A few among the Scottish nobles, for both political and religious reasons, are eager for this alliance too. They kill Cardinal Beaton, who is Mary’s great protector, and take St Andrews Castle, expecting rescue any day from England.For a sister and brother – spirited Bethia, living outside the castle in St Andrews, and Will among the rebels inside the castle – the long siege becomes a fight for survival. But it’s also a struggle over loyalties and the choices they each must make: whether to save their family, or follow their hearts…This debut novel closely follows the tumultuous events of the siege of St Andrews Castle, and its dramatic re-takingRunner up SAW Barbara Hammond TrophyFinalist Wishing Shelf Book Awards

    It relates the story of a young dreamer and English soldier, Edward Waverley, who was sent to Scotland in 1745. He journeys North from his aristocratic family home, Waverley-Honour, in the south of England (alleged in an English Heritage notice to refer to Waverley Abbey in Surrey) first to the Scottish Lowlands and the home of family friend Baron Bradwardine, then into the Highlands and the heart of the 1745 Jacobite uprising and aftermath.

    His anger was surfacing, and he felt suddenly seized by the demons he had been struggling to contain. Sioltach stared at Calach in admiration as he quickly translated his words." ""Why have you lost one legion, soon to be followed by another? Look, and see! Your soldiers are wide-eyed Roman lads, fighting beside non-Romans who were your enemies longer than they have been your slaves. They are bewildered by a strange and frightening land. They are bound to you not by loyalty, but by fear, and when their fear ends, only hatred will remain."""For all of your pomp, you have none of what inspires men to victory. Your soldiers fight for nothing but the glory of an empire that has crushed their own nations and tribes. They have no wives to inspire them, and no parents to mock them should they shrink from battle. They have no country, or if they do it is not Rome, and it is in ruins."""Agricola began to grow pale. He was certain that he would die at the hands of this man whose spirit he could not comprehend.

    James Robertson's breathtaking novel is a portrait of modern Scotland as seen through the eyes of natives and immigrants, journalists and politicians, drop-outs and spooks, all trying to make their way through a country in the throes of great and rapid change. It is a moving, sweeping story of family, friendship, struggle and hope - epic in every sense.The winner of the Saltire Society Scottish Book of the Year Award 2010, And the Land Lay Still is a masterful insight into Scotland's history in the twentieth century and a moving, beautifully written novel of intertwined stories.

    Their friends – Jaws, Linda, and Mat Bond are all leading happy lives despite adjusting to the commitments of adulthood. Through ups dan downs, their friendship remained strong.But in life, love and happiness require hard work and sacrifice.For some, life will come to a beautiful full circle – proving that eternal happiness is for everyone, even if one was once, so far away from God.*** It is easy to give up on everything when one is drowning in hardships. But there are divine blessings in life, if one seek them with eyes of mercy and gratitude.

    Pagford is not what it first seems.And the empty seat left by Barry on the parish council soon becomes the catalyst for the biggest war the town has yet seen. Who will triumph in an election fraught with passion, duplicity and unexpected revelations?

    Their life is, to say the least, unconventional. Frank's mother abandoned them years ago: his elder brother Eric is confined to a psychiatric hospital; and his father measures out his eccentricities on an imperial scale. Frank has turned to strange acts of violence to vent his frustrations. In the bizarre daily rituals there is some solace. But when news comes of Eric's escape from the hospital Frank has to prepare the ground for his brother's inevitable return - an event that explodes the mysteries of the past and changes Frank utterly.The Wasp Factory is a work of horrifying compulsion: horrifying, because it enters a mind whose realities are not our own, whose values of life and death are alien to our society; compulsive, because the humour and compassion of that mind reach out to us all. A novel of extraordinary originality, imagination and comic ferocity.

    Based on Cronin's own experiences as a physician, The Citadel boldly confronts traditional medical ethics, and has been noted as one of the inspirations for the formation of the National Health Service.The Citadel has been adapted into several successful film, radio, and television productions around the world, including the Oscar-nominated 1938 film starring Ralph Donat, Rosalind Russell, Ralph Richardson, and Rex Harrison.

    Magnus Mills gives us a wiry novel of tensile strength that proves him a writer of ferocious talent. Eerie, resonant, spare yet rich in tones both hilarious and ominous—as if a work by Irvine Welsh, or perhaps Macbeth, had been adapted by the Coen brothers—his story has a finale so ingenious, insidious, and satisfying, it remains locked in the mind long after the last wire has been strung into place.

    A few hours later, Alice is lying in a coma after an accident that may or may not have been a suicide attempt. Alice's family gathers at her bedside and as they wait, argue, and remember, long-buried tensions emerge. The more they talk, the more they seem to conceal. Alice, meanwhile, slides between varying levels of consciousness, recalling her past and a love affair that recently ended. A riveting story that skips through time and interweaves multiple points of view, After You'd Gone is a novel of stunning psychological depth and marks the debut of a major literary talent.

    The only good news is that Steven, her increasingly distant teenage son, is about to move back in with her. The bad news is that Bob, her ex-husband, wants the house. Trisha's mind is unexpectedly made up when she inherits a place in the Highlands. Having pictured a rural idyll, she finds rain, sheep, a jaywalking dog and kamikaze midges. And more rain. Her social life is so limited that she even contemplates joining the Inversnechty Mental Health Awareness Group just for the craic. Then three nurses on holiday leave from Saudi invite Trisha to a ceilidh. A night of whisky-fuelled high jinks with a frozen salmon ensues which leads to a significant encounter with Spider, the local Lothario, and a dramatic discovery that will change Trisha's future forever.

    The walking wounded. These are the stories of ordinary people.

    He talks to the models, he reads hundreds of filthy readers' letters, he organises the photoshoots and even gets to direct the action. He has, according to his non-porn friends, "the best job in the world". But Godfrey Bishop has a problem. Godfrey Bishop is going through the sex drought to end all sex droughts. He hasn't been with a woman in over a year and this knee-twisting frustration is magnified a hundred times by his daily grind. He feels like Billy Bunter put in charge of the cake shop, only to have the Atkins diet forced upon him at gun point. Chuck into the mix a twelve girl orgy, a stable of alcoholic co-workers, an angry argumentative feminist, a naked run from justice and an obsessive nutty reader who thinks Godfrey is trying to scupper his chances of marrying the magazine's centre-spread girl and you have Danny King's filthiest and funniest novel yet – according to the back of the book. Godfrey Bishop has "the best job in the world" – and it's doing his f*cking head in.

    It came to little, being no more than that I should miss love and fortune in the sunlight and find them in the rain. The woman was a haggard, black-faced gypsy, and when my mother asked for more she turned on her heel and spoke gibberish; for which she was presently driven out of the place by Tarn Roberton, the baillie, and the village dogs. But the thing stuck in my memory, and together with the fact that I was a Thursday's bairn, and so, according to the old rhyme, "had far to go," convinced me long ere I had come to man's estate that wanderings and surprises would be my portion.It is in the rain that this tale begins. I was just turned of eighteen, and in the back-end of a dripping September set out from our moorland house of Auchencairn to complete my course at Edinburgh College. The year was 1685, an ill year for our countryside; for the folk were at odds with the King's Government, about religion, and the land was full of covenants and repressions. Small wonder that I was backward with my colleging. . . .

    Her choice could open the door to answers she's long wondered about, or it could forever chill a heart too long without love.