Fifty-something librarian Shona is a proud former pupil of the Marcia Blaine School for Girls, but has a deep loathing for The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, which she thinks gives her alma mater a bad name. Impeccably educated and an accomplished martial artist, linguist and musician, Shona is selected by Marcia Blaine herself to travel back in time for a crucial mission involving Macbeth, the Weird Sisters and a black cat.Unsure which version of history she's in, Shona tries to figure out who she's here to save. But between playing the Fool and being turned into a mouse, things don't always go her way. Shona's expertise in martial arts is put to the test as family tensions rise and fingers are pointed for murder. Can Shona unravel the mystery in time to complete her mission?Never underestimate a librarian!
The first book to focus on Dorothy Wordsworths later life and work and the impact of her disability allowing her to step out from her brothers shadow and back into her own life story.Dorothy Wordsworth is well known as the author of the Alfoxden and Grasmere Journals (17981803) and as the sister of the English Romantic poet William Wordsworth. She is widely praised for her nature writing and is often remembered as a woman of great physical vitality. Less well known, however, is that Dorothy became seriously ill in 1829 and was mostly housebound for the last twenty years of her life.Her personal letters and unpublished journals from this time paint a portrait of a compassionate and creative woman who made her sickroom into a garden for herself and her pet robin and who finally grew to call herself a poet. They also reveal how vital Dorothy was to her brothers success, and the closeness they shared as siblings.By re-examining her life through the perspective of her illness, this biography allows Dorothy Wordsworth to step out from her brothers shadow and back into her own life story.
A stimulating collection of essays about our environment, nature, and wildlife by world-renowned naturalist and conservationist Roy Dennis.A new collection of vibrant essays to inform, stimulate and inspire every nature lover.Times of darkness offer opportunities to reflect. In Mistletoe Winter, Roy Dennis offers his reflections on the natural world from the past yearfrom the welcome signs of change to the ongoing problems we are posing for nature, and what humankind can and must do about them.As in his companion volume, Cottongrass Summer, Roy Dennis balances his alarm at the crisis confronting the natural world with his own sense of optimism that new generations can make crucial changes for the future. One of our most prominent advocates for our planet and its species, he writes with insight and originality. This volume will provide inspiration and ideas for everyone who cares about our planet and its species.
"e;I have decided to write down everything that happens, because I feel, I suppose, I may be putting myself in danger."e; London, 1965. An unworldly young woman believes that a charismatic psychotherapist, Collins Braithwaite, has driven her sister to suicide. Intent on confirming her suspicions, she assumes a false identity and presents herself to him as a client, recording her experiences in a series of notebooks. But she soon finds herself drawn into a world in which she can no longer be certain of anything. Even her own character. In Case Study, Graeme Macrae Burnet presents these notebooks interspersed with his own biographical research into Collins Braithwaite. The result is a dazzling - and often wickedly humorous - meditation on the nature of sanity, identity and truth itself, by one of the most inventive novelists writing today.
Approvalis a powerful meditation on judgment, the adoption process, and fatherhood, told from a perspective rarely explored in fiction: a mans response to a couples infertility.Approvalfollows would-be parents David and Cici through a series of forays into the past as they go through the motions of applying to adopt a child. Their story builds a picture of hope, vulnerability and fear as David is put under intense and intrusive scrutiny during their battle against faceless bureaucracy.From family background and early experiences to adult relationships, he is forced to revisit uncomfortable sometimes painful episodes, in the hope of meeting the authoritys requirements.Confronting a lonely, difficult and uncertain path to family life, and raising questions about how much intervention and judgement is necessary for the state to ascertain fitness to parent,Approvalultimately invites the reader to decide.
The Lake District is one of our busiest national parks. Many people believe that wildness is long gone from the fells, lakes, tarns and becks, yet, within its boundaries, Jim Crumley sets out to prove them wrong - to find "e;a new way of seeing and writing about this most seen and written about of landscapes"e;.With a naturalist's eye and a poet's instinct he is drawn to Lakeland's turned-aside places where nature still thrives, from low-lying shores to a high mountain oakwood that's not even on the map. Through backwaters and backwoods, Crumley traces this captivating land's place in the evolution of global conservation and pleads the case for a far-reaching reappraisal of all of Lakeland's wildness.
