Книги

Cruinneachadh sgeulachdan làidir, brìoghmhor eile bho ùghdar Tocasaid ’Ain Tuirc. Coltach ri sgeulachdan na Tocasaid, a tha a’ togail ceann sa chruinneachadh seo cuideachd, ach lem blas is lem beatha fhèin. Tha feadhainn dhiubh suidhichte ann an Leòdhas san linn a chaidh, agus feadhainn suidhichte ann an àiteachan eile. Ach ge bith càite, eadar Nis agus Nèamh, tha iad uile air an innse ann an guth tarraingeach, dealbhach a tha a’ cur diomb leanaibh an cèill a cheart cho soilleir, fìor ’s a bheir e thugainn aithreachas boireannaich, no fiamh bodaich.

’S ann às a’ Chnoc Àrd ann an Nis a tha Donnchadh MacGillÌosa, an ceann-a-tuath Leòdhais. Seo an ceathramh cruinneachadh de sgeulachdan goirid aige air fhoillseachadh, agus a’ chiad leabhar leis far a bheil a’ Ghàidhlig is a’ Bheurla còmhla, taobh ri taobh.

A new collection of short stories from the author of Tocasaid ’Ain Tuirc, bringing the same sharp wit and observational skill to this evocation of Lewis life and people from last century intertwined with stories situated elsewhere, and giving as authentic a voice to an angry child’s resentment, a woman’s regret or an old man’s fears.

Cruinneachadh sgeulachdan làidir, brìoghmhor eile bho ùghdar Tocasaid ’Ain Tuirc. Coltach ri sgeulachdan na Tocasaid, a tha a’ togail ceann sa chruinneachadh seo cuideachd, ach…

The unmissable new work from Ali Smith, following the dazzling Man Booker-shortlisted Seasonal quartet

One day in post-Brexit, mid-pandemic Britain, artist Sandy Gray receives an unexpected phone call from university acquaintance Martina Pelf. Martina is calling Sandy to ask for help with a mysterious question she's been left with after she's spent half a day locked in a room by border control officials for no reason she can fathom:

'Curlew or curfew? You choose.'

And what's any of this got to do with the story of a young and talented blacksmith hounded from her trade and her home more than five hundred years ago?

Ali Smith's novel takes wing, soaring between our atomised present and our medieval past in the hope we can open our locked down homes and selves to all the other times, other species, other histories, other possibilities.

The unmissable new work from Ali Smith, following the dazzling Man Booker-shortlisted Seasonal quartet

One day in post-Brexit, mid-pandemic Britain, artist Sandy Gray receives…

This is a story a young, ambitious art dealer who transforms an old church into one of Scotland's top commercial art galleries. It introduces us to the often-unseen lives of Scottish artists and reveals global changes over the last quarter century that effect everywhere, even this beautiful glen.

This is a story a young, ambitious art dealer who transforms an old church into one of Scotland's top commercial art galleries. It introduces us to the often-unseen lives of…

Cynthia’s mother is dying. Often.

Travelling between her home in Scotland and California, as she spends time at her mother’s bedside Cynthia recalls her youthful adventures: living in a squat, train-hopping, hitchhiking and all the other things she never told her mother.

Cynthia’s mother is dying. Often.

Travelling between her home in Scotland and California, as she spends time at her mother’s bedside Cynthia recalls her youthful adventures:…

Jen Hadfield’s new collection is an astonished beholding of the wild landscape of her Shetland home, a tale of hard-won speech, and the balm of the silence it rides upon. The Stone Age builds steadily to a powerful and visionary panpsychism: in Hadfield’s telling, everything – gate and wall, flower and rain, shore and sea, the standing stones whose presences charge the land – has a living consciousness, one which can be engaged with as a personal encounter.

The Stone Age is a timely reminder that our neurodiversity is a gift: we do not all see the world the world in the same way, and Hadfield’s lyric line and unashamedly high-stakes wordplay provide nothing less than a portal into a different kind of being. The Stone Age is the work of a singular artist at the height of her powers – one which dramatically extends and enriches the range of our shared experience.

