Biologist Angela Haynes is accustomed to dark, lonely nights as one of the few humans at a penguin research station in Patagonia. She has grown used to the cries of penguins before dawn, to meager supplies and housing, to spending most of her days in one of the most remote regions on earth. What she isn't used to is strange men washing ashore, which happens one day on her watch. The man won't tell her his name or where he came from, but Angela, who has a soft spot for strays, tends to him, if for no other reason than to protect her birds and her work. When she later learns why he goes by an alias, why he is a refugee from the law, and why he is a man without a port, she begins to fall in love-and embarks on a journey that takes her deep into Antarctic waters, and even deeper into the emotional territory she thought she'd left behind. Against the backdrop of the Southern Ocean, The Tourist Trail weaves together the stories of Angela as well as FBI agent Robert Porter, dispatched on a mission that unearths a past he would rather keep buried; and Ethan Downes, a computer tech whose love for a passionate activist draws him into a dangerous mission.

The Tourist Trail: A Novel (1)

Literature & Fiction

Yunker, John

Contemporary

Ashland Creek Press

Mad as the Mist and Snow is a traveler's guide to Oregon's most celebrated and unique cemeteries Organized into 18 regions and including detailed driving directions, this book profiles more than 200 cemeteries, including such legendary cemeteries as Lone Fir, Jacksonville, and Willamette National. Much more than a travel guide, this book illustrates how cemeteries have evolved and how Oregon's cemeteries are still evolving. Author Johan Mathiesen has traveled to each and every one of these cemeteries and provides detailed profiles that highlight unique historical events, famous residents, and the evolution of headstone designs. Mathiesen also highlights which cemeteries around the state should be on every traveler's and historian's "must visit" list -- and why. Mad as the Mist and Snow, written for anyone interested in history, cemeteries, and Pacific Northwest culture, is the perfect guide for both day trips as well as extended explorations of Oregon's eclectic and historic cemeteries.

Mad as the Mist and Snow: Exploring Oregon Through Its Cemeteries

History

Mathiesen, Johan

Americas

Nineteen-year-old Kat Jones has been a competitive runner since she was a young girl, but after her mother's death, the path her life was supposed to take begins to crumble around her -- until one day, she finds herself on the run in a literal sense, this time in a race for her very life. Kat's journey takes her to the Pacific Northwest town of Lithia, the place of her last good memories, of the days when her mother was still alive. But soon after her arrival, strange things begin to happen in Lithia -- and when one of her new friends disappears under mysterious circumstances, Kat begins to realize that Lithia's inhabitants are not all of this world. Worst of all, she is falling in love with one of these otherworldly locals, and the friend who hopes to save her has secrets of his own. As Kat tries to rebuild her life, she is also training for a race that will turn out to be her biggest challenge yet, as she must outrun not only the demons of her past but the demons of the here and now, who threaten her very existence and that of the entire town. At once a paranormal love story and an environmental allegory, Out of Breath offers an exciting new voice in young adult fiction.

Out of Breath: The Lithia Trilogy, Book 1

Science Fiction & Fantasy

Richmond, Blair

Fantasy

The Names of Things

2013 Chautauqua Prize Finalist The anthropologist's wife, an artist, didn't want to follow her husband to the remote desert of northeast Africa to live with camel-herding nomads. But wanting to be with him, she endured the trip, only to fall desperately ill years later with a disease that leaves her husband with more questions than answers. When the anthropologist discovers a deception that shatters his grief and guilt, he begins to reevaluate his love for his wife as well as his friendship with one of the nomads he studied. He returns to Africa to make sense of what happened, traveling into the far reaches of the Chalbi Desert, where he must sift through the layers of his memories and reconcile them with what he now knows. Set in a windswept wilderness menaced by hyenas and lions, The Names of Things weaves together the stories of an anthropologist's journey into the desert, his firsthand accounts of the nomads' death rituals, and his struggle to find the names of things for which no words exist. Anthropologist John Colman Wood's debut novel is an exquisite, haunting exploration of the meaning of love and the rituals of grief.

