An enchanting, haunting collection of stories by Crystal Wilkinson, a self-described Black, country girl and poet from rural Kentucky. The stories explore the joys and pain of the women of "Affrilachia", and will touch the reader profoundly. "I grew up on a farm in Indian Creek, Kentucky during the seventies. I swam in creeks and roamed the knobs and hills. We had an outhouse and no inside running water. Our house was heated by coal and wood-burning stoves and we lived so far back in the woods that we could get only one television station. But it was a place of beauty - trees, green grass and blue sky as far as you could see. I am country. Being country is as much a part of me as my full lips, wide hips, dreadlocks and high cheek bones. There are many Black country folks who have lived and are living in small towns, up hollers and across knobs. They are all over the South--scattered like milk thistle seeds in the wind. The stories in this book are centered in these places." - CRYSTAL E. WILKINSON

From the author of Chocolat, an intoxicating fairy tale of alchemy and love where wine is the magic elixir. Jay Mackintosh is a 37-year-old has-been writer from London. Fourteen years have passed since his first novel, Jackapple Joe, won the Prix Goncourt. His only happiness comes from dreaming about the golden summers of his boyhood that he spent in the company of an eccentric vintner who was the inspiration of Jay's debut novel, but who one day mysteriously vanished. Under the strange effects of a bottle of Joe's '75 Special, Jay decides to purchase a derelict yet promising château in Lansquenet-sous-Tannes. There, a ghost from his past waits to confront him, and his new neighbour, the reclusive Marise - haunted, lovely and dangerous - hides a terrible secret behind her closed shutters. Between them, there seems to be a mysterious chemistry. Or could it be magic? Joanne Harris's previous novel, Chocolat, was both a dazzling literary success and a commercial triumph. Chocolat, the major motion picture directed by Lasse Hallström (The Cider House Rules), was released in December 2000, starring Juliette Binoche, Johnny Depp, Dame Judy Dench, Alfred Molina, and Lena Olin.

In a society begging to be duped, Martin Gardner, the most devastating debunker of scientific fraud and chicanery of our time, ranges here from science and mathematics to literature, philosophy, religion, and mysticism. With keen skepticism, he skewers the fallacies of pseudoscience, from Dr. Bruno Bettelheim's erroneous theory of autism to the farce of Primal Scream therapy, and he examines the bizarre tangents produced by Freudians and deconstructionists in their critiques of "Little Red Riding Hood." Book jacket.

"Joan Peck Arnold began writing poetry in her sixties to work through the challenges of later life, in the process arriving at a way of healing and a fresh perspective on the everyday. In these poems, she looks frankly at difficult things-grief and loss, fear and illness, life's seasons and storms-to locate hope or make peace with what has come and gone. She shows us how to find solace and connection in an object, a memory, or a moment, in our senses, and in the poignant details of ordinary life. What do we leave behind? What endures? How do we let go? A beautiful and accessible meditation on time, nature, and art, drawing inspiration from ghosts to Van Gogh, Sugar the Blackberries is a resonant collection for poetry enthusiasts and newcomers alike that holds lessons about love and survival for us all, no matter our age"--

Father Bear and Mother bear and Baby Bear have all gone to pick blackberries.

The residents of Water Street are hardworking, God-fearing people who live in a seemingly safe and insulated neighborhood within a small Kentucky town: "Water Street is a place where mothers can turn their backs to flip a pancake or cornmeal hoecake on the stove and know our children are safe." But all is not as it seems as the secret lives of neighbors and friends are revealed in interconnected tales of love, loss, truth, and tragedy. In this critically acclaimed short story collection, Crystal Wilkinson peels back the intricate layers that form the fabric of this community and its inhabitants -- revealing emotionally raw, multifaceted tales of race, class, gender, mental illness, and interpersonal relationships. The thirteen succinct stories offer fragmented glimpses of an overarching narrative that emerges, lyrical and fierce. Featuring a new foreword and a new afterword which illuminate Wilkinson's artistic achievement, this captivating work is poised to delight a new generation of readers.