Jen Hadfield’s new collection is an astonished beholding of the wild landscape of her Shetland home, a tale of hard-won speech, and the balm of the silence it rides upon. The…

Scots were involved in every stage of the slave trade: from captaining slaving ships to auctioning captured Africans in the colonies and hunting down those who escaped from bondage. This book focuses on the Scottish Highlanders who engaged in or benefitted from these crimes against humanity in the Caribbean Islands and Guyana, some reluctantly but many with enthusiasm and without remorse. Their voices are clearly heard in the archives, while in the same sources their victims' stories are silenced - reduced to numbers and listed as property.

David Alston gives voice not only to these Scots but to enslaved Africans and their descendants - to those who reclaimed their freedom, to free women of colour, to the Black Caribs of St Vincent, to house servants, and to children of mixed race who found themselves in the increasingly racist society of Britain in the mid-1800s.

As Scots recover and grapple with their past, this vital history lays bare the enormous wealth generated in the Highlands by slavery and emancipation compensation schemes. This legacy, entwined with so many of our contemporary institutions, must be reckoned with.

Scots were involved in every stage of the slave trade: from captaining slaving ships to auctioning captured Africans in the colonies and hunting down those who escaped from…

In 1995 the National Trust for Scotland acquired Mar Lodge Estate in the heart of the Cairngorms. Home to over 5,000 species, this vast expanse of Caledonian woodlands, subarctic mountains, bogs, moors, roaring burns and frozen lochs could be a place where environmental conservation and Highland field sports would exist in harmony. The only problem was that due to centuries of abuse by human hands, the ancient Caledonian pinewoods were dying, and it would take radical measures to save them.

After 25 years of extremely hard work, the pinewoods, bogs, moors and mountains are returning to their former glory. Regeneration is the story of this success, featuring not only the people who are protecting the land and quietly working to undo the wrongs of the past, but also the myriad creatures which inspire them to do so.

In addition, it also tackles current controversies such as raptor persecution, deer management and rewilding and asks bigger questions about the nature of conservation itself: what do we see when we look at our wild places? What should we see?

In 1995 the National Trust for Scotland acquired Mar Lodge Estate in the heart of the Cairngorms. Home to over 5,000 species, this vast expanse of Caledonian woodlands, subarctic…

After Highland shepherd Colvin Munro disappears, a mysterious trail of his possessions is found in the Cairngorm mountains. Writing the eulogy for his memorial years later, his foundling-sister Mo seeks to discover why he vanished. Younger brother Sorley is also haunted by his absence and driven to reveal the forces that led to Colvin's disappearance. Is their brother alive or dead?

Set on a farming estate in the upper reaches of the River Spey, Of Stone and Sky follows several generations of a shepherding family in a paean to the bonds between people, their land and way of life. It is a profound mystery, a passionate poem, a political manifesto, shot through with wisdom and humour.

After Highland shepherd Colvin Munro disappears, a mysterious trail of his possessions is found in the Cairngorm mountains. Writing the eulogy for his memorial years later, his…

Investigative journalist Cal Flyn's ISLANDS OF ABANDONMENT, an exploration of the world's most desolate, abandoned places that have now been reclaimed by nature, from the demilitarized zone between North and South Korea to the "urban prairie" of Detroit to the irradiated grounds of Chernobyl, in an ultimately redemptive story about the power and promise of the natural world.

Investigative journalist Cal Flyn's ISLANDS OF ABANDONMENT, an exploration of the world's most desolate, abandoned places that have now been reclaimed by nature, from the…

An apprentice writer has an entirely unexpected encounter with literary genius Jorge Luis Borges that will profoundly alter his life and work. A poignant and comic literary coming-of-age memoir.

"This is a jewel of a book." --Ian McEwan

In 1971 Jay Parini was an aspiring poet and graduate student of literature at University of St Andrews in Scotland; he was also in flight from being drafted into service in the Vietnam War. One day his friend and mentor, Alastair Reid, asked Jay if he could play host for a "visiting Latin American writer" while he attended to business in London. He agreed--and that "writer" turned out to be the blind and aged and eccentric master of literary compression and metaphysics, Jorge Luis Borges. About whom Jay Parini knew precisely nothing. What ensued was a seriocomic romp across the Scottish landscape that Borges insisted he must "see," all the while declaiming and reciting from the literary encyclopedia that was his head, and Jay Parini's eventual reckoning with his vocation and personal fate.

