Polygon
New TiTles 2015
Birlinn Limited was established in 1992 by Managing Director Hugh Andrew, and is comprised of a number of imprints. Birlinn publishes Scottish and general UK interest books, from biography to history, military history, sport and Scottish Gaelic. Children’s books are also included in this list. The name comes from the old Norse word ‘birlinn’, meaning a long boat or small galley used especially in the Hebrides and West Highlands of Scotland in the Middle Ages. Polygon publishes literary fiction and poetry, both classic and modern, from Scottish writers such as Robin Jenkins, George Mackay Brown and the author of the No.1 Ladies’ Detective Agency series, Alexander McCall Smith, as well as selected music and film titles. International writers including Jan-Philipp Sendker, Rita Monaldi and Francesco Sorti are also published under this imprint. Polygon was originally set up by students of Edinburgh University in the late 1960s. Arena Sport is Birlinn’s sport imprint and is designed for the general trade. The sport books range from football and rugby, to golf and cycling. These books have an international as well as national appeal. Arena’s first titles were published in June 2013. John Donald publishes academic books.
BIRLINN LTD West Newington House 10 Newington Road Edinburgh EH9 1QS Tel: +44 (0) 131 668 4371 Fax: +44 (0) 131 668 4466 info@birlinn.co.uk
RIGHTS REPRESENTED BY SCRIPT AGENCY Maria White scriptagency2010@aol.co.uk Mobile: +44 7866713512
CUSTOMER AND TRADE ORDERS Booksource 50 Cambuslang Road Cambuslang Investment Park Glasgow G32 8NB Tel: 0845 370 0067 Fax: 0845 370 0064 Intl: +44 (0) 141 643 3961 MANAGING DIRECTOR Hugh Andrew hugh@birlinn.co.uk PUBLICITY AND MARKETING DIRECTOR / DEPUTY MD Jan Rutherford jan.ppw@janrutherford.co.uk PUBLISHING DIRECTOR Neville Moir neville@birlinn.co.uk FINANCE DIRECTOR Joanne Macleod joanne@birlinn.co.uk
SALES DIRECTOR Laura Poynton laura@birlinn.co.uk CREATIVE DIRECTOR James Hutcheson jim@birlinn.co.uk EDITORIAL DIRECTOR (BIRLINN) Andrew Simmons andrew@birlinn.co.uk MANAGING EDITOR (POLYGON) Alison Rae alison@birlinn.co.uk ACADEMIC EDITOR (JOHN DONALD) Mairi Sutherland mairi@birlinn.co.uk EXPORT MANAGER, DIGITAL DEVELOPMENT MANAGER, SPORTS EDITOR Peter Burns peter@birlinn.co.uk PRODUCTION MANAGER Liz Short liz@birlinn.co.uk SALES AND MARKETING LIAISON Vikki Reilly vikkir@birlinn.co.uk
www.birlinn.co.uk www.polygonbooks.co.uk
2015 NEW TITLES
www.polygonbooks.co.uk
CONTENTS FICTION 2 3 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 10 11 11 12 12 13 14
The Revolving Door of Life Alexander McCall Smith Fatty O’Leary’s Dinner Party Alexander McCall Smith Stories of Love Alexander McCall Smith Wasp Ian Garbutt The Art of Waiting Christopher Jory Lie of the Land Michael F. Russell Penelope’s Web Christopher Rush Whispering Shadows Jan-Philipp Sendker Dacre’s War Rosemary Goring Friend & Foe Shirley McKay Queen & Country Shirley McKay Whisky from Small Glasses Denzil Meyrick Dark Suits and Sad Songs Denzil Meyrick The Good Priest Gillian Galbraith Troubled Waters Gillian Galbraith British Bulldog Sara Sheridan Ascension Gregory Dowling
POETRY 14 15 16 16
Beneath Troubled Skies WWI Poetry Anthology Magicians of Scotland Ron Butlin Shore to Shore Kevin MacNeil Neu! Reekie! Michael Pedersen and Kevin Williamson
NON-FICTION 17 17
Sixty Degrees North Malachy Tallack I Knew George Wyllie Jan Patience & Louise Wyllie
NEW EDITIONS 18 19 19
A Drunk Man Looks at the Thistle Hugh MacDiarmid Rowing After the White Whale James Adair Barbed Wire Kisses Zoë Howe
Fiction
Alexander McCall Smith The Revolving Door of Life A 44 Scotland Street Novel ALEXANDER MCCALL SMITH is one of the world’s most prolific and most popular authors. For many years he was a professor of Medical Law, then, after the publication of his highly successful No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency series, which has sold over twenty-five million copies, he devoted his time to the writing of fiction and has seen his various series of books translated into over fortysix languages and become bestsellers throughout the world.
Praise for the 44 Scotland Street series:
‘A treasure of a writer whose books deserve immediate devouring’ The Times
‘It is hard to think of a contemporary writer more genuinely engaging...[his] novels are also extremely funny: I find it impossible to think about them without smiling’ Mail on Sunday
‘As charming as the bohemian street in which it’s set’ Daily Record
2
Catch up with all your favourite faces down in Scotland Street as we follow their daily pursuit of a little happiness. The Revolving Door of Life is the tenth book in this series and revolves around the many colourful characters that come and go at No. 44 Scotland Street. McCall Smith handles the characters with his customary charm and deftness – the stalwart Tory chartered surveyor, the pushy mother, and, perhaps most importantly, the beleaguered Italian-speaking prodigy, Bertie. This is classic McCall Smith – clever, witty and entertaining – and beautifully illustrated. A chance encounter with Armistead Maupin in San Francisco inspired Alexander McCall Smith to write this series of novels based around the fictional No. 44 Scotland Street in Edinburgh’s New Town. On his return to Edinburgh he agreed to write a serial novel through the pages of the Scotsman newspaper. These daily episodes were then published in the first of now ten books, 44 Scotland Street. Today, fans around the world follow the series which continues to appear in the Scotsman for four months every year.
