This book represents a circle, moving geophysically and mythologically from salt water - the cosmic and microcosmic elemental birthplace - to desert sand, the reposing place of earth matter, or materiality. The visions that make up this volume are taken from experiences, past and present, of Native American storytellers. The speakers come from many tribes: Pascagoula, Arawak, Iroquois, Arapaho, Kiowa, Rio Grande Pueblo, Kwakiutl, Cherokee and Navajo. Gerald Hausman has created this poetic and visionary anthology from years of dedicated research and dialogue with Native American people.

Aram Saroyan's The Street: An Autobiographical Novel tells what it was like to come of age in New York City in the turbulent period of Vietnam and L.S.D., of racial unrest and rock-and-roll. Saroyan's free-wheeling, poignant and funny autobiographical novel deals with near stardom in Hollywood (Mike Nichols wanted him for the title role in "The Graduate"), his father, William Saroyan, his step-father, Walter Matthau, and a fascinating cast of characters from the world famous to the drop-outs of the psychedelic revolution. A screen adaptation of The Street, written and directed by Noam J. Christopher, can be viewed at ubu.com/film/saroyan.html. "Here is a novel that pins down an era." -Bookpeople Aram Saroyan's Complete Minimal Poems received the William Carlos Williams Award from the Poetry Society of America. His many prose books include Genesis Angels: The Saga of Lew Welch and the Beat Generation, Artists in Trouble: New Stories, and Door to the River: Essays and Reviews from the 1960s into the Digital Age. "A writer who looks deeply into himself and his own experience, confronts what he finds there with real courage and reports what he has experienced with a measure of candor that is both breathtaking and, at moments, heartbreaking." -Jonathan Kirsch, Los Angeles Times

Marcos Caliente is a jalapeno pepper who is called Marcos the Wise because he stands up to his enemy, Phatkat, and the greedy growers of Phlamco who want the whole world to eat test tube food. How does Marcos defeat those who want to put him under the ground? Well, you must remember that once upon a dream Marcos was a tiny little sprout in the earth. No stranger to the natural soil of life, he likes it there better than anywhere else. But it's as he says, "Those who wish to bury me should remember that I come from the earth and the powers of the earth reside within me forever." Follow the adventures of Marcos Caliente, the clever jalapeno pepper who makes the world a better place for all to live and grow wise just like him.

Josephine grows up on the island of Martinique longing for a glorious life in Paris. A West Indian seer has told her she is destined to be "more than a queen." An arranged marriage to a French nobleman brings her to the city of lights. But instead of the grand life, she experiences the French Revolution. Her husband is executed, she is imprisoned and all of her dreams of diamonds turn to dirt. But then she meets the greatest love of her life, Napoleon Bonaparte. Their ups and downs, joys and sorrows, set against the background of the Napoleonic Wars ensure that this dramatic novel is one of the most turbulent romances of the time.

A collection of stories, poems, and meditations that illuminate the spiritual world of the Navajo.

- Explores the Navajo's fundamental belief in the importance of harmony and balance in the world.

- Shares Navajo healing ways that have been handed down for generations.

- Includes meditations following each story or poem.

Navajo myths are among the most poetic in the world, full of dazzling word imagery. For the Navajo, who call themselves the Dine (literally, "the People"), the story of emergence--their creation myth--lies at the heart of their beliefs. In it, all the world is created together, both gods and human beings, embodying the idea that change comes from within rather than without. Poet and author Gerald Hausman collects this and other stories with meditations that together capture the essence of the Navajo people's way of life and their understanding of the world. Here are myths of the Holy People, of Changing Woman who teaches the People how to live, and of the trickster Coyote; stories of healings performed by stargazers and hand tremblers; and songs of love, marriage, homecoming, and growing old. These and the meditations that follow each story reveal a world--our world--that thrives only on harmony and balance and shares the Dine belief that the most important point on the circle that has no beginning or end is where we stand at the moment.

A collection of first-person stories and essays about living on Pine Island, a barrier island off the West Coast of Florida. The author and his wife have lived on Pine Island for 18 years and have met just about every kind of animal, insect, amphibian, reptile and person that inhabits small, sub-tropical mangrove islands in this part of Florida. Often humorous, the stories share the lives of creatures often unseen by other people. Also shared are weather patterns, including a category 5 hurricane, and the many "transplants," non-native species that have made Florida their permanent home.

Six stories of survival -- men and women set upon by stormy seas, starvation, thirst, beasts, ghosts and their own inner demons. Based on real historical accounts the narratives are filled with the eerie poetry of island life, the exultant triumph of survival against all odds. From Florida's Bigfoot called the Skunk Ape to "the man who would not go bottom" -- a superhero who could not drown but was vulnerable on land, these stories of castaways will appeal to readers of all ages.

Condemned to a penal colony in Australia for stealing a woman's bonnet, young Mary Bryant braves every danger in Britain's newest colony, Australia -- disease, famine, rape, and the cruelty of the penal system. As the first convict married in Australia, Mary and her husband Will learn from aboriginal friends how to survive. In time they also learn how to escape. Traveling three months and three thousand miles, Mary's courageous feat is yet unequaled by a woman with two young children traversing rough seas for so many miles in an open boat without training or navigational equipment. Mary's capture, return to England and the curious trial that determines if she lives or dies is filled with drama, and all the more interesting for the portrait of her real-life attorney, James Boswell.

Wondrous stories of Changing Woman, First Man and First Woman, Coyote, Great Snake, Gila Monster and others who infuse the rich and complex canvas of the Navajo world view. This book illuminates the traditional oral narratives of the tribe and shows how they work ceremonially as healing ways. Collectively, they also convey the origin story of The People and in addition they provide a moral code for harmonious existence with the natural world. The enlightened state of Navajo consciousness, which they call "walking in beauty" is presented in such a way that all of us can learn to use it and live by it.