Oceans of Literary Possibilities

"In 1820, the 240-ton Essex set sail from Nantucket on a routine voyage for whales. Fifteen months later, in the farthest reaches of the South Pacific, the Essex was rammed and sunk by an enraged sperm whale. Its twenty-man crew, fearing cannibals on the islands to the west, decided instead to sail their three tiny boats for the distant South American coast. They would eventually travel over 4,500 miles. The next three months tested just how far humans...

Covers all aspects of sea life including evolution, reproduction, foodgetting, communication, attack and defense mechanisms, legends and tales, life in the polar regions and the future of the oceans.

This is a story of right and wrong, and how sometimes they look the same...1926. Tom Sherbourne is a young lighthouse keeper on a remote island off Western Australia. The only inhabitants of Janus Rock, he and his wife Isabel live a quiet life, cocooned from the rest of the world. One April morning a boat washes ashore carrying a dead man and a crying infant -- and the path of the couple's lives hits an unthinkable crossroads. Only years later do...

A national bestseller combining the emotional depth of The Art of Racing in the Rain with the magical spirit of The Life of Pi, "Lily and the Octopus is the dog book you must read this summer" (The Washington Post).
Ted—a gay, single, struggling writer is stuck: unable to open himself up to intimacy except through the steadfast companionship of Lily, his elderly dachshund. When Lily's health is compromised,...

From Ann Cleeves--bestselling and award-winning author of the Vera and Shetland series, both of which are hit TV shows--comes the first in a gripping new series. "Ann Cleeves is one of my favorite mystery writers."--Louise Penny In North Devon, where two rivers converge and run into the sea, Detective Matthew Venn stands outside the church as his father's funeral takes place. Once loved and cherished, the day Matthew left the strict evangelical community...

"The harrowing true survival story of an early polar expedition that went terribly awry-with the ship frozen in ice and the crew trapped inside for the entire sunless, Antarctic winter. As the Belgica's men teetered on the brink, de Gerlache relied increasingly on two young officers whose friendship had blossomed in captivity: the expedition's lone American, Dr. Frederick Cook--half genius, half con man--whose later infamy would overshadow his brilliance...

In a small fictional town on the Oregon coast there are love affairs and almost-love-affairs, mystery and hilarity, bears and tears, brawls and boats, a garrulous logger and a silent doctor, rain and pain, Irish immigrants and Salish stories, mud and laughter. There's a Department of Public Works that gives haircuts and counts insects, a policeman addicted to Puccini, a philosophizing crow, beer and berries. An expedition is mounted, a crime committed,...

Winner of the 2016 Whiting Award

One of Publishers Weekly's "Most Anticipated Books of Spring 2016"

One of Lit Hub's "10 must-read poetry collections for April"

“Reading Vuong is like watching a fish move: he manages the varied currents of English with muscled intuition. His poems are by turns graceful and wonderstruck. His lines are both long and short, his pose narrative and lyric, his diction formal

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Returning to his childhood home to attend a funeral, a middle-aged man is drawn back to a place once alive with monsters and magic; to a past where the impossible is all too frighteningly real . . . A haunting meditation on memory, wonder, friendship, and sacrifice, The Ocean at the End of the Lane, which was named “Book of the Year” by the UK National Book Awards, is a groundbreaking triumph of storytelling as delicate as a butterfly’s wing...