Sailing, smuggling, murder, rough stuff, romance, international intrigue and the CIA - Vital Spark has it all and Mac is in the middle. In Cape Town, the smugglers customers want The Package, but what, and where, is it? Mac is in the middle and he hasn't got it. Trouble is, the smuggler's cutomers don't believe him. His friends are being murdered and Mac has to find out who is who before they are all dead but who can he trust?

A renowned Jungian analyst shares a call to action for women who dream of reuniting with their brilliant, creative, and fiercely independent nature. Within every woman lies a powerful force: a vibrant, sizzling spirit that lives life to the fullest. For so many of us, the burdens of responsibility, caretaking, and social expectations cause us to bury this essential part of ourselves under six feet of niceness. Yet as Jungian analyst Lisa Marchiano says, “Our inner flame of embodied wisdom, sharp-witted cunning, burning passion, and empowered confidence is never truly extinguished.” With The Vital Spark, she invites us on an immersive journey to reclaim the split-off parts of ourselves that enliven and rejuvenate us—and allow us to become who we were meant to be. Combining personal stories, intercultural mythology, and guidance for inner exploration, Marchiano shares invaluable resources for breaking free from the conditioning that has kept us confined to rigid roles and muffled the sound of our souls. Here she invites us to explore eight core aspects of ourselves: shrewdness, disagreeableness, desire, trickiness, sexuality, anger, authority, and ruthlessness. Each chapter reinforces the truth of our relentlessly human narrative in the truest sense—allowing us to retrieve our “outlaw” energies, our discarded talents, and the deepest parts of our authentic selves. “When we try to domesticate our wild, assertive, and liberated spirit,” says Marchiano, “she flies away to some shadowy part of our soul, where she waits for us to find her again. Though she can be a bit savage and uncivilized, she is also the very best of us—and what we need to become whole.” The Vital Spark is a guide to recovering our courageous inner spirit so we can access her wisdom, her fire, and her burning aliveness.

The "Para Handy Tales" is a collection of sea adventure tales written by author Neil Munro. Para Handy is the crafty Gaelic skipper of the Vital Spark, a steamboat of the sort that delivered goods from Glasgow to Loch Fyne, the Hebrides, and the west coast highlands of Scotland in the early 20th century. The stories partly focus on his pride in his ship, "the smertest boat in the tred" which he considers to be of a class with the Clyde steamers, but mainly tell of the "high jinks" the crew get up to on their travels.

Para Handy has been sailing his way into the affections of generations of Scots since he first weighed anchor in the pages of the Glasgow Evening News in 1905. The master mariner and his crew - Dougie the mate, Macphail the engineer, Sunny Jim and the Tar - all play their part in evoking the irresistible atmosphere of a bygone age when puffers sailed between West Highland ports and the great city of Glasgow. This definitive edition contains all three collections published in the author's lifetime, as well as those that were unpublished and a new story which was discovered in 2001. Extensive notes accompany each story, providing fascinating insights into colloquialisms, place-names and historical events. This volume also includes a wealth of contemporary photographs, depicting the harbours, steamers and puffers from the age of the Vital Spark.