(These are excerpts—click on the title to view the whole piece!)
 

Ann Skea reviews...
 

The Northern Tomb
by Isabelle Li

Sister Fu, on the other hand, has memories of growing up in a shared mud house in the Black River country on the Russian border. There, she herded pigs, chopped wood, and cut grass, while her grandmother with bound feet chased and killed chickens in the backyard. She has nightmares about her older cousin, who had molested her until she was 11 and her family moved away. And at the age of 19, she became pregnant by another man and had to run away from home, rejected by her parents.
 

Swallow
by Alexandria Burnham

Being an expert storyteller, Swallow breaks off each episode at a critical moment to attend to the ship, but he does eventually get around to telling them about the reported cannibalism. However, we do not learn how Swallow came to suffer the "one hundred and fifty" lashes which scar his back. Nor do we know what ultimately happens to the Cyprus (as Swallow still calls her) and to Swallow and his crew. Of course, one can look it up on the Internet, but how much more enjoyable it will be to hear Swallow tell us about it in the sequel planned for this book.
 

Cast Away
by Francesca de Tores

The cat and the goat are a delight. They are curious and full of questions about how he came to be on the island. "My past is not a story I wish to tell," says Selkirk, but it is to gratify them and to have a listener "as attentive" as the Reverend Vicarious Cronch, that he begins to tell it.
 

The Names of a Hare
by Bernice Barry

Bernice Barry, like her un-named heroine, knows that words are potent things and "a story shared is the highest magic of all."