ISBN: 9781846973284 Price: £16.99 Format: 216 x 138mm hbk Rights: UK & Commonwealth August 2015
Fiction
Fatty O’Leary’s Dinner Party Praise for Fatty O’Leary’s Dinner Party:
It takes a lot to get under the skin of Cornelius ‘Fatty’ O’Leary, but then there is a lot of skin to get under.
‘All you can eat platter of humour . . . once again McCall Smith doles out an appropriately extralarge helping of fun’
The heroically proportioned Fatty can normally take life as it comes. Right at home in easy-going Fayetteville, Arkansas, he is happily married to his childhood sweetheart Betty, and likes nothing better than the company of good friends Tubby O’Rourke and Porky Flanagan. But when Fatty and Betty head off to Ireland on the trip of a lifetime, they find that they have left their comfort zone far behind. Calamity and mayhem ensue as one mishap after another befalls the beleaguered couple.
Scotland on Sunday
‘McCall Smith’s generous writing and dry humour, his gentleness and humanity, and his ability to evoke a place and a set of characters without caricature or condescension have endeared his books to readers’
Can Fatty’s broad shoulders take the strain or will he suffer one indignity too many? Will he get his just deserts, or just dessert? Format: 198 x 129mm pbk Price: £7.99 176pp
ISBN: 9781846973239 Rights: UK & Commonwealth April 2015
The New York Times 9781846972454 £9.99 hbk 9781846972638 £7.99 pbk
Stories of Love Shorn of context, unknown people look out to us from old and anonymous photographs, and each image has magical appeal. Alexander McCall Smith, one of the world’s best-loved writers, has reimagined the stories of these individuals in this charming, humorous, unexpected and poignant collection. The 15 photographs captured here are all from days long gone – some are formal in setting with a sepia tone, some are hazy family snaps. Every one of these images is powerful and intriguing in its own way and in Alexander’s hands, each reveals a story of love . Format: 178 x 114mm hbk Price: £9.99
ISBN: 9781846973291 Rights: UK & Commonwealth November 2015
3
Fiction
Ian Garbutt Wasp
Or, A Very Sweet Power
IAN GARBUTT has worked in journalism and publishing. He was awarded a Scottish Arts Council New Writer’s Bursary and attended Napier University, in Edinburgh, where he obtained a Master of Arts with Distinction in Creative Writing.
For a gentleman seeking more prestigious company amidst the seedy bawdy houses of an eighteenth-century city, the House of Masques provides the perfect no-touch escorts. Girls, highly educated and socially trained, are geisha-like status symbols for politicians, bankers and minor royalty. But these girls are the condemned, the exiled and the abandoned, who are given new identities to service the needs of the House. Among them is the Abbess, the white-haired proprietor, the Fixer, a disgraced surgeon, and Kingfisher, an African tribesman who is now a slave. Into this world comes Bethany Harris, a disgraced governess who has been rescued from a madhouse and transformed into the Masque named Wasp. She soon discovers that everyone in the House has a past, and personal horrors, coupled with dark ambition, are leading to a crisis that threatens to destroy the House of Masques and everyone in it. ISBN: 9781846973079 Price: £12.99 Format: 198 x 129mm hbk Rights: UK & Commonwealth March 2015 368pp
4
Hummingbird leans forward and clasps Wasp’s knee. ‘We all inhabit a half-world, a demi-monde. It draws admiration yet allows people to socially exclude you in the same turn. Ladies will curse you for a harlot yet slavishly copy your fashion. Society has built a complex house. We can ascend to the top, but only if we are shut in a separate room.’ She gestures at the onlookers’ rapt faces. ‘They all come here to see us. To try and touch the stars. Never underestimate your power. You need only to be spotted in public wearing a new style of choker and within a week a score of society ladies will parrot the fashion. Charm is also a powerful weapon. With it you can turn a papist to a Baptist in the breath of a sentence.’ Wasp peers out of the window. ‘Those men watching, they remind me of hungry dogs.’ ‘Things can get out of hand. Last month the landau belonging to one famous courtesan struck a pothole as big as a pit and snapped the axle. Her carriage was mobbed. Grown men scrambled like urchins around a dropped farthing. Items were snatched: a strip of lace from her sleeve, a bead from her reticule. She was plundered like a shipwreck.’ Hummingbird laughed. ‘Don’t go so wide-eyed, Sister. Leonardo will look after us. Sit back and enjoy the ride.’
Fiction
Christopher Jory The Art of Waiting A Novel
Russia, 1943. A girl from Leningrad, a soldier from Venice, stand together on the edge of wilderness. He is a shadow of a man, trapped behind wire, an enemy in her land. She takes something from her pocket, slips her hand through the wire, and catches her skin on one of the barbs. Up comes a tiny sphere of blood. CHRISTOPHER JORY was born in 1968 in Newcastle-upon-Tyne. He spent his early childhood in Barbados, Venezuela and finally Oxfordshire. He did a degree in English Literature and Philosophy at Leicester University and then worked as an English teacher for the British Council and other organisations in Italy, Spain, Crete, Brazil and Venezuela. He is currently a Publisher at Cambridge University Press. His first book, Lost in the Flames (Troubadour, 2011), is a moving account of RAF Bomber Command airmen and their families.