The Mahogany Pod is a deeply moving account of falling in love with someone who only has a few months to live. Through honest prose, Jill Hopper's story explores the joy and pain of loving and losing, and the beginnings that come after endings.
Imani is a foundling. Raised by nuns on a Northumbrian Island, she grows up with an increasing sense of displacement. After the death of her biological mother, Imani travels to Ghana - beginning a journey of self-discovery that illuminates the stories we all tell to make ourselves whole.
An authoritative guide to the history, landscape and lore along the scenic English train line between Settle and Carlisle, by an established travel writer and railway aficionado.Widely known as England's most picturesque line, the enduring Settle-Carlisle Railway crosses the north Pennines between Yorkshire and Cumbria, traversing stunning scenery from the Dales through the lonely and lofty fells to the limestone pavements of Westmorland, and on into the lush, green Eden Valley.The line was built by the Midland Railway company in the 1870s, to forge an independent route connecting its English network with Scotland. Uniquely for a railway in the UK, the entire infrastructure is a Conservation Area in its own rightcomprising viaducts, stations, bridges, tunnels, trackside structures and railway workers' cottages.
Femke, her mother Trijn and her grandfather have very different ideas about how to run their family farm. Tensions between mother and daughter are growing; Femke wants to switch to sustainable growing principles, whilst her mother considers this an attack on tradition. To make matters worse, their home province of Groningen is experiencing a series of earthquakes caused by a fracking operation near their farm. While the cracks and splinters in their farmhouse increase, the authorities and the state-owned gas company refuse to offer the local farming community any help.In Shocked Earth, Saskia Goldschmidt investigates what it means to have your identity intensely entwined with your place of birth and your principles at odds with your closest kin.And how to keep standing when the world as you know it is slowly falling apart.
"e;He's back, Carrie. The Scribbler is back."e;DI Gayther and his rookie colleague DC Carrie have been assigned a new caseload. Or rather, an old one... cold murder cases of LGBTQ+ victims.Georgia Carrie wasn't even born when the notorious serial killer began his reign of terror across the East of England, but Roger Gayther was on the force that failed to catch him and remembers every chilling detail.Back in the Eighties, Gayther's team hadn't been assigned sufficient resources. But now, after all these years, there's a sudden death featuring The Scribbler's tell-tale modus operandi. Gayther and Carrie have to find and bring him to justice to stop the killing once and for all.
From Great Yarmouth to Aberystwyth, Westering is a coast-to-coast journey crossing the Fens, Leicester, the Black Country and central Wales. It connects landscape, place and memory to evoke a narrative unravelling the deep topography, and following a westerly route that runs against the grain of the land, its geology, culture and historical bedrock. With the industrial Midlands sandwiched between bucolic landscapes in East Anglia and Wales, here we explore places too often overlooked. Along the way we encounter deserted medieval villages, battlefield sites, the ghosts of Roman soldiers, valleys drowned for reservoirs, ancient forests, John Clare's beloved fields, and the urban edgelands. Notions of home and belonging, landscapes of loss and absence, birds and the resilience of nature, the psychology of walking, and the psychogeography of liminal places all frame the story.
When the body of Aberdeen socialite Annabel Imray is discovered at her home, the police are under pressure to come up with answers, and fast. The last thing they want is the distraction of a series of baffling break-ins. The victims, all of them women, are terrorised: just how did the intruder know so much about them? Meanwhile, local PIs Maggie Laird and Wilma Harcus are at rock bottom, their bills mounting. As Maggie prepares to sell her home and contemplates dissolving the agency, Wilma goes off-piste to get a loan. But when the clock starts ticking on repayment, she realises the price is too high. And before long, Maggie herself is in grave danger.Wilma fears the worst. Can she find her before it's too late?
An entertaining memoir of rain, midges, petty authority figures and minor humiliations, lightened with music, booze, anarchy and an array of eccentric characters.
