March, 1850. In the tense days before the Civil War, a slave breakout in the labyrinthine swamps of Maryland’s eastern shore sets loose a riveting drama of violence, hope, and redemption among slave catchers, plantation owners, watermen, runaway slaves, and free blacks. Liz Spocott, a beautiful runaway slave, shot and near death, is wracked by disturbing visions of the future as she lies shackled to an old woman in the prison attic of the notorious...

"Dao Strom's Instrument continues the author's virtuosic exploration of identity, selfhood and refusal-of stasis, of forgetting, of falsity. The book furthers creative and historical material Strom first explored in her books You Will Always Be Someone From Somewhere Else and We Were Meant To Be a Gentle People while simultaneously exploring new directions, modes and fragments. The companion album to Instrument, Traveler's Ode is an interwoven series...

"Playwright, actor, composer, poet, painter and songwriter, Noel Coward was perhaps the most complete entertainer the twentieth century - or any other - produced. But with his sophisticated manner and his clipped wit he became something more ... an icon of his times, the embodiment of "cool" before the term was ever thought of. On the centenary of his birth, amid the revival of his complete works, it is time to take stock of Coward the songwriter....