‘Have this,’ the man takes the gift – a small crust of bread, a little piece of hope. Its memory will keep him alive on his long journey home. And when home again, which way will he tip, which sentiment will be strongest? His quiet love for the girl who saved his life, his unfulfilled desire for vengeance, a burning desire to see Fausto Pozzi finally pay the price for the terrible thing that he has done? ISBN: 9781846973086 Price: £12.99 Format: 198 x 129mm hbk Rights: World April 2015 304pp
A whistle blew and the trucks pulled away and as he was passing out through the gate, Aldo looked over to where the Romanian stood digging at the earth beneath the gaze of the guard. Then the guard looked at his watch and raised his rifle. The Romanian stopped digging and looked at the guard. There was the sound of a shot and the Romanian fell into the semi-dug grave. Aldo spent the rest of the day chopping logs into bits, lifting the dead weight of his axe time after time, but all the while he thought of Katerina. What on earth had compelled her to come over to him, to risk herself for him? Why him out of all the others in the camp? And anyway, wasn’t he the enemy? Shouldn’t she be afraid of him? Shouldn’t she hate his guts? As he dwelt on what she had done, he allowed himself to dream, that one day the world might be at peace and he and Katerina might meet again after the war, and she would come to visit him at his home in Venice, and he would show the most beautiful person in the world the most beautiful city that had ever existed. And they would be together there forever, that’s how it would be. He was still thinking of her late that night as he lay on the concrete floor of the bunker and listened to men all around him tormented in their sleep. And as he wondered if she really would come back to see him again, he was suddenly aware of it, that feeling again, something he had forgotten, something lighting up in him, something she had lit in him. 5 It was hope. And he loved her for it.
Fiction
Michael F. Russell Lie of the Land For investigative journalist Carl Shewan, the Scottish coastal village of Inverlair is a picturesque cage.
MICHAEL F. RUSSELL grew up on the Isle of Barra before leaving to study Social Sciences at the University of Glasgow, followed by a postgraduate diploma in Journalism Studies at the University of Strathclyde. He is deputy editor at the West Highland Free Press and writes occasionally for the Sunday Herald. His writing has appeared in Gutter, Northwords Now and Fractured West.
6
Imprisoned in this remote refuge by a technological catastrophe for which he feels partly responsible, Carl struggles to adapt to impending fatherhood and to a harsh new existence in an ancient landscape, until a childless gamekeeper offers him an alternative to guilt and alienation. ISBN: 9781846973192 Price: £12.99 Format: 198 x 129mm hbk Rights: World June 2015
Some way off the road was a derelict old house, windowless, with a ragged corrugated-iron roof. To his left, the hills rose to the fissured rocky summit of Ben Bronach, and beyond, to the deer forest. After a few minutes Carl got up and, standing at the roadblock with his hands in his coat pockets, considered the road ahead. He stepped over the painted boulders. Maybe today was the day when the world would open up again. He could drive away from Inverlair. He could leave Room 14 and Simone and the baby, today, the eighty-second day of his confinement. This would be the last day he’d have to spend here, in this prison refuge. The redzone would open. Its signal would fail. He took Howard’s deltameter out of his pocket and watched the EMF waveform on the screen, spiking at 85 microtesla today, close to the active neural level. Another hundred metres or so and, he knew, the buzzing sound would start in his head. Another two hundred after that and the pain would skewer through his head, from temple to temple. Any further and sleep was death. Today was not the day. But he’d known that anyway. There would be no escape. Even Before he took his dead friend’s gadget out of his pocket to check the signal he knew what it would tell him.
Fiction
Christopher Rush Penelope’s Web
CHRISTOPHER RUSH was born in St Monans and taught literature for thirty years in Edinburgh. His books include A Twelvemonth and a Day and the highly acclaimed To Travel Hopefully. A Twelvemonth and a Day served as inspiration for the film Venus Peter, released in 1989. The story was also reworked by Rush in a simplified version in 1992 as a children’s picture book, Venus Peter Saves the Whale, illustrated by Mairi Hedderwick, which won the Friends of the Earth 1993 Earthworm Award for the book published that year that would most help children to enjoy and care for the Earth.
Odysseus returns to Ithaca after nearly twenty years, half of it spent as a soldier and the other half as a soldier of fortune. During his absence his wife Penelope remained faithful, despite Odysseus being missing and presumed dead, but when her husband suddenly reappears he confronts those who have been trying to seduce his wife and kills them all. The perspectives of Odysseus and Penelope question one another, as do their distinctly contrasting voices, the lines between them often blurring as the reader is led deeper into the question of what constitutes reality and truth. Odysseus’ account of his long journey home (his womanising, uncertainties and ambivalence about home) contrasts with Penelope’s web version, into which she weaves an idealised account of that reality, and one much more flattering to her and to her (apparently) faithful and heroic husband.
ISBN: 9781846973093 Price: £12.99 Format: 198 x 129mm hbk Rights: World August 2015
9781846972782 £9.99 pbk
Praise for Will:
‘Startlingly poetic – excellent’ The Spectator
‘This fictional autobiography does more than eulogize – Burgess is the only other novelist to pass this test’ Times Literary Supplement
‘A brilliantly witty and imaginative piece of writing’ Classic FM
7
Fiction
Jan-Philipp Sendker Whispering Shadows Paul Leibovitz was once an ambitious advisor, dedicated father, and loving husband. But after living for nearly thirty years in Hong Kong, personal tragedy strikes and Paul’s marriage unravels in the fallout. JAN-PHILIPP SENDKER lives in Berlin with his family. He was the American correspondent for Stern from 1990 to 1995, and its Asian correspondent from 1995 to 1999. The Art of Hearing Heartbeats, his first novel, was an international bestseller, and he’s the author of A Well-Tempered Heart, Whispering Shadows and its sequel Dragon Games. He is currently at work on the third novel set in Hong Kong.
