Jack Tartarus, a photographer, has returned to his family’s house on Crab, an island off the east coast of Vancouver Island. After mulling it over for ten years, Jack has decided to tear his family’s house down, board-by-board, just as his father built it up. He purchases a wrecking bar. Struggling with the first piece of siding, his wrecking bar jammed between ancient planks, it seems the house is determined to remain. The people on Crab Island are also angrily opposed to his plan—including his responsible sister, his self-centered niece, a beautiful woman he knew intimately long ago, and Turtle, the hardware store clerk and the island’s self-proclaimed guardian. In a story about families and family history, Jack’s calculated plans for demolition are fired by the memory of his parents and the other losses he has felt. Like the others who have retreated to Crab Island, Jack has come to a place where he must make peace with the house, in order to construct his future.

A tribute to nature’s influence on the creative process, Bog Tender is a stunning memoir that explores nature and the act of writing, and where the two intersect. Accomplished fiction author George Szanto lives and writes on a bog that cuts his property in two. Rather than filling in the wetland, he has embraced it as a site of inspiration. Pieced together in 12 chapters—one for each month of the year—this enchanting narrative explores how Szanto’s writing process is affected by the bog’s transformations throughout the seasons. Through each chapter, the author searches for the moments of greatest consequence to him, from his parents’ escape from Hitler’s Vienna to his time spent studying in Germany, and from meeting his future wife and becoming a parent, to his adventures in Mexico. Set in a place where city is left behind for rural space, Bog Tender is about home and the intricate connections that evolve under and above the water.

In the fourth mystery in the Islands Investigations International series, Noel Franklin and Kyra Rachel are called to Moresby University on San Juan Island to investigate a case of possible plagiarism. As they look into the theft, the two get to know the small island’s university. They soon discover another, more menacing crime: the daughter of a professor engaged in highly sensitive research has been kidnapped. And her ransom is a piece of intellectual property far greater than any manuscript. While Noel and Kyra navigate the murky waters of university politics and come closer to discovering the origins of the crimes and their perpetrators, their lives are first threatened and then terrorized. Kyra, an insurance investigator, and Noel, a former journalist, pair up their sleuthing skills once again in Always Love a Villain on San Juan Island, as they investigate crimes and mysteries in the Pacific Northwest.

�â�€�œStories of desire, chance, promise, brought from the down below. Against the rules of heaven, what hope is there?�â�€� Ted tells stories. High on a cloud above Mount Washington, he peers down at the earth, listening to the memories of the mortal folk he watches. Lola, once a famous Hollywood bombshell, now a god, listens to his stories. Ted�â�€�™s words capture her heart, just as she captured the hearts of her fans. Down on Earth, three families experience joy, tragedy, hope, and loss. Milton and Theresa are activists, conservationists, parents, lovers, fighters. Johnnie Cochan is a self-styled ecological leader, haunted by sadness and fear. And Carney is a disaster recovery specialist who can quench an oil-platform fire but finds love hard to hold onto. Through their attractions and battles, their futures become bound, as Cochan�â�€�™s vision for a new utopia, a massive construction project, threatens to rupture everything. Whatever Lola Wants is story about stories�â�€�”those we tell others, and those that fill us up. It is also about the stories we tell ourselves and the ways they make us who we are�â�€�”admired artists, despised monsters, adored immortals.

The Islands Investigations International team is back! This time, Kyra Rachel and Noel Franklin are sleuthing around Quadra Island in the employ of Noel’s old high school buddy, Jason Cooper. In a quiet wooded area of the island, Jason, his wife, and two younger boys are worried for the oldest son in the family. Derek was discovered badly beaten in the woods by Campbell River and has remained in a deep coma for three weeks. Desperate to find out what happened to his son and why, Jason hires Noel and Kyra. As the two get to know the sleepy island community, they’re surprised to discover that Derek may have been in on a drug deal—but why? Others in the community describe him as a decent young man with a good head on his shoulders—what could have possibly pushed him to deal in drugs? Kyra and Noel aren’t even certain the drug deal is connected to the attack, so who would want to hurt this young man and why? Kyra and Noel are determined to find out what circumstances could have drawn this happy family into such dark territory.

"Jack Tartarus has returned to his family's house on Crab, a small island off the coast of the Pacific Northwest. After mulling it over for ten years, Jack has deciced to tear the family house down, board by board, just as his father built it up. Fired by the memory of his parents, one among the losses he has suffered, he purchases a crowbar. But the bar jams between the old planks; it seems the house is determined to remain. In a story about families and family history, Jack's calculated plans for demolition are interrupted by the will of the house and the people of Crab Island- his responsible sister, his ssel-centred niece, a beautiful woman he once knew initmately, and Turtle, the hardware store clerk and the island's self-proclaimed guardian"--P. [4] of cover.

This book aims to put Walter de la Mare back on the literary map. A writer beloved by many, he has nevertheless remained on the sidelines of literary history. Walter de la Mare: Critical Appraisals promises to restore his reputation as one of the most memorably haunting of poets, as well as a peculiarly unnerving writer of ghost stories. A collection of varied, wide-ranging essays on de la Mare’s poetry, stories, novels, reviews and lectures, it puts his work beside that of many of his famous contemporaries, including Thomas Hardy, Robert Frost, W. H. Auden, T. S. Eliot and Katherine Mansfield. It also contains an invaluable survey of his archive, much of it unpublished, and a number of newly commissioned poems reflecting on his legacy. This multifaceted volume will be of interest to students working on twentieth-century poetry, the short story, the nature and limits of modernism and British intellectual history, as well as on de la Mare himself. List of contributors: Catherine Charlwood, Guy Cuthbertson, Peter Davidson, Giles de la Mare, Andrew Doyle, Suzannah V. Evans, Adam Guy, Robin Holloway, Yui Kajita, Zaffar Kunial, Gregory Leadbetter, Angela Leighton, Erica McAlpine, Jenny McDonnell, Will May, Andrew Motion, Paul Muldoon, A. J. Nickerson, Seamus Perry, Adrian Poole, Camille Ralphs, Vidyan Ravinthiran, Peter Scupham, A. E. Stallings, Mark Valentine, Rory Waterman, Anne Welsh, David Wheatley, Rowan Williams, William Wootten.