THE BEST OF SCOTTISH BOOKS

The infamous ‘Beeching Axe’ swept away virtually every Scottish branch line in the 1960s. Conventional wisdom viewed these losses as regrettable yet inevitable in an era of growing affluence and rising car ownership. This ground-breaking analysis of Beeching’s flawed approach to closures has unearthed strong evidence of a ‘stitch-up’ – the Beeching Report ignored the scope for sensible economies which would have allowed a significant number of axed routes to survive and prosper.

David Spaven traces the birth, life and eventual death of Scotland’s branch lines, and outlines the controversial closure process through the unique stories of how a dozen routes lost their trains in the 1960s: the lines to Ballachulish, Ballater, Callander, Crail, Crieff, Fraserburgh, Kelso, Kilmacolm, Leven, Peebles, Peterhead and St Andrews.He concludes by exploring a potential renaissance of branch lines, propelled by concerns over road congestion and the climate emergency.

Features rarely seen photographic material including 96 photographs and maps.

In her long-awaited debut memoir, award-winning poet Maggie Smith explores in lyrical vignettes the end of her marriage and the beginning of a surprising new life. It is a story about a mother’s fierce and constant love for her children, and a woman’s love and regard for herself.

Above all, this memoir is an argument for possibility. Smith reveals how, in the aftermath of loss, we can discover our power and make something new. Something beautiful.

Following the death of her best friend, Erin has to get out of London. Returning home to Belfast, an au pair job provides some refuge from her grief and her relentless mother. She spends her spare daytime sitting in quiet churches and her free nights at the bar where her childhood friend Declan works.

Erin is grateful for the distraction offered by, first, a good-looking American academic, and then the reappearance in her life of an old flame. They offer delightful diversions. But Erin must eventually confront herself.

An organisation that doesn’t exist.

A spy that can’t be caught.

Years ago, a spy was born-

1989: The Cold War will soon be over, but for BOX 88, a top secret spying agency, the espionage game is heating up. Lachlan Kite, recruited from an elite boarding school, is sent to France, tasked with gathering intelligence on an enigmatic Iranian businessman implicated in the Lockerbie bombing. But what Kite uncovers is more terrifying than anyone expected-

Now he faces the deadliest decision of his life-

2020: MI5 hear rumours of BOX 88’s existence and go after Kite – but Iranian intelligence have got to him first. Taken captive and brutally tortured, Kite has a choice: reveal the truth about what happened in France thirty years earlier – or watch his family die.

In a battle unlike anything he has faced before, Kite must use all his skills to stay alive.

‘A spy for the 21st century’ -Daily Mail, Books of the Year

‘Wonderfully taut, exciting and up-to-date’ – Spectator, Books of the Year

‘An ambitious fusion of coming-of-age novel and gripping espionage thriller’ – Financial Times, Books of the Year

‘BOX 88 is so good. Charles Cumming is up there with the very best espionage writers’ – Ian Rankin

‘A wonderful spy novel; Charles Cumming’s most ambitious – and his best – yet’ – Mick Herron

‘Charles Cumming has breathed new life into the spy novel’ – Ben Macintyre

‘Atmospheric and full of sharply realised characters’ – Sunday Times

‘A clever thriller’ – Sun

‘Intelligence, grace, and stunning verisimilitude’ – Gregg Hurwitz

‘An engaging hero’ – James Swallow

‘All the hallmarks of the finest spy thriller’ – Charlotte Philby

‘Sharp-eyed and satisfying’ – Henry Porter

‘A great new spy hero is born’ -Amanda Craig

‘Ideal for anyone nostalgic for their first love and the whiff of Marlboro Lights’ – The Times

A beloved classic adult novel skilfully abridged to inspire and engage a new generation of middle-grade readers, from a multi-award-winning author.

Young orphan Pip, downtrodden and mistreated by his guardian sister, has a terrifying meeting with an escaped convict. Soon afterwards he is invited to play at the gloomy, cobwebbed house of unhappy Miss Havisham, where he is humiliated by her beautiful ward, Estella. Pip falls in love with the girl, despite her disdain for his ignorance and rough appearance, and begins his apprenticeship to his blacksmith brother-in-law feeling ashamed of his lowly home.