9781846972409 £8.99 pbk
9781846972850 £8.99 pbk
When he makes a fleeting connection with Elizabeth, a distressed American woman on the verge of collapse, his life is thrown into turmoil. Less than twentyfour hours later, Elizabeth’s son is found dead in Shenzhen, and Paul, invigorated by a newfound purpose, sets out to investigate the murder on his own. As Paul, Elizabeth, and a detective friend descend deeper into the Shenzhen underworld they discover dark secrets hidden beneath China’s booming new wealth. In a country where rich businessmen with expensive degrees can corrupt the judicial system, the potential for evil abounds. Praise for Whispering Shadows:
‘An absorbing mystery set in a Hong Kong tourists only glimpse—the dark underside of a money-making beehive trying to find its place in a cynically corrupt new China. Vivid and knowing’ Joseph Kanon, New York Times bestselling author of Leaving Berlin
‘A stunning mystery in which a twisted murder investigation pulls back the curtain on a country whose culture and history have been shaped as much by Western capitalism as its own communism. Whispering Shadows is a Thoughtful, moving, and profoundly revelatory read’ 8
Attica Locke, author of Black Water Rising, a finalist for the Orange Prize and Los Angeles Times Book Award
ISBN: 9781846973307 Price: £8.99 Format: 198 x 129mm pbk Rights: UK & Commonwealth exc. Canada June 2015
Fiction
Rosemary Goring Dacre’s War The sequel to Rosemary Goring’s acclaimed After Flodden. ROSEMARY GORING was born in Dunbar and studied social and economic history at the University of St Andrews. She was the literary editor of Scotland on Sunday, followed by a brief spell as editor of Life & Work, the Church of Scotland’s magazine, before returning to newspapers as literary editor of the Herald, and later also of the Sunday Herald. In 2007 she published Scotland: The Autobiography: 2000 Years of Scottish History By Those Who Saw it Happen, which has since been published in America and Russia.
9781846972720 £14.99 hbk 9781846972836 £8.99 pbk
Praise for After Flodden:
‘A well-crafted tale which drives forward with unremitting pace’ Scotland on Sunday
‘A swashbuckling tale in the best tradition of adventure fiction ... charged with melancholy and menace’ Times Literary Supplement
‘Goring has a fine story to tell, a keen sense of place, and the ability to evoke mood. It’s a compelling and gripping novel’ Scotsman
Dacre’s War is a story of personal and political vengeance. Ten years after the battle of Flodden, Adam Crozier, head of his clan and of an increasingly powerful alliance of Borderers, learns for sure that it was Lord Thomas Dacre – now the most powerful man in the north of England – who ordered his father’s murder. He determines to take his revenge. As a fighting man, Crozier would like nothing better than to bring Dacre down face to face but his wife Louise advises him that he must use more subtle methods. So he sets out to engineer Dacre’s downfall by turning the machinery of the English court against him. A vivid and fast-moving tale of political intrigue and heartache, Dacre’s War is set against the backdrop of the Scottish and English borders, a land where there is never any chance of peace. ISBN: 9781846973116 Price: £14.99 Format: 215 x 153mm hbk Rights: UK & Commonwealth excl Canada May 2015
The Fleet Prison, 1488-9 The river seeped into his clothes, food and dreams. In the first few days after the key turned in the lock behind him and the bolts were thrown, the stench of oily water and tidal slime was his only companion. The cell’s walls glistened, as if from the poisonous breath that crept under the iron door and through the shuttered bars. A hand put to the bare bricks came away damp and smelling of rot. Some nights he caught a whiff of putrid flesh, borne downstream at a doleful pace. Whether it was a corpse, a dead cat, or merely butcher’s scraps, he did not care to know. He pulled his cloak over his nose and turned to the wall, hoping for a cleansing breeze to freshen the air. Weeks later, it had yet to appear. After Christmas came the cold. London turned white and brittle under frost and snow, and though the prisoner’s meagre ration of coal did no more than melt the icicles on the low ceiling, he did not complain. The chill had cleared the air. As he rubbed his knuckles and stamped his feet, he found his appetite. Wolfing the bread and broth his servant brought each evening, he longed for ale and lark pies, for roasted boar and hot-smoked eels, but such fare was not allowed in this place. Each day his ribs lost an ounce more fat, in time growing as taut to the touch as the bars at his needle-thin window. 9
Fiction
Shirley McKay Friend & Foe
A Hew Cullan Mystery NEW EDITION SHIRLEY MCKAY was born in Tynemouth but now lives with her family in Fife. At the age of fifteen she won the Young Observer playwriting competition, her play being performed at the Royal Court Theatre Upstairs. She went on to study English and Linguistics at the University of St Andrews before attending Durham University for postgraduate study in Romantic and Seventeenth-Century prose.
