Rock Bottom & Rising Tide

Set on fictional islands cut from the same granite as Islesboro, Matinicus, Vinalhaven, Isle au Haut, and the Cranberry Isles, this anthology of short fiction and novelettes captures the coast of Maine at its most stubborn, funny, and unforgiving. If you've ever fallen in love with a Maine island, these stories are for you. 275 pages.

Excerpt from The Circumambulation of Richard Ensley

Now, some of these mainland fellers thought they'd move onto our territory in the fall when theirs wasn't producing so good. Me and a few others half-hitched their buoys to let 'em know we wouldn't have it, and they come back cutting our lines. Of course we cut 'em back and then it's all-out war.

One evening at the height of it, here comes Ebb Mulvaney from over to the main, cruising slow right down our harbor like he owns the place. Ebb steps back from the helm and Jesus Christ, he starts waving a pistol around and hollering threats at anyone who'll listen. I run out on my dock loaded for bear. Ebb draws a bead on me and I'm yelling, "Go ahead, you son of a bitch, shoot me!" Figuring he don't have the guts. The dock piling beside me blows up in a shower of splinters and wood chips.

Then my wife Maybelle comes out of the house carrying on with a fury of language that'd damn near make the Devil himself blush bright red. She's got hold of my deer rifle. Ebb fires another shot; this one buries itself in a coil of potwarp by my feet. He ain't about to hit me at this distance, 'cept maybe by accident. I turn to tell Maybelle to go on inside but she's got that rifle up to her shoulder. Ebb goes to squeeze off another round but BLAM! Maybelle shoots first.

A Moxie and a Pop-Tart

Bonnie-Kate Caldwell is four-and-a-half feet tall, seventy pounds soaking wet, bisexual, atheist, and missing an eye, half a leg, and several fingers — none of which has slowed her down or shut her up. This is the wildly funny, unexpectedly moving memoir of a tiny, somewhat confused woman from a remote Maine island, told without apology. 789 pages.

Excerpt from chapter 25, Sometimes You Feel Like a Nut

I jammed my pirate hat on my head and Lady Jane peg-legged her way to the lectern. I'd worn my black glass eye for the occasion. Adjusting the mike, I coaxed an ear-splitting squeal of feedback from the PA system, thus setting the proper tone for what was to follow, which I made up as I went along.

"Avast! ye lubbers, or I'll keelhaul every man-jack of ye."

I went on about my days as a young up-and-coming pirate, studying Navigation 101 and Intro to Plundering at this very institution. I expounded on the many ways Wolcroft College had prepared me for my murderous campaigns against Queen Isabella's fleet upon the Spanish Main, the glory and untold wealth seized from her majesty's greedy clutches by me and my barbarous crew of ne'er-do-wells.

When I got to the end, I finished with strong words of encouragement.

"Hell will one day call your name, and when it does, you're fucked. Until then, I urge you to loot and pillage on the high seas, give no quarter, and be a pox on humanity. Yar."

The graduating class greeted my speech with hoots, hollers, and wild applause. Faculty, administration, and parents did not.