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.

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.

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.

The dark side of The Lion City is explored in a thrilling anthology that gives “plenty of new and unfamiliar voices a chance to shine” (San Francisco Book Review). The island city-state of Singapore harbors unique customs and traditions largely unknown to the West. A booming economy and embrace of conformity overshadow its gambling dens, red-light districts, and a collective passion for ghostly and gory tales. Now, in Singapore Noir, some of its best contemporary authors delve into its seedy side, including three winners of the Singapore Literature Prize: Simon Tay (writing as Donald Tee Quee Ho), Colin Cheong, and Suchen Christine Lim, whose contribution was named a finalist for the Private Eye Writers of America Shamus Award for Best P.I. Short Story. Eleven more tales showcase the talents of Colin Goh, Philip Jeyaretnam, Cheryl Lu-Lien Tan, Monica Bhide, S.J. Rozan, Lawrence Osborne, Ovidia Yu, Damon Chua, Johann S. Lee, Dave Chua, and Nury Vittachi. “Singapore, with its great wealth and great poverty existing amid ethnic, linguistic, and cultural tensions, offers fertile ground for bleak fiction . . . Tan has assembled a strong lineup of Singapore natives and knowledgeable visitors for this volume exploring the dark side of a fascinating country.” —Publishers Weekly

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.

This picture book biography tells the story of Meg Lowman, a groundbreaking female scientist called a "real life Lorax" by National Geographic, who was determined to investigate the marvelous, undiscovered world of the rainforest treetops. Meg Lowman was always fascinated by the natural world above her head — the colors, the branches, and, most of all, the leaves and mysterious organisms living there. Meg set out to climb up and investigate the rain forest tree canopies — and to be the first scientist to do so. But she encountered challenge after challenge. Male teachers would not let her into their classrooms, the high canopy was difficult to get to, and worst of all, people were logging and clearing the forests. Meg never gave up or gave in. She studied, invented, and persevered, not only creating a future for herself as a scientist, but making sure that the rainforests had a future as well. Working closely with Meg Lowman, author Heather Lang and artist Jana Christy beautifully capture Meg's world in the treetops.

&‘A poignant tale of secret histories and the mechanics of forgiveness' The Age1939. As a burgeoning city emerges from its landscape, so too does a bridge that will transform it from a sleepy country town. Three young men work on the construction of this iconic steel bridge. Labouring high above the river in dangerous conditions, close bonds develop between them. But one slip can &– and does &– alter their lives forever.A generation later, Robbie, a young landscaper, grapples with his difficult relationship with his father whose past is inextricably linked with the famous cantilevered bridge. Robbie is also battling to save his future with his girlfriend Freya, after a violent assault by a stranger sends her spiralling into herself.The Comfort of Figs is the engrossing story of the birth of a city and the burden of a family secret. Its legacy is two monuments &– one of nature and one of engineering &– both of them unforgettable.

"Defiant and uncategorizable, Lo Kwa Mei-en's Yearling, with its teeming species, battles, and passions, read like an illuminated manuscript: mysterious, visceral, awe-full. Hers are some of the most enviable poems I have ever read, and herald Mei-en as the new standard bearer for innovative structure, terrifying acknowledgment, ecstatic statement, and, I daresay, beauty."—Kathy Fagan Lo Kwa Mei-en's Yearling explores adolescence through a deeply moving and poignantly raw lens. As the speaker ages, so too does the poetry, creating laments for the loss of friendship, the loss of species, and sometimes the loss of humanity itself. Harsh, forlorn and yet effervescent, Mei-en's lyricism perfectly captures the ethos of youth in an unsure world. From "Rara Avis Decoy": Wild diamond rocking on the floor of a predatory boat. Point & say sweet traitor to the wood & water for wanting to be made of both. My name is I know not what I am as a country of mothers & fathers comes down. They call me sleeping beauty. I dream I am in flight, body unfolding, folding, a bullet wounding water again & again—the mysterious love of a father & mother a two-barreled gaze. The gun in my dream speaks my name & sees a beating vein. Takes aim— Lo Kwa Mei-en is from Singapore and Ohio. Her poems have appeared in Boston Review, Guernica, the Kenyon Review, West Branch, and other journals, and won the Crazyhorse Lynda Hull Memorial Poetry Prize and the Gulf Coast Poetry Prize.