Search results for ""sandstone press ltd""

In 2015, climber and documentary maker Joe French was about to fulfil a dream of a lifetime – to climb Everest and film it. Then tragedy struck and Joe found himself at the epicentre of an earthquake which killed nearly 9,000 people. Only a few years previously, his team of Sherpa had been killed in another avalanche, and soon after that, Julie, his wife, was diagnosed with cancer. The accumulation of trauma took its toll: suffering from post-traumatic stress, Joe was haunted by the horrors he’d witnessed. In an attempt to find a resolution, he turned to his love of the outdoors. Running barefoot through the forests and glens around his house in Scotland, Joe discovered the means to find a return to health and peace of mind.

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Longlisted for the 2022 Highland Book Prize Mary, Queen of Scots’ marriage to the Earl of Bothwell is notorious. Less known is Bothwell’s first wife, Jean Gordon, who extricated herself from their marriage and survived the intrigue of the Queen’s court. Daughters of the North reframes this turbulent period in history by focusing on Jean, who became Countess of Sutherland, following her from her birth as the daughter of the ‘King of the North’ to her disastrous union with the notorious Earl of Bothwell – and her lasting legacy to the Earldom of Sutherland.

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Leonie Charlton travelled extensively as a child, living in England, Africa, Wales and Scotland. She has worked as a cowgirl in Australia, an English teacher in Japan, and her degree in Hispanic Studies took her to Catalonia for two years. Marram is her first full length book although her fiction and poetry have appeared widely in magazines.

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Puffins, the breathtaking new book from internationally renowned photographer Kevin Morgans, celebrates the iconic Atlantic puffin and its place in the ecology of the British Isles. With their brightly coloured beaks, quirky personalities and comical movements, the ‘clowns of the sea’ are the best loved of all Britain’s seabirds. In a series of stunning images from his award-winning portfolio, Kevin Morgans documents their lives and their relationship with our windswept coast.

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Mark Atkinson is living proof that you don’t have to be ‘good’ at running to make it through a marathon or even further. Packed with insights and tips, pitfalls and joy, Ducking Long Way invites you to join him for a beer at mile thirty as he pushes himself as far as he can while still running for the sheer joy of it.

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The first woman to be elected First Minister of Scotland, Nicola Sturgeon’s impact on the future of Scotland and the United Kingdom makes her words essential reading. Independently selected by editor Robert Davidson, this collection of speeches from her time as First Minister addresses such crucial matters as the climate crisis, education, human rights and the European Union. Women Hold Up Half the Sky depicts a leader tackling not only immediate, pressing concerns but also mapping out a progressive agenda for the future.

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Ted moves to London to become a journalist but quickly slides into debt. Things look up when he is given the opportunity to go to Romania to interview a film director and then attend the Moscow film festival. But someone has other plans for him. Has he walked into a trap?

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A ship adrift, all hands dead. A lighthouse keeper murdered in the night. The Crown needs man to find the truth. Doctor Mungo Lyon, his reputation tarnished by the Burke & Hare scandal, and forbidden to practise as a surgeon, is the wrong man. That's exactly why the Crown chose him.

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136,000 people in the UK are in some form of slavery. This is big business, generating more than £120 billion annually for criminal organisations across the world. Stolen Lives examines trafficking and slavery in Britain, hearing from those on the front line. Powerful and moving testimony from survivors reveals the individual stories behind the headlines and charts one young woman’s terrifying and ultimately inspiring journey to freedom and independence. Finally, it shows us what we can do to make a difference.

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On a hot July day, Lindsay Mathieson, confident, carefree and thirteen years old, walks up the beach where she has played all her life, around the rocks and out of sight. She does not come back. More than thirty years later, her younger brothers and cousins are still dealing with the fallout from that terrible summer.

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Bea’s favourite customer, Julie, hasn’t been seen for weeks. Her abusive husband, Dave, claims she’s left him but Bea can’t shake the feeling something worse has happened. When a body is found, it seems to confirm her fears – until it comes out that the corpse is fifteen years old. Where is Julie? Who is the dead girl? And what was her connection to Bea’s late father? Ant and Bea are back with their most personal case yet.

