a promotional supplement in association with Northwords Now
Discover the wealth of ebooks from the Highlands and Islands of Scotland this winter
eBooks from the Highlands & Islands of Scotland
Winter 2011/12
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Welcome to HI~Arts’ first ebooks supplement - bringing you eight pages of information on the wide range of ebooks from the Highlands and Islands of Scotland.
For those new to ebooks, in these pages you’ll find details of ebooks from gripping, bestselling fiction to fascinating histories, biographies and autobiographies. For those whose ereader is never too far from their sides, this supplement will hopefully help you find something new and different in the maze of ebook titles now available through a myriad of retail sources. In this supplement you’ll find ebook fiction, nonfiction and Gaelic ebooks by authors born and/or living in the region, published by publishers based in the region and, in addition, some titles on fascinating aspects of the history and culture of the Highlands and Islands. Whilst not a complete catalogue of all the ebooks available from the Highlands and Islands, this supplement aims to bring you a comprehensive choice of the ebook titles that are available from the region. We hope you enjoy looking through the titles in this supplement and that you enjoy your ereading this winter. The supplement is published by HI~Arts in association with Northwords Now. All content and images in this supplement are the copyright of the specific and individual ebook publishers. HI~Arts Writing Development Project receives financial support from Creative Scotland and HIE. This supplement was produced with additional funds from HIE.
HI~Arts eBooks Supplement Winter 2011
eBooks from the Highlands & Islands great titles, great choice, great reading...
eBooks: Gaelic
Cogadh Ruairidh
by Iain MacLean
Price: £4.99 ISBN: 978-1-905207-30-5 Published by Sandstone Press Available at: www.sandstonepress.com Iain Maclean’s Cogadh Ruairidh (Ruairidh’s War) is an account of the first day of the Battle of the Somme through the eyes and the experience of a Highland soldier, Ruairidh, and his two friends.
Front Cover: The front cover image of this supplement is taken with thanks from John Buchan’s classic Highland tale ‘John MacNab’ book & ebook published by Polygon (ebook: £4.99), cover illustration by Tim Byrne.
Ìmpireachd by Iain F. MacLeòid
Price: £5.99 ISBN: 978-1-900901-666 Published by Clar Available at: iBookstore, Lulu Thug athair Thormoid an rathad mòr air aon latha agus cha chualas guth bhuaithe tuilleadh. Ach carson? Dè thachair dha? Feumaidh Tormod seann
MacLean first describes the waiting period, when the soldiers’ emotions swing between tedium and high tension, fear and naïve overconfidence, and then, clearly and dispassionately, what the three men encounter as they go over the top and advance towards the enemy trenches – and the waiting machine guns. The novel follows Ruairidh through his convalescence in France and his journey home, where he struggles to come to terms with what has happened on that awful day. Cogadh Ruairidh is a powerful evocation of one of the grimmest days in the history of modern warfare. As an indictment of the brutality and futility of war, it is all the more effective for the fact that MacLean lets the events speak for themselves. With chapter-by-chapter glossaries and summaries to assist Gaelic learners, this is a most impressive debut novel from yet another talented young Gaelic author.
dìomhaireachd fhuasgladh agus aig an aon àm a bhean, Maryam, a shàbhaladh o chogadh is geur-leanmhainn anns an nobhail ioma-fhillte seo. Chì sinn fear às na h-Eileanan Siar a' dèanamh air na Stàitean agus tè à Iran a' togail beatha ùr dhi fhèin ann an Alba. Eadar na dhà, tha Tormod a' strì ri gàbhadh thall thairis is ana-ceartas aig an taigh, agus an-còmhnaidh tha ceistean ga bhuaireadh mu an àite a th' aig dachaigh is dualchas nabheatha. The third novel from Iain F. MacLeod is his perhaps his most ambitious. A powerful tale links a man's journey from the Western Isles to the United States, and a young female journalist's flight from Iran to Scotland. Tension, humour and warmth are shown in equal measure in a fast moving novel spanning continents and centuries. This is a thought-provoking, yet accessible, international Gaelic novel.
San Dùthaich Ùir by Alison Lang Price: £4.99 ISBN: 978-1-905207-84-8 Published by Sandstone Press Available at: www.sandstonepress.com San Dùthaich Ùir is a story of second generation exile. Anna looks up to both her mother and her Aunt Marguerite although they live very different lives.
Her mother’s is one of work and duty but Marguerite’s ways are quite different and Anna’s father does not approve. Anna eventually enters university to begin a new life of her own. When both Marguerite and Anna’s father die the people from the old country assist at the funeral and the book closes with Anna’s regret, perhaps anger, at the breach that has been made with her traditions. Alison Lang’s new book, San Dùthaich Ùir, is the fifth publication in the Sandstone Meanmnach series of books primarily aimed at advanced learners of Gaelic. The story is told entirely in Gaelic. Chapter outlines are given in English and a glossary of more challenging words and phrases are given at the end of each chapter. Alison’s first book of short stories, Cainnt na Caileige Caillte (The Lost Girl’s Language), was shortlisted for the Saltire Society’s First Book of the Year award in 2009.
