Poet, novelist and essayist Kenneth Steven takes us on a series of meditative quests in search of “atoms of delight”—treasures, both natural and spiritual.In this captivating collection of short pieces, each documenting a different journey through some of Scotland's most beautiful landscapes, Steven invites readers to accompany him as he seeks out crystal-clear waters, delicate orchids, plump berries, and pebbles polished by time and tide. Appreciative of the gift ...

One man walks alone through an abandoned country. He has lost everything, even his own name. It may be that he is the last living person. As he walks, he remembers, and recounts what he remembers. He is the scribe. And yet, somehow, he is not alone. Sometimes, somehow, he knows the company of the child he came to feel in the end was his own. More than anything, despite all that he has lost and all that has been taken from him, he knows a sense of God. For in the horrors that have befallen ...

Kenneth Steven grew up in the heart of Highland Scotland, but from earliest childhood days he spent the summer days on the Atlantic coast and in the islands of the Hebrides. At the heart of those islands lies Iona, the place St. Columba came to from Ireland to build his monastery. Kenneth Steven is first and always a poet, and this collection gathers fifty of his best poems from across thirty years, works that speak of wild beauty, truth, love, and sanctity.

Two British geologists are working deep underground in the hills of southwest England. They emerge to a landscape locked in ice and work out after a time that something extraordinary has taken place, that an asteroid has fallen and plunged the world into winter. But as the days progress they start to realize the asteroid’s fall was no surprise event, and their survival far from the accident they had imagined.

IN 2020, BRITAIN IS AT BREAKING POINTIn a country sorely divided, what happens to empathy and tolerance, to generosity of spirit? And can hope survive? In 2020, years of economic turmoil, bitter debates over immigration, and anger at the political elites have created a maelstrom, a dis-United Kingdom. The country is a bomb waiting to explode. Then it does.As the nightmare unfolds, a myriad of voices – from across the political and social spectrum – offer wi...

"A poetic voice of great sensitivity.” - Alexander McCall SmithBeneath the Ice tells the fascinating, often troubling, story of the Sami - the indigenous people of the Scandinavian Arctic. A proud and resilient people in an unforgiving yet stunningly beautiful northern wildscape, the Sami have carved out an existence rich in tradition, where the old ways of reindeer herding, shamanic belief and the veneration of bears have not yet been forgotten.Author Kenn...

A sequence of poetry based on the tragic, ancient Irish legend, from the author of Out of the Ordinary and Iona.The story of Deirdre of the Sorrows is widely known in Ireland, yet all but forgotten across the water in Scotland. This great tragic love story, which has its roots in the ninth or tenth century, is very much shared by both countries. For Deirdre, according to the legend, fled with her lover Naoise to Argyll. The oldest song in Scotland...

Two geologists emerge from caves in the south-west of England to discover that the world they left a few days before has been encased in ice. After wandering for hours through a transformed landscape, they begin to get a sense of what must have taken place - the fall of a giant asteroid. As they begin to adapt to their new world, and to piece events together through their meetings with fellow survivors, the men start to realise that their survival was no accident. Indeed the survival of ot...

The story of a young man from Highland Scotland who arrives mysteriously in a lonely glen to begin building a house. We have no knowledge of where he has come from or what his past may have been. Only when his simple house is built at last - with his own hands - does he go down the glen to find the little community on his doorstep. And there in the pub he meets the gold-haired Anna, daughter of the blacksmith, and at once falls for her. This then is the story of the life that they build in...

The story of a family from Sicily who leave for New York at the beginning of last century carrying with them a secret recipe for lemon ice cream.

The story of a boy returning home for Christmas after his first term at boarding school. The previous year he lost his mother, and through the last months he has been bullied mercilessly. He comes home miserable and unable to share that misery. But his grandmother tells him that if it's a real winter the ice will form on the little pond on the estate and he and his brother can spend Christmas there with their cousin Winnie. The boy all but prays for sufficient frost, and to his utter joy, ...

A swirling together of selected poems from over twenty years of writing. Poems that are first and foremost inspired by the wild world, and by the places and people that are found there. These are poems that have appeared in twelve different volumes over the last two decades; they are poems that have been loved by readers both at home and abroad.