Soon McKay and his team start to identify a disturbing pattern behind the killings.Why are candles and roses placed around the bodies?What is this twisted murderer trying to achieve?While the police follow their own leads, a young woman who discovered the first victim begins an investigation of her own.As the case unfolds McKay will be forced to face his own demons.To catch the killer McKay must discover the true motive and untangle the web of truth and lies.Candles and Roses is the first book in the explosive new DI McKay Series.  Death Parts Us: Twenty years ago, Jackie Galloway was a senior cop with a bad reputation. Then he ended up on the wrong side of the wrong people, and his career was ruined. Sacked and with no pension, he ends up eking out his last days on Scotland's Black Isle, his mind lost to dementia, supported only by his long-suffering wife, Bridie. Then Galloway is found dead. The police assume the death to be accidental until Bridie Galloway reveals that her husband has been receiving threatening letters containing only the phrase: 'NOT FORGOTTEN. NOT FORGIVEN.'DI Alec McKay is struggling to come to terms with life without his estranged wife Chrissie, and is living in isolation on the Black Isle. As a junior officer, McKay had been allocated to Galloway's team and has bad memories of the man and his methods. Now he finds himself investigating Galloway's death.But when suspicion falls on him and more police officers are murdered, the pressure is on for McKay to solve the case.Why would the killer seek revenge twenty years after Galloway left the force?As McKay fights to link the events of past and present, he realizes that time is rapidly running out… Their Final Act: Jimmy McGuire, a washed-up comic, is found dead on the streets of Inverness, his body garroted. Back in the 1990s, McGuire had been half of a promising double-act until his partner, Jack Dingwall, was convicted of rape.Soon after, a second corpse is found in an abandoned industrial site on the edge of the Moray Firth. The body has been there for some days and has also been garroted. The victim turns out to be a former musician turned record producer, who had also been the subject of rape allegations.Meanwhile, DI Alec McKay and DCI Helena Grant are still wrestling with the fallout from one of their recent cases following an acquittal.As the body count rises, the police think they have the killer in their sights. But McKay is concerned that the evidence is too neat so when he realises there will be a final victim, he fears that time is running out. The best-selling DI Alec McKay series are gripping serial killer thrillers set in the Scotish Black Isle. They will appeal to fans of authors like Ian Rankin, Helen Fields and Ann Cleeves.

    

    

    In 1913 they published this unique record in Round About a Pound a Week. We learn about family life, births, marriages and deaths; of grinding work carried out on a diet of little more than bread, jam and margarine. We learn how they coped with damp, vermin and bedbugs; how they slept - four to a bed, in banana crates; how they washed, cooked, cleaned, scrimped for furniture and clothes, saved for all too frequent burials...This classic text is one of the most important and vivid historical portraits of the daily life of working people in the early part of the twentieth century.

    a time when countrymen battled for their freedom and usurpers sought crowns. At the novel's center is a love story of breathtaking scope: a man and a woman - enemies from birth - know from the moment they meet that they will lie in each other's arms someday. But their love, for centuries forbidden, comes at the most dangerous of times. Lady of the Glen tells of Catriona Campbell's enduring love for Alasdair Og MacDonald, the second-born son of her clan's most powerful enemy, the Laird of Glencoe. It is MacDonald who alone shows the young Catriona kindness in a harsh and violent world. As the years pass, the heart proves stronger than the sword, and they boldly pledge their love ... to handfast forever. While the Dutch King William conspires against the Scottish rebels who seek to return the exiled James Stuart to the throne, Catriona and Alasdair share a passion that joins them forever - although the lovers become pawns of war ... and of history.

    Sparked by the painful two-year process of cleaning out her mother's house in the wake of a devastating physical and emotional collapse, Howard sets her own personal struggle with clutter against a meticulously researched history of just how the developed world came to drown in material goods. With sharp prose and an eye for telling detail, she connects the dots between the Industrial Revolution, the Sears & Roebuck catalog, and the Container Store, and shines unsparing light on clutter's darker connections to environmental devastation and hoarding disorder. In a confounding age when Amazon can deliver anything at the click of a mouse and decluttering guru Marie Kondo can become a reality TV star, Howard's bracing analysis has never been more timely.

