Trouble the Waters gathers the tidal force of bestselling, renowned writers from Lagos to New Orleans, Memphis to Copenhagen, Northern Ireland and London, offering extraordinary speculative fiction tales of ancient waters in all its myriad forms. Meet techno savvy water spirits, bayou saints and sirens, robots and river rootwomen, a pod of joyful space whales, and a castle of water-born terrors and mysteries. Including work by Nalo Hopkinson, Jaquira Diaz, Andrea Hairston, Linda D. Addison, Rion Amilcar Scott, Marie Vibbert, Maurice Broaddus, and other breakout beautiful voices, these stories and poems celebrate the most vital of elemental forces, water.

National bestselling author Sharon Shinn introduces a rich new fantasy world, one in which people believe that five essential elements rule all things and guide their lives.

"'Troubled Waters' is a novel of transition. Set in 1974, the action focuses on two young people who are being shaken loose from their roots in family and tribe by the winds of political change. There is the Transvaler Andries Malan, conscripted into the South African bush war against SWAPO and posted to teach Biblical Studies in the black school near Rundu. And there is Lucia, subtly alienated from the local community by her university training, whom he loves briefly and leaves with child when his tour is ended. Surrounding them, or surfacing in memories and dreams, are other border crossers: Mavis, the maid who was closer to Andries than his own mother but whose children he has never met; Frank the misfit 'Suitwester' who honours the ways of the children he teaches; Moyo the herdboy who becomes a guerilla - and, always present yet barely glimpsed as brief apparitions among the foliage of trees, the PLAN fighters. What is more, the order and dignity of tribal life have themselves been irretrievably fractured by the imposition of puppet 'self-rule' on an ethnically defined Kavango 'nation'. A penetrating political understanding controls the narrative which centres on the troubled mind of Andries. 'The Other' is imaginatively entered and observed without either sentimentality or rancour. This steady calm gaze is the most remarkable virtue of a beautifully told novel"--Annemarie Heywood, back cover.

Inspired by the life of an unsung American hero and slave, Trouble the Water navigates the rich tributaries of courage, betrayal, and redemption. In his inspiring journey, Robert Smalls witnesses great privilege and suffering alongside his owner's daughter and the dangerous son of a firebrand secessionist.

Abigail Milton was born into the British middle class, but her family has landed in unthinkable debt. To ease their burdens, Abby’s parents send her to America to live off the charity of their old friend, Douglas Elling. When she arrives in Charleston at the age of seventeen, Abigail discovers that the man her parents raved about is a disagreeable widower who wants little to do with her. To her relief, he relegates her care to a governess, leaving her to settle into his enormous estate with little interference. But just as she begins to grow comfortable in her new life, she overhears her benefactor planning the escape of a local slave—and suddenly, everything she thought she knew about Douglas Elling is turned on its head. Abby’s attempts to learn more about Douglas and his involvement in abolition initiate a circuitous dance of secrets and trust. As Abby and Douglas each attempt to manage their complicated interior lives, readers can’t help but hope that their meandering will lead them straight to each other. Set against the vivid backdrop of Charleston twenty years before the Civil War, Trouble the Water is a captivating tale replete with authentic details about Charleston’s aristocratic planter class, American slavery, and the Underground Railroad.

This text examines the causes and consequences of each of those dynamics, both individually and collectively, that have made this small waterway and its surrounding areas one of the most volatile and tension-filled regions in the world. This pervasive insecurity, the book argues, is largely a product of four interrelated developments.

Poetry and paintings in tribute to the many individuals who acted with courage for justice and change during the civil rights movement.