Cleasan a' Bhaile Mhor by Catriona Lexy Campbell Price: £4.99 ISBN: 9978-1-905207-29-9 Published by Sandstone Press Available at: www.sandstonepress.com Jessie is an aspiring actress who has moved to London to try to make a breakthrough into the big time but is finding the going tough. She has to work in a hotel to make ends meet and is about give up when she stumbles, with the help of her friend Curtis, on a novel way of using her acting talents for gain. Jessie’s series of imaginative ‘scenarios’, designed to help her clients through sticky patches in their lives,are brought alive vividly in this entrancing tale. In Cleasan a’ Bhaile Mhòir, Catriona Lexy Campbell has created a wide range of interesting characters and their relationships, which she describes with humour and not a little insight.
There are also exciting incidents which help carry the story along at a gripping pace. Underlying it all is a tender, understated love story. Jessie’s story is told in her own words, in a colloquial form of Gaelic which will enhance its appeal to both fluent speakers and learners. There are chapterby-chapter glossaries and summaries to help the latter. Catriona Lexy Campbell, herself a young actress, is one of an exciting new wave of highly talented writers to have emerged in Gaelic recently.
eBooks: nonfiction HI~Arts eBooks Supplement Winter 2011
Calum's Road by Roger Hutchinson
Price: £3.99 Isbn: 978-0-85790-002-9 Published by Birlinn www.birlinn.co.uk Available at Amazon Kindle, Waterstones, iBookstore In Calum’s Road, Roger Hutchinson recounts the extraordinary story of a remarkable man’s devotion to his visionary project. Calum MacLeod had lived on the northern point of Raasay since his birth in 1911.
He tended the Rona lighthouse at the very tip of his little archipelago, until semi-automation in 1967 reduced his responsibilities. ‘So what he decided to do,’ says his last neighbour, Donald MacLeod, ‘was to build a road out of Arnish in his months off. With a road he hoped new generations of people would return to Arnish and all the north end of Raasay . . .’ And so, at the age of 56, Calum MacLeod, the last man left in northern Raasay, set about single-handedly constructing the ‘impossible’ road. Roger Hutchinson is an awardwinning author and journalist. After working as an editor in London, in 1977 he joined the West Highland Free Press in Skye. He has published thirteen books, including Polly: the True Story Behind Whisky Galore. He is still a columnist for the WHFP. Calum's Road (2007) was shortlisted for the Royal Society of Literature's Ondaatje Prize.
Between Weathers Travels in 21st Century Shetland by Ron McMillan with a foreword by Aly Bain
Price: £4.99 ISBN: 978-1-905207-20-6 Published by Sandstone Press www.sandstonepress.com Available at Amazon Kindle
Between Weathers is the first all-new Shetland travel narrative
since Victorian times. Ron McMillan spent weeks exploring scenic landmarks, archaeological treasure troves and remote islands. A travel writer for more than twenty years, he casts an inquisitive and witty eye over present-day Shetland to interweave the islands' history, archaeology and geology with observations on a remarkably hospitable society. Set amid fascinating locations and filled with stories skilfully told, this is a book for lovers of lyrical travel writing delivered with authority and irresistible humour. Ron McMillan, born in 1958, has been a professional writer and photographer since 1986, when he covered the tumultuous scenes in South Korea, during the run-up to the 1988 Olympic Games. For ten years, from a home base in Hong Kong, McMillan criss-crossed Asia on assignment for major magazines in Asia, North America and Europe. Between Weathers is his first book.
The Leper's Bell by Norman McLean
Price: £3.99 Isbn: 978-0-85790-003-6 Published by Birlinn www.birlinn.co.uk Available at Amazon Kindle, Waterstones, iBookstore
The Soap Man by Roger Hutchinson
Price: £5.99 Isbn: 978-0-85790-074-6 Published by Birlinn www.birlinn.co.uk Available at Amazon Kindle, Waterstones, iBookstore The Soap Man is the tale of a small civil war in the early 20th century in one of the remotest regions of Britain. In 1918, as the First World War was drawing to a close, the eminent liberal industrial Lord Leverhulme bought – lock, stock and barrel – the largest Hebridean island of Lewis. His intention was to revolutionise the lives and environments of its 30,000 people, and those of neighbouring Harris, which he
shortly added to his estate. This is the story of their fight – a battle which ultimately led to the defeat of one of the most powerful men of the time.
Born in Glasgow in 1936, Norman Maclean was educated at school and university in Glasgow, before going on to teach all over Scotland. He garnered much fame after winning two Gold Medals at the National Mod – for poetry and singing – in the same year, 1967, the only person ever to do so. Shortly afterwards he began a career, as he would say himself, as a clown, and it is in that role, and that of a musician, that he is still best-known today. A comedian, singer, composer, musician, linguist, actor, author and a favourite of Sean Connery and Billy Connolly’s, Norman MacLean is a living legend in the Gaelic world and a household name across the Highlands and Islands of Scotland. Yet for all his creative genius Norman MacLean is virtually anonymous outside this ribbon of northern Scotland. His career has been etched with enormous
highs and lows – a reflection of the turmoil of his private life, where a lifelong battle with alcohol has had a crippling effect on everything that he has touched, and which has arguably prevented him from achieving the global recognition that his undoubted talent so merited. In The Leper’s Bell, an erudite, analytical and frank autobiography of this wonderful, unique, but ultimately little-known star, Norman MacLean reveals the man behind the comedy and the crippling horrors of alcoholism.
