A delightful collection of short stories that follow the life of Toby, a beloved Labrador-hound mix, and the laughter, tears, and lessons that come from each exciting adventure on his life's journey. Lightly humorous and realistically warming, Standing Naked In The Rain pays tribute to the unconditional love and unmatched loyalty of our four-legged family members, reminding us that the most treasured gifts aren't always wrapped in a box or delivered by Amazon. And that sometimes an old dog can still teach us a few new tricks. It is a simple reminder that an abundant life is chock full of first times. And the realization that with our canine friends there is sacrifice without expectation, and trust anchored in faithful repetition. Dog and pet lovers of all ages are sure to enjoy this cheerful reminder of the valuable relationships we share with our canine companions.

From New York Times bestselling author Nina Bangs comes the first book in her sizzling Castle of Dark Dreams series. Welcome to the Castle of Dark Dreams, the yummiest attraction in an adult theme park where women take erotic role-playing to new heights with only the most dangerously tempting men. Okay, so they’re not quite human, but that’s a secret. Tonight, Eric, the castle’s resident vampire, will prove that he’s everything bad should be. Talk-show host Donna Nolan—on the lookout for a weird and wacky story—finds it when she braves the Castle of Dark Dreams and meets Eric. With the coldest blue eyes and the hottest mouth she’s ever seen, he’s a primitive call to the wild in every woman. Love between a talk-show host and a vampire shouldn’t be possible. But then, strange things happen in the Castle of Dark Dreams...

A novel that “does for Newfoundland what Empire Falls did for dying smalltown Maine and The Sportswriter did for suburban New Jersey” (Publishers Weekly). Winner of the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize and a Globe and Mail Book of the Year St. John’s, Newfoundland, is a city whose spiritual location is somewhere in the heart of Flannery O’Connor country. Its denizens jostle one another in uneasy arabesques of desire, greed, and ambition, juxtaposed with a yearning for purity, depth, and redemption. Colleen is a seventeen-year-old would-be ecoterrorist, drawn inexorably to the places where alligators thrive. Her mother, Beverly, is cloaked in grief after the death of her husband. Beverly’s sister, Madeleine, is a driven, aging filmmaker who obsesses over completing her magnum opus before she dies. And Frank, a young man whose life is a strange anthology of unpredictable dangers, is desperate to protect his hot-dog stand from sociopathic Russian sailor Valentin, whose predatory tendencies threaten everyone he encounters. This debut novel, which moves with swiftness of an alligator in attack mode through the lives of these brilliantly rendered characters, examines the ruthlessly reptilian, and painfully human, sides of all of us. “Glints with wit and jarring insight.” —The Globe and Mail (Toronto) “An astonishing writer.” —Richard Ford

Fiction based on a factual localities and native colouring; Situated in Queensland, near Brisbane.

Out of the Crazywoods is the riveting and insightful story of Abenaki poet Cheryl Savageau’s late-life diagnosis of bipolar disorder. Without sensationalizing, she takes the reader inside the experience of a rapid-cycling variant of the disorder, providing a lens through which to understand it and a road map for navigating the illness. The structure of her story—impressionistic, fragmented—is an embodiment of the bipolar experience and a way of perceiving the world. Out of the Crazywoods takes the reader into the euphoria of mania as well as its ugly, agitated rage and into “the lying down of desire” that is depression. Savageau articulates the joy of being consort to a god and the terror of being chased by witchcraft, the sound of voices that are always chattering in your head, the smell of wet ashes that invades your home, the perception that people are moving in slow motion and death lurks at every turnpike, and the feeling of being loved by the universe and despised by everyone you’ve ever known. Central to the journey out of the Crazywoods is the sensitive child who becomes a poet and writer who finds clarity in her art and a reason to heal in her grandchildren. Her journey reveals the stigma and the social, personal, and economic consequences of the illness but reminds us that the disease is not the person. Grounded in Abenaki culture, Savageau questions cultural definitions of madness and charts a path to recovery through a combination of medications, psychotherapy, and ceremony.

"One of the wisest books I've read in years, and it would be a shame to think that only poets will read it."—David Kirby, The New York Times Book Review, on Madness, Rack, and Honey "What a civil, undomesticable, and heartening poet is Mary Ruefle . . . any Ruefle poem is an occasion of resonant wit and language, subject to an exacting intelligence."—Rodney Jones, Poetry Society of America, William Carlos Williams Award citation Trances of the Blast is a major new collection from recent National Book Critics Circle Award finalist Mary Ruefle. Full of Ruefle's particular wisdom and wit, the poems deliver her imaginative take on the world's rifts—its paradoxes, failures, and loss—and help us better appreciate its redeeming strangeness. If only I'd understood that loneliness was just loneliness, only loneliness and nothing more. But I was blind. Little did I know. If only I'd invented salt. I might have died happy. I wish I loved you, but you can't have everything. Mary Ruefle is the author of many books of prose, poetry, and erasures. She is the recipient of the William Carlos Williams Award, an Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, a Guggenheim fellowship, a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship, and a Whiting Award. Her book of lectures, Madness, Rack, and Honey, was named a finalist for the 2012 National Book Critics Circle Award. She lives and teaches in Vermont.

A rebel patriot force goes to battle against a resurgent Nazi army in Africa in this post-apocalyptic adventure by the New York Times bestselling author. After a nuclear strike decimates America, retired soldier Ben Raines refuses to let his once great nation be snuffed out. In the ashes of the apocalypse, he and his Rebels face off against the anarchists and barbarians who seek to destroy what's left of the Red, White and Blue. But the threat to civilization knows no borders. Now, Raines's battalions are positioned to advance on Southern Africa in pursuit of Bruno Bottger and his neo-Nazi armies. Those seasoned SS combat stompers are on the verge of turning Hitler's nightmare into a new and terrible reality—unless Raines wipes them out first.