In The Bone Pile: Essays on Nature and Culture, author Maximilian Werner uses the vehicles of fly fishing, every day experience, and some of our most sacred rituals to explore the origins and limitations of our behavior and ideas. These essays range from the quasi-mystical to the polemical and from the polemical to the ecological. However different each of these essays may be, together they represent an incisive study of human and nonhuman life and of the environment that unites us.
This study is an analysis and functional interpretation of the cultural remains from a Middle Period bison hunters’ campsite situated in the parklands of central Saskatchewan. The Harder site, excavated by the author during 1969, 1970, 1971 and 1972, and radiocarbon dated at 3,400 years, belongs to the Oxbow archaeological complex.
Preparing to leave the town of Barkley, West Virginia, Owen Allison becomes involved in the investigation of a broken dam that has released coal mining pollution throughout the town.
The Dictionary of Southern Appalachian English is a revised and expanded edition of the Weatherford Award–winning Dictionary of Smoky Mountain English, published in 2005 and known in Appalachian studies circles as the most comprehensive reference work dedicated to Appalachian vernacular and linguistic practice. Editors Michael B. Montgomery and Jennifer K. N. Heinmiller document the variety of English used in parts of eight states, ranging from West Virginia to Georgia—an expansion of the first edition's geography, which was limited primarily to North Carolina and Tennessee—and include over 10,000 entries drawn from over 2,200 sources. The entries include approximately 35,000 citations to provide the reader with historical context, meaning, and usage. Around 1,600 of those examples are from letters written by Civil War soldiers and their family members, and another 4,000 are taken from regional oral history recordings. Decades in the making, the Dictionary of Southern Appalachian English surpasses the original by thousands of entries. There is no work of this magnitude available that so completely illustrates the rich language of the Smoky Mountains and Southern Appalachia.
Resting on what was left of the bench was something else, lighter in shade than the background, round, about the size of a cabbage. There were two large holes close together, a smaller pair below, then two rows of wedge-shaped objects. The pattern suddenly coalesced: in atavistic and chilling familiarity . . . In a remote British Columbia lake, an ancient auto wreck is discovered. Inside are the half-century-old remains of a traveler long lost and long forgotten. While there are few clues to the identity of the corpse, the discovery sets in motion a singular chain of events that dramatically affects a small and disparate group of people, each unknown to the other, but connected by history to the dead driver. Old agonies, unresolved quarrels, and desperate, dangerous secrets come to light, leading to a strange and surprising conclusion. Old Bones is the story of how a single circumstance can bring about huge changes in the lives of many people. “If we could only know,” observes one of the characters, “just how many lost souls are stashed beneath the earth, some likely as near as our neighbour’s yard, we would never sleep at night. Old Bones is the tale of what happens when some small-town stashing comes badly undone.
"YA horror has found a new standard-bearer." - Kirkus Reviews (starred review) “Dark, gripping, and gorgeous, Wake the Bones will lead you into the woods and keep you up late. As lush and sweltering as a Kentucky summer... Elizabeth Kilcoyne is a force.” - Gwenda Bond, New York Times bestselling author The sleepy little farm that Laurel Early grew up on has awakened. The woods are shifting, the soil is dead under her hands, and her bone pile just stood up and walked away. After dropping out of college, all she wanted was to resume her life as a tobacco hand and taxidermist and try not to think about the boy she can’t help but love. Instead, a devil from her past has returned to court her, as he did her late mother years earlier. Now, Laurel must unravel her mother’s terrifying legacy and tap into her own innate magic before her future and the fate of everyone she loves is doomed. Elizabeth Kilcoyne’s Wake the Bones is a dark, atmospheric debut about the complicated feelings that arise when the place you call home becomes hostile. "Seething with shadows, summer, and uniquely southern magic, Wake the Bones is a powerful debut that captures the ache of home being a place you simultaneously love and loathe." - Hannah Whitten, New York Times bestselling author of For the Wolf
Marine mammals attract human interest – sometimes this interest is benign or positive – whale watching, conservation programmes for whales, seals, otters, and efforts to clear beaches of marine debris are seen as proactive steps to support these animals. However, there are many forces operating to affect adversely the lives of whales, seals, manatees, otters and polar bears – and this book explores how the welfare of marine mammals has been affected and how they have adapted, moved, responded and sometimes suffered as a result of the changing marine and human world around them. Marine mammal welfare addresses the welfare effects of marine debris, of human traffic in the oceans, of noise, of hunting, of whale watching and tourism, and of some of the less obvious impacts on marine mammals – on their social structures, on their behaviours and migration, and also of the effects on captivity for animals kept in zoos and aquaria. There is much to think and talk about – how marine mammals respond in a world dramatically influenced by man, how are their social structures affected and how is their welfare impacted?