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Isolation Shepherd by Iain R Thomson
Price: £3.99 Isbn: 978-0-85790-044-9 Published by Birlinn www.birlinn.co.uk Available at Amazon Kindle, Waterstones, iBookstore Well-known throughout Scotland for his work with the Farmers Union, the Countryside Commission, and the BBC’s Rural Affairs Committee, amongst others, Iain R. Thomson (below) has led a remarkable life. From the Royal Horse guards to fence building on Mingulay, cattleman for a Russian cattle baron to organic farmer founder, he has sailed from the Caribbean to Fort William and lived as a shepherd in the most remote parts of Scotland. In August 1956 a young shepherd, his wife, two-year-old daughter and ten-day-old son sat huddled in a small boat on Loch Monar in Ross-shire as a storm raged around them. They were bound for a tiny, remote cottage at the western end of the loch which was to be their home for the next four years. Isolation Shepherd is the moving story of those years. Whether in stalking or gathering sheep for shearing or droving cattle over mountain passes, navigating the loch, in haymaking, finding firewood or cutting the peats, the ever present background splendidly portrayed is the grandeur of the Highlands - sometimes benign and magnificent, at others, harsh and relentless.
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Shadow Behind The Sun by Remzije Sherifi with a foreword By George Szirtes
Price: £4.99 Isbn: 978-1-905207-13-8 Published by Sandstone Press www.sandstonepress.com Available at Amazon Kindle
Shadow Behind The Sun is perhaps the first substantial book to emerge from the wave of new Scots who have arrived here in the last decade from war zones across the world.
The Kerracher Man by Eric MacLeod
Price: £4.99 Isbn: 978-1-905207-15-2 Published by Sandstone Press www.sandstonepress.com Available at Amazon Kindle Eric Macleod looks across the loch at the forlorn wreck of his family’s croft. ‘How would you like to live there?’he asks his wife
Please note:
The content of this supplement has been supplied to HI~Arts by the ebook publishers whose titles are represented in these pages, and any views expressed are those of the authors and publishers concerned. HI~Arts cannot give any guarantee as
HI~Arts eBooks Supplement Winter 2011 ‘Sherifi is a woman younger than me, who has already seen more suffering and trauma than anyone should have to see in a lifetime. But she is still learning, changing and growing here in Scotland, building a new life which is not the same as the old one, but which still brings new challenges and fulfillments.’ - from Joyce McMillan’s appreciation at the Saltire Society Awards Ceremony Remzije Sherifi worked as a journalist with Radio Gjilan in Kosova. She lost her job, and almost her life, as the Milosevic regime steadily tightened its grip on the Albanian people who lived there. In Shadow Behind The Sun she recounts her family’s history to shine a new light on the terrible events of the 1990s. Now a British citizen she has made her commitment to Asylum Seekers and other refugees, working with the Maryhill Integration Network in Glasgow. Beside the history of the Kosovar people she describes the plight of Asylum Seekers in the here and now. Remzije Sherifi is a compassionate and visionary presence in difficult and changing times. Ruth, half joking. After all, they have to think of something to do with the place. But he doesn’t expect her instant reply – ‘I would love to.’ A few short months later, fired by the challenge of an adventure like no other they’ve known, Eric has given up a promising career in London as an accountant with an international company, and moved to the remote shores of Loch Cairnbawn in the West Highlands. With Ruth and their two little girls, he plans to renovate the croft and make a living from the land, but it’s a long leap from management accountant to house builder and crofter - as they soon find out. Eric MacLeod was born in Dingwall in the Highlands. His early post graduate career was in Accountancy in London, but he made a life change at the age of thirty to become a crofter and self-employed in a variety of ways. He has returned to the area of his birth with his wife Ruth of 37 years and has two daughters and three grandchildren. to the accuracy of the information given in this supplement, and does not endorse any views expressed in the book descriptions. Please check to ensure that the format of any ebook title you purchase is compatible with your ereader.
A Wilder Veil Edited by Linda Cracknell
Price: £5.50 ISBN: 978-1-906120-863 Published by Two Ravens Press www.tworavenspress.com Available from publisher’s website. An anthology of new literary non-fiction that focuses on the relationship between people and the wild places of Britain and Ireland. This is writing which animates a connection between humanity and the natural world, articulating discoveries and new ways of seeing - writing which is, above all, a meditation on who
Eccentric Wealth: The Bulloughs of Rum by Alastair Scott Price: £7.49 Isbn: 978-0-85790-052-4 Published by Birlinn www.birlinn.co.uk Available at Amazon Kindle, Waterstones, iBookstore
Alastair Scott was born in Edinburgh in 1954. He now lives with his wife, Sheena, on Skye (with occasional bouts of vagrancy), working as a photographer, writer and broadcaster. In Eccentric Wealth, Alastair Scott traces the life of Lancashire industrialist Sir George Bullough in this absorbing biography which explores his family’s connection with the Hebridean island of Rum, particularly the building of Kinloch Castle, the most intact preserve of Edwardian highliving to be found in Britain. Based on new information, the book offers a fascinating insight into the life and times of one of the great eccentrics of his age, including the Bullough myths and scandals which continue to make extraordinary reading more than a hundred years later.
