It’s no secret. One glance at the shimmering sardine on the cover of Andy Sharpless’s new book The Perfect Protein reveals that the answer is simple: “We need to eat fish and lots of it . . . .”

It’s not a new message. “We all know fish are good for your brain, your heart and your nerves,” said Mr. Sharpless. “If you substitute fish for red meat, you get a reduction in obesity, heart disease, cancer. It’s interesting how our own biology is so tuned up to benefit from fish.”

In 1040 AD a Danish king by the name of Harthacnut took control of the English throne through a massive display of military force. He then sustained his power as king by re-instituting an oppressive war tax, called the “heregeld.” The heregeld drove England into poverty and, when towns around the country began to revolt against the tax, he ordered his vassals to destroy these towns and murder their own people.

Charlie McDowell knows how to wear pastel, effortlessly. He also knows how to eavesdrop which is how he came upon this new skill. But most importantly, the young author knows how to write.

Mr. McDowell will read from his new book Dear Girls Above me, a roman à clef about how thinking like a couple of girls turned a single guy into a better man, at the Bunch of Grapes Bookstore in Vineyard Haven on July 7 at 7 p.m.

Did you know that America’s deadliest maritime disaster was not the Titanic? Or that an African-American woman refused to give up her seat on a bus 11 years before Rosa Parks did the same? How about that the government directed a massacre against Mormons in Missouri, the first non Native American to climb Pike’s Peak was a woman, or that a 14-year-old boy on an Idaho farm led to the invention of television?

In the winter of 1993, travel writer and essayist Edward Hoagland was travelling in Eastern Africa on assignment for Harper’s Magazine. He had visited the region twice before, in the years 1976 and 1977. This time, however, a civil war was raging in Sudan and a crippling famine gripped the region. Political, ethnic and religious conflict had created a web of alliances that divided the country, making travel outside the cities a dangerous and complicated ordeal. As he ventured into famine zones alongside NGO
(non-governmental organizations)
aid groups, Mr.

When Diane Wolkstein’s book, The Magic Orange Tree and other Haitian Folktales was published in 1978, it became a favorite among American storytellers in the early years of a storytelling renaissance in which I have been privileged to participate. Sitting with Diane at a story event in Appalachia in 1981, she insisted I learn the song the way she’d heard it in Haiti, and gave me permission to tell and record the title story.

Diane, folklorist and mythologist and one of the foremost scholars of the contemporary storytelling movement in America, died Jan.

SQuire Rushnell’s latest book, Divine Alignment (2012, Simon & Schuster Inc.), is the fifth book in his Godwink series, the term he coined to describe how life’s un-coincidental coincidences all come together to create a purpose in our lives. Once again he rejects the idea that we are all “twigs floating down a river to destinations unknown.” Instead, he believes these coincidences, or godwinks, have divine underpinnings.

Poetry Reading

The last literary event of the summer at the West Tisbury Library is a joint poetry reading with part-time resident Fanny Howe and visiting writer Katie Peterson. Ms. Peterson’s debut poetry collection, This One Tree (2006), was awarded the New Issues Poetry Prize by William Olson. She teaches in the English Department at Tufts University.

Fanny Howe has written over 20 books of poetry and prose. She lives in West Tisbury and will be teaching at University of Massachusetts Boston in the fall.

Summer on the Vineyard conjures images of sand and surf, beaches and breaking waves, water and . . . wagging tails?

p> Summer Is. By M. Lesnikowski, 21 pages, Southern Lion Books, $20. Vineyard-born artist Molly Lesnikowski, who has written two earlier children's books, has turned her pen and paintbrush to the Island, at last.