St Andrews, 1583. The young King James VI is confined at Falkland Palace, plotting his escape. Dissension rages between Kirk and Crown, the king and his ‘lord enterprisers’, and between the separate factions of the church. In St Andrews Castle, a bishop in decline plays out his darkest fantasies, while Hew and his friend Giles investigate the true source of his sickness, uncovering corruption at its heart. The death of a young soldier, implicating Hew’s sister and Giles’s wife Meg, leads Hew to an astonishing discovery, and towards his blackest hour, his fortunes inextricable from those of James himself. Format: 198 x 129mm pbk Price: £8.99 320pp
ISBN: 9781846973222 Rights: World English Language February 2015
She was shortlisted for the CWA Debut Dagger.
Praise for Friend & Foe:
‘Intoxicating mix of dramatic crime and repressed passion’ New Books
‘A gripping mystery that holds the reader to the very last page, and a marvellous portrait of St Andrews in the sixteenth century’ John Burnside
Queen & Country A Hew Cullan Mystery
1587. Three years after his enforced departure to London, Hew is reconciled with King James VI and recalled to Scotland. He elopes to St Andrews with a young Englishwoman. The death of Mary, Queen of Scots has unleashed a wave of anti-English sentiment among the Scottish people, and fear and confusion in the king himself. James will grant his blessing to their controversial marriage on the condition that Hew discovers what lies behind a painting cunningly contrived to prick the young king’s conscience – an anamorphic death’s-head with his mother’s face. Meanwhile in St Andrews, the death of a painter is troubling to Giles Locke, and the English Frances, struggling to adapt to a foreign town and culture, helps Hew find the link among the artists and intriguers of opposing courts, a quest for love – and life - requiring all his skills. Format: 229 x 150mm pbk Price: £12.99
10
ISBN: 9781846973123 Rights: World English Language September 2015
9781846971525 £8.99 pbk
9781846971808 £8.99 pbk
9781846972188 £8.99 pbk
Fiction
Denzil Meyrick Whisky from Small Glasses A DCI Daley Thriller DENZIL MEYRICK was born in Glasgow and brought up in Campbeltown. After studying politics, he pursued a varied career including time spent as a police officer, freelance journalist, and director of several companies in the engineering, leisure and marketing sectors. He lives in Loch Lomondside with his wife Fiona.
Praise for The Last Witness:
When the body of a young woman is washed up on an idyllic beach on the west coast of Scotland, D.C.I. Jim Daley is despatched from Glasgow to lead the investigation. Far from home, and his troubled marriage, it seems that Daley’s biggest obstacle will be managing the difficult local police chief; but when the prime suspect is gruesomely murdered, the inquiry begins to stall. As the body count rises, Daley uncovers a network of secrets and corruption in the closeknit community of Kinloch, thrusting him and his loved ones into the centre of a case more deadly than he had ever imagined. The first novel in the D.C.I. Daley Thriller series, Whisky from Small Glasses is a truly compelling crime novel, shot through with dark humour and menace.
‘Touches of dark humour, multi-layered and compelling’
ISBN: 9781846973215 Price: £8.99 Format: 198 x 129mm pbk Rights: English language (UK, Europe & Commonwealth) February 2015 368pp
Daily Record
‘The right amount of authenticity ... gritty writing ... most memorable’ Herald
‘Has the ability to give even the least important person in the plot character and the skill to tell a good tale’ Scots Magazine
‘Soon to be mentioned in the same breath as authors such as Alex Gray, Denise Mina and Stuart Macbride ... very impressive’ Ian Baillie, Lennox Herald 9781846972881 £8.99 pbk
Dark Suits and Sad Songs A DCI Daley Thriller
When a senior Edinburgh civil servant spectacularly takes his own life in Kinloch harbour, DCI Jim Daley comes face to face with the murky world of politics. To add to his woes, two local drug dealers lie dead, ritually assassinated. It’s clear that dark forces are at work in the town. With his boss under investigation, his marriage hanging on by a thread, and his sidekick DS Scott wrestling with his own demons, Daley’s world is in meltdown. When strange lights appear in the sky over Kinloch, it becomes clear that the townsfolk are not the only people at risk. The fate of nations is at stake. Jim Daley must face his worst fears as tragedy strikes. This is not just about a successful investigation, it’s about survival.
ISBN: 9781846973154 Price: £8.99 Format: 198 x 129mm pbk Rights English language (UK, Europe & Commonwealth) May 2015
11
Fiction
Gillian Galbraith The Good Priest
A Father Vincent Ross Mystery GILLIAN GALBRAITH grew up near Haddington. For seventeen years she was an advocate specialising in medical negligence and agricultural law cases. She also worked for a spell as an agony aunt in teenagers’ magazines.
In the house of a Roman Catholic bishop a man lies in a pool of blood. Out in the bishop’s diocese the quiet life of parish priest Father Vincent Ross is about to be thrown into turmoil by a terrifying revelation. There are ugly scandals being hidden by the church he has served for so long, and a murderer is on the prowl. The police and the authorities are groping in the dark, but Father Ross has been given special information that he cannot disclose to anyone. It gradually dawns on him that he and he alone can unravel the mystery and to do this he must put his personal safety, his reputation and finally his life on the line.
Since then, she has been the legal correspondent for the Scottish Farmer and has written law reports for The Times.
Format: 198 x 129mm pbk Price: £7.99 256pp
ISBN: 9781846973109 Rights: World English Language April 2015
She lives deep in the country near Kinross with her husband and daughter, plus assorted cats, dogs, hens and bees.