Wilderness Dreams by Mike Cawthorne with an introduction by Jim Perrin
Price: £9.99 Isbn: 978-1-906476-496 Published by The In Pinn www.nwp.co.uk Available at Amazon Kindle, Waterstones, Kobo Mike Cawthorne is one of Scotland's most respected mountain writers. He wrote Hell of a Journey to great critical acclaim and contributes to The Sunday Times, The Scots Magazine, The Sunday Post, High Mountain Sports, TGO and Trail Magazine. This book has been a long time in the writing. While Mike Cawthorne's life over the last two decades has been mostly involved in climbing and journalism, he has managed to stow away a large memory bank of experiences of his times spent deep within the wilderness areas of Scotland.
Wilderness Dreams charts eight intriguing and thought-provoking journeys through the remotest parts of Scotland – 60 miles in an open canoe down an increasingly turbulent River Dee; struggling across the Monadhliath – the most ‘unScottish’ of landscapes – in a blizzard; an epic round of all the Munros achieved on shoestring finances, where the focus is on
we are as people in a still-wild world. Contributors are: Raja Shehadeh, Andrew Greig, Sara Maitland, Margaret Elphinstone, Kenneth Taylor, Jane Alexander, Michelle Cotter, Marco Daane, Alison Grant, Mandy Haggith, Lesley Harrison, Neil Hegarty, Gerry Loose and many others. Linda Cracknell has published two collections of short stories, Life Drawing (2000) and The Searching Glance (2008). She writes drama for BBC Radio Four and received a Creative Scotland Award in 2007 for a collection of non-fiction essays in response to journeys on foot.
provides a range of development and support services for those working in the fields of the arts and heritage across the Highlands and Islands of Scotland and beyond. To find out more about our services, visit our website: www.hi-arts.co.uk companionship and the effects of spending so long adrift in the mountains; there are treks through the Flow Country of Sutherland, through areas tarnished and threatened by energy firms and also encounters – with an obdurate crofter, and the unspoken testimony of a maverick hermit on the Cape Wrath Peninsula, the loneliest place on mainland Britain. These essays, which share threads of delight, self-realisation and freedom, are united by a commonality of experience that transcends any notion of ‘activity’ as an end in itself. Shining through it all is the author’s passion for Scotland’s unspoilt acres, his alarm and anger at the burden placed on them by seemingly insatiable economic interests. Here is an unravelling of a relationship with the wild and the quiet truth that most journeys, the best journeys, are as much about mind as they are about place.
HI~Arts eBooks Supplement Winter 2011
At The Water’s Edge - A Walk In The Wild by John Lister-Kaye
Price: £8.99 Isbn: 978-1-847678-904 Published by Canogate www.canogate.tv Available at: Canongate, Amazon Kindle For the last thirty years John Lister-Kaye has taken the same circular walk from his home deep in a Scottish glen up to a small hill loch.
Each day brings a new observation or an unexpected encounter - a fragile spider's web, an osprey struggling to lift a trout from the water or a woodcock exquisitely camouflaged on her nest - and every day, on his return home, he records his thoughts in a journal. Drawing on this lifetime of close observation, At The Water's Edge encourages us to look again at the nature around us, to discover its wildness for ourselves and to respect and protect it. Sir John Lister-Kaye is one of Britain's best-known naturalists and conservationists. He is the author of eight books on wildlife and the environment and has lectured widely on three continents. He has served prominently in the RSPB, the Nature Conservancy Council, Scottish Natural Heritage and the Scottish Wildlife Trust. In 2003 he was awarded an OBE for services to nature conservation. He has a passion for wilderness and deserts and has travelled widely, from the pack-ice of the Barents Sea to the Kalahari and the scorching heat of the Chalbi desert. He lives with his wife and family among the mountains of the Scottish Highlands, where he runs the world-famous Aigas Field Centre.
The Great Glen by Catriona Fforde
Price: £9.99 Isbn: 978-1-906476-670 Published by NWP www.nwp.co.uk Available at Amazon Kindle, Waterstones, Kobo
Golf On The Rocks by Gary Sutherland
Price: £16.99 Isbn: 978-0-755387-939 Published by Hachette Scotland www.hachette.co.uk Available at Amazon Kindle Gary Sutherland was a lapsed golfer, until he acquired his late dad's putter. After studying a crumpled golf map of Scotland, Gary decided to embark on a voyage. His target was to play 18 rounds of golf on 18 Scottish islands in honour of his dad, a ship's captain who, when he wasn't at sea, was never off the golf course. His journey would take him from the Northern Isles to the Outer Hebrides.
This is an all-encompassing history of Scotland's most famous glen from the times of
The Weekend Fix by Craig Weldon with an introduction by Hamish Brown
Price: £4.99 Isbn: 978-1-905207-26-8 Published by Sandstone Press www.sandstonepress.com Available at: Amazon Kindle
In this light-hearted coming-ofage tale Craig Weldon, confused and directionless except for his love of the hills, wanders Scotland, Wales and England having fun outdoors. This is a lively account of hillwalking in all weathers and up and down every possible terrain, braving Welsh farmers, Knoydart rain, the terrors of the Cuillin, and
The Red Cockatoo by Mitch Miller and Johnny Rodger
Price: £4.99 Isbn: 978-1-905207-76-3 Published by Sandstone Press www.sandstonepress.com Available at: Amazon Kindle The Red Cockatoo is the first full length study of the work of James Kelman to take full cognisance of the author’s political commitments and activism throughout his career. This book is published in partnership with The Drouth Magazine and traces the history and details of Kelman’s political St Columba to the period when Thomas Telford was Britain's most prominent civil engineer in the 1850s. Catriona Fforde is a noted academic, linguist and translator with a passion for Highland history. She is the author of A Summer in Lochaber: The Jacobite Uprising of 1689 and lives in Glenmoristion in Inverness-shire. This book provides a picture of the Great Glen, stretching from Fort William to Inverness, from AD550 to 1850. It begins with a description of the glen as it is today and an account of its geological development. This is followed by eleven chapters describing major characters or events in the glen. The book is academic to some degree but perfectly comprehensible to the general reader with any interest in history. It will be particularly welcome to the hundreds of people who walk the Great Glen Way each year.
the real ales of Yorkshire. From Sutherland in the Far North to the rolling downs of Gloucestershire, Craig and his friends search out their Weekend Fix.
