THE BEST OF SCOTTISH BOOKS

Rock Lighthouses of Britain & Ireland is a new edition of the classic work on the subject – but with some of the most famous Irish rock lighthouses included. The text has been updated to include the modern technology being used by the lighthouse authorities, as well as all the historical advances made over the centuries at British and Irish rock lights, complemented by scores of new and many stunning photographs. Also included are historic plans and drawings, many of them highly colourful and artistic, as used by the original lighthouse builders. At the end are comprehensive and detailed tables about the rock lighthouses maintained by all three lighthouse authorities.Building on the acclaim received for the earlier editions, it brings the history of these iconic structures completely up-to-date, from the day the first granite block was laid, through their construction, automation, the disappearance of the lighthouse keeper, right up to today’s automated operation.Here are some of the world’s most famous rock lighthouses. There are stories of men battling against Nature’s most powerful forces to build a structure designed to save lives on a seemingly impossible site. Rock Lighthouses of Britain & Ireland spans the centuries between the world’s first rock lighthouse on the Eddystone reef, to the very last rock lighthouse, constructed in the traditional style, on Ireland’s Fastnet Rock and accordingly will remain the premier book about rock lighthouses.

From the author of the bestselling D.C.I. Daley series comes a thrilling new tall tale from Kinloch.It’s December 1968. Having cheated Sandy Hoynes out of a rowing race and navigation certificate when they were young, Dreich MacCallum makes an unexpected return to Kinloch.With the Girl Maggie up on the slip awaiting urgent repairs, Hoynes takes to his bed, the memory of it all too much. When first mate Hamish persuades his skipper to get up and put the fishing boat back into the water, there are unexpected consequences that put Hoynes’ liberty and reputation at risk.Has Dreich won the day again?But the spirits of the past have yet to have their say. Upon whom will the winter sun set?

Collecting Superman and the Authority #1-2.

The Last Woman Born on the Island is an exploration of the past and the present, and a celebration of the landscapes, bothphysical and emotional, that make up our lives. What are the colours of the language or languages we speak, and how dothey infl uence the ways we live?Much of this collection is set in the author’s homeland of Scotland. Some poems contemplate the history and traditions of theHighlands and Islands – from the HMS Iolaire disaster off Lewis in 1919 to the knitting of Eriskay ganseys, from the legend of the White Cow at Callanish stone circle to herring girls at the start of the twentieth century. Others consider Scottish languages and parlances, the country’s wildest and most beautiful landscapes, and the effects of tourism on the culture of the Hebrides.Is there is a diff erence between something lost and something merely forgotten? How do we fi nd what we don’t know we everhad? And what is belonging to a place, let alone to two places? In one long poem, the author stands between her home countryand her adopted country of France, letting her feet talk us through the places they have been. Who is the last woman andwhere is the island?

WUNDS THAT BLAW SAE ROCH: 50 Years o Lallans ProseSince it first kythit in 1972 The Scots Leid Associe/The Scots Language Society has ettled tae publish a fowth o screivins by the maist byordinair makars and screivers o Scots in the pages o its bi-annual magazine, Lallans. Lallans is a ferlie in itsel, haen survived and fordered tae rax tae its 100th issue in 2022.Whiles poetry in Scots has aften been tae the fore, the first editor o Lallans, JK Annand, recognised that prose in Scots needit a heeze by prentin mair fiction, owersettin, drama, reviews and non-fiction airticles on ilka subjeck.Wunds That Blaw Sae Roch is an ingaitheran o some o the best walins by the furthmaist prose authors in the Scots leid ower this hauf century o mensefou chynge in Scottish life, politics and cultur. It sterts wi the makars at the hinder-end o Scottish Leiterary Renaissance and taks the reader up intil the here and nou and the new generation o screivers, the bairns o the Scottish Parliement.Wunds That Blaw Sae Roch is pruif that Scots is no a deean language. Alang wi Sangs That Sing Sae Sweit (The Scots poetry anthology that is published sib wi it) it is steekit wi tentfou, thochtie and brawsome celebrations o our kintrae, our landscape, fowk, sangs, leir and history. While it celebrates the cairrying stream o bonnie screivers, some wha hae passed on, it bides relevant and luiks faurrit tae the hecht and hairst o the future.Wunds That Blaw Sae Roch tells us that the Scots leid is whaur it aye has been – the ongaun and virrfou vyce o the fowk.

