This series is designed to bring to North American readers the once-unheard voices of writers who have achieved wide acclaim at home, but are not recognized beyond the borders of their native lands. With special emphasis on women writers, Interlink's Emerging Voices series publishes the best of the world's contemporary literature in translation or original English.

The lushness of language and the landscape, wild contrasts, and pure storytelling magic abound in this anthology of Caribbean writing. Steeped in the tradition of fabulism, where the irrational and inexplicable coexist with the realities of daily life, the stories in this collection are infused with a vitality and freshness that most writing traditions have long ago lost. From spectral slaving ships to women who shed their skin at night to become owls, stories from writers such as Jamaica Kincaid, Marcia Douglas, Ian MacDonald, and Kamau Brathwaite pulse with rhythms, visions, and the tortured history of this spiritually rich region of the world.

Meet Josephine, the most loveable mischief-maker in Barbados, in a magical, heartfelt adventure inspired by Caribbean mythology. * “A heart-wrenching adventure with big laughs and well-earned surprises.” –Kirkus Reviews, Starred Review Eleven-year-old Josephine knows that no one is good enough for her daddy. That's why she makes a habit of scaring his new girlfriends away. She's desperate to make it onto her school's cricket team because she'll get to play her favorite sport AND use the cricket matches to distract Daddy from dating. But when Coach Broomes announces that girls can't try out for the team, the frustrated Josephine cuts into a powerful silk cotton tree and accidentally summons a bigger problem into her life . . . The next day, Daddy brings home a new catch, a beautiful woman named Mariss. And unlike the other girlfriends, this one doesn't scare easily. Josephine knows there's something fishy about Mariss but she never expected her to be a vengeful sea creature eager to take her place as her father's first love! Can Josephine convince her friends to help her and use her cricket skills to save Daddy from Mariss's clutches before it's too late?

This work is the first monograph devoted solely to Bombax ceiba, popularly known as the Red Silk Cotton Tree. Consisting of seven chapters, it covers all relevant aspects of this plant, from its historical and spiritual importance, to its botanical characterization, pharmacognostical details and ethnobiological uses, to its scientific validation in various animal and human studies. Each part of the tree is of medicinal value and possesses many novel chemical constituents such as shamimicin, bombasin, bombamalone, bombamaloside etc. along with other bioactive secondary metabolites. The book presents the chemical structures of the most important constituents and highlights various pharmacological activities, predominantly antioxidant, anti-inflammatory, anti-mutagenic, hypoglycemic, hypotensive, hepatoprotective and fibrinolytic, which may prove to be a source for the development of a novel phyto-pharmaceutical agent to treat diabetes, heart disease and cancer. In addition, separate chapters deal with the commercial and ecological significance of B. ceiba, as well as a case study on its conservation. Numerous color illustrations are included to identify the plant and to justify its nickname, the “Little Bird’s Cafeteria”.

The author travels from his own back garden around the world to explore the beauty, variety and ingenuity of trees everywhere, from how they live so long to how they talk to each other, and why they came to exist in the first place.