Then Pip is told he is to be brought up as a wealthy gentleman, and he delightedly assumes his secret benefactor to be Miss Havisham, planning him as a match him for Estella. When he discovers this is not the case, his heart is broken and his loyalties torn.

What is the connection between Miss Havisham and the mysterious convict? And will Pip ever win Estella’s heart?

A WATERSTONES BEST BOOK OF 2023: BIOGRAPHY

This Ragged Grace tells the story of Octavia’s journey through recovery from alcohol addiction, and the parallel story of her father’s descent into Alzheimer’s. Over the course of seven years life continues to unfold. Paths are abandoned, people fall ill, waters get choppy, seemingly impossible things are navigated without the old fixes.

As Octavia moves between London, Stromboli, New York, Cornwall and Margate, each place offers something new but ultimately always delivers the same message: that wherever you go, you take yourself with you.

Tides around the British Coast, Ireland and the North Sea.

This new expanded edition has been completely revised using the most up to date information available.

The updated charts show how the tides are running at any hour around the British Isles and the North Sea. It is essential for safe navigation that great care be taken at all times to be aware of and allow for the effects of tidal streams on the performance of a vessel.

This book has been compiled to assist in this matter and its value will he properly accounted for if its content is applied in relation to the navigation and safety of a vessel. There are over 70 larger scale diagrams of tidal streams in the North Channel, Sound of Jura, Pentland Firth, The Humber Approaches and the Bristol Channel.

The second book in Charles Cumming’s gripping new thriller series surrounding BOX 88 – a covert intelligence organization that operates below the radar.

A spy in one of the most dangerous places on Earth-

1993: Student Lachlan Kite is sent to post-Soviet Russia in the guise of a language teacher. In reality, he is there as a spy. Top secret intelligence agency BOX 88 has ordered Kite to extract a chemical weapons scientist before his groundbreaking research falls into the wrong hands. But Kite’s mission soon goes wrong and he is left stranded in a hostile city with a former KGB officer on his trail.

An old enemy looking for revenge-

2020: Now the director of BOX 88 operations in the UK, Kite discovers he has been placed on the JUDAS list – a record of enemies of Russia who have been targeted for assassination. Kite’s fight for survival takes him to Dubai, where he must confront the Russian secret state head on-

Who will come out on top in this deadly game of cat and mouse?

‘Judas 62 has all you could want from a tense, topical and intelligent spy thriller’ – The Times Books of the Year

Trapped within the oppresive warrens of the city’s chimneys, young sweeper Tom longs for fresh air and freedom in this atmospheric and ghostly tale from Lucy Strange.

Young chimney sweep Tom has started seeing strange, supernatural things – fairies in the flowers by the river, a soot monster crouching in the darkness of a chimney, and then the mysterious river spirit Elle. Elle joins Tom and the other children apprenticed to cruel master sweep Mister Crow. Together, they shimmy up the town’s narrow, filthy chimneys. But Tom has an ominous feeling in his bones, and when he faces his most dangerous job of all, the reason for Elle’s magical appearance becomes clear . . .

A SCOTSMAN BOOK OF THE YEAREDINBURGH, 1853.

In a city of science, discovery can be deadly . . .

Body parts have been found at Surgeons’ Hall, and they’re not anatomy specimens. Dr Will Raven is able to identify a prime suspect, but the individual he seeks happens to be an accomplished actor, a man of a thousand faces and a renowned master of disguise.

Meanwhile, mesmerism, spiritualism and other unexplained phenomena are taking hold of hearts and minds. Frustrated in her own medical ambitions, Sarah Fisher sees opportunity in a new therapeutic field not already closed off to women. With the lines between science and spectacle dangerously blurred, the stage is set for a grand and deadly illusion . . .

Them! by Harry Josephine Giles is a challenging and subversive collection of poems about trans life as it is lived today, through the lenses of work, technology and ecology. Witty, candid, furious, and always compelling, Them! negotiates the fraught and fruitful space between the worlds of ‘online’ and the ‘outside’, and how they fuse and diverge in the imagination.

Giles’ visual poetics create an unusually dynamic reading experience as she finds new ways ‘to sing, shout and strike in the cracks of what’s possible’. At a time when trans rights are to the fore in public discourse, Them! is a zestful poetic intervention from one of this generation’s most necessary poets.