Despite efforts to create a safe environment to see out the pandemic, the residents of the Last Ditch Motel face more dangers than they imagined possible in this hilarious yet claustrophobic mystery.March 2020 and Operation Cocker is a go! The owners of the Last Ditch Motel, with a little help from their friend Lexy Campbell, are preparing to support one another through the oncoming lockdown, offering the motel’s spare rooms to a select few from the local area in need of sanctuary.While the newbies are settling in, an ambiguous banner appears demanding one of them return home. But who is it for? Lexy and her friends put a plan into action to ward off the perpetrator, but the very next night, a resident disappears and a message scrawled in human blood is found.As California shuts down, the Last Ditchers make another gruesome discovery. They tried to create a haven but now it seems as if everyone’s in danger. Is the motel under attack from someone on the outside? Scary as that is, the alternative is worse by far.

This is a mighty book of Norths: northern geographies, histories, lights; a place of definition, frost and cold. There is an unfaltering Recusant spirit about these poems, a survival through defeat and a sense of underlying permanences.Each poem has an occasion: some of the occasions are personal meetings, conversations, which unlock shared scenes and themes; some are historical in origin, their past often one of early Christian faith or religious conflict. The poems abound in art, in specific lived detail, particulars of landscape, and in a harsh weather which is not unlike time itself in its effect on the living and aging imagination. Each poem requires a different metre, a different pace; each form is carefully attuned to its occasion.Peter Davidson was born in Scotland in 1957 and educated there and at the Universities of Cambridge and York. He is Senior Research Fellow of Campion Hall, Oxford, and Fellow-Curator of the Hall’s art collection. As well as academic works he has published several works of literary nonfiction. This is his second collection for Carcanet.

Loki, ever the shapeshifter, has never been more adaptable across pop culture. By exploring contemporary variations of Loki, from Norse god to anti-hero trickster, we can better understand the power of myth, queer theory, fandom, ritual, pop culture itself and more.

Loki, ever the shapeshifter, has never been more adaptable across pop culture. By exploring contemporary variations of Loki, from Norse god to anti-hero trickster, we can better understand the power of myth, queer theory, fandom, ritual, pop culture itself and more.

Murder Squad, a group of award-winning crime and mystery writers, celebrate their twenty-first birthday with a bang in this criminally good collection of short stories.A dawn swim turns deadly in a brand-new short story starring DCI Vera Stanhope . . . Two bored cell-mates play a game with chilling results . . . A hen night in an isolated cottage brings new meaning to ‘I will survive’ . . . A train traveller teaches a valuable lesson in reading labels . . . A day at the seaside turns stormy for a woman who doesn’t care for foreigners . . . A wealthy retiree makes a new friend who connects her to the Other Side . . . and much much more.Short, sharp and packed with twists, these 21 unputdownable tales showcase Murder Squad’s range and talent throughout the years. So why not treat yourself to a slice of murderously moreish fiction, and join us in wishing the squad ‘Many Deadly Returns’.With stories by Ann Cleeves, Martin Edwards, Kate Ellis, Margaret Murphy, Chris Simms and Cath Staincliffe, as well as John Baker, Chaz Brenchley and Stuart Pawson.

Brought to you by Penguin.Robert Louis Stevenson’s Kidnapped is at once a rollicking adventure story and an earnest political allegory. This Penguin Classics edition is edited with an introduction and notes by Donald McFarlan and a foreword by Alasdair Gray.Orphaned and penniless, David Balfour sets out to find his last living relative, miserly and reclusive Uncle Ebenezer. But Ebenezer is far from welcoming, and David narrowly escapes being murdered before he is kidnapped and imprisoned on a ship bound for the Carolinas. When the ship is wrecked, David, along with the fiery rebel Alan Breck, makes his way back across the treacherous Highland terrain on a quest for justice. Through his powerful depiction of the two very different central characters – the romantic Breck and the rational Whig David – Stevenson dramatized a conflict at the heart of Scottish culture in the aftermath of the Jacobite rebellion, as well as creating an unforgettable adventure story.This new edition includes a foreword by Alasdair Gray discussing Stevenson’s life and literary career and how he came to write Kidnapped. In his introduction, Donald McFarlan considers the novel’s realism and a depiction of Scotland. This volume also includes a historical note, a map, notes, new further reading and a glossary.Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894) was born in Edinburgh, the son of a prosperous civil engineer. Although he began his career as an essayist and travel writer, the success of Treasure Island (1883) and Kidnapped (1886) established his reputation as a writer of tales of action and adventure. Stevenson’s Calvinist upbringing lent him a preoccupation with predestination and a fascination with the presence of evil, themes he explored in The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1886), and The Master of Ballantrae (1893).(c) Penguin Classics 1994 (P) Penguin Audio 2022