5 For hill walkers this is an easy guide to the hills, informative and amusing. If you’ve never been on a hill in your life this book will make you think again about the landscape around you, and the challenges to courage, determination and the human spirit to be found only a few miles from home, wherever you live in Britain. Craig Weldon was born in 1974 in Glasgow. He has been a student, an engineer, a submersible pilot, a songwriter and failed music studio owner, an itinerant temp worker, a technical editor, and a public servant – but the one steady thread has been his love of the hills and his hill-walking companions.
writing and activism. Besides numerous novels Kelman has published two volumes of literary, social, historical and political criticism. He has also been unceasingly involved in political and human rights campaigns, manifestoes and demonstrations throughout his life. What exactly are Kelman’s politics: why are some readers still baffled and shocked by his standpoint? His stance on social and political issues has been widely criticised not only by ordinary readers, but by the Establishment in the form of Booker Prize judges, and others.
Up The Creek Without A Mullet by Simon Varwell
Price: £4.99 Isbn: 978-1-905207-34-3 Published by Sandstone Press www.sandstonepress.com Available at: Amazon Kindle
After acquiring a fascination with the dubious 1980s haircut while travelling around Eastern Europe,
Simon Varwell discovered a village in Albania called Mullet, and a mission was born. 'Up The Creek Without a Mullet' charts the first three legs of the mission, in Albania, Ireland and Australia. Over the years, Simon has met clowns, farmers, journalists and politicians across the world as he visits remote villages, dried upstreams, and obscure corners of the world simply because they have the word 'mullet' in their name. Creating media storms in both hemispheres, the list of mullets has grown like a tragic haircut, the quest threatening his career and finances, eventually taking over his life… Simon Varwell is a compulsive traveller, a keen amateur photographer, and spends too much time having ‘what if ...’ moments. ‘Up the Creek Without a Mullet’ tells the story of one such moment, and is his first book. Simon was born in 1978 and grew up in Benbecula in the Western Isles. He is married and lives in Inverness.
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HI~Arts eBooks Supplement Winter 2011
eBooks: fiction
The Testament Of Jessie Lamb by Jane Rogers
Listed for the Man Booker Prize 2011 The Last Bear by Mandy Haggith Price: £4.50 ISBN: 978-1-906120-90-0 Published by Two Ravens Press www.tworavenspress.com Available from publisher’s website. A haunting and compelling novel set one thousand years ago in the remote northwest Highlands of Scotland, The Last Bear recounts a tale of ecological and spiritual crisis from the viewpoint of one extraordinary woman. Mandy Haggith first studied Philosophy and Mathematics and then Artificial Intelligence, and spent years struggling to write elegant computer programs that could help to save the planet. A decade ago she left academia to pursue a life of writing and revolution, and has since travelled all over the world researching forests and the people dependent on them, and campaigning for their protection. In 2003, she returned to Glasgow University to study for an MPhil in Creative Writing, gaining a distinction. She lives on a woodland croft in Assynt, in the Scottish Highlands.
The Testament Of Jessie Lamb by Jane Rogers
Price: £4.99 Isbn: 978-1-905207-77-0 Published by Sandstone Press www.sandstonepress.com Available at: Amazon Kindle
Women are dying in their millions. Some blame scientists, some see the hand of God, some see human arrogance reaping the punishment it deserves. Jessie Lamb is an ordinary girl living in extraordinary times: as her world collapses, her idealism and courage drive her towards the ultimate act of heroism. If the human race is to survive, it’s up to her. But is Jessie heroic? Or is she,
as her father fears, impressionable, innocent, incapable of understanding where her actions will lead?
Homecomings by Donald Paterson
Price: £4.50 ISBN: 978-1-906120-870 Published by Two Ravens Press www.tworavenspress.com Available from publisher’s website. Rona McPherson, a newly divorced woman in present-day Aberdeen, uncovers the dusty old diary of a young man, Hugh Ross, born on a croft in the far north of Scotland. Through crafted changes in Hugh's language and view of the world as his life expands into new
Miss Thing by Nora Chassler
Price: £4.50 ISBN: 978-1-906120-856 Published by Two Ravens Press www.tworavenspress.com Available from publisher’s website. Andromeda, a beautiful teenage girl whose mother has just killed herself, and Sam, a failed thirty-something writer in a miserable marriage, spy on each other across the interior courtyard of their New York apartment building. Through their diaries we learn just how much these two lost souls have in common.
