Men and boys of Newfoundland's north East Coast always looked forward to the coming of March. It was sealing or swilin' time. Seal meat would give some reprieve to 'the long and hungry month' of March by which time the family food store was very low. At this time of the year, sealing provided the only opportunity to obtain fresh meat and the pelts brought long awaited cash.Shannon Ryan was born and bred in Riverhead, Harbor Grace, the one time home of the great sealing industry. He...

These poems span the gamut of life from love to death; a eulogy for a people, who for the most part, are no longer with us. Their evolution in rural Newfoundland has taken hundreds of years and there is a good possibility that we will never see their likes again. Full of knowledge, self-sufficiency, independence, pride and dignity, most of them, I think, would be deeply insulted by some of our contemporary characterizations of them. One could easily argue that this collection is a portraya...

In Hard Light, Michael Crummey retells and reinvents his father's stories of outport Newfoundland and the Labrador fishery of a half century ago. Speaking through generations of storytellers, he conjures a world of hard toil and heavy weather, shot through with stoicism, grim humour, endurance, and love. This is writing that is supple and charged with intensity, language that vivifies --- electrifies --- whoever and whatever it describes. "Michael Crummey's lucid, dexterous writing shies a...

Susan Unwin is an emigrant sailing from England to Australia in the Nineteenth century. Tragedy befalls the ship and they are close to sinking, but an American captain finds them adrift in the middle of the ocean and offers help. As the ship struggles towards its destination, Susan's daydreams torment her with her own tragedy.

Three tales of wonderThree quests for greatnessThree feats of imaginationNorton Juster, author of the beloved classic The Phantom Tollbooth, shares spellbinding stories that entertain and delight. The first is of Alberic and his endless search for wisdom—will his journey satisfy him in the end? The second reveals a boy with no illusions and a princess with no kingdom. The third is the tale of the richest monarch in the world—and the poorest. What they discover is as a...

'Seamus Heaney has gone beyond the themes of his earlier poetry and has made the giant step towards the most ambitious, most intractable themes of maturity. The power of this book comes from a sense that he is reaching out towards a type of desolation and of isolation without which no imagination can be seen to have grown up.' Eavan Boland, Irish Times'Keyed and pitched unlike any other significant poet at work in the language anywhere.' Harold Bloom, Times Literary Su...

Wilde Stories showcases the previous year's best offerings in short gay fantasy, horror, weird, and science fiction. This volume offers readers the secret missives of Roman emperors, an ungrateful ghost haunting her father's lover, werewolves, possible vampires, and more tales of the strange and eerie blended with bit of loss and passion. Editor Steve Berman has been collecting the finest stories in the field for nearly a decade. The authors included are Steve Berman, Tom Cardamone, Andrew...

Of Plan B, an interim volume that included several of the poems in Maggot, Robert McCrum recently said in the London Observer that "Paul Muldoon, who has done so much to reimagine the poet's task, has surpassed himself with his latest collection." In his eleventh full-length book, Muldoon reminds us that he is a traditional poet who is steadfastly at odds with tradition. If the poetic sequence is the main mode of Maggot, it certainly isn't your father's ...

Essential works from the first half of the Irish Nobel Prize–winning poet's career, selected by the author himself.Between my fingers and my thumbThe squat pen rests.I'll dig with it.Selected Poems 1966-1987 assembles the groundbreaking work of the first half of Seamus Heaney's extraordinary career. This edition, arranged by the author himself, includes the seminal early poetry that struck readers with the...

Dreaming All Things Great is a collection of colourful tales that shock, surprise and weave through the dramas and dilemmas of life. How much ridicule does a boy who is dreaming of becoming a comedian have to go through? How about the dark secret of what happens in Radyr? Or even the tale of a man who visits a witch in the middle of the night?   Bevin Magama is a renowned storyteller who has dedicated his life to challenging social issues through the medium of storytel...

Now that the war has ended, three soldiers make a pact to meet again in two years. One has lost a foot, one has lost a hand, and one hears voices in his head. Will they keep their promise to meet? Will their plans for the future work out as they hope? Find out what lies ahead for these soldier friends.

These poems report on worlds both robust and delicate, from boisterous pub-bluff to the oxygen bubble of an exquisite underwater spider. Whether situated in the quiet lanes of his native Co Cork or amid the bustle of his adopted London, Riordan's poems exist between many states, poised at once in the grip of both activity and stillness, concerned with speaking and listening to what he hauntingly describes as 'the unwonted quiet'. There are tributes to the departed and the living, the befri...