Sangs That Sing Sae Sweit – 50 Years o Lallans PoesieSince it first kythit in 1972 The Scots Leid Associe/The Scots Language Society has ettled tae publish a fowth o screivins by the maist byordinair makars and screivers o Scots in the pages o its bi-annual magazine, Lallans. Lallans is a ferlie in itsel, haen survived and fordered tae rax tae its 100th issue in 2022.Sangs That Sing Sae Sweit is an ingaitheran o some o the best wark by the heidmaist authors tae screive poetry in the Scots leid ower this hauf century o mensefou chynge in Scottish life, politics and cultur. It sterts wi the makars at the hinder-end o Scottish Leiterary Renaissance and taks the reader up intil the here and nou and the new generation o screivers, the bairns o the Scottish Parliement.Sangs That Sing Sae Sweit is pruif that Scots is no a deean language. Alang wi Wunds That Blaw Sae Roch (The Scots prose anthology that is published sib wi it) it is steekit wi tentfou, thochtie and brawsome celebrations o our kintrae, our landscape, fowk, sangs, leir and history. While it celebrates the cairrying stream o bonnie screivers, some wha hae passed on, it bides relevant and luiks faurrit tae the hecht and hairst o the future.Sangs That Sing Sae Sweit tells us that the Scots leid is whaur it aye has been – the ongaun and virrfou vyce o the fowk.

When Sherlock Holmes receives a bungled tip-off from one of the agents of his nemesis, Professor Moriarty, the great detective hopes to avoid a murderous crime and bring the would-be assassin to justice. But on being informed soon afterwards that one John Douglas of Birlstone Manor has been found with his head blown apart by a shotgun, he realizes that he is too late. And so begins an enthralling tale of revenge, vigilantism and secret societies, one that transports the reader from the English countryside to the violent world of the American frontier of the 1860s.The fourth and final novel in the Sherlock Holmes canon, originally published in the Strand magazine between September 1914 and May 1915, The Valley of Fear is a riveting whodunit that showcases all of the classic elements that have ensured the enduring popularity of the stories featuring Conan Doyle’s most famous creation.

‘As in a good novel, the people, their feelings and reactions are instantly recognisable and as fresh and immediate today as they were then’ GUARDIAN’She writes vividly and movingly’ DAILY TELEGRAPH26th September 1939. I am beginning to wonder whether the point of a place like this may be that it will keep alive certain ideas of freedom which might easily be destroyed in the course of this totalitarian war…Born in Edinburgh, Naomi Mitchison spent most of the Second World War in the fishing village of Carradale on Kintyre, her home until her death aged 101. Her life was crowded with incident, and her attitudes to events predictably forceful, original and honest.Throughout the war she kept a diary at the request of the research organisation Mass Observation, in which she recorded both the momentous events of the time, and also how one (albeit extraordinary) family and their friends lived, what they hoped for and what actually happened. Her diaries developed far beyond the confines of a social document.Written with the passion of a poet combined with the intellectual curiosity of a radial thinker, they provide a unique and valuable document of the period.