Praise for Gillian Galbraith:
‘Highly readable’ Alexander McCall Smith
‘An author to watch’ Publishing News
‘[Galbraith] offers a much needed female perspective on the city and the genre’ Scottish Field
Troubled Waters An Alice Rice Mystery
A young, disabled girl is lost on a winter’s night in Leith, unable to help herself or find her way home. Someone is combing the streets, frantically searching for her. Within hours of her disappearance, a body is washed up on Beamer Rock, a tiny island in the Forth being used as part of the foundations for the new Queensferry Bridge. No sooner has Detective Inspector Alice Rice managed to discover the identity of that body than another one is washed up on the edge of the estuary, in Belhaven Bay. What is the connection between the two bodies? Has the killer any other victims in their sights and if so, can Alice solve the puzzle before another life is taken? In this novel, the sixth in the series, appearances belie reality, and truths and falsehoods gradually merge, becoming indistinguishable. Format: pbk Price: £7.99
12
ISBN: 9781846973161 Rights: World English Language September 2015
Fiction
Sara Sheridan British Bulldog
A Mirabelle Bevan Mystery British Bulldog sees Mirabelle on the trail of an RAF pilot who went missing during the war and mysteriously never came home.
SARA SHERIDAN writes fiction for adults and children. Previous recent novels include The Secret Mandarin (2009) and Secret of the Sands (2011), both published by HarperCollins. She studied English Literature at Trinity College, Dublin. Sara sits on the committee of the Society of Authors in Scotland and was Project Manager for the 26 Treasures Project in Scotland 2011. Sara is very active on Facebook and Twitter and has her own website – www.sarasheridan.co.uk. She lives in Edinburgh with her family.
Her search takes her to Paris where she discovers an espionage operation smuggling secrets out of Russia. Her investigations also uncover some unwelcome truths about her wartime lover Jack and the true nature of his intelligence work in France. This is the fourth installment in Sara Sheridan’s best-selling cosy crime noir series featuring heroine Mirabelle Bevan. ISBN: 9781846973253 Price: £16.99 Format: 234 x 156mm hbk Rights: World English Language May 2015
Praise for the series:
‘Mirabelle has a dogged tenacity to rival Poirot’ Sunday Herald
‘I was gripped from start to finish’
9781846972287 £7.99 pbk
9781846972430 £16.99 hbk
9781846972812 £16.99 hbk
9781846972652 £7.99 pbk
9781846972904 £7.99 pbk
Newbooks
‘Unfailingly stylish, undeniably smart’ Daily Record
‘Plenty of colour and action, will engage the reader from the first page to the last. Highly recommended’ Bookbag
13
Fiction
Gregory Dowling Ascension A Novel GREGORY DOWLING grew up in Bristol before studying English at Christ Church, Oxford where he obtained a First Class Degree. He moved to Venice in 1981, where he is Associate Professor of American Literature at Ca’ Foscari University of Venice. Gregory has published four novels, co-edited two anthologies of poetry, written various non-fiction books, and academic articles. He is non-fiction editor for the journal Able Muse and editor of the British section of the Italian poetry-journal Semicerchio, and writes for and regularly updates the sightseeing pages of the Time Out Guide to Venice.
This novel is set in Venice in the mideighteenth century, when the city had lost its political and financial primacy but had become Europe’s pleasure capital, famous for its gambling dens, its courtesans, its hectic carnival, its music, art and theatre – and the most highly organised secret service in Europe. The hero-narrator is Alvise Marangon, a Venetian in his early twenties who is unwillingly recruited into the Secret Service. Ascension is a witty, pacy spy thriller. Format: 198 x 129mm hbk Price: £12.99
ISBN: 9781846973130 Rights: World September 2015
Beneath Troubled Skies Poems of Scotland at War 1914–1918 Published in association with the Scottish Poetry Library Published September 2015 to coincide with the 100th anniversary of the Battle of Loos. This anthology traces the progress of Scotland’s war through poetry written by serving soldiers and those on the home front. Includes Charles Hamilton Sorley, E.A. Mackintosh, R.Watson Kerr, Joseph Lee, Charles Murray, May Wedderburn Cannan, Mary Symon. Published in association with the Scottish Poetry Library Edited by Lizzie MacGregor With a foreword by Professor Sir Hew Strachan, and chapter introductions by Yvonne McEwan, Format: 216 x 138mm pbk Price: £12.99 hbk 208pp
14
ISBN: 9781846973321 Rights: World September 2015
Fiction
Ron Butlin Magicians of Scotland
RON BUTLIN is a poet, playwright, novelist, short story writer and opera librettist whose works have been broadcast in the UK and abroad and have been translated into many languages. His volumes of poetry include the award-winning Ragtime in Unfamiliar Bars (Secker & Warburg, 1985) and Histories of Desire (Bloodaxe, 1995). His New and Selected Poems was published by Barzan in 2005. His novels include the novels The Sound of My Voice (winner of the Prix Mille Pages 2004 and Prix Lucioles 2005, both for Best Foreign Novel), Night Visits and most recently Belonging. He was appointed Edinburgh Makar in May 2008.