An apprentice writer has an entirely unexpected encounter with literary genius Jorge Luis Borges that will profoundly alter his life and work. A poignant and comic literary…

“When we may feel as though our species and our planet is cascading into a future unknown, and uncertainty is all about, it may seem odd to publish a book which is ‘a conversation’ with a mountain, the very symbol of solidity. The mountain is Ben Dorain, which rises near Bridge of Orchy. It appears as Fuji-esque cone from some angles. The conversation is also with a praise poem composed 250 years ago, by Duncan Ban MacIntyre. MacIntyre’s poem is a musical paean to this one particular Scottish mountain and its deer. The original poem is in Gaelic, a language no longer spoken on that mountainside.

But what Gary MacKenzie has done, in this wonderful book, is to revivify that poem. He has created a new ‘inhabited music’ which springs McIntyre’s work into the present day. It’s not a translation, nor a modernised version, though there is that also. He has opened MacIntyre’s mountain poem like a geode, to use a geological term, and he has created an environmentally-aware, science-informed poetic counterpoint in English, which he presents dancing along with MacIntyre’s re-expressed eighteenth-century vision. Like the deer they so admire, the two poets’ lines leap back and forth across the page, across times, across languages, across species and poetic forms. It is a new work which alerts us to the tradition, which is to say, to the consciousness of the past. It calls this consciousness into the present, so that its wisdom might strengthen us for the environmental challenges to come.

But this is not primarily a political work. This is a work of love: of landscape and animals and poetry. Despite the shifting grounds which surround it, Ben Dorain the mountain remains true and centred, its marvellous creatures marvellously observed.”

Duncan Ban MacIntrye’s eighteenth-century long poem in Gaelic, Moladh Beinn Dobhrain (Praise of Ben Dorain), is also included and follows Garry MacKenzie’s long poem in English.

“When we may feel as though our species and our planet is cascading into a future unknown, and uncertainty is all about, it may seem odd to publish a book which is ‘a…

This is an account of the inter-relationship between one small island village in the Hebrides and the wider world. From the formation of the bedrock 3 billion years ago, to the predictable near-future, the layers of this unique landscape are explored. The social history of the people is closely interwoven with the natural environment in a journey of deep mapping to consider the meaning of special places. Through the Iron Age and the Clearances to the contemporary events of community land ownership, a portrayal is given that challenges the perception that this is a remote place, isolated at the edge, but instead is crucial to our contemporary relationship with the land.

This is an account of the inter-relationship between one small island village in the Hebrides and the wider world. From the formation of the bedrock 3 billion years ago, to the…

Среди сосен в темном лесу кто-то бродит. Призрак, чужой или безмолвная тень женщины? Далеко в полях местные видели костры, находили камни, выложенные в круг. Говорят, это проделки ведьмы. Той самой ведьмы, что давным-давно ушла из дома и не вернулась. С тех пор ее муж Найл научился жить заново. Днями он один воспитывает дочь, вечерами заливает тоску алкоголем.

Он никогда не говорит с десятилетней Лорен о маме. И девочка ищет ответы в картах Таро... Она хотела бы знать, о чем судачат местные. Кто та женщина-призрак в белом халате, что бродит в лесу? Куда ушла темной ночью ее соседка Анн-Мари? А главное, она хотела бы знать, о чем молчит ее отец. Что он скрывает в той комнате, которая вечно закрыта?

Среди сосен в темном лесу кто-то бродит. Призрак, чужой или безмолвная тень женщины? Далеко в полях местные видели костры, находили камни, выложенные в круг. Говорят, это проделки…

В настоящем Саша знает, что все идет наперекосяк. Ее брат Роберт — ходячая беда. Между матерью и отцом не ладится. А мир в раздрае — и ведь станет только хуже. А в прошлом лето было прекрасно. Другие брат и сестра еще не знали, что ждет их впереди. Это история о людях на пороге больших перемен. Они родня, но словно чужие друг другу. Так с чего начинается семья? И что общего у людей, которым кажется, что их ничего не объединяет? Лето.

В настоящем Саша знает, что все идет наперекосяк. Ее брат Роберт — ходячая беда. Между матерью и отцом не ладится. А мир в раздрае — и ведь станет только хуже. А в прошлом лето…

Like some lost chapters from the Celtic folk tradition, Grimoire tells stories of ordinary people caught up, suddenly, in the extraordinary: tales of violence, madness and retribution, of second sight, witches, ghosts, selkies, changelings and doubles, all bound within a larger mythology, narrated by a doomed shape-changer - a man, beast or god.

