of Middle Ages.

“The newspaper headline declared in large bold letters: “Shoot Out At High Noon.” Reading the first paragraph of the article disclosed the truth of the old saying, “don’t take a knife to a gun fight.” The man with the knife lay dead on the ground, while the fellow with the rifle fled the scene in his blue Ford F-150 full-size pickup truck” (from “The Love Triangle”). Tales and Torts: Stories of a Country Lawyer is a unique collection of short stories proving the axiom, “sometimes the truth is stranger than fiction.” Each story recounted is based on a real legal case and each illuminates the human condition. Love, prized animals, tragedy, murder, swindlers and thieves, disgruntled family members, and hardened criminals. These tales involve a wide variety of cases in many areas of the law with astonishing fact patterns and extraordinary individuals chosen out of thousands of cases over a forty-year legal career. From the Jewish Russian tenor escaping religious persecution in Russia, to the Tongan travelling to experience the miracle of snow in Canada, to Li jing, whose life was tragically altered on Chinese New Year’s Eve, each character is brought to life with humour, compassion, and an eye to achieving one goal: justice.

Meet Ptolemy Jovan Lane—lawkeeper, investigator, and problem-solver—on the fringes of known space. From bodies found in zero-gravity brothels to mysterious severed limbs, Lane’s reputation as the town peacemaker takes him deep into the heart of murder, intrigue, and political machinations in Georgina’s Town. But it's not just about solving crimes; Lane must face the demons of his own past, new enemies he didn’t know he had, and even the impossible notion that Serials—the non-human citizens—might feel emotions just as strongly as humans. The Ptolemy Lane Tales Omnibus collects all five stories in this thrilling space opera series. From his early days chasing killers to a final confrontation that could change the future of humanity, Ptolemy Lane’s journey is packed with high-stakes mysteries, action, and the rich world-building of award-winning SF author Cameron Cooper. The Ptolemy Lane Tales: 1.0: The Body in the Zero Gee Brothel 2.0: The Captain Who Broke the Rules 3.0: The Maker of Widowmakers’ Arm 4.0: The Ancient Girl in the Autopod 5.0: The Return of the Peacemaker 5.5: Ptolemy Lane Tales Omnibus Space Opera Science Fiction Collection

A century of adventures, beliefs and musings come to life in Lundie’s Stories. The fourth generation Wyoming pioneer tells his tales with sensitivity, respect and details that readers will long remember and likely never read again. From family memories to garden tips, from political perspectives to wild weather, and from unusual animal encounters to military service, we are astounded by this Wyoming original. In a voice as distinct and open as the Wyoming range, Lundie Thayer entertains us with a personal glimpse at remarkable times and real-life characters before they vanish from collective memory. A wild west ride, Lundie’s Stories speaks to young and old alike.

A small collection of short stories including genre's such as Science Fiction, Fantasy, Adventure, Mystery & Crime.

Fibonacci Tales are fiction written in the format of the Fibonacci sequence, hence the name Fibonacci Tales. What Fibonacci did is plug a 0 and a 1 and set the rule to always add the next two numbers. Each Fibonacci Tales book has: two one-page chapters, one two-page chapter, one three-page chapter, one five-page chapter, one eight-page chapter, one thirteen-page chapter, one twenty-one-page chapter, one thirty-four-page chapter, one fifty-five-page chapter, and one eighty-nine-page chapter for a total of 232 pages per book. Fibonacci Tales are written for all ages and in paired sets of books. The first pair of Fibonacci Tales books are Fibonacci Tales Vampire Tales and Fibonacci Tales Knights Tales. The second pair of Fibonacci Tales books are Fibonacci Tales Dust Tales and Fibonacci Tales Mother Tales. The third pare of Fibonacci Tales books will be called Fibonacci Tales Cat Tales and Fibonacci Tales Goddess Tales. These books are works in progress during mid-September 2016. The author expects to complete the third pair of Fibonacci Tales books and available around early to mid-2017. Fibonacci Tales books are designed for electronic book reading. Each pair of books includes music callouts that are essential to the stories (music has the power to calm the savage beast), and therefore, Fibonacci Tales books do not lend themselves to printed book format. Plus the cost of printing two pairs of books and pressing two CDs for each pair of books would not be cost-effective, and it would be an outright irritant for the dear reader who would have to advance the CD one tune at a time and stop the CD before the next tune began as CD players are designed to do. I would utterly hate to read Fibonacci Tales in printed book format. For that reason alone, scratch the idea of publishing Fibonacci Tales in physical book format. I will not agree. On the plus side again, I have two disinterested readers who will read and comment on Fibonacci Tales books once they are available in e-book format.