Everything Passes, Everything Remains takes us freewheelin' through Spain, song and memory as Chris Dolan documents his lifelong journey from Glasgow to Valencia. Along the way Dolan explores Spain's history, and future, through stories of the great writers before him and the friends around him.
This is a story of gardens and how people can grow well in them. Through a lifetime's experience of award-winning work in community gardens and in mental health care and training, Cameron shows us how tending green spaces can bring tremendous benefits to mental health.
The final instalment in the acclaimed "Seasons" series, which interrogates how climate change has disrupted the natural rhythm of the seasons. It has attracted widespread praise and prize attention; Jim's passionate stance on climate chaos and the need for rewilding chimes with an increasingly eco-aware public.
This handbook offers an inspirational resource for those who want to discover more about the thousands of miles of Scotland's spectacular coastline.
A thrilling historical novel based on the extraordinary true story of Lady Grange, who in 1732 was kidnapped on the orders of her powerful husband and exiled to a remote island beyond the Outer Hebrides.
The third in an acclaimed historical trilogy set in the Iron Age, The Stone Stories. Former slave, indomitable survivor and now matriarch Rian returns with her daughters to her Celtic homeland, navigating plundered riches, feuding warlords and a menacing curse.
A gripping, high-concept, page-turning crime debut featuring realistic digital face-recognition technology.
Scotland is a nation of dramatic weather and breathtaking landscapes. Its mountains, glens, rivers, lochs and seas are world-renowned for their beauty and their bounty. This is a lexicon of Scottish words that have been shaped by the landscape and wildlife.
Intrepid librarian Shona McMonagle, erstwhile Marcia Blaine Academy prefect, finds herself in an isolated French mountain village, where she must solve a mystery involving the mayor, the cheesemonger, the soprano Mary Garden - and even Count Dracula himself.
Anne: the boring Bronte? Or talented author, feminist, pioneer? Who, then, was the real Anne, how was her reputation destroyed, and why has she been so overlooked?
A compelling, often funny, inspirational boxing memoir charting one woman's incredible determination to achieve fitness goals in mid-life that smash all expectations of her age and gender.
Winner of the inaugural Mslexia Novella Award (2019). 1960s: A young woman arrives in 1960s Vegas, where she wants to start again and leave her past behind.
"A Superior Spectre is an ambitious and curious venture. Meyer straddles historical drama and dystopian fiction, and yet manages to cross the divide." Thuy On, Sydney Morning Herald
The story of a murder and its aftermath. On Christmas Night in 1881, John Manley, a poor son of Irish immigrants living in the slums of Leeds, was fatally stabbed in a drunken quarrel. The frightened murderer went on the run, knowing that capture could see him hang.A few generations later, author Catherine Czerkawska begins to tease out the truth behind her great-great-uncle's tragic death. But she uncovers far more than she bargained for.In a personal family story that takes us from Ireland to the industrial heartlands of England and Scotland, from the nineteenth century to the twentieth, Catherine gives voice to people often maligned by society and silenced by history - immigrants, women, the working classes. She unearths a tale of injustice and poverty, hope and resilience, and she is both angered and touched by what she finds. Catherine is driven to keep digging, to get to the very heart of life - and death - in the not-so-distant past.
Light is changing, dramatically. Our world is getting brighter - you can see it from space. But is brighter always better? Artificial light is voracious and spreading. Vanquishing precious darkness across the planet, when we are supposed to be using less energy. The quality of light has altered as well. Technology and legislation have crushed warm incandescent lighting in favour of harsher, often glaring alternatives. Light is fundamental - it really matters. It interacts with life in profound yet subtle ways: it tells plants which way to grow, birds where to fly and coral when to spawn. It tells each and every one of us when to sleep, wake, eat. We mess with the eternal rhythm of dawn-day-dusk-night at our peril. But mess with it we have, and we still don't truly understand the consequences. In Incandescent, journalist Anna Levin reveals her own fraught relationship with changes in lighting, and she explores its real impact on nature, our built environment, health and psychological well-being. We need to talk about light, urgently. And ask the critical question: just how bright is our future?
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