THE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLERSHORTLISTED FOR THE WAINWRIGHT PRIZE FOR NATURE WRITINGWishing to leave behind the isolation of her Orkney island life, Amy Liptrot books a one-way flight to Berlin. She rents a loftbed in a shared flat and starts to look for work – and for love – through the screen of her phone. The Instant tells of the momentous year that follows, encountering the city’s wildlife in the most unexpected places, tracing th...

'Luminous' The Times'Beautiful’ Caught by the RiverBringing together contemporary Scottish writing on nature and landscape, this inspiring collection takes us from walking to wild swimming, from red deer to pigeons and wasps, from remote islands to back gardens, through prose, poetry and photography.Edited and introduced by Kathleen Jamie, and with contributions from Amy Liptrot, Jim Crumley, Chitra Ramaswamy, Malac...

A young woman finds herself washed up back home on the Scottish archipelago of Orkney, trying to rebuild her life after a decade of addiction.The life she has left behind in London, with all its intoxicating temptations, has pushed her to the point of destruction. Now there is wildness of a different form – an alluring wilderness that she must learn to navigate.Speaking to the impact of isolation and loneliness and – ultimately – the resilience of people, Amy Liptrot's best...

The women of the tiny town of Fetter-Rothnie have grown used to a life without men, and none more so than the tangle of mothers and daughters, spinsters and widows living at the Weatherhouse. Returned from war with shellshock, Garry Forbes is drawn into their circle as he struggles to build a new understanding of the world from the ruins of his grief.In The Weatherhouse Nan Shepherd paints an exquisite portrait of a community coming to terms with the brutal losses of war, ...

WITH A NEW FOREWORD BY AMY LIPTROTSHORTLISTED FOR THE BOOKER PRIZE 1994WINNER OF THE SALTIRE SOCIETY LITERARY AWARD 1994'Intimate, humorous, effortlessly combining the strands of history and folklore, the past and the present, this is a deceptively simple book, like a tale told to a child. But its echoes sound on unforgettably. A whole universe is created from a grain of Orkney sand' Independent

SHORTLISTED FOR THE WAINWRIGHT PRIZE FOR NATURE WRITING'I loved this book' Raynor Winn, author of The Salt Path'Utterly absorbing' Lucy Jones, author of Losing EdenWishing to leave behind the quiet isolation of her Orkney island life, Amy Liptrot books a one-way flight to Berlin. Searching for new experiences, inspiration and love, she rents a loftbed in a shared flat and looks for work. She explore...

THE SUNDAY TIMES TOP TEN BESTSELLERWINNER OF THE 2016 WAINWRIGHT PRIZESHORTLISTED FOR THE 2017 ONDAATJE PRIZESHORTLISTED FOR THE 2016 WELLCOME PRIZEAt the age of thirty, Amy Liptrot finds herself washed up back home on Orkney. Standing unstable on the island, she tries to come to terms with the addiction that has swallowed the last decade of her life. As she spends her mornings swimming in the bracingl...

C.S. Lewis’s dazzling allegory about heaven and hell – and the chasm fixed between them – is one of his most brilliantly imaginative tales, as he takes issue with the ideas in William Blake’s ‘The Marriage of Heaven and Hell’.In a dream, the narrator boards a bus on a drizzly afternoon and embarks on an incredible voyage through Heaven and Hell. He meets a host of supernatural beings far removed from his expectations, from the disgruntled, ghostly inhabitants of Hell to the angels ...

The Breadmaker's Saga follows the story of a Glasgow working class community living through the dark days of the Depression and the Second World War.Clydend, McNair's Bakery and the surrounding tenements, are all vividly and absorbingly depicted, as are the lives and loves of people like Catriona, a young woman trying to cope with an overbearing husband; the foreman baker Baldy Fowler and his tragic wife, Sarah; Alec Jackson, the philandering insurance sal...

Introducing sixteenth-century Scottish lawyer and amateur sleuth Hew Cullan in "a gripping mystery that holds the reader to the very last page" (John Burnside, prize-winning poet and novelist).1579, St Andrews. A thirteen-year-old boy meets his death on the streets of the university city of St Andrews, and suspicion falls upon one of the regents at the university, Nicholas Colp. Hew Cullan, a young lawyer recently returned home from Paris, uncovers a complex tale o...

BASED ON THE LONG-RUNNING BBC RADIO 4 McLEVY DRAMA SERIES...WHILE THE STREETS OF LONDON HAD SHERLOCK HOLMES, THE DARK ALLEYS OF EDINBURGH HAD INSPECTOR JAMES McLEVYELEGANT AND CONVINCING' The Times | 'ASHTON IS THE DIRECT HEIR TO ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON' Brian Cox | 'EXCELLENT' The Sherlock Holmes Society | 'DRIPPING WITH M...

In the sixteenth century, a girl is found dead on the beach at St Andrews, Scotland, and a young scholar of the law must play sleuth.1581: Young St Andrews academic Hew Cullan is unhappy with his life and disillusioned with the law. After his father's death he is invited by the advocate Richard Cunningham to complete his legal education in Edinburgh as Richard's pupil at the bar. Among his father's things, Hew finds a manuscript entitled "In Defence of the Law," dir...