Straddling the literary territory between social satire and feminist cautionary tale, Miss Thing is both a serious commentary on the not-so-clearcut differences between reader and writer, and an anti-novel that's a foil for love stories and the facile definitions they peddle. Nora Chassler grew up on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. She graduated from Hunter College where she earned a degree in English and Film Studies. She has worked as a fashion model, a Repatriation Case Worker and a housewife. She now lives in Dundee.
Set just a month or two in the future, in a world irreparably altered by an act of biological terrorism, The Testament of Jessie Lamb explores a young woman’s determination to make her life count for something, as the certainties of her childhood are ripped apart. Jane Rogers has written eight novels including Her living Image (Somerset Maugham Award), Mr Wroe’s Virgins (Guardian Fiction prize shortlisted), Promised Lands (Writers Guild Best Novel Award), Island (Orange long-listed), and The Voyage Home. She has written drama for radio and TV, including an awardwinning adaptation of Mr Wroe’s Virgins, directed by Danny Boyle. experiences and new continents, this diary allows us an unusually intense and intimate insight into the world of an immigrant crofter in the late nineteenth century. Donald Paterson was born in Motherwell, but grew up in Tain in the Scottish Highlands. After studying at Aberdeen University, he taught for many years in Aberlour and, more recently, in Inverness. Donald lives with his wife Val in Fortrose, on the Black Isle, where the dolphins swim only a short evening walk away. This is his first novel.
A Small Town Affair by Rosie Wallace
Price: £7.99 Isbn: 978-0-755361-8 Published by Hachette Scotland www.hachette.co.uk Available at Amazon Kindle A Delicious Recipe for Domestic Disaster: Take one small town where everyone thinks they know everyone else's business. Add three households: MP Mike Andrews, his wife Gill and two young children; Church of Scotland minister Tom Graham, his wife Ali, two teenage daughters and an afterthought; Sixty-something local businessman Jack Caldwell, and his childless wife Phyllis. Mix in several large dollops of scandal, some secrets and a tragedy.Turn up the heat and bring to the boil.Season with one eccentric old lady - Minty Oliver - and serve with the tabloid press and a big helping of local gossip. Rosie Wallace was brought up in Milngavie, near Glasgow but has lived on Orkney since her marriage to Jim Wallace, MP for Orkney and Shetland, bringing up their two daughters. She is a speech and language therapist, and since 2003 has been working freelance, specialising in dyslexia.
Far Inland by Peter Urpeth
£3.99 978-0-85790-049-4 Published by Polygon www.polygonbooks.co.uk Available at Amazon Kindle, Waterstones, iBookstore Raised in the Outer Hebrides, Sorley MacRath loved the moorlands and the brilliant night skies he knew as a child, but he knew as well the destructive power of the gift of ’second sight’. Far Inland draws on Gaelic and Inuit mythology and spirituality to inform a contemporary tale that is profoundly original, elegiac and redemptive.
HI~Arts eBooks Supplement Winter 2011
Tell Me Where You Are by Moira Forsyth
Price: £4.99 Isbn: 978-1-905207-35-0 Published by Sandstone Press www.sandstonepress.com Available at: Amazon Kindle Frances is doing fine; she has her life sorted. Then comes the phone call from Alec, the husband who left her for her younger sister Susan, thirteen years ago. Susan has disappeared, and Alec wants her daughter Kate to come and stay with Frances, out of harm’s way. Meanwhile, Frances’s youngest sister, Gillian, finds that two months after ending her relationship with a married man, she is
pregnant. While all this is going on another crisis is looming. It’s been a family full of secrets. Frances and Gillian haven’t even Published by Sandstone Press www.sandstonepress.com Available at: Amazon Kindle
Site Works by Robert Davidson Price: £4.99 Isbn: 978-1-905207-70-1
In the corner of the door lintel a cobweb shone like silver. Like me the spider works through instinct. It just gets up and gets on with the job without thought. Every so often it turns out something perfect. On a wind lashed coast in the far north a group of men assemble on a construction site. The Ness and Struie Drainage Project will dominate their lives for the next few months as they toil through the daylight hours and into the night, endure hardship and conflict and – mostly survive. Within the compound and fence lines a new, temporary
Dearest Dacha by Norman McLean Price: £5.49 Isbn: 978-0-85790-059-3
Tricksters Norman McLean
Price: £5.49 Isbn: 978-0-85790-060-9 Both published by Birlinn www.birlinn.co.uk Both available at: Amazon Kindle, Waterstones, iBookstore Based in the Uists in the Outer Hebrides, with side trips to Glasgow, Hamburg and Amsterdam, Dearest Dacha is a dotty adventure that embraces frustrated sex, drugs, eightsome reels and a memorable cast of oddball characters: three inept would-be criminals, a demented care-home resident, an excommunicant of the Free Church of Scotland who moonlights as an enforcer, a pair of Russian weight-lifters who raise ostriches by day and mud-wrestle by night,
managed to tell their parents Susan is missing. After all, she’s left unacknowledged thirteen years of birthday and Christmas presents for Kate, the granddaughter they never saw. She was the one who made sure she could never be forgiven, and now there’s another secret. It’s not always the things you fear most, which matter in the end. Moira Forsyth grew up in Aberdeen before moving first to Hertfordshire and then Northumberland, and now Highland Scotland where she works in Education and as an Editorial Director for Sandstone Press. She is the author of two previous, successful novels, 'Waiting for Lindsay' and 'David's Sisters'. world will form, bounded by sea, mountains and sky. Site Works is the story of the men and their work, transients creating something permanent and greater than they know. Robert Davidson is a writer and editor based in Highland Scotland. He is the author, co-author, and editor of many books as well as a published poet, lyricistand librettist. Before altering his life’s course he worked in civil engineering, mainly in or around the water industry. It is this experience which informs Site Works. Books written by Robert Davidson have been short listed for the Saltire Society, Scottish Arts Council, and Boardman Tasker Awards. and a formidable woman lawyer determined to cleanse the island of wrongdoing before HM The Queen arrives on her annual visit. Something akin to a mad Gaelic version of The Sopranos as directed by the Coen Brothers, this novella is a masterclass of understatement, pitch-perfect dialogue and confident narration. Tricksters takes the reader on a rambunctious journey around Scotland with endearing but oddly-matched couple, Murdo and Rachel. Murdo is a semi-pro thespian struggling with an alcohol problem; Rachel is constantly on the brink of ending their relationship. And there’s the truly appalling television director, Sam, whose Machiavellian schemes are aided by a heavydrinking Presbyterian heretic from Lewis. When all converge in the Tartan Pagoda Hotel, Uist, what could possibly go right?
