Blood And Salt

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.

Detective Alex Morrow discovers that the darkest secrets never stay buried as she investigates the criminal underbelly of a seemingly tranquil seaside town. For reasons she can't quite explain, Alex Morrow is addicted to watching surveillance footage of Roxanna Fuentecilla -- a gorgeous Spanish mother of two, in a tempestuous relationship with her boyfriend, who recently relocated to Glasgow under mysterious circumstances. She is also Morrow's prime suspect in an investigation that resembles a soap opera, filled with glamorous jetsetters and enough money to interest the highest levels of law enforcement. Until Roxanna vanishes. Morrow traces Roxanna's steps to Helensburgh, a sleepy, picturesque seaside community. But behind the idyllic Victorian homes and quaint storefronts, darkness lurks. Home to a man with blood on his hands who is haunted by guilt, a mysterious woman with ulterior motives back in town for the first time in decades, a sexually frustrated restaurateur looking to blow off steam, and a crew of vicious small-time gangsters blindly following orders, it's a town ruled by base instincts where no one is quite what they seem. And it's the perfect place to get rid of someone. When she uncovers an unsettling connection to Roxanna's job back in Glasgow, Morrow suspects that her missing person is more than a white-collar criminal on the lam -- she may also be a victim caught up in a sophisticated conspiracy that stretches far beyond Helensburgh and is more personal than Morrow ever imagined. As the truth rises to the surface and the conflicts that lie beneath Helensburgh's calm waters threaten to explode, Morrow must find Roxanna before any hope of solving the case disappears with her. A gripping tale of greed, power, and vengeance, Blood, Salt, Water is a masterful crime novel from Denise Mina that confirms her reputation as "one of the genre's brights stars" (George Pelecanos).

"A sweeping, scary, and entertaining paranormal read." -School Library Journal Ash may have escaped the immortal-worshipping cult that killed her mother, but the love of her life is still under its thrall. Dane has been possessed by his diabolical ancestor Coronado, a man who's fabulously wealthy, dripping with fame, and the leader of Europe's most dangerous immortal network. Dane begs Ash to join him at Coronado's castle in Spain, and swears that his blood bond with Ash is stronger than Coronado's hold over him. Ash is desperate to help Dane vanquish Coronado without having to sacrifice herself to the darkness. But when you're all in, blood and salt, the only way to hold on to the light might just be by setting everything on fire.

Ten years ago, Cat's volatile mother, Mary, left her at her grandmother’s house with nothing but a deck of tarot cards. Now seventeen, Cat is determined to make her life as different from Mary’s as possible. When Cat’s grandmother dies, she’s forced to move to New Orleans with her mother. There, she discovers a picture of Mary holding a baby that’s not her, leading her to unravel a dark family history and challenge her belief that Mary’s mental health issues are the root of all their problems. But as Cat explores the reasons for her mother’s breakdown, she fears she is experiencing her own. Ever since she arrived in New Orleans, she’s been haunted by strangely familiar visitors—in dreams and on the streets of the French Quarter—who know more than they should. Unsure if she can rebuild her relationship with her mother, Cat is realizing she must confront her past, her future, and herself in the fight to try.

The central character, Taras Kalyna, has run away from the Austrian army on the brink of World War I, to follow his love, Halya, to Canada. He can’t know how hard it will be to find her again or that his search will be interrupted by two years in what some have called “Canada’s Gulag.” Because Ukrainians come from Austrian-ruled territories, they will be classed as “enemy aliens” and confined behind barbed wire in internment camps. Not every single Ukrainian; the emphasis was on the unemployed, the political (such as union activists), and people who were in somebody’s way. The novel involves class relations. Halya’s ambitious father gets her a job as companion to a rich woman, Louisa Shawcross. Louisa is the mother of Ronnie Shawcross, Taras’s boss at the small-town brick plant, and he falls in love with Halya. Taras becomes a person in his way. Ronnie denounces him to the police. By the end of the story, Taras and Halya do come together again. Taras has come to love the southern Saskatchewan landscape and raises horses like the one he saw in a dream as a young man in the old country. Storytelling is an important element. To explain why he’ll never return to the old country, Taras begins a tale – about why he left – which lasts for most of the time in camp and helps to sustain the men’s spirits. Another character, Myro, a teacher, tells stories about the great 19th century Ukrainian poet and patriot, Taras Shevchenko. In these stories the narrative moves to the poet’s point of view. We see him in St. Petersburg and elsewhere and we learn of his own “internment” – his exile to eastern Russia.

