With school over and the locked world of their fathers before them, they rush towards the climax of their youth: a magical weekend in Manchester, the epicentre of everything that inspires them in working-class Britain. There, against the greatest soundtrack ever recorded, a vow is made: to go at life differently. Thirty years on, half a life away, the phone rings. Tully has news.Mayflies is a memorial to youth's euphorias and to everyday tragedy. A tender goodbye to an old union, it discovers the joy and the costs of love.

    He offered to marry Claire and adopt Melanie. But it seems Andreas wasn’t quite the answer to her prayers – he was certainly prepared to deceive his new bride!For – Xander Pascalis has bought himself a wife! Helen is lavishly expensive but headstrong and refusing to share his bed! So Xander carries her off to his private Greek island to get the wedding night she’s so far denied him…Marriage – Mia Frazier agreed to her father’s demand that she marry Greek millionaire Alexander Doumas for her own reasons – not money! Alex won back his family island, Mia’s father would get a grandson, but could Mia’s motive stay hidden now she was carrying Alex’s child?

    First US publication for the Scottish Spence.Neil McGraw is a lad in Glasgow, an only child, the son of a dour undertaker permanently embittered by his wife's death during childbirth. Whenever the boy misbehaves, he's locked in the basement among the coffins, so it's not surprising he asks every body: What happens when you die? Against his will, he finds himself learning the trade. This is less gloomy than it sounds. The story moves at a good clip as the resilient Neil experiments with drinking and dating.The crisis comes when his dad finds him and his girl making out in a coffin. Soon, it's Neil's turn to lock his old man, dead drunk, into the basement, before hightailing it to the London of the Swinging '60s. A friendly queer, Abe Morris, offers him a crash pad, no strings attached, where Neil finds drugs, straight sex, and Zen. The party ends when Abe, stoned, is killed in traffic and Spence abandons conventional narrative to send Neil hopscotching around the world before depositing him, 15 years later, beside the funeral pyres of the Ganges. Here, he gets very sick but is rescued by a vision in a sari: Lila, a Londoner, back home for her father's funeral. The two fall in love and marry, lickety-split, before Neil is summoned back to Glasgow. His father has died, leaving him the business, which Neil gives a hippie twist, producing brightly painted coffins in unusual shapes, with Lila a business partner.The mood is light and buoyant, but novelistic concerns (what makes Lila tick? why do the couple decide not to have kids?) are shelved in favor of a scrapbook of original last rites, seasoned with Eastern mysticism. There's an appealing freshness to Spence's writing; too bad he gives up on credible plotting and characterization.

    But in the season of goodwill to all men, will it take a cat to prove that miracles can still happen?

    He has but one. Love. Tavia is the adopted child of an apothecary and former priest. Besides loving her, Tavia’s father passed on to her his medical skills and also taught her French and Latin, giving her a better education than most men of her time.Blair is the son of the Laird and a handsome man that every single woman in the village desires. He is respected by his tenants and he is a capable man, always wiling to help and protect them.When Blair has an accident close to Tavia’s house, she uses her medical skills to heal his wounds. Blair finds in her beautiful eyes a unique woman that can give meaning to his life.He can not accept that he won’t see her again after this meeting, so he asks Tavia to give him French lessons. Tavia accepts and that only makes the heat between them grow… They both know though, that Tavia is a peasant girl, and marrying her is forbidden by society’s rules. But Blair wants to defy all of them! Determined to find a solution he will start discovering clues about Tavia’s real parents and her past, making things take a turn none of them could ever imagine."Highlander’s Lost Daughter" is a story packed with romance, mystery, and salvation, set on the beautiful backdrop of the Scottish Highlands.

    From bestselling author of Little Birds, Hannah Lee Kidder's Starlight touches your heart before taking a bite with twelve pitch-dark fantasy, horror, and contemporary short stories.

    The exquisite debut novel from one of Scotland's most exciting new writers'The thing he felt ending was not just one person, or even one generation; it was older, and had, in truth, been ending for a long time . . . It was a chain of stories clinging to stories, of love clinging to love. It was an inheritance he did not know how to pass on.'Shetland: a place of sheep and soil, of harsh weather, close ties and an age-old way of life. A place where David has lived all his life, like his father and grandfather before him, but where he abides only in the present moment. A place where Sandy, a newcomer but already a crofter, may have finally found a home. A place that Alice has fled to after the death of her husband.But times do change - island inhabitants die, or move away, and David worries that no young families will take over the chain of stories and care that this valley has always needed, while others wonder if it was ever truly theirs to join. In the wind and sun and storms from the Atlantic, these islanders must decide: what is left of us when the day's work is done, the children grown, and all our choices have been made?The debut novel from one of our most exciting new literary voices, The Valley at the Centre of the World is a story about community and isolation, about what is passed down, and what is lost between the cracks.