Brian Holton is unique in that he can translate directly into Scots from the Chinese. This anthology consists of translations into Scots and English of the first sixty poems of the standard anthology Song Ci Sanbaishou(“300 Song Dynasty Song Lyrics”), edited by Zhu Zumou (1924), with a Translator’s Afterword/Owresetter’s Eftirword.In China, the “300 Song Ci” is the standard anthology for high school and undergraduate students. This book introduces Scots (and English) speakers to one of the major genres of Chinese lyric verse. This genre appeared in the ninth century, during the late Tang Dynasty, but is generally considered to have reached its full flowering in the following Song Dynasty (960-1279CE).Among the most elegant and beautiful texts written in any language, these lyrics are of particular interest in that they demonstrate the multum in parvo (less is mair) principle: like Chinese calligraphy or landscape painting, great and subtle effects result from a high artfulness that looks artless. The two main schools of Song Ci are the heroic (haofang) and the delicately restrained (wanyue). They are also technically interesting, each being written to the irregular metrical structure of one of a selection of 800-odd models, each of which was derived from an existing song form, often from Central Asia. The authors include masters such as Fan Zhongyan (989-1052), Ouyang Xiu (1007-1072), Liu Yong (987-1053), and Yan Jidao (1031-1106), as well as lesser-known writers.

As an archaeologist, Steven Mithen has worked on the Hebridean island of Islay over a period of many years. In this book he introduces the sites and monuments and tells the story of the island’s people from the earliest stone age hunter-gatherers to those who lived in townships and in the grandeur of Islay House. He visits the tombs of Neolithic farmers, forts of Iron Age chiefs and castles of medieval warlords, discovers where Bronze Age gold was found, treacherous plots were made against the Scottish crown, and explores the island of today, which was forged more recently by those who mined for lead, grew flax, fished for herring and distilled whisky – the industry for which the island is best known today.Although an island history, this is far from an insular story: Islay has always been at a cultural crossroads, receiving a constant influx of new people and new ideas, making it a microcosm for the story of Scotland, Britain and beyond.

This book traces the Clann Meic-bethad or Clan MacBeth whose members practised medicine in the classic Gaelic tradition in various parts of Scotland from the early fourteenth to the early eighteenth century. From many medieval Gaelic manuscripts known to have been in their possession, individual members of the clan and their activities are identified. Sometime in the second half of the sixteenth century the kindred began to adopt Beaton as a surname for use in non-Gaelic contexts.The medical Beatons fell naturally into two divisions: one confined mainly to the Western Isles and the other to the mainland of Scotland. This detailed study of the Beatons and their medicine describes how the position of medical doctor was inherited by the eldest son, and potential Beaton physicians were sent out to be trained by other members of the family for several years before undertaking their own practice. The book provides information on medieval medicine at the highest levels of Highland society.

From the time of the Picts to the present day, Scotland has played an important role in the development of British brewing, providing a host of inventions and other contributions vital to its success.Covering such topics as Scotch Ale, Porter, Shilling Ales and the influential waters of Edinburgh and Alloa, The Little History of Scottish Brewing will intrigue both the aficionado and the interested enthusiast.

For years, Diana of Paradise Island yearned to leave the only home she knew behind for adventures that laid beyond its shores. Now, after a fateful meeting with Air Force pilot Steve Trevor, the Amazon Warrior finds herself in Man’s World. And she is ready for anything that it may throw at her. But is the world ready for Wonder Woman? An American government, fraught with dissension and conflicts foreign to Diana, has deemed her a danger to society. How will Wonder Woman carry out her mission of peace and love in a world that can’t get out of its own way? That is, unless there are more insidious forces at play… And once Diana, becomes queen of the Amazons, she’ll be faced with challenges like never before! Diana must assemble the disparate Amazonian tribes for the first time in a millennium. Max Lord’s assault on Paradise Island with his destructive A.R.E.S. armors is on the horizon, and to weather the war that is coming, Wonder Woman will need the full might of her sisters by her side! Can Diana finally bring her message of peace to Man’s World, or will Max Lord’s war burn the world and the Amazons to ashes? Continuing the tradition of the critically acclaimed Earth One tales that challenge the status quo of the comics industry, Wonder Woman: Earth One Complete Collection is Grant Morrison and Yanick Paquette’s complete collection of this visionary and enterprising graphic novel series.

Sisters Fatemeh and Shirin have been living together, in the same flat in Edinburgh, for 43 years. In this flat they cook, read their coffee grains, listen to the radio, and try to remember their childhoods in Tehran but they no longer talk to one another. When a global pandemic hits and the sisters are locked in their flat, they are forced to reckon with their memories of a betrayal that changed the course of their relationship.