The Lost Salt Gift of Blood

The Lost Salt Gift of Blood
Author: Alistair MacLeod
Publisher: New Canadian Library
Total Pages: 160
Release: 1989
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 077109969X

The stories of The Lost Salt Gift of Blood are remarkably simple – a family is drawn together by shared and separate losses, a child’s reality conflicts with his parents’ memories, a young man struggles to come to terms with the loss of his father. Yet each piece of writing in this critically acclaimed collection is infused with a powerful life of its own, a precision of language and a scrupulous fidelity to the reality of time and place, of sea and Maritime farm. Focusing on the complexities and abiding mysteries at the heart of human relationships, the seven stories of The Lost Salt Gift of Blood map the close bonds and impassable chasms that lie between man and woman, parent and child.

Island: The Complete Stories

Island: The Complete Stories
Author: Alistair MacLeod
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Total Pages: 268
Release: 2011-11-28
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0393246825

Winner of the PEN/Malamud Award: “The genius of his stories is to render his fictional world as timeless.”—Colm Tóibín The sixteen exquisitely crafted stories in Island prove Alistair MacLeod to be a master. Quietly, precisely, he has created a body of work that is among the greatest to appear in English in the last fifty years. A book-besotted patriarch releases his only son from the obligations of the sea. A father provokes his young son to violence when he reluctantly sells the family horse. A passionate girl who grows up on a nearly deserted island turns into an ever-wistful woman when her one true love is felled by a logging accident. A dying young man listens to his grandmother play the old Gaelic songs on her ancient violin as they both fend off the inevitable. The events that propel MacLeod's stories convince us of the importance of tradition, the beauty of the landscape, and the necessity of memory.

No Great Mischief

No Great Mischief
Author: Alistair MacLeod
Publisher: Emblem Editions
Total Pages: 292
Release: 2012-01-11
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1551995476

Alexander MacDonald guides us through his family’s mythic past as he recollects the heroic stories of his people: loggers, miners, drinkers, adventurers; men forever in exile, forever linked to their clan. There is the legendary patriarch who left the Scottish Highlands in 1779 and resettled in “the land of trees,” where his descendents became a separate Nova Scotia clan. There is the team of brothers and cousins, expert miners in demand around the world for their dangerous skills. And there is Alexander and his twin sister, who have left Cape Breton and prospered, yet are haunted by the past. Elegiac, hypnotic, by turns joyful and sad, No Great Mischief is a spellbinding story of family, loyalty, exile, and of the blood ties that bind us, generations later, to the land from which our ancestors came.

As Birds Bring Forth the Sun and Other Stories

As Birds Bring Forth the Sun and Other Stories
Author: Alistair MacLeod
Publisher: New Canadian Library
Total Pages: 178
Release: 2010-12-10
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 155199545X

The superbly crafted stories collected in Alistair MacLeod’s As Birds Bring Forth the Sun and Other Stories depict men and women acting out their “own peculiar mortality” against the haunting landscape of Cape Breton Island. In a voice at once elegiac and life-affirming, MacLeod describes a vital present inhabited by the unquiet spirits of a Highland past, invoking memory and myth to celebrate the continuity of the generations even in the midst of unremitting change. His second collection, As Birds Bring Forth the Sun and Other Stories confirms MacLeod’s international reputation as a storyteller of rare talent and inspiration.

Blood and Salt

Blood and Salt
Author: Kim Liggett
Publisher: Penguin
Total Pages: 354
Release: 2015-09-22
Genre: Young Adult Fiction
ISBN: 069817383X

The last words Ash hears her mother say are, “When you fall in love, you will carve out your heart and throw it into the deepest ocean. You will be all in—blood and salt.” Determined to find her mother when she disappears, Ash follows her to Quivara, Kansas, the spiritual commune she escaped long ago. But something sinister and ancient waits among the rustling cornstalks of this village lost to time. Her mother is nowhere to be found, but Ash is plagued by memories of her ancestor, Katia, which harken back to the town’s history of unrequited love, murder, alchemy, and immortality. Charming traditions give way to a string of deaths. And Ash feels herself drawn to Dane, a mysterious, forbidden boy with secrets of his own. As the community prepares for a ceremony five hundred years in the making, Ash fights to save her mother, her lover, and herself. She must discover the truth about Quivara before it’s too late. Before she’s all in—blood and salt.

The Lost Salt Gift of Blood

The Lost Salt Gift of Blood
Author: Alistair MacLeod
Publisher: New Canadian Library
Total Pages: 169
Release: 2010-12-17
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1551995484

The stories of The Lost Salt Gift of Blood are remarkably simple – a family is drawn together by shared and separate losses, a child’s reality conflicts with his parents’ memories, a young man struggles to come to terms with the loss of his father. Yet each piece of writing in this critically acclaimed collection is infused with a powerful life of its own, a precision of language and a scrupulous fidelity to the reality of time and place, of sea and Maritime farm. Focusing on the complexities and abiding mysteries at the heart of human relationships, the seven stories of The Lost Salt Gift of Blood map the close bonds and impassable chasms that lie between man and woman, parent and child.