    The authors include scientists, journalists, and many of the most famous SF writers in the world. Futures from Nature includes everything from satires and vignettes to compressed stories and fictional book reviews, science articles, and journalism, in eight-hundred word modules. All of them are entertaining and as a group they are a startling repository of ideas and attitudes about the future.   Appearing in book form fo the first time, these one hundred pieces were originally published in the great science journal, Nature, between 1999 and 2006, as one-page features. That proved very popular with the readers of the journal. This is a unique book, by scientists and writers, of interest to any reader who might like to speculate about the future.   With stories from: Arthur C. Clarke; Bruce Sterling; Charles Stross; Cory Doctorow; Greg Bear; Gregory Benford; Oliver Morton; Ian Macleod; Rudy Rucker; Greg Egan; Stephan Baxter; Barrington J. Bayley; Brian Stableford; Frederik Pohl; Vernor Vinge; Nancy Kress, Michael Moorcock, Vonda N. McIntyr; Kim Stanley Robinson; John M. Ford; and eighty more.

    The people who care have remade the Earth in their image, and its an Earthly Paradise. Humanity is joined together under a single, popularly-elected world government. Gay marriage is a normal institution, the Libertarian Party rules, and the First Lady is Head of State.But who are the new underclass called Touchables, and why are they hunted for sport? Why are clones treated as inferior? Why do men outnumber women seven to one? And why are teenage women being drafted into government service for three years?This 1984 Prometheus Award-winning novel is the story of Joan Darris, a brilliant young artist in the medium of laser concerts. Is it her destiny to play music for men's eyes, or to make herself a plaything for their desires? How does the lingering horror of the murder she witnessed at five threaten to rob her not only of her artistic triumph, but also threaten the life of a man she loves?Like the novels of Huxley, Burgess, and Rand, The Rainbow Cadenza uses black humor to show you a future you fear but ends with a rainbow of hope.

    She is not quite so happy to find out that her fiance David is a gambling addict. When she discovers that she was just days away from losing all of the assets from the sale of her home she panics. She runs away to Shetland to start a new life for herself. She is hoping for peace and quiet; after all, what could happen in Shetland? It is so far away from everything. What could go wrong? Everything it seems.A romantic comedy.Cover photo of the Northern Lights over Shetland: Dave Wheeler (Fair Isle)

     Dead Women A Ruthless Killer A Detective with something to prove Newly promoted DI Shona McKenzie struggles to cope with her new job, the respect of her colleagues, and the need to solve the hardest case of her life. Will she succeed? For lovers of books by Val McDermid, Ian Rankin, Alex Gray, Stuart MacBride, Lin Anderson

    He was having a normal day until his friend Benjy turned up in a car Gravy didn't recognise. Benjy had a bullet hole in his chest, but lived just long enough to ask Gravy to hide him and look after his gun.

     Gaby's recently split from her boyfriend of ten years and needs to escape fast. Where better than the Highlands of Scotland where she can lick her wounds and recover in peace and quiet? Fate has different ideas in mind. First, there's the rough and ready Jack McAllan who bears more than a passing resemblance to the fabled Jamie Fraser of Outlander fame. He's an important part of the local community, even if he's failed to impress Gaby so far. Who knew a guy could be so rude and taciturn? Then, there's the mystery of the woman whose home she now inhabits. Kirsty's left too many tantalising clues for Gaby to resist. Why did Kirsty run, and does it have anything to do with the red-haired Scot who keeps turning up in Gaby's daydreams much as she tries to resist… Featuring kilts, mist-cloaked hills, lochs where the water runs deep and a little too much whisky, Highland Fling is a sweet, fun-filled romp through Scottish village life, finding love, making a fool of yourself and discovering that an overactive imagination leads you into all kinds of trouble…

    There's Pat, a twenty-year-old who has recently moved into a flat with Bruce, an athletic young man with a keen awareness of his own appearance. Their neighbor, Domenica, is an eccentric and insightful widow. In the flat below are Irene and her appealing son Bertie, who is the victim of his mother’s desire for him to learn the saxophone and italian–all at the tender age of five.Love triangles, a lost painting, intriguing new friends, and an encounter with a famous Scottish crime writer are just a few of the ingredients that add to this delightful and witty portrait of Edinburgh society, which was first published as a serial in The Scotsman newspaper.

    Her father’s best friend, on the other hand, has a penchant for vodka, strip clubs, and moral philosophy. Aneliya is torn between love of the former and passion for the latter.When an angelic presence named Xstabeth enters their lives Aneliya and her father’s world is transformed.A short, stylish novel with a big heart, humor, Xstabeth moves from Russia to Scotland, touching upon the pathos of Russian literature and the Russian soul, the power of art and music to shape reality, and the metaphysics of golf while telling a moving father-daughter story in highly-charged, torrential prose.