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Helen Bellany, twice married to the artist John Bellany, recalls their lives together in Scotland, London, and Italy, John's rise from poverty and obscurity to worldwide recognition, and the human cost inherent in creating great art. The sea was in both their hearts and in John's work from its earliest stages. From there, he deepened into a profound exploration of the human condition. The Restless Wave reflects the mystery, poetry and passion that was at the core of the inner life John and Helen shared. The couple had great friendships with such fellow artists as David Bowie, and John painted such internationally known figures as Billy Connelly, Sean Connery and Peter Maxwell Davis, as well as many portraits of his muse, Helen.

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Lead Fiction, Spring 2019: This thriller brilliantly evokes 1973 Moscow and a world of diplomacy and counter-espionage. Escaping failure as an undergraduate and a daughter, not to mention bleak 1970s England, Martha marries Kit – who is gay. Having a wife could keep him safe in Moscow in his diplomatic post. As Martha tries to understand her new life and makes the wrong friends, she walks straight into an underground world of counter-espionage. Out of her depth, Martha no longer knows who can be trusted.

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Tom is an Asian puppy, destined to be dinner. Instead, an Irish couple rescue him from a street vendor and take him into their care. Together they embark on a whirlwind tour through Vietnam, Nepal and Cambodia, thwarting street dogs and customs officials along the way. But can the three of them truly become a family?

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Featured in Amazon.com's Best Books of 2018. ‘Every day we put fire and swords and electricity into our bodies, throw knives at them, contort them, wrap them in snakes, and every day we wake up sure those things won’t harm us but also sure that there is so much else that will.’ When her mother had a series of strokes, Tessa Fontaine couldn’t stand to watch her mother disappear. The Electric Woman tells Tessa’s story of joining America’s last travelling freak show, and learning to perform death-defying acts in order to come to terms with her mother’s illness. In her life-affirming memoir, Tessa finds hope and companionship among sword swallowers and snake charmers.

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This extraordinary book tells the story of a remarkable family caught in Japan at the outbreak of the Second World War in the Pacific. With letters, journal extracts and notes from Hamish Brown’s parents, as well as his own recollections, it brings the era to life: not only life in the dying days of the British Empire, but also the terrible reality of the invasion of Singapore into which they escaped.

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For one brilliant season in 1983 the sport of fell running was dominated by the two huge talents of John Wild and Kenny Stuart. Wild was an incomer to the sport from road running and track. Stuart was born to the fells, but an outcast because of his move from professional to amateur. Together they destroyed the record book, only determining who was top by a few seconds in the last race of the season. Running Hard is the story of that season, and an inside, intimate look at the two men by Steve Chilton, the author of It’s a Hill, Get Over It and The Round.

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SHORTLISTED FOR SALTIRE SOCIETY NON-FICTION BOOK OF THE YEAR Quirky, hilarious, always engaging and often moving, The Passion of Harry Bingo enters the lives of some of Britain’s least known but most amazing characters. From Orkney to the Sussex coast they bring light and laughter into all our lives: the Sikh pipe band and Wall of Death riders, herring queens and drag queens, crazy golfers and Harry himself, still following Partick Thistle in his nineties. This second selection of Peter Ross’s sideways looks at life in Scotland – and beyond – follows the highly successful and acclaimed Daunderlust.

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In over 40 years as a senior captain for Greenpeace International, Peter Willcox has been in the vanguard of the international environmentalist movement. He has led crews into battle against whale killers, nuclear testing sites, and deep sea drillers. He has confronted naval warships, faced a bombing attack on the iconic Rainbow Warrior, and endured imprisonment for peacefully protesting Russian oil drilling in Antarctica. This is his story.

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The dead are never far away. Catherine knows that the face she glimpsed in a crowd can’t be her dear friend Hugh because he’s dead. Kenneth is more concerned about someone who might still turn up one day, while Helen hopes that Joe, who certainly isn’t dead, will come back. All three are waiting for the message that will free them.

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Approaching his middle forties, Gavin Boyter wondered what his life was all about. A Scot living in London, single and with no kids, he was living for the job and the dwindling hope of a career in film. He had been a club runner all his life, pretty good but not at the front all that often. He was what he called an ordinary runner and he came to wonder just what an ordinary runner might be capable of. How about John O'Groats to Land's End, the longest linear run in Britain, and how about making