The Darkest Walk by Malcolm Archibald Price: £4.59 Isbn: 978-1-905916-375 Published by Fledgling Press www.fledglingpress.co.uk Available at: Amazon Kindle, Barnes & Noble, eBooks.com It is 1848 and Sergeant Mendick of Scotland Yard is sent undercover to investigate rumours of an uprising among the radical Chartists of
Strip the Willow by John Aberdein
Price:£3.99 Isbn: 978-0-85790-010-4 Published by Polygon www.polygonbooks.co.uk Available at Amazon Kindle, Waterstones, iBookstore ’Before you could sort a city out, you had to clean up the source.’ That is the challenge Lucy faces... For years she made that common mistake: her heart was blocked, she thought she was alone. Now, as predatory LeopCorp gets set to pounce on a bankrupt Uberdeen, her quest for fellow-resisters has to speed up pronto. Feisty Alison? Subtle anarchist Iris? Ruthless young Gwen? The big fisherman with a chip on his deck, the Cretan
7 Manchester. Follow Mendick as he struggles with conflicting loyalties, trust and personal betrayals in this fast-paced crime novel. Battling with a double agent, will he succeed in preventing a treacherous plot that threatens to rock the Empire? After his foray into contemporary fiction with Powerstone in 2008, Malcolm Archibald has returned to historical fiction with The Darkest Walk. Malcolm Archibald was born in Edinburgh and holds a history degree from Dundee University. Malcolm has worked as a lecturer and in historical research. He writes mainly historical fiction with the occasional venture into folklore and believes that history should be accessible to everyone. A winner of The Dundee Book Prize 2005, he has published several novels with Fledgling Press. Among the most notable are Powerstone and Mother Law. The Darkest Walk is Malcolm’s first venture into the Victorian era. Malcolm lives in Moray with his wife Cathy. professor – or the smart anti-capitalist clowns? Perhaps the overcrowded Polish workers – or the wounded haunting stranger that has rolled back into town? Or is Lucy simply past it? Might as well retreat to Morocco and let GrottoLotto take over the streets for a new global bonanza. Black political satire meets salty, funny love story. Strip the Willow reveals itself as a dance of vision, desire, plotting and despair. The apocalypse when it comes is pretty damn sharp, the tenderness real. A vivid, breathtaking tale, Strip the Willow is the long-awaited second novel by the author of Saltire award-winning Amande’s Bed. John Aberdein was born and educated in Aberdeen and now lives in Hoy. He worked fishing herring and scallops before teaching English and outdoor education, becoming the first person to kayak round mainland Scotland. Active in politics John stood as a Labour candidate in the 1987 and 1992 general elections for the constituency of Orkney and Shetland. John’s debut novel Amande’s Bed won the Saltire First Book of the Year Award in 2005 and he was a runner-up in the inaugural Scotsman Orange Short Story Competition. His long-awaited second novel, Strip the Willow, has been shortlisted for the 2010 Scottish Mortgage Investment Trust Award, winning the Fiction category.
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Vanessa and Virginia by Susan Sellers
Price: £4.50 Isbn: 978-1-906120-82-5 Published by Two Ravens Press www.tworavenspress.com Available from publisher’s website. Vanessa Bell and her sister Virginia Woolf are raised to be perfect ladies. Devoted to each other, yet fiercely competitive, both sisters fight to realise their
Blood Red Roses by Lin Anderson
Price: £4.99 Isbn: 978-0-954633-35-6 Published by Sandstone Press Sandstone Vista Series www.sandstonepress.com Available at: Amazon Kindle A prequel to Driftnet with Forensic Scientist, Dr Rhona MacLeod. When does desire become obsession? A hen night in Glasgow leaves the bride-to-be dead on a toilet floor. Her body is twisted, her face a mask of terror. Who would kill a girl just before her wedding? Dr Rhona MacLeod and her team are called in to find out. As they go through the evidence, they find themselves in
HI~Arts eBooks Supplement Winter 2011 artistic vision amidst a chaos of desire, scandal, illness and war. This is a chronicle of love and revenge, madness, genius, and the compulsion to create beauty in the face of deep grief. After a nomadic childhood, Susan Sellers ran away to Paris. She worked as a barmaid, tour guide and nanny, bluffed her way as a software translator and co-wrote a film script with a Hollywood screen writer. Closely involved with leading French feminist writers such as Helene Cixous, she was among the first to introduce their work to the English-speaking world. From Paris she travelled to Swaziland, teaching English to tribal grandmothers, and to Peru, where she worked for a women's aid agency. She moved to Scotland and in 2002 won the Canongate Prize for New Writing. She now lives mostly near Cambridge with her husband, a composer, and a young son, but is a part-time professor in English literature at St Andrews University. She has published short stories and a number of books and translations; this is her first novel. a world where sex is bought and sold, and more violent death is lying in wait. Lin Anderson is a crime novelist and screen writer. Her first novel Driftnet became a Scottish best seller in August 2003 and has since sold to germany, France and Russia. Lin lives in Edinburgh and the Highlands with her husband, John. She has two sons and one daughter. The Sandstone Vista Series has been developed for readers who are not used to reading full length novels, or for those who simply want a 'quick read' which is satisfying and well written. Other ebooks available in the Sandstone Vista Series include ‘The Cherry Sundae Company’ by Isla Dewar; ‘The Highway Men’ by Ken MacLeod, and ‘Losing It’ by Lesley Glaister.
