Standing in the shadow of the squat stone structure, it is hard to imagine a more isolated spot. The building sits alone in a vast tract of empty, featureless terrain to the south of Cape Wrath, in Sutherland. There is no access road, no running water, no electricity and no telephone. Yet James McRory Smith survived here, battered by the elements and devoid of human company. His story is a fascinating account of a man pitting his wits against the wilderness, enduring endless isolation and existing, for a large part, off the land. James’ lifestyle belonged to a bygone age, yet he lived it in the 20th century, turning his back on the luxuries and conveniences of the modern world.His way of life was frugal. He constructed furniture from fish boxes and driftwood washed upon on the coast. He kept warm by burning peat dug from the moor, and he ate trout caught from local lochs.James survived everything Sutherland could throw at him. He arrived at Strathchailleach in the early 1960s, after leaving the army and embarking upon an itinerant lifestyle, moving from one abandoned, isolated property to another, and remained there until 1994 when ill health finally forced him back into society.Behind this tale of survival there were two significant events that brought major change to James’ life and both involved women very close to him.James was a complex character. He was intelligent and resourceful, artistic and creative, but he also drank heavily, resulting in regular confrontation with hillwalkers and anglers who visited his bothy home, and the law. This biography traces James’ life, from his early years in Dumbarton, through his time on the army to the moment he decided to leave behind everything he knew for the isolation of Strathchailleach. It seeks to answer why any man would take such a momentous decision and describes how James was able to exist for over 30 years in such a barren and unforgiving environment. It looks at the tools and life skills he developed to survive and examines how he was able to cope, both physically and mentally, with the challenges he faced on a daily basis.This biography provides readers with an inspiring account of a modern day hermit. It offers a rare insight into an alternative way of life, one that is far removed from the norm. At a time when people are becoming increasingly concerned about consumption and consumerism, and their impact on the environment, James McRory Smith’s story demonstrates the practicalities and challenges of the frugal, self-sufficient lifestyle many people dream of. However, this is not intended simply as a social history, is also a true-life story of adventure and survival.

    Justin Flint has the power to persuade the Board of Directors. He is bisexual and attracted to both Nick and Natalie, but he doesn't know that they are lovers. After secretly sleeping with both of them, Justin announces his decision. Natalie has gotten the position in Paris. Nick is furious because he has sacrificed his sexuality and his manhood for this position. Natalie is now torn between the love of her life and her dream job. She chooses to move to Paris. Although she is in Paris, she is miserable without Nick, so she creates a position for an assistant so that he will come to Paris also. Will Nick follow her? Will past skeletons come back to haunt her and Nick?

    I’m going right up them stairs to nail me a villain – and that, Sammy-boy, is called law enforcement!”When detective Sam Tyler was catapulted into the alien world of 1973, he could think of nothing but getting home. It was a world where men swigged scotch before breakfast, smoked fifty Embassy No. 6’s day and where birds put the kettle on.But when at last Sam got home, he realized he’d left his heart back in the seventies amongst the fly-wing collars and pints of Skol. And he missed Annie Cartwright, the woman he had fallen in love with, and perhaps – just perhaps – he even missed The Guv, that nicotine-stained, sexist, homophobic caveman who was his DCI.Now Sam is back in ’73 for good, but is this the greatest mistake he’s ever made? The creepy little girl from the TV test card seems to think so. As Sam dodges bullets, deals with what appears to be a IRA bombing campaign, and clashes with the irrepressible Gene Hunt, the test card girl keeps warning him, “you should never have come back here, Sam. It’s all going to end in tears. You’ll see… you’ll see…”

    L. Kennedy's first collection of stories, are small people - the kind who inhabit the silence in libraries, who never appear on screen and who never make the headlines. Often alone and sometimes lonely, her characters ponder the mysteries of sex and death-and the ability of public transport to affect our lives.

    'Bring back the lynx? Over my dead body!”The environmental protestors murmured, and Rory stepped forward. ‘Your hunting has destroyed our hills and left them treeless wastes, devoid of wildlife. It’s time that changed.’‘Listen, you lentil-eating cat lover,’ Purdey barked through the megaphone, ‘men like me own Scotland. If we want to kill anything that moves and turn the whole damn place into a theme park, we’ll do it.’Someone from the group of protestors hurled a turnip. It struck Purdey and he crumpled to the ground. Just as the archaic class system he represents must eventually fall, Angus thought with a grin.In his first two bestselling books, The Last Hillwalker and Bothy Tales, John D. Burns invited readers to join him in the hills and wild places of Scotland. In Sky Dance, he returns to that world to ask fundamental questions about how we relate to this northern landscape – while raising a laugh or two along the way. Anyone who has gazed at the majesty of the Scottish mountains will know this place and want to return to it. Now, as wild land is threatened like never before, it’s time we asked ourselves what kind of future we want for the Highlands.

    Her husband had abandoned her for a sinister, younger woman and the weird nomadic group she led, and had taken their two children with him. But now Patsy had snatched Peter and Judith back again and was bringing them home to safety. Or so she thought. For as she left the dark old house with the witch-woman's snarled curses deafening her, tearing at her being, the real nightmare was just beginning. She drove into the night, and the road shifted, changed.

    Getting out... will be another matter. *** It was supposed to be just one more job: in, out, and millions the richer. But when four thieves break into THIS house, they discover the owners were ready. And waiting. Now, the thieves find themselves in a deadly maze of traps. Traps designed not only to steal their lives, but their sanity. The only way out is the front door. The only way to get there is to survive. And the only way to survive is to be willing to do anything, to suffer all... and to lose everything.