The Magicians of Scotland builds upon the success of The Magicians of Edinburgh (reprinted five times) and on that book’s critical acclaim. Ron Butlin is the former Edinburgh Makar and this collection seeks to celebrate and interrogate Scotland and its people at a crucial turning point in our country’s history. Just as The Magicians of Edinburgh’s themes ranged from Sir Walter Scott to the new Parliament, from Greyfriar’s Bobby to the trams, the themes of the new collection include Scotland’s past, present and future, its landscape and people, its myths and politics – from Bannockburn, Flodden to Faslane, the Loch Ness Monster, wind farms, Hutton to Higgs, Bonnie Prince Charlie to Donald Trump. It is accessible, serious and entertaining. ISBN: 9781846972911 Price: £9.99 Format: 198 x 129mm pbk Rights: World August 2015 112pp
Magic Edinburgh
9781846972362 £9.99 pbk
Praise for The Magicians of Edinburgh:
‘A lively collection of poems that will entertain, move and frequently amuse . . . this book confirms [Butlin] as one of our finest contemporary poets’ Alexander McCall Smith
‘The poetical genius of Butlin . . . Ron Butlin is the voice of Edinburgh’ FringeReview.com
‘Butlin is the best, the most productive Scottish poet of his generation’ Douglas Dunn
15
Non-Fiction
Kevin MacNeil (editor) Shore to Shore
KEVIN MACNEIL was born and raised in the Outer Hebrides of Scotland. Novelist, poet, playwright, editor, aphorist and lyricist, his books include A Method Actor’s Guide to Jekyll and Hyde, The Stornoway Way, Love and Zen in the Outer Hebrides and Be Wise, Be Otherwise. He was the editor of These Islands, We Sing.
Gaelic, now regarded as a minority language, was once spoken in almost every part of Scotland. The descendants of the Gaels are scattered far and wide across the world – a diaspora that is at once cherished and overlooked. This unique book brings vividly to life, in poetry and prose, the Gaelic experience as it was, is and might be. In exclusively commissioned poems and essays, leading Gaelic writers offer perspectives that are by turns innovative, inspiring, heartfelt and provocative. From Gaelic raps to secular psalms, love poems to aphorisms, ceilidhs to collateral damage via Western modernity, Shore to Shore memorably demonstrates editor Kevin MacNeil’s assertion that inside every culture is to be found the whole human condition.
ISBN: 9781846973178 Price: £9.99 Format: 198 x 156mm pbk Rights: World March 2015 120pp
Michael Pedersen and Kevin Williamson MICHAEL PEDERSEN is a poet, playwright and animateur with an electric reputation on the performance circuit and a prolific precedent of collaborations, having teamed up with some of the UK’s top musicians, filmmakers and artists. He is widely published in magazines, journals, anthologies and e-zines, and a key creative within Dream Tower Productions. He’s also the lyricist for cult band Jesus, Baby! and has written short plays for various troupes including the National Theatre of Scotland. KEVIN WILLIAMSON is a writer, publisher, and activist, originally from Caithness. He is a Scottish socialist and republican and was an activist for the Scottish Socialist Party (SSP). He was also the architect of their radical drug policy, which included the legalisation of cannabis and the provision under the National Health Service of free synthetic heroin to addicts under medical supervision to combat the problems of drugs in working class communities. He wrote a regular weekly column, Rebel Ink, for the Scottish Socialist Voice. He is co-founder of Neu! Reekie!
16
Neu! Reekie! #Untitled One
A poetry anthology boasting some of the UK’s most exciting voices who have all shared the Neu! Reekie! bil. Many of the works are new, many are favourites read at the events; all are savoured, sublime, sumptuous voices within poetry already – with the exception of Aidan Moffat of Arab Strap and Scott Hutchison of Frightened Rabbit – who are ferocious forces within music and beyond. Contributors include: Irvine Welsh, Douglas Dunn, Liz Lochhead, Ron Butlin and Tom Leonard; as well as younger blood such as: Jenni Fagan, Hollie McNish and William Letford. Accompanying the book is a 20 track compilation album, artists include: Jesus, Baby; Emelle; The Merrylees; Stanley Odd; TeenCanteen and Young Fathers. Format: 234 x 156mm pbk Price: £12.99 112pp
ISBN: 9781846973345 Rights: World May 2015
Non-Fiction
Malachy Tallack Sixty Degrees North Sixty Degrees North is a deeply personal book which begins with the author’s loss of his father, and his troubled relationship. It is also a book of travel and culture, of history and natural history. Most of all, though, it is a book about home. MALACHY TALLACK is a young writer and musician who has recently been awarded a New Writers Award by the Scottish Book Trust and an Artist’s Bursary by Creative Scotland. He is currently being mentored by John Burnside. He has worked as a reporter on the Shetland Times and his writing has appeared in the Guardian, the New Statesman and the Scottish Review of Books, and in magazines such as Irish Pages, PN Review, Waterlog and Earthlines. In 2013 he launched The Island Review, an online magazine featuring writing and visual arts from islands all over the world.
The sixtieth parallel marks a borderland between the northern and southern worlds. It wraps itself around the lower reaches of Norway, Sweden, Finland and Greenland; it skirts the southern coast of Alaska and divides the great spaces of Russia and Canada in half. The parallel also passes through the author’s home, Shetland, at the very top of the British Isles. Sixty Degrees North begins and ends there, at home, and explores some of the places that share this latitude. In particular, it focuses on the landscapes and natural environments along the parallel, and the ways that people have interacted with those landscapes. Within the book, each location is explored through personal observations, interviews and encounters with local people, and references to historical and contemporary texts. These are woven together to create portraits of each place that are both intimate and illuminating. Format: 198 x 129mm hbk Price: £12.99 208pp
ISBN: 9781846973369 Rights: World July 2015
Jan Patience & Louise Wyllie I Knew George Wyllie 1921 – 2012 Voyage of a Lifetime I Knew George Wyllie has been co-written by his elder daughter, Louise Wyllie, and arts journalist, Jan Patience. Containing never-before-seen images and fresh insight into his influences and early life, this book seeks to answer questions about the forces which shaped Wyllie’s unique view of the world. The voyage begins with Wyllie’s Glasgow childhood; a period ‘disadvantaged by happiness’, and moves on to time spent serving in the Pacific with the Royal Navy during WW2, when he witnessed first-hand the devastation caused by an atomic bomb being dropped on Hiroshima. After the war, like Robert Burns and Adam Smith before him, Wyllie became an Excisemen.
