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EMPTY BOWL PRESS, a division of Pleasure Boat Studio: A Literary Press announces the release of—  WORKING THE WOODS, WORKING THE   SEA,  Edited by Finn Wilcox & Jerry Gorsline

  ISBN: 978-1-929355-40-2 / Price: $22.00; soft cover / 376 pages  

Working the Woods, Working the Sea is a unique collection of poetry and prose by Gary Snyder, Tom Jay, Holly Hughes, Tim McNulty, Jim Dodge and many more of the North Pacific Coast. Deeply connected to the earth and sea through physical work, these writers speak eloquently of the beauty and power of their environments and of their shared labor and sense of community. With its wit, song and wisdom, this book will take you out to sea and “back to the land.”  

As novelist Tom Robbins writes, “These mud-flecked prose lines and skinned-knuckle sweat poems out-sparkle every diamond necklace at Tiffany’s.”  

and . . .

Dream of the Dragon Pool – A Daoist Quest is a multifaceted novel woven around the historical fact of the death-sentence exile of China’s best-loved poet-adventurer, Li Bo (also known as Li Bai, 701-762 A.D.). This is an adventure story of magic, myth, and occult powers written as traditional Chinese-style wu-xia (heroic) fiction.  

Albert A. Dalia is a China scholar with four decades of study, research, and experience in medieval Chinese history and culture. Twenty years ago, after earning two masters degrees and a Ph.D. in Chinese history and religion, he turned to fiction writing and published a series of short stories and, now, his first novel. For more information, please go to www.aadalia.com.  

Price: $18.00 (softbound) 335 pages / ISBN 978-1-929355-34-1

More about Dream of the Dragon Pool

And our latest Caravel mystery, the award-winning Good Night, My Darling, by Sweden's Inger Frimansson, was released on April 1st. This compelling mystery was just named a Finalist in the Book of the Year Awards by ForeWord Magazine as Best Translation. Congratulations to Inger and to her translator, Laura Wideburg. You can read about her recent tour of the U.S. and Canada by logging onto her husband's blog at www.janfrimansson.com. Good photos, too. This novel won BEST MYSTERY OF THE YEAR in Sweden in 1998.

Special announcement: Caravel Books is pleased to announce that we will be publishing Inger's follow-up to this novel in April of 2008!! The new book is called The Shadow in the Water, and it continues the remarkable and macabre story that Frimansson started with Good Night, My Darling. The second book also won BEST MYSTERY OF THE YEAR, this time in 2005. Inger Frimansson is the first woman to have won that honor twice.

AND THIS: Dr. Bessie W. Blake's Speak to the Mountain: The Tommie Waites Story was named a Winner in the USA Book News Best Books of 2007. It was honored in the category of Religion: Christianity. We are very proud of this award, and we heartily congratulate Bessie. Speak to the Mountain tells the story of a unique woman, Tommie Waites, who started from direst poverty in the Ark-La-Tex region of the U.S. and overcame one powerful force after another until she emerged as a leading Christian evangelist. The book was released in both hardcover and soft as the first book in our new Aequitas imprint, an imprint focusing on non-fiction with sociological or philosophical themes.

And this, too, just out (January, 2007): Way Out There: Lyrical Essays, by Michael Daley (another Aequitas Book). Here's what critic William Bridges said about this book: "I can hardly think when a book has spoken to me as well, or in as many ways, as Mike Daley's Way Out There: Lyrical Essays. This was not completely apparent on first reading; too old to have experienced the '60s, I read those chapters distantly, as another well-written counterculture narrative. But Daley 

brings an unusual sensibility: that of a poet, teacher, and naturalist, with years of preparation (aborted at the last moment) for the Roman Catholic priesthood. He is a brilliant and quiet observer: read "The Duckabush, the Dosey, and the Hamma Hamma" for an explanation of why national parks won't save the planet. "Climate & Currency" is as good an essay on economics as I've read. Daley's range is wide, from refugees, to how he became a poet, to his time in a Budapest hospital just after 9/11. This is memoir that glints and deepens, like light and shadow on a stream. In fact a river figures in what is to me the most memorable essay, "For the One Among Us Who Will Be the First to Die." Into this deceptively simple account of an ice-skating expedition, Daley has woven first love, the natural world, and his decision not to become a priest. It is an incomparable short story. This is a book to read more than once—maybe even more than twice."

See Michael in a reading in Yakima on this site: http://writersandideas.blogspot.com/2007/05/daley-reading-april-30th.html

or look here for biographical information: http://www.poetsencyclopedia.com/michaeldaley.shtml

More about Michael.

And another book released in December 2006:

Monique, a novella by Luisa Coelho, newly translated into English by Dolores DeLuise and Maria do Carmo de Vasconcelos. In 1929, Marguerite Yourcenar, writing in French, published her first novel, Alexis, or a Treatise on a Vain Conflict, in the form of a letter written by a husband to the wife of three years whom he had deserted.  In 2003, the Portuguese author, Luisa Coelho took up the task and created Monique in response to Yourcenarâ's Alexis. 

Coelho's  novella, the letter Monique wrote in return to Alexis, explodes not only Alexis's perception of Monique, but society's perception of women as well. In it, she opens the door to an inner life unimaginable by both her husband and the society in which she lived. Monique allows a re-reading of Alexis that makes clear his lack of knowledge of the woman to whom he had been married for three years.  He knew nothing of her immense creativity and lesbian sexuality that had taught her to long for a passionate sexual relationship. Much worse, however, was the tragedy of Alexis's emotional isolation that prevented his interest in her inner life.  He too was a victim of social circumstances that dictated he marry against his sexual preference.

Here's more material about this remarkable little book.

Our first Caravel mystery was released in November, 2006, and it's a dandy. It's called The Case of Emily V. This book also kicks off our new mystery imprint, Caravel Books. (A caravel is a small boat, so this seemed appropriate. It's also the name of a detective in our friend Aaron Elkins' recent mystery, Good Blood.) The Case of Emily V. is written by Keith Oatley. It was previously published in the U.K. and Canada, and it won the Commonwealth Prize for Best First Novel at the time. If you're a Sherlock Holmes fan, or if you like to delve into the deep psychological motives (with Sigmund Freud, no less), then you should really like this book.