A grimoire is a manual for invoking spirits. Here, Robin Robertson and his brother Tim Robertson - whose accompanying images are as unforgettable as cave-paintings - raise strange new forms which speak not only of the potency of our myths and superstitions, but how they were used to balance and explain the world and its predicaments.

From one of our most powerful lyric poets, this is a book of curses and visions, gifts both desired and unwelcome, characters on the cusp of their transformation - whether women seeking revenge or saving their broken children, or men trying to save themselves. Haunting and elemental, Grimoire is full of the same charged beauty as the Scottish landscape - a beauty that can switch, with a mere change in the weather, to hostility and terror.

Like some lost chapters from the Celtic folk tradition, Grimoire tells stories of ordinary people caught up, suddenly, in the extraordinary: tales of violence, madness and…

An Archive of Happiness is set in the Scottish Highlands over the course of one day during the Avens family's annual get-together.

It's the summer solstice and theirs is a fractured family, broken by arguments, by things said and not said, by a mother who has left and a father who was left behind.

What happens on this day will force them to cleave together to survive and redraw the traditional bonds of family.

An Archive of Happiness is set in the Scottish Highlands over the course of one day during the Avens family's annual get-together.

It's the summer solstice and theirs is a…

Fourteen centuries ago, Irish saints brought the Word of God to the Hebrides and Scotland’s Atlantic shore. These ‘white martyrs’ sought solitude, remoteness, even harshness, in places apart from the world where they could fast, pray and move closer to an understanding of God: places where they could see angels. Columba, who founded the famous monastery at Iona, was the most well-known of these courageous men who rowed their curraghs towards danger and uncertainty in a pagan land, but the many others are now largely forgotten by history.

In this book, Alistair Moffat journeys from the island of Eileach an Naoimh at the mouth of the Firth of Lorne to Lismore, Iona and then north to Applecross, searching for traces of these extraordinary men. He finds them not often in any tangible remains, but in the spirit of the islands and remote places where they passed their exemplary lives.

Brendan, Moluag, Columba, Maelrubha and others brought the Gaelic language and echoes of how the saints saw their world can still be heard in its cadences. And the tradition of great piety endures.

Fourteen centuries ago, Irish saints brought the Word of God to the Hebrides and Scotland’s Atlantic shore. These ‘white martyrs’ sought solitude, remoteness, even harshness, in…

These poems probe the edge of the natural order of things, and what it means to explore knowledge, power, memory and play, in words that are time charged and skittish, words that jib at being claimed by anyone. It’s probably a political book, but is almost certainly already out of date; it’s probably some kind of warning, but without a clear sense of what.

In English and Gaelic.

These poems probe the edge of the natural order of things, and what it means to explore knowledge, power, memory and play, in words that are time charged and skittish, words that…

The celebrated author of Border explores a mysterious, ancient, and little-understood corner of Europe

Lake Ohrid and Lake Prespa. Two ancient lakes joined by underground rivers. Two lakes that seem to hold both the turbulent memories of the region’s past and the secret of its enduring allure. Two lakes that have played a central role in Kapka Kassabova’s maternal family.

As she journeys to her grandmother’s place of origin, Kassabova encounters a historic crossroads. The lakes are set within the mountainous borderlands of North Macedonia, Albania, and Greece, and crowned by the old Via Egnatia, which once connected Rome to Constantinople. A former trading and spiritual nexus of the southern Balkans, this lake region remains one of Eurasia’s most diverse corners. Meanwhile, with their remote rock churches, changeable currents, and large population of migratory birds, the lakes live in their own time.

By exploring on water and land the stories of poets, fishermen, and caretakers, misfits, rulers, and inheritors of war and exile, Kassabova uncovers the human destinies shaped by the lakes. Setting out to resolve her own ancestral legacy, Kassabova locates a deeper inquiry into how geography and politics imprint themselves upon families and nations, one that confronts her with universal questions about human suffering and the capacity for change.

