These linked short stories tell the tales of Tony Aardehuis, a young Ontario police officer who centres more on the human puzzle than on crime and detection. Fraud, theft, blackmail: every small town crime short of murder drives these stories to conclusions that usually warm the heart. Along the way Tony struggles, like the rest of us, to figure it all out. The first Tony Aardehuis story was inspired by the Eastern Ontario ice storm of 1998 and the suggestion that natural disaster might double as a murder weapon. This constable meets life with a fine blend of curiosity, compassion and an occasional bent for bending the rules. Tony Aardehuis's adventures have been published in The Grist Mill, Bone Dance, and Storyteller Magazine, where he twice won The Great Canadian Story Contest. One story is also shortlisted for a 2003 Arthur Ellis Award.

The poems in Dancing Alone are drawn from the six small-press classics, all out of print, that William Hawkins published between 1964 and 1974 plus some new poems. A contemporary of George Bowering, Victor Coleman and Michael Ondaatje, Hawkins appeared in Raymond Souster's landmark anthology New Wave Canada and in Oxford's Modern Canadian Verse, where editor A.J.M. Smith positioned him between Margaret Atwood and Gwendolyn MacEwen. Readers will discover in Hawkins' work an inimitably haunting poetic voice. Hawkins was also the central figure of a richly creative Ottawa-based music scene. His fugitive pickup bands included Bruce Cockburn, David Wiffen, Colleen Peterson, Amos Garrett, Darius Brubeck and Sneezy Waters. Hawkins calls himself "a semi-retired hard rocker and high roller."