Articles by: Mary Woodbury

The Hungry Tide, Amitav Ghosh

The Hungry Tide was published in 2004 but is still getting accolades in the media and has celebrated many reprints since. The Hungry Tide is a very contemporary story of adventure and unlikely love, identity and history, set in one of the most fascinating regions on the earth. Off the easternmost […]

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We Can Save Us All, Adam Nemett

Welcome to The Egg, an off-campus geodesic dome where David Fuffman and his crew of alienated Princeton students train for what might be the end of days: America is in a perpetual state of war, climate disasters create a global state of emergency, and scientists believe time itself may be […]

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The Migration, Helen Marshall

Marshall is painting on a large canvas here and her style is unabashedly baroque: the novel is characterized by a high level of drama, intensity, and movement, including a repeated motif of flooding, raging waters that claim (or threaten to claim) various characters over the course of the narrative. Climate change […]

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Last Ones Left Alive, Sarah Davis-Goff

In Last Ones Left Alive (Tinder Press) the Irish writer Sarah Davis-Goff, co-founder of the fine independent publisher Tramp Press, imagines a post-apocalyptic Ireland stalked by a zombie-like menace, the skrake. –New Statesman LAST ONES LEFT ALIVE is the story of Orpen, a young woman who must walk on foot across […]

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Doggerland, Ben Smith

Debut novelist Ben Smith enters the scene with Doggerland (Fourth Estate), a haunting story set on a huge wind farm in some unspecified time after climate disaster has rendered most of what was once the landscape uninhabitable and survivors are in thrall to an organisation known only as the Company. –New Statesman […]

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News & Events

For recent news, see the widget at the top of the site. Also, see my list of upcoming novels in 2021. Older news: On August 9th the site celebrated its 8th anniversary. I posted the Impacts of Environmental Survey results.  I also have a second part to the large and […]

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Climate Change Author Spotlight – D.G. Driver

Back to the series Welcome to the 30th spotlight on authors tackling climate change in fiction. We continue with the YA/teen focus, certainly timely right now as youth have entered the front lines on fighting climate change. This week, on March 15th, is an international march with thousands of students […]

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Back to the Garden

Author: © Clara Hume Series: Wild Mountain Series, book 1 Publisher: Dragonfly Publishing Publication Date: October 2018 Social Media: Author blog, Facebook, Twitter Back to the Dragonfly Library Chapter 1–Fran Between dropping seeds like raindrops onto pitted soil and slogging hotly through the creek at the hatchery, I often thought what […]

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YA and Teen Fiction Exploring Climate Change

Updated: Click here for Dragonfly’s YA/teen bookshelf. Followers of this site will be familiar with my spotlight on authors who explore global warming in fiction. This is a diverse series–recognizing various genres, voices, and storytelling styles which cover the subject of climate change found in fiction. Generally speaking, climate change […]

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Women Working in Nature and the Arts, D.M. Cameron

I’m very happy to return to the “Women Working in Nature and the Arts” series with D.M. Cameron, whose novel Beneath the Mother Tree (MidnightSun Publishing, 2018) was recently posted at Dragonfly.  Donna writes radio plays, film scripts, and novels and has received many awards. As with other women in […]

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The Novels of Deon Meyer, South Africa

Click here to return to the series Today the global eco-fiction series travels to South Africa to explore the beautiful country and environmental themes found within Deon Meyer’s crime novels (Meyer writes in his native Afrikaans, and his books have been translated around the world), noting, for example, the Lemmer […]

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Spliced Series, Jon McGoran

In this gripping sci-fi thriller, genetically altered teens fight for survival in a near-future society that is redefining what it means to be human. Goodreads Reviews Back to Goodreads [Coming May 2019] In the second installment of the Spliced series, sixteen-year-old Jimi Corcoran risks her life to clear a friend’s […]

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The Wild Birds, Emily Strelow

Emily Strelow’s mesmerizing debut stitches together a sprawling saga of the feral Northwest across farmlands and deserts and generations: an American mosaic alive with birdsong and gunsmoke, held together by a silver box of eggshells—a long-ago gift from a mother to her daughter. Written with grace, grit, and an acute […]

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Mother of Rain, Karen Spears Zacharias

Using the idiom of the time and place–a small, close-knit, East Tennessee community as the Depression yields to World War II–the story follows the struggles of Maizee Hurd as she suffers through a series of setbacks from childhood on: the gruesome early death of her mother; her father’s rejection; the […]

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Jaws of Life, Laura Leigh Morris

In the hills of north central West Virginia, there lives a cast of characters who face all manner of problems. From the people who are incarcerated in West Virginia’s prisons, to a woman who is learning how to lose her sight with grace, to another who sorely regrets selling her […]

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