The celebrated author of Border explores a mysterious, ancient, and little-understood corner of Europe

Lake Ohrid and Lake Prespa. Two ancient lakes joined by underground…

Originally written as a series of Facebook status updates during the recovery from Covid-19, Robert Alan Jamieson’s Plague Clothes is an immediate and intimate account of one person’s battle with the virus that emphasises the universality of our struggle during the pandemic. Moving seamlessly between sharp satire, confessional and philosophical enquiry, Jamieson takes aim at Western government, laments the current ecological crisis, and challenges our treatment of the so-called ‘old and vulnerable’, carried all the way by a rare voice of wisdom and protest at a time when ageism in society risks reducing an entire generation to statistics. Published in beautiful hardback with seventeen black and white photographs.

Originally written as a series of Facebook status updates during the recovery from Covid-19, Robert Alan Jamieson’s Plague Clothes is an immediate and intimate account of one…

When Fred Lawson takes a summer job on St Kilda in 1927, little does he realise that he has joined the last community to ever live on that desolate, isolated island. Only three years later, St Kilda will be evacuated, the islanders near-dead from starvation. But for Fred, that summer is the bedrock of his whole life...

Chrissie Gillies is just nineteen when the researchers come to St Kilda. Hired as their cook, she can't believe they would ever notice her, sophisticated and educated as they are. But she soon develops a cautious friendship with Fred, a friendship that cannot be allowed to develop into anything more...

Years later, to help deal with his hellish existence in a German prisoner of war camp, Fred tells the tale of the island and the woman he loved, but left behind. And Fred starts to wonder, where is Chrissie now? And does she ever think of him too?

When Fred Lawson takes a summer job on St Kilda in 1927, little does he realise that he has joined the last community to ever live on that desolate, isolated island. Only three…

In a mythic Scotland, two unlikely heroes must make a dangerous journey to save their people.

Agatha is a Hawk, brave and fierce, who protects her people by patrolling the high walls of their island home. She is proud of her job, though some in her clan whisper that it is meant to keep her out of the way because of the condition she was born with.Jaime, thoughtful and anxious, is an Angler, but he hates the sea. Worse, he’s been chosen for a duty that the clan hasn’t required for generations: to marry. The elders won’t say why they have promised him to a girl in a neighboring clan, but there are rumors of approaching danger.

When disaster strikes and the clan is kidnapped, it is up to Agatha and Jaime to travel across the haunted mainland of Scotia to Norveg, with help along the way from a clan of nomadic Highland bull riders and the many animals who are drawn to Agatha’s extraordinary gift of communication. Thrilling and dark yet rich with humor and compassion, this is the first book in the Shadow Skye trilogy, written by a wonderful new voice in fantasy and introducing a welcome new kind of hero.

In a mythic Scotland, two unlikely heroes must make a dangerous journey to save their people.

Agatha is a Hawk, brave and fierce, who protects her people by patrolling the high…

A collection of vibrant essays to inform, stimulate and inspire every nature lover. Through unparallelled expertise as a field naturalist, Roy Dennis is able to write about the natural world in a way that considers both the problems and the progress in ecology and conservation. Beginning with cottongrass, whose snow-white blooms blow gently in the wind across the wetter moors and bogs, this is a year-round trove of insight and knowledge for anyone who cares about

A collection of vibrant essays to inform, stimulate and inspire every nature lover. Through unparallelled expertise as a field naturalist, Roy Dennis is able to write about the…

In the endless light of summer days, and the magical gloaming of the wee small hours, nature in Jim’s beloved Highlands, Perthshire and Trossachs heartlands is burgeoning freely, as though there is one long midsummer’s eve, nothing reserved.

For our flora and fauna, for the very land itself, this is the time of extravagant growth, flowering and the promise of fruit and the harvest to come. But despite the abundance, as Jim Crumley attests, summer in the Northlands is no Wordsworthian idyll. Climate chaos and its attendant unpredictable weather brings high drama to the lives of the animals and birds he observes.

There is also a wild, elemental beauty to the land, mountains, lochs, coasts and skies, a sense of nature at its very apex during this, the most beautiful and lush of seasons. Jim chronicles it all: the wonder, the tumult, the spectacle of summer.

In the endless light of summer days, and the magical gloaming of the wee small hours, nature in Jim’s beloved Highlands, Perthshire and Trossachs heartlands is burgeoning freely,…