ISBN: 9781846973062 September 2015
He made ‘time for art’ in his 40s, going on to create memorable public art works such as a life-sized Straw Locomotive, which hung from the Finnieston Crane in Glasgow, and a giant sea-worthy Paper Boat, with the letters QM (Question Mark) on her side. By the time of his death at the age of 90 in 2012, Wyllie had laid out his vision of himself as the artist-Shaman, arrow in hand, making a last Cosmic Voyage. I Knew George Wyllie animates the life and times of George Wyllie, creating a vivid portrait of an artist who came into his own in later life.
17
New Editions
Hugh MacDiarmid A Drunk Man Looks at the Thistle Edited by Kenneth Buthlay NEW EDITION HUGH MACDIARMID was born Christopher Murray Grieve in 1892 in the Scottish Borders. He started out as a journalist, working in Scotland and Wales before joining the Royal Army Medical Corps on the outbreak of the First World War. MacDiarmid was an ardent believer in socialism, later communism, and he was a founding member of the Scottish National Party in 1928. A Drunk Man Looks at the Thistle was MacDiarmid’s second poetry collection, published in 1926. He died in 1978.
18
Hugh MacDiarmid’s masterpiece in Scots, A Drunk Man Looks at the Thistle, is a richly rewarding work encompassing fine lyrics, hard-hitting satires of contemporary Scotland and displays of metaphysical wit. The stream of consciousness of the ‘drunk man’ of the poem twists and turns as he reflects on the fate of the nation, the human condition in general and his own personal fears. Kenneth Buthlay’s thoroughly annotated and glossed edition of MacDiarmid’s work is widely considered to be definitive, guiding the reader through the poem’s often dense allusions and complex language.
ISBN: 9781846970269 Price: £12.99 Format: 198 x 129mm pbk Rights: World February 2015 264pp
Zoë Howe
James Adair
New Editions Rowing After the White Whale A Crossing of the Indian Ocean by Hand JAMES ADAIR read Modern History at the University of St Andrews. He worked for two years as the editor of the Alderney Journal, perhaps the world’s smallest paid-for newspaper, wrote a column in the Guernsey Press and wrote freelance articles for The Times’ Books and News sections. To finance his dream of rowing an ocean he took a job as a shipbroker with HSBC in London. In the aftermath of his and Ben’s incredible journey, he has returned to shipbrokerage and is currently based in Ghana.
PAPERBACK EDITION ‘Always do sober what you said you’d do drunk. That will teach you to keep your mouth shut’ – Ernest Hemingway Over a boozy Sunday lunch, flatmates James Adair and Ben Stenning made a promise to row across the ocean. At first they considered the Pacific, then the Atlantic, but once James Cracknell and Ben Fogle completed the high-profile Atlantic Rowing Race, their thoughts turned to the Indian Ocean, longer and tougher than the Atlantic and having seen fewer people row across its waters than have walked on the Moon. After years of planning and fund raising, they are ready to launch in Spring 2011. Neither James nor Ben had any rowing or sailing experience. To add to this, James had contracted Guillain-Barre syndrome at the age of 14, which had locked his body into total paralysis for three months (while his mind had remained completely active) and which had left him with paralysed feet. This was a challenge that neither man should have ever considered . . .
ISBN: 9781846973277 Price: £8.99 Format: 198 x 129mm pbk Rights: World March 2015 272pp
Barbed Wire Kisses
The Jesus and Mary Chain Story NEW EDITION ZOË HOWE is a music author whose other books include the acclaimed Typical Girls? The Story of the Slits; ‘How’s Your Dad?’ Living in the Shadow of a Rock Star Parent, British Beat Explosion – Rock n’ Roll Island and Dr Feelgood guitarist Wilko Johnson’s memoir Looking Back At Me, published by Cadiz Music in 2012. Her writing has also appeared in The Quietus, Company, Notion, BBC Music, Holy Moly, Classic Rock and NME. Zoë has also made music radio series for stations including the award-winning Resonance FM, and she can be heard talking about rock n’ roll from time to time on BBC 6 Music, Absolute Radio, Planet Rock, BBC London and elsewhere.
Musically, culturally and in terms of sheer attitude, The Jesus and Mary Chain stand alone. Their seminal debut album Psychocandy would change the course of popular music, and their iconic blend of psychotic white noise, darkly surreal lyrics and pop sensibility continues to enchant and confound. This is the fierce, frank and often funny tale of The Jesus and Mary Chain, told by the band members themselves, as well as their associates for the first time. The story begins in the faceless new town of East Kilbride, near Glasgow, at the dawn of the 1980s with two chronically shy brothers, Jim and William Reid, listening to music in their shared bedroom. What follows charts the formation of The Jesus and Mary Chain, their incendiary live performances, their relationship with Alan McGee’s Creation Records and those famous fraternal tensions that prepared McGee for the onslaught of the Gallaghers, with plenty of feedback, fighting and, most importantly, perfectly crafted pop along the way. It is time this vastly influential group and sometime ‘public enemy’ had their say.
ISBN: 9781846973314 Price: £9.99 Format: 198 x 129mm pbk Rights: UK & Commonwealth April 2015 304pp
19