Including stories from paradise and hard-won lessons inseamanship, Taleisin’s Tales reflects back to the first milesLin and Larry gained together on their second cruising boat – one they built lovingly with teak carvel planking over sawn black locust frames. The story takes the reader from launching and sea trials through those initial cautious 1000 coastal miles between California and the Sea of Cortez, discussing everything from sail handling to dinghy racing to the relative luxuries of bicycles and a custombuilt sitztub to encounters, both pleasant and surprising, with sailors and locals along the Baja peninsula. Then it launches the reader across the Pacific on Taleisin’s first offshore leg to French Polynesia, through the Cook Islands and Tonga, then on to New Zealand. In the style readers have come to know through the Pardeys’ ever popular Cruising in Seraffyn series and Lin’s award winning Bull Canyon, this book relates stories sometimes harrowing, sometimes cautionary, sometimes hilarious – and often heart-warming, especially when it comes to encounters with the people of the South Pacific who become family. If there is a lesson to be gained from reading Taleisin’s Tales, it’s that slowing the pace and taking each day as it comes brings unexpected moments of clarity and joy. And that sailing across an ocean on a small boat is not easy but, with the right partner and attitude, can be beautifully rewarding. Taleisin’s Tales takes the reader from Bull Canyon, California, to Kawau Island, New Zealand, where, after almost 28 years of voyaging on Taleisin, Lin and Larry now spend their time running a small nautical publishing company, managing a very small boatyard, puttering about on their fifteen-foot Herreshoff sloop and reflecting on their five decades of bluewater cruising.

A collection of nineteen short stories from the Nebula and Hugo Award–winning author of The Iron Dragon’s Daughter and Stations of the Tide Written over the course of a decade, Tales from Old Earth contains nineteen masterful pieces of short fiction—including the Hugo Award–winning stories “The Very Pulse of the Machine” and “Scherzo with Tyrannosaur;” the World Fantasy Award–winning novella “Radio Waves;” Hugo Award finalists “The Dead,” “Radiant Doors,” and “Wild Minds;” and World Fantasy Award finalist “The Changeling’s Tale”—as well as an introduction by Bruce Sterling. From pure fantasy to hard science fiction, this finely crafted collection from one of the greatest science fiction writers of his generation promises to stretch readers’ minds far beyond ordinary limits. These tales are guaranteed to delight and are an excellent introduction to this highly praised author.

After spending eleven years sailing around the globe, husband and wife, Larry and Lin Pardey, decide to spend some time as landlubbers in Bull Canyon, California, and build their own boat, where they experience perhaps their most adventurous voyage yet.