Politics & Social Sciences

Wood, John Colman

Anthropology

Everything — in nature and in murder – is connected... As an ecopsychologist, Dr. Esmeralda Green is skilled at solving the mysteries of the mind, especially if they collide with the laws of nature. But when a body is found below the crumbling cliffs near her Los Angeles home, she is pulled back in time to a tragedy that defies all understanding. When a young girl is murdered at the same cliff that took the life of her best childhood friend, Ez suspects the two are connected - and, having always lived up to her ecological name, she has learned to trust her intuition and the cues that the natural world can offer. In fact, from her hybrid car to her organic diet, Ez is living a sustainable life in every way - except for the man she's falling in love with, an attractive TV news reporter who drives, of all things, a Hummer. After Ez discovers a key piece of evidence, she is swept into a maze of corporate corruption and family secrets whose depths seem to have no bounds. As she finds herself venturing into ever more treacherous territory, her intuition and psychological skills can take her only so far. With the memory of her childhood friend haunting her at every turn, Ez finds herself falling further and further into danger. Both an eco-mystery and a love story, Cher Fischer's captivating debut novel offers an intimate look at the myriad ways in which nature defines us. "Fischer's debut mystery introduces a fascinating topic-ecopsychology...readers intrigued by a New Age topic, psychological work with troubled clients, and Los Angeles's cultural diversity may enjoy." -- Library Journal

Falling Into Green

Fischer, Cher

Health, Fitness & Dieting

A multicultural American family comes together just as the world around them begins to fall apart When Vic Singh finds a dead blue butterfly-out of place in his cold, upstate New York village-he knows something is terribly amiss. Yet he is too busy dodging the bully at his high school, let alone trying to live up to his father's expectations, to look much further into the environmental oddities around him. Meanwhile, for Vic's father, Paul, the ghosts of the past cause him to pressure his son to live up to his Sikh traditions-while his Latvian wife, Maija, is haunted by the present: She's having new and ominous psychic visions even though she can't read her own teenage children. Isabella, attempting to lose herself through her role in a school play, has an illness she can't seem to shake-and Vic, trying to find himself, is spending more time alone in nature. Then Paul's father and Maija's mother move in to the family home, upending the delicate balance of this Indian/Latvian family and its two American teenagers. Yet, as the environmental devastation that Vic's butterflies have forewarned comes to bear, the family comes together in new and unexpected ways. Olivia Chadha's lovely, multilayered novel brings us into an extended family of three generations that strives to remain together in an unstable world.

Balance of Fragile Things

Chadha, Olivia

United States

"This invaluable collection of writing prompts and sage advice should be on every writer's shelf--and used!--alongside Anne Lamott's Bird by Bird and Stephen King's On Writing." --Jenna Blum, author of New York Times &amp; international bestsellers Those Who Save Us and The Stormchasers "Practical and encouraging with refreshing touches of humor, Midge Raymond shows us how to use our everyday lives as material for our writing and offers intriguing prompts to get us started (from five minutes) and to keep us going (a weekend retreat)." --Judy Reeves, author of A Writer's Book of Days How to be a writer even when you can't write every day... Writers are often told that in order to succeed, they must write every day--yet this isn't realistic or feasible for writers with families, day jobs, and other responsibilities that preclude a daily writing practice. Everyday Writing is about how to be a writer every day, even if you're unable to sit down to write every day. This book provides dozens of tips for busy writers, including how to create your ideal writing space, how to develop habits that work for you, and how to keep your projects moving forward even when you're short on time. Everyday Writing also offers more than 150 prompts to fit into any writer's life, from five-minute prompts you can do in a grocery store line to lengthy prompts that are perfect for a writing retreat. Whether you'd like to generate new material, free yourself from writer's block, or start a revision, these writing exercises provide a way to engage immediately with your work.