Tommo has just started at a new school – a training ground for the Scottish elite – when his friend Johnnie’s brother is found dead in a Land Rover on a Highland farm. There’s a shotgun at his feet. Nobody seems clear about what has happened, least of all Tommo.

A child of the middle class, and with new independence thrust upon him, Tommo finds himself invited into fading crumbling houses. It’s the early nineties and this elite is struggling for relevance. Alienated from the mainstream, and running low on inherited wealth, his peers have retreated into snobbery and fatalism. Half-remembered traditions mix with decadence and an awful lot of small dead animals. And sometimes, not just animals.

Awed by their poise and seduced by their hedonism, Tommo gradually becomes aware of sinister currents beneath the surface and a suppressed rage that threatens to explode into violence.

Alfie Parker has bagged the hottest date to prom – hasn’t he? Bestselling LGBTQ+ writer Simon James Green makes his Barrington Stoke debut with a life-affirming teen romance.

Harvey is popular, cool, plays football and has been in a relationship with his girlfriend Summer for as long as anyone can remember. Alfie is not popular, not cool, has a sick note so he doesn’t have to play any sport, and has been in a relationship with his Xbox since forever. So when Summer dramatically dumps Harvey just a few days before the school prom, no one is expecting Alfie to ask Harvey to be his date. Least of all Alfie. But sometimes amazing things can happen when you take a chance.

This book aims to present the fundamentals of meteorology and highlight those aspects of particular interest to all seafarers. It does not aim to provide a simple explanation, as this is regularly and professionally done by radio, television and the more elementary text books, nor does it delve into the highly complex explanations provided by research papers.

Meteorology for Seafarers is therefore a technical book which aims to explain the complexities of the atmosphere and provide the information needed by professional seafarers aspiring to first class certificates of competency and to students studying for degrees.

In this sixth edition, the opportunity has been taken to incorporate recent examples of marine forecasts and charts, and figures have been modified.

Merging of major operators continues to produce economies of scale but to maintain market share each operator needs to ensure that cargoes are carried safely and are delivered in prime condition. Thus, the principles of stowage written by Captain R.E. Thomas nearly 100 years ago are still as relevant today as they were then in ensuring a satisfactory outturn. Thomas’ Stowage has always endeavoured to make that task simpler for the ship’s officer and, in recent years, the terminal manager and container packer.

As with previous editions of Stowage, revisions will be found in all parts of the book. Part 2 has revised and / or expanded sections while Parts 3A and 3B contain both new commodities and revisions of others. Similarly, there are additions to Appendix 5 (Solid Bulk Cargoes Which May Liquefy or Have Hazardous Properties) and Appendix 8 (A Glossary of Cargo Handling and Shipping Terms).

The value of Thomas’ Stowage continues to lie in being able to draw on the wisdom and experience of colleagues, experts, contacts, organisations and friends to ensure that the information contained in the book reflects current knowledge and good practice.

For Mariners-

A seaman always knows his latitude- is an ancient proverb which emphasises the importance attached to knowledge of the ship’s latitude. Hansen’s Ex-Meridian Tables, first published in 1919, have for over a century proven to be essential for mariners to calculate their position on Earth.

The method of finding the latitude of a ship at sea from an observation of the sun is still practised – even as it became obsolete as technology improved. Historically the only time the ship accurately knew its position in the open ocean was at noon every day, and at other times based on dead reckoning.

To get an accurate latitude this way mariners will measure either the peak upper or lower transit on their sextant. However, if this isn’t possible – either the sun is obscured, or at twilight, you might realise the star or planet you’ve been following is already going back up – the mariner will still be able to get a near miss.

Hansen’s Ex-Meridian Tables are used when a near miss occurs and allows the mariner to still calculate their latitude.

Part biography, part forensic jigsaw puzzle, part cold-case detective investigation, The Eagle in the Mirror is the story of Charles Howard ‘Dick’ Ellis. The longest-serving spy for the British Secret Intelligence Service (MI6), Ellis helped set up the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), now known as the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), and the Australian Secret Intelligence Service (ASIS). In the 1940s he was considered one of the top three secret agents in MI6 and controlled its activities, as one journalist put it, ‘for half the world’.

