Exploring the way our choices and relationships are shaped by the menace and beauty of the natural world, Megan Mayhew Bergman's powerful and heartwarming collection captures the surprising moments when the pull of our biology becomes evident, when love or fear collides with good sense, or when our attachment to an animal or wild place can't be denied.
In "Housewifely Arts," a single mother and her son drive hours to track down an African gray parrot that can mimic her deceased mother's voice. A population-control activist faces the conflict between her loyalty to the environment and her maternal desire in "Yesterday's Whales." And in the title story, a lonely naturalist allows an attractive stranger to lead her and her aging father on a hunt for an elusive woodpecker.
As intelligent as they are moving, the stories in "Birds of a Lesser Paradise "are alive with emotion, wit, and insight into the impressive power that nature has over all of us. This extraordinary collection introduces a young writer of remarkable talent.

'Zekameron' comes from 'Zek' meaning prisoner and is a word-play on Boccaccio's Decameron. 'He came back from interrogation looking like death. Some people look better than he did when they're being put in their coffin. "What happened then? Did they stick any other articles of the Criminal Code on you? Or break your jaw?" "Nothing like that. I've got toothache..." The 100 tales in Zekameron are based on the 14th Century Decameron, but Znak is closer to Beckett than to Boccaccio. Banality and brutality vie with the human ability to overcome oppression. Znak's stories in different voices chart 100 days in prison in Belarus today. The tone is laconic, ironic; the humour sparse. The stories bear witness to resistance and self-assertion and the genuine warmth and appreciation of fellow prisoners.

In this unique collection of stories, each story chronicles an emotional dance of some type-the dance of life, the dance of death. Each story resonates with the knowledge that every person must learn the steps to his or her own dance and with the subtle reality that each of us recognizes when the dance is over. In "Lost," Ginny longs for the innocence of a life that is long gone-obliterated by alcohol and lost love. She has lost the desire to live and love; she is hopeless, even in the face of life in the exotic South Pacific. In "The Yellow Dress," set in New Zealand, Joseph Miller is mourning the loss of his beloved wife and wondering how he will spend his remaining time-since he is also unwell. He wanders aimlessly through his days, not focusing on anything in particular. Then one day, by chance, he joins some people at a cultural performance, the type of event he would have normally skipped in the past. That night something happens that changes him-and once again he finds himself joining the dance of life. "All in Order" explores the dance of marriage, hindered by the neuroses of man to whom order is of utmost importance. "The Dancing Hills" depicts the dance of new relationship in which both the tune and the dancers are somewhat unconventional. Full of life, love and emotions, the stories in "Dances" will awaken your heart and take you along on some surprising journeys.

During embalming an arm jerks and strikes a mortician, leaving him unmoored. A pastor’s wife encounters a young congregant in her kitchen wearing her apron and preparing breakfast. A man’s attempt to make sense of why a tornado picked him up leads to a showdown with a cult leader. A daydreaming, gawky kid is appointed guardian of a watermelon that the ocean could snatch away. Love comes slowly, like water heating over a low fi re or extra sugar being stirred into tea. In another story, the love of a father cannot save his musician son. A young woman living in a recognisable future contemplates the end of memory as her body transforms into the silver promise of a carapace. Another young woman feels she should be smiling but nothing stirs in her when her father wakes from death aft er 15 minutes. Battling portentous pre-dawn heat and still air, a bystander abandons removing caterpillars from a Ficus because the idea of touching them makes her squeamish. Elsewhere in the suburbs, in a fi xerupper from hell, crickets screech and squeal, their ringing like that of a demented alarm clock.

When Water Wants To presents the fi nalists of the DALRO Can Themba short story award. Celebrating the legacy of master storyteller Can Themba, this collection provokes, inspires, challenges and entertains with bold storytelling and keen social commentary. The stories range from the deeply personal to the wildly allegorical, playing with genre conventions and inhabiting a multitude of perspectives and unruly voices. These exciting new authors confi rm the pre-eminence of the short story, and its oral antecedents, by delving into the national psyche in the conversations they have, the connections they make, and the themes, concerns and water-soaked imagery they share.

In 1885, Vincent Martinez Ybor, a Spanish entrepreneur, purchased forty acres east of Tampa and built a company town of tall red-brick factories and small wood-frame houses for the workers. Over the next forty years, this community of cigar-makers from Cuba, Spain, and Italy grew into a thriving industry that made Tampa the "Cigar Capital of the World." The urban renewal of the 1960s, however, struck a deathblow to Ybor City; thousands of cigar-makers' homes and businesses were leveled by bulldozers, and an interstate highway stormed through the dying neighborhood.

The narratives, reflecting a coming-of-age in this colorful community that no longer exists, speak of a kidnapping, a hold-up, a shark attack, a deadly duel, and a murder. A teenager comes to grips with his sexual identity, an activist mother resists Jim Crow laws, and an unexpected baby changes everyone's life. In Cigar City Stories, author Emilio Gonzalez-Llanes presents a collection of short stories that provides a snapshot of this lost island in time.

Julian stood on that raised platform in the middle of the factory floor, reading to the workers: Anna Karenina, War and Peace, Les Miserables, writings of Cervantes, newspapers, and the poems of Jose Marti. He didn't just read the words; he took on the voice and mannerisms of the characters in the novels, like an actor in the theater. Good performances were followed by the sustained thumping roar of two hundred chavetas, or tobacco knives, repeatedly striking the workers' tobacco-cutting boards. -from "El Lector"

The new century saw a furthering of violence hinged in some bizarre way to organized religion, religions that were centuries old and born of good will toward man. Within months of the terror attacks ultimately linked to Bin Laden and his platter. The initial shock, horror, revulsion and sorrow was now replaced with vengeance served up big-time and brought to you nightly by CNN or whoever had the best feed. The far reaching effects trickled down into the communities we lived in. Surprise anthrax packages, remember Tom Brokaw's little gift at the network home site? The attacks continue today with assaults at Fort Hood attributed to a madman, English transit, in Spain and everyday something new. The recent Shafia trial in Kingston Ontario was blocks from our fictitious setting, imagine... The setting is ever changing in this thriller set between Ontario prisons and the fluid world of terrorists who maneuver their agenda with well laid out plans that cover several months or more of planning. We've grown somewhat callous perhaps to the daily bombings and activities of the Middle East. Picture some of the same events in our own towns and communities, the scope of the 911 attacks on a smaller scale, but with potential to devastate lives. A must read

"He flicked the coin onto the table and it spun lazily, resting on tails. An eagle, squatting on a cactus, snake held aloft in its beak. Cinco pesos, the worn script read . . . " Within these covers, you will find murderous dropbears, zombie kangaroos and undead camels. Poignant endings to the world mash-up with muscle car battles, featuring feral killers that make Mad Max look like the Disney channel. Everything is a Graveyard delves into the fantastic, the horrifying, the sad and the just plain weird.