Book picks similar to
If This Were Real by Gerda Stevenson
poetry
iraq
scotland
scottish
Susan Settles Down
Molly Clavering - 1936
Their neighbours prove a mixed bag, including the towering, kindly Jed Armstrong, a farmer whose land 'marches with' theirs, the local vicar and his family, and the three gossipy Pringle sisters, who travel by donkey-drawn cart and get their knives into one and all. After a bumpy start, with a disagreeable cook and her nincompoop daughter as their only help, Susan and Oliver begin to settle in nicely, and find themselves in the midst of romance, confusion, and earthy hilarity.Molly Clavering was for many years the neighbour and friend of bestselling author D.E. Stevenson, and they may well have influenced one another's writing. First published in 1936 (under the pseudonym B. Mollett) and out of print for more than 80 years, Susan Settles Down is one of her most cheerful and vivid romantic comedies. This new edition features an introduction by Elizabeth Crawford.
Selected Poems
Robert Burns - 1898
We are republishing these classic works in affordable, high quality, modern editions, using the original text and artwork.
Fire in the Night: The Piper Alpha Disaster
Stephen McGinty - 2008
The heat generated was so intense that a helicopter could only circle at a perimeter of one mile. Flying at a height of 200 feet, the air crew saw that the tongues of flame extended high above the rotor blades. On the surface a converted fishing trawler inched as close as possible, but the paint on the vessel's hull blistered and burnt, and the rope handrails began to smoke. In the water surrounding the inferno, men's heads could be seen bobbing like apples as their yellow hard hats melted with the heat. At the center stood, at least for now, the Piper Alpha oil platform, 110 miles northeast of Aberdeen, once the world's single largest oil producer. On July 6, 1988, its final day, it was ablaze with 226 men onboard. Only sixty-one would survive. Fire in the Night tells, for the first time and in gripping detail, the devastating story of that summer evening. Combining interviews with survivors, witness statements, and transcripts from the official enquiry into the disaster, this is the moving and vivid tale of what happened on that fateful night inside an oil rig inferno.
Independence or Union: Scotland's Past and Scotland's Present
T.M. Devine - 2016
From the Middle Ages onwards the island of Britain has been shaped by the unique dynamic between Edinburgh and London, exchanging inhabitants, monarchs, money and ideas, sometimes in a spirit of friendship and at others in a spirit of murderous dislike.Tom Devine's seminal new book explores this extraordinary history in all its ambiguity, from the seventeenth century to the present. When not undermining each other with invading armies, both Scotland and England have broadly benefitted from each other's presence - indeed for long periods of time nobody questioned the union which joined them. But as Devine makes clear, it has for the most part been a relationship based on consent, not force, on mutual advantage, rather than antagonism - and it has always held the possibility of a political parting of the ways.With the United Kingdom under a level of scrutiny unmatched since the eighteenth century Independence or Union is the essential guide.
The Fable of the Bees
Bernard Mandeville - 1989
Each was a defence and elaboration of his short satirical poem The Angry Hive, 1705. The version of the Fable of 1723 and 1732 are the fullest defences of his early paradox that social benefit is the unintended consequence of personal vice. It is an argument that is generally held to lie behind Adam Smith's doctrine of the 'hidden hand' of economic development.
Let Me Tell You This
Nadine Aisha Jassat - 2019
Shortlisted for the Edwin Morgan Poetry Award 2018.Let Me Tell You This is a vital exploration of racism, gender and the sustaining and restorative bonds between women, told with Jassat’s searing precision and lyricism. Her poems seep into the reader, and deliver a punch to the chest."A punchy, powerful debut." - Jackie Kay (Trumpet)"An important collection of poems, incisive, delicate and precise, as it interrogates the trauma of systemic and every day racism. Jassat is unflinching as she delivers lyrical gut punches that stay with you for days." - Nikesh Shukla (The One Who Wrote Destiny)
Phantastes
George MacDonald - 1858
Lewis said that upon reading this astonishing 19th-century fairy tale he "had crossed a great frontier," and numerous others both before and since have felt similarly.In MacDonald's fairy tales, both those for children and (like this one) those for adults, the "fairy land" clearly represents the spiritual world, or our own world revealed in all of its depth and meaning. At times almost forthrightly allegorical, at other times richly dreamlike (and indeed having a close connection to the symbolic world of dreams), this story of a young man who finds himself on a long journey through a land of fantasy is more truly the story of the spiritual quest that is at the core of his life's work, a quest that must end with the ultimate surrender of the self.The glory of MacDonald's work is that this surrender is both hard won (or lost!) and yet rippling with joy when at last experienced. As the narrator says of a heavenly woman in this tale, "She knew something too good to be told." One senses the same of the author himself.Newly designed and typeset in a modern 6-by-9-inch format by Waking Lion Press.
رسوایی در بوهم و پنج داستان دیگر
Arthur Conan Doyle - 2001
London, 1928
Blood in the Water
Gillian Galbraith - 2007
1 in the UK eBook Library-Lending charts, 2020 - The GuardianThis thrilling police-procedural debut from crime writer Gillian Galbraith introduces readers to Alice Rice, Edinburgh's latest fictional detective and a new female presence in the macho world of crime detection. Galbraith draws on her own experience to give a realistic portrayal of the medical and legal worlds. Smart and capable, but battling disillusionment and loneliness, Alice races against time and an implacable killer to solve a series of grisly murders amongst the professional elite of Edinburgh's well-to-do New Town.
Naming the Bones
Louise Welsh - 2010
His family, his career, his affair...not even drinking offers much joy. All his energies are now focused on his research into Archie Lunan, a minor poet who drowned 30 years ago off a remote stretch of Scottish coast. By redeeming Lunan's reputation, Watson hopes to redeem his own. But the more he learns about Lunan's sordid life, the more unlikely redemption appears.