“Everything creaks and bends in heavy seas – what will not bend will simply snap. So many times I wondered how much load we could carry in a powerful storm without breaking apart. If we flooded any faster I would drown in seconds.” Patrick Dixon spent years working as a doctor at University College Hospital, while his wife Sheila was a magistrate – high-pressure careers that demanded long hours away from their home, family and passion for sailing. It is a frustrating story many occasional sailors can relate to, but unlike most, Patrick and Sheila realised early enough that they could only bend so far before something snapped, they could only take on so much before they drowned. This is their story of how they made changes (some more challenging than others) that they knows other sailors could make too, regardless of where they are at the moment – how they changed their priorities but managed to sustain a new career that fitted in around life rather than the other way round. It is also the story of their personal journey, both physically (across the Atlantic and to little-visited corners of the Mediterranean) and metaphorically – how a doctor who treated cancer patients coped with a partner facing the same battle. Neither of them wanted to let that flood things either. Through their personal story, with plenty of mishaps that led to insights (both about sailing and life in general), and encounters that turned into opportunities, Patrick and Sheila explore the importance of prioritising the right things in life, and the simple benefits of travel. The book is packed with inspiring but practical advice for all those who have salt in the blood.

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.

From Hannah Lavery, Edinburgh's Makar. 'Speaks to and for the conflicted conscience of Scotland ... with a power and authenticity like perhaps no other' – The Scotsman In a moment that is demanding you to constantly choose your side, how do you find your humanity, your own voice, when you are being pushed to find safety in numbers? Blood Salt Spring is a meditation on where we are – exploring ideas of nation, race and belonging. Much of the collection was written in lockdown and speaks to that moment, the isolation and the traumas of 2020 but it also looks to find some meaning and makes an attempt to heal the pain and vulnerabilities that were picked and cut open again in the recent cultural shifts and political wars. Organised into three sections this book takes the reader on a journey from the old inherited wounds, the trauma of tearing open again these chasms within recent discourses and events, to a hopeful spring, where pain and trauma can be laid down and a new future can be imagined. In this collection, the poet has sought to heal these salted wounds, and move out of winter and into spring – into hope. The National Theatre of Scotland has launched a new digital visual album, Blood, Salt, Spring - a digital accompaniment to Hannah Lavery's collection. You can view the visual album here .

On Quinnipeague, hearts open under the summer stars and secrets float in the Sweet Salt Air... Charlotte and Nicole were once the best of friends, spending summers together in Nicole's coastal island house off of Maine. But many years, and many secrets, have kept the women apart. A successful travel writer, single Charlotte lives on the road, while Nicole, a food blogger, keeps house in Philadelphia with her surgeon-husband, Julian. When Nicole is commissioned to write a book about island food, she invites her old friend Charlotte back to Quinnipeague, for a final summer, to help. Outgoing and passionate, Charlotte has a gift for talking to people and making friends, and Nicole could use her expertise for interviews with locals. Missing a genuine connection, Charlotte agrees. But what both women don't know is that they are each holding something back that may change their lives forever. For Nicole, what comes to light could destroy her marriage, but it could also save her husband. For Charlotte, the truth could cost her Nicole's friendship, but could also free her to love again. And her chance may lie with a reclusive local man, with a heart to soothe and troubles of his own. Bestselling author and master storyteller Barbara Delinsky invites you come away to Quinnipeague...

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.