Joseph's Box by Suhayl Saadi
Price: £7.00 Isbn: 978-1-906120-81-8 Published by Two Ravens Press www.tworavenspress.com Available from publisher’s website. Recently-bereaved Zuleikha MacBeth wades into the Clyde one morning and recovers a large box, with which she becomes obsessed. The discovery of the box brings her together with Alex, a lute-playing clerk, and they manage to open the box - only to find six further boxes inside which they can only open once they have followed cryptic clues. Drawing on a wide framework of cultural and spiritual reference, this is an extraordinary and ambitious novel with a visceral sensuality and subtle touches of magical realism, in the vein of Okri, Murakami and
Pamuk. Suhayl Saadi is a novelist and stage and radio dramatist based in Glasgow. His novel Psychoraag (2004) won a PEN Oakland Josephine Miles Literary Award, was shortlisted for the James Tait Black Memorial Prize and the Pakistan National Literary Award, Available at: Amazon Kindle and many other outlets
Rising Blood by James Fleming
Price £16.99 Isbn: 978-0-224091-35-0 Published by Jonathan Cape www.rbooks.co.uk
Senseless by Stona Fitch
Price: £4.50 Isbn: 978-1-906120-84-9 Published by Two Ravens Press www.tworavenspress.com Available from publisher’s website. American economist Eliott Gast is a man who treasures the finest things that life can offer - fine food, a good bottle of wine, beautiful music - until the day that he is abducted in Europe by a shadowy and extremist anti-globalisation group. Eliott is held hostage for forty days, and each moment of his incarceration is broadcast on the internet. His captors inform him that his
was nominated for the Dublinbased Impac Prize and was acclaimed by The List magazine and the Scottish Book Trust as one of the Top 100 Scottish books of all time. Saadi's eclectic short story collection, The Burning Mirror (2001) was shortlisted for the Saltire First Book Prize. His work has been adapted for stage and screen, he has edited a number of anthologies and has penned song lyrics for modern classical compositions with the Dunedin Consort (The People's Mass), international choir (Project Paradisum) and with Scottish Opera (5:15). Driven often by music, his work has appeared from Cape Town to Kerala by way of Kiev and from San Diego to Singapore via New York City and Teheran. He has written extensively for the UK national Press, the BBC and the British Council.
The final chapter in the Charlie Doig trilogy: another installment of rip-roaring adventure and intrigue, as our hero escapes from Russia to the Orient. Lenin may have just seized power for the Bolsheviks, but Charlie Doig has just seized twenty-eight tonnes of Lenin's gold. For two days he's the richest man in the whole of Russia. However, on hearing that the Red armies have cut off his escape to the west, he decides to hide the gold for a later day and with Kobi, his Mongolian henchman, makes his way east along the Trans-Siberian Railway to the Pacific, and freedom. Charlie has to fight his way past refugees, bandits, murderers and shamans, only to discover when he gets there that the Japanese
have invaded Siberia. He falls in with an old flame, a New Yorker now calling herself Countess Cynthia von Zipf. He saves the life of her protector, General Sato. In an unforgettable final scene, Charlie, clothed in a samurai's blue and green robes, strides through the wood to the pavilion where Mimosa awaits him. She's after a share of his luck. But what can she offer Charlie? James Fleming, the nephew of Ian Fleming, was born in London in 1944. He read history at Oxford and has been variously an accountant, farmer, forester and bookseller. He is the author of four previous novels, The Temple of Optimism, Thomas Gage and also White Blood and Cold Blood, the first two books of the Charlie Doig trilogy. He writes in Caithness, Scotland.
eventual release depends on the votes - and donations made to their cause - of the millions of people who are watching this most disturbing of reality shows. As Eliott battles to understand
why he has been chosen, he unearths sins both small and large. Over the course of his captivity Eliott is deprived of each of his senses, one by one deprived of everything except the choice of whether or not to survive. Of Scottish-Cherokee ancestry, Stona Fitch lives with his family in Concord, Massachusetts, where he leads the renegade Concord Free Press, the world's first generosity-based publisher. His original, powerful and disturbing novels have been published in the UK, France, Germany, Sweden and the US, and have attracted an international following.