Remembrance

Remembrance
Author: Alistair MacLeod
Publisher: McClelland & Stewart
Total Pages: 37
Release: 2013-11-05
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0771055781

From the internationally celebrated author of No Great Mischief comes a moving short story of three generations of men from a single family whose lives are forever altered by the long shadow of war. In the early morning hours of November 11, David MacDonald, a veteran of the Second World War, stands outside his Cape Breton home, preparing to attend what will likely be his last Remembrance Day parade. As he waits for the arrival of his son and grandson, he remembers his decision to go to war in desperation to support his young family. He remembers the horrors of life at the frontlines in Ortona, Italy, and then what happened in Holland when the Canadians arrived as liberators. He remembers how the war devastated his own family, but gave him other reasons to live. As the story unfolds, other generations enter the scene. What emerges is an elegant, life-affirming meditation on the bond between fathers and sons, "how the present always comes out of the past," and how even in the midst of tragedy and misfortune there exists the possibility for salvation. His first new short story in over a decade, Remembrance is a powerful reminder of why Alistair MacLeod is one of the most beloved storytellers of our time.

Smoke in the Glass

Smoke in the Glass
Author: Chris Humphreys
Publisher: Gollancz
Total Pages: 362
Release: 2019-05-16
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1473226058

'A brilliant epic fantasy debut from a master storyteller' Sebastien de Castell, author of the Greatcoat series including The Traitor's Blade 'Wonderful characters and great world-building, in Humphreys' special brand of addictive storytelling' Diana Gabaldon, author of the Outlander series 'An intriguing premise... an intricate, fast-paced story... Humphreys packs gods, deicide, warring tribes and some impressive world-building into just over 300 pages' Guardian Three lands, peopled by humans and immortals. In Corinthium a decadent endlessly-lived elite run the world for profit and power. But when a poor, honest solider dies, and is reborn, everything changes. In wintry Midgarth, where immortals are revered as deities, one of them has realized that something - or someone - is killing the gods. And in Ometepe there is only one immortal, for he has murdered every other. Until one woman gives birth to a very special baby. Yet there is a fourth, hidden land, where savage tribes have united under the prophecy of 'the One': a child who is neither boy nor girl. Now they plan to conquer the world. Unless a broken soldier, a desperate mother and a crippled god can stop them . . .

The Sweet Scent of Blood

The Sweet Scent of Blood
Author: Suzanne McLeod
Publisher: Penguin
Total Pages: 327
Release: 2010-04-27
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1101432144

Genevieve Taylor is a Sidhe-one of the noble fae-and she's unusual, even in a London where celebrity vampires, eccentric goblins, and scheming lesser fae mix freely with humanity. But she's about to learn that some magive isn't all its cracked up to be.

Of Women and Salt

Of Women and Salt
Author: Gabriela Garcia
Publisher: Flatiron Books
Total Pages: 224
Release: 2021-03-30
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1250776694

AN INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER THE WASHINGTON POST NOTABLE BOOK OF 2021 A GOOD MORNING AMERICA BOOK CLUB PICK WINNER of the Isabel Allende Most Inspirational Fiction Award, She Reads Best of 2021 Awards • FINALIST for the 2022 Southern Book Prize • LONGLISTED for Crook’s Corner Book Prize • NOMINEE for 2021 GoodReads Choice Award in Debut Novel and Historical Fiction A sweeping, masterful debut about a daughter's fateful choice, a mother motivated by her own past, and a family legacy that begins in Cuba before either of them were born In present-day Miami, Jeanette is battling addiction. Daughter of Carmen, a Cuban immigrant, she is determined to learn more about her family history from her reticent mother and makes the snap decision to take in the daughter of a neighbor detained by ICE. Carmen, still wrestling with the trauma of displacement, must process her difficult relationship with her own mother while trying to raise a wayward Jeanette. Steadfast in her quest for understanding, Jeanette travels to Cuba to see her grandmother and reckon with secrets from the past destined to erupt. From 19th-century cigar factories to present-day detention centers, from Cuba to Mexico, Gabriela Garcia's Of Women and Salt is a kaleidoscopic portrait of betrayals—personal and political, self-inflicted and those done by others—that have shaped the lives of these extraordinary women. A haunting meditation on the choices of mothers, the legacy of the memories they carry, and the tenacity of women who choose to tell their stories despite those who wish to silence them, this is more than a diaspora story; it is a story of America’s most tangled, honest, human roots.