    I might be the only person in Scotland that’s not fussed, one way or the other. But my friend, Lily, loves the idea. That’s how I wound up on the set, cast as an extra in a low budget movie set in a castle. I’m a freshly-trained history teacher about to begin my new career. History’s my passion and soon I’ll get to teach it all day long. There are so many other, more important things I should be doing right now, rather than standing in line waiting for a costume, then waiting for hair, then waiting for makeup. When I agreed to this, to be part of the crowd scene, Lily was thrilled and promised me a special time. She delivered on that promise-rather too well. Sure, I love history, but that doesn’t mean I’m prepared to be thrust back in time, into our dark past. That’s what happens to me though. I suddenly find myself living the humble and horribly dangerous life of a Scottish lass in 1263. I was not ready for this. I’m a modern woman who likes modern things. I love the idea that there’s a doctor around the corner waiting to cure me. If I had to choose a place and time in history to stop for a while, it wouldn’t be medieval Scotland. That's the end of the Viking era. It’s a tumultuous time in history when the Vikings still own small bits of Scotland, and are determined to hold on, no matter the cost. The Scots are equally as stubborn. Nevertheless, this is where I end up, forced to deal with lawlessness, disease, lack of education, and an entirely foreign sort of man. In these wayward times, men are not like they are in my own century. Here, they’re wilder and a whole lot more frightening. I need to find my way home before something really bad happens to me. I’m not blending in well in the past. Laird Bern is curious and itching to know more. He plans to keep me indefinitely, I think. But that’s not happening because I’m determined to get home again, back to my own time, to the place I belong. Someone else has noticed me too—Storr, the Viking leader. It’s bad enough to be caught between warring Vikings and Scotsmen, but somehow I also find myself trapped in a tug of love. Do I want an ambitious Viking leader or a rugged, Scottish laird, one that is hellbent on getting his own way? What I want is to go home.

    Many historians have ignored female participation in the ’45: this book aims to redress the balance. Drawn from many original documents and letters, the stories that emerge of the women – and their men – are often touching, occasionally light-hearted and always engrossing.

    Lebrecht compellingly demonstrates that classical recording has reached its end point, but this is not simply an expos? of decline and fall. It is, for the first time, the full story of a minor art form, analyzing the cultural revolution wrought by Schnabel, Toscanini, Callas, Rattle, the Three Tenors, and Charlotte Church. It is the story of how stars were made and broken by the record business; how a war criminal conspired with a concentration-camp victim to create a record empire; and how advancing technology, boardroom wars, public credulity and unscrupulous exploitation shaped the musical backdrop to our modern lives. The book ends with a suitable shrine to classical recording: the author's critical selection of the 100 most important recordings, and the 20 most appalling.Filled with memorable incidents and unforgettable personalities, from Goddard Lieberson, legendary head of CBS Masterworks who signed his letters as God; to Georg Solti, who turned the Chicago Symphony into the loudest symphony on earth - this is at once the captivating story of the life and death of classical recording and an opinionated, insider's guide to appreciating the genre, now and for years to come.

    First published in 1809 to spectacular success throughout Europe, this new edition captures the grandeur of the earlier edition, with Wyeth's glorious paintings reproduced from the original canvases.

    George MacDonald Fraser is the author of the "Flashman" novels.

    Along the way, it explains when these stories date from, how they arose, and what historical events—if any—underlie them, and the result is an endlessly fascinating exploration of the astonishing wealth of Scottish folklore.

    When the sheriff of Perth demands that Sir Law show that the death was not an inconvenient murder, Law thinks this looks like an easy job. But circumstances seem to conspire against him, and another murder follows. Soon the King's chancellor becomes involved, making the mystery even more dangerous. Not only does the murder investigation keep running into brick walls, his friend Cormac plunges into danger; and Law again encounters the thief who has already been a thorn in his side. When answers start to emerge, Sir Law gets more than he bargained for…

     An immortal Highlander. A modern-day heroine. An ancient war. When Ree Hamilton is flung back in time to the medieval Scottish Highlands, she becomes a pawn in an ancient battle between the immortals of Clan Lewis and the mortals of Clan Gunn. Alone in a strange time and place, Ree doesn’t know which side to trust. Niall Lewis, immortal chief of Clan Lewis, can’t help but be intrigued by the bonnie lass brought before him. Not only is Ree strong and brave in the fight, but she has the intellect to create the Cipher’s Kiss elixir that will hand his people victory in the war against the Gunns. Can he win Ree’s love and convince her to side with the immortals? Or will she spurn Niall’s advances and help her fellow humans destroy the remaining immortals once and for all? Immortal Flame is the first book in the Cipher’s Kiss series. If you like burly Highlanders, strong heroines, mystery, magic, sword fighting, and romance, then you’ll love this exciting series. Pick up your copy today!

    Defined by its relationship to England, Scotland's popular history is full of near-mythical figures and tragic events, her past littered with defeat, failure and thwarted ambition. The martyrdom of William Wallace, the tragedy of Mary Queen of Scots and the forlorn cause of Bonnie Prince Charlie all give the impression of 'poor' Scotland; a victim of misfortune, leading to the country's inevitable submission to the Auld Enemy. After the Union in 1707, Scotland's increasing reliance on England culminated in a crisis of confidence and identity that tortures the country to this day. But how accurate is this version of events? Using the very latest in historical research and by placing Scotland's story in the wider context of British, European and global history, some of the myths that pervade the past will be exploded to reveal a Scotland which forged its own destiny, often with success.