Everyday Writing: Tips and Prompts to Fit Your Regularly Scheduled Life

Raymond, Midge

Self-Help

The Dragon Keeper

A zookeeper fights to save the animal she loves, even as her own life crumbles around her... Meg Yancy knows she may be overly attached to Jata, the Komodo dragon that has been in her care since it arrived at the zoo from Indonesia. Jata brings the exotic to Meg's Minnesotan life: an ancient, predatory history and stories of escaping to freedom. A species that became endangered soon after being discovered, Komodos have a legacy of independence, something that Meg understands all too well. Meg has always been better able to relate to reptiles than to people, from her estranged father to her live-in boyfriend to the veterinarian who is more concerned with his career than with the animals' lives. Then one day, Meg makes an amazing discovery. Jata has produced viable eggs-without ever having had a mate. Faced with this rare phenomenon, Meg must now defend Jata's hatchlings from the scientific, religious, and media forces that converge on the zoo to claim the miracle as their own. Finally forced to deal with the very people she has avoided for so long, Meg discovers that opening herself up comes with its own complications. And as she fights to save the animal she loves from the consequences of its own miracle, she must learn to accept that in nature, as in life, not everything can be controlled. Mindy Mejia's gripping debut novel highlights the perils of captivity and the astonishing ways in which animals evolve.

Mejia, Mindy

Literary

Float

When everything around you is sinking, sometimes it takes desperate measures to stay afloat When Duncan Leland looks down at the garbage-strewn beach beneath his office window, he sees the words God Help Us scrawled in the sand. While it seems a fitting message-not only is Duncan's business underwater, but his marriage is drowning as well-he goes down to the beach to erase it. Once there, he helps a seagull being strangled by a plastic six-pack holder-the only creature in worse shape than he is at the moment. Duncan rescues the seagull, not realizing that he's being filmed by a group of conceptual artists and that the footage will soon go viral, turning both him and the gull into minor celebrities. And when an unsavory yet very convincing local, Osbert Marpol, talks him into a not-quite-legitimate loan arrangement, Duncan can't help but agree in a last-ditch attempt to save the jobs of his employees. For a while, it seems as if things are finally looking up for Duncan-yet between his phone-sex-entrepreneur ex-girlfriend's very public flirtations and the ever-mysterious terms of his new loan, Duncan realizes that there's no such thing as strings-free salvation-and that it's only a matter of time before the tide rises ominously around him again. A wry tale of financial desperation, conceptual art, insanity, infertility, seagulls, marital crisis, jellyfish, organized crime, and the plight of a plastic-filled ocean, JoeAnn Hart's novel takes a smart, satirical look at family, the environment, and life in a hardscrabble seaside town in Maine.

Hart, JoeAnn

Humor & Satire

Jean Ryan's debut collection tells stories of nature and of human nature. The characters who inhabit Jean Ryan's graceful, imaginative collection of stories are survivors of accidents and acts of nature, of injuries both physical and emotional. Ryan writes of beauty and aging, of love won and lost-with characters enveloped in the mysteries of the natural world and the animal kingdom. In "Greyhound," a woman brings home a rescued dog for her troubled partner in hopes that they might heal one another-while the dog in "What Gretel Knows" is the keeper of her owner's deepest secrets. In "Migration," a recently divorced woman retreats to a lakefront cabin where she is befriended by a mysterious Canada goose just as autumn begins to turn to winter. As a tornado ravages three towns in "The Spider in the Sink," a storm chaser's wife spares the life of a spider as she anxiously waits for her husband to return. And in "A Sea Change," a relationship falls victim to a woman's obsession with the world below the waves. The world is at once a beautiful and perilous place, Jean Ryan's stories tell us, and our lives are defined by the shelters we build.

Survival Skills: Stories

Ryan, Jean

Short Stories & Anthologies

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Books by Ashland Creek Press