    

    

    Her first book, Almanacs, was a travellers's litany, featuring a road movie in poems set in the north of Scotland. Nigh-No-Place is the liturgy of a poet passionately aware of the natural world." Nigh-No-Place reflects the breadth of ground she's covered. 'Ten-minute Break Haiku' is her response to working in a fish factory. 'Paternoster' is the Lord's Prayer uttered by a draught-horse. 'Prenatal Polar Bear' takes place in Churchill, Manitoba, surrounded by tundra.

    A romantic thriller set against the background of the French Revolution.

    In the half-light, fragments of cello music crash around in her mind, but she casts them out - it's more than a year since she performed in public. There are memories she must banish in order to survive: a charismatic teacher with gold-flecked eyes, a mistake she cannot unmake. At home her mother Ada is waiting: a fragile, bitter woman who distils for herself a glamorous past as she smokes French cigarettes in her unkempt garden. In the village of Bosham the future is invading. A charming young documentary maker has arrived to shoot a film about King Cnut and his cherished but illegitimate daughter, whose body is buried under the flagstones of the local church. As Jonny disturbs the fabric of the village, digging up tales of ancient battles and burials, the threads lead back to home, and Ada and Nora find themselves face to face with the shameful secrets they had so carefully buried. One day, Nora finds a half-dead fledgeling in a ditch. She brings him home and, over the hot summer months, cradles Rook back to life. A mesmerising story of family, legacy and turning back the tides, Rook beautifully evokes the shifting Sussex sands, and the rich seam of history lying just beneath them.

    She also has an insomniac toddler, a precocious, death-obsessed seven-year-old, and a frequently-absent ecologist husband who has brought them all to Colsay, a desolate island in the Hebrides, so he can count the puffins. Ferociously sleep-deprived, torn between mothering and her desire for the pleasures of work and solitude, Anna becomes haunted by the discovery of a baby's skeleton in the garden of their house. Her narrative is punctuated by letters home, written 200 years before, by May, a young, middle-class midwife desperately trying to introduce modern medicine to the suspicious, insular islanders. The lives of these two characters intersect unexpectedly in this deeply moving but also at times blackly funny story about maternal ambivalence, the way we try to control children, and about women's vexed and passionate relationship with work. Moss's second novel displays an exciting expansion of her range - showing her to be both an excellent comic writer, and a novelist of great emotional depth.

    Get both curvy girl holiday romances for the price of one! A Christmas Dream Hayden: For the last decade, I’ve had the same Christmas dream every holiday season. It’s lovely, happy, sensual, and it’s total bullsh*t because there is no man like my dream man out there for me. Luckily, the sexy dream only happens once a year, because if it happened more than that, it would be depressing, a constant reminder of what I have in reality. In real life, I was just dumped by the latest loser in my life, a man who was just using me for my money, and a roof over his head. Good riddance, right? But things aren’t really all that simple. Problem is, I don’t feel like I’m worthy of anything better because I’m a big girl, and I like my food, if you know what I mean. So I made a bargain with myself to stay away from men and dating completely for at least a year to give myself a break, and to try to find my self-esteem after dating a string of men who just didn’t want…me. I thought that promise I made to myself would be easy to keep, and it was…until I met Jackson Gillette in Galveston while I was hiding out in my beach house licking my wounds from so many bad relationships. Jackson is a gorgeous, drool-worthy kind of guy. In other words, he was trouble. Men like him did not date women like me. But when I realized that there’s so much more to Jackson than the eye can see, do I dare take a chance on realizing my Christmas dream? After all, he might just be exactly what I want from Santa this year. Author Note: If you’re looking for a traditional, sweet Christmas romance, you might want to move on. This is a sexy, panty melting, fantastical Christmas romance that’s heavily rolled in sugar sweet enough to satisfy your craving for Christmas cookies, with a big dose of Christmas magic. If that sounds like great holiday reading to you, then dig in and enjoy!! A Valentine Dream Amy: February 14th is just another day to me. I don't really believe in hearts, flowers, romance, or happily-ever-afters. And I certainly don't think there's a dream man for a curvy woman like me, even if my little sister had found hers over the holidays. I'm more realistic. Or at least...I was...until I met Levi Gillette during my sister Hayden's wedding rehearsal dinner The man seems to have an annoying ability to make me lose my cool and calm facade. Yeah, he's definitely hot, but my sister's brother-in-law-to-be was also arrogant, infuriating, presumptuous, bossy, and most likely one big player because the man could be charming when he wanted to be. No thanks! Been there, done that, and I'd had more than enough of men like Levi Gillette. But when I start having amazingly erotic, intimate dreams about him, it's almost impossible to ignore him in the flesh. In my dreams, it was like I'd known Levi forever. But in person, I barely knew him, and he challenges everything I'd ever assumed about myself. We don't even like each other, yet he feels so...familiar. Finally, when the lines between dreams and reality start to blur, I have to wonder whether I can trust a guy like Levi with my heart. I knew he was hiding something. There were things I didn't know. I could feel it.

    But Jay Gatsby, the owner of all this wealth, wants only one thing - to find again the woman of his dreams, the woman he has held in his heart and his memory for five long years.The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald's masterpiece, is one of the great American novels of the twentieth century. It captures perfectly the Jazz Age of the 1920s, and goes deep into the hollow heart of the American Dream.