But in the 1980s crusading espionage journalist Chapman Pincher (in the hugely successful books Their Trade is Treachery and Too Secret Too Long) and retired MI5 intelligence officer Peter Wright (in the worldwide bestseller Spycatcher) posthumously accused Ellis of having operated as a ‘triple agent’ for Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union. In 1965, while under interrogation in London, Ellis had allegedly made a confession that he had supplied information to the Nazis before World War II. However, Pincher’s and Wright’s accusations against Ellis have never been comprehensively proven. No confession has materialised.

Was Ellis guilty or was an innocent man framed? By confessing did he take the fall for someone else? Or had the intelligence agencies of the United States, the United Kingdom and Australia been fatally compromised by a ‘super mole’? Internationally bestselling author JESSE FINK (Pure Narco, Bon: The Last Highway, The Youngs) attempts to find out the truth once and for all.

The Eagle in the Mirror is not just a long-overdue biography of the unheralded Dick Ellis; it’s a gripping real-life international whodunit.

Richard Hannay Returns.

JULY, 1942.

Once again veteran adventurer Richard Hannay is called into action on a mission that will test him as never before. At stake is the fate of the beleaguered island of Malta where Hannay’s son is stationed as a fighter pilot. The German master spy Ravenstein has stumbled upon a centuries old secret which will give the Nazis the key to conquering Malta and so take control of the entire Mediterranean.

To stop them, Hannay and his allies the Gorbals Diehards must track down the mysterious Karrie Adriatis, who alone knows the nature of the ancient secret. The quest takes them on a perilous journey from Gibraltar, to Casablanca, to the Atlas Mountains of Morocco, and finally on to Malta itself. Here Hannay and Ravenstein come face to face in a battle that will determine the future of the war.

The second volume of Robert Crawford’s magisterial biography of the revolutionary modernist, visionary poet and troubled man, drawing on extensive new sources.In this compelling and meticulous portrait of the twentieth century’s most important poet, Robert Crawford completes the story he began in Young Eliot. Drawing on extensive new sources and letters, this is the first full-scale biography to make use of Eliot’s most significant surviving correspondence, including the archive of letters (unsealed for the first time in 2020) detailing his decades-long love affair with Emily Hale.

This long-awaited second volume, Eliot After ‘The Waste Land’, tells the story of the mature Eliot, his years as a world-renowned writer and intellectual, and his troubled interior life.

From his time as an exhausted bank employee after the publication of The Waste Land, through the emotional turmoil of the 1920s and 1930s, and his years as a firewatcher in bombed wartime London, Crawford reveals the public and personal experiences that helped generate some of Eliot’s masterpieces.

He explores the poet’s religious conversion, his editorship at Faber and Faber, his separation from Vivien Haigh-Wood and happy second marriage to Valerie Fletcher, and his great work Four Quartets.

Robert Crawford presents this complex and remarkable man not as a literary monument but as a human being: as a husband, lover and widower, as a banker, editor, playwright and publisher, but most of all as an epoch-shaping poet struggling to make art among personal disasters.

Alistair Moffat tells the extraordinary story of the Highlands in the most detailed book ever written about this remarkable part of Scotland.

The chronicle begins millions of years ago, with the dramatic geological events that formed the awe-inspiring yet beloved landscapes, followed by the arrival of hunter gatherers and the monumental achievements of prehistoric peoples in places like Skara Brae in Orkney. The story continues with the mysterious Picts; the arrival of the Romans as they expanded the boundaries of their huge empire; the coming of Christianity and the Gaelic language from Ireland; the Viking invasion and the establishment of the great Lordship of the Isles that lasted for three hundred years.

The Highlands are perhaps best known as the key battleground in Bonnie Prince Charlie’s doomed attempt to restore the Stuart monarchy and its dreadful aftermath, which saw the suppression of the clans and the whole of Highland culture. This situation was exacerbated by the terrible Clearances of the nineteenth century which saw tens of thousands evicted from their native lands and forced to emigrate. But, after centuries of decline, the Highlands are being renewed, the land is coming alive once more, and the story ends on an upbeat note as the Highlands look forward to a future full of possibilities.

While this is an epic history of a fascinating subject, Moffat also features the stories of individuals, the telling moments and the crucial details which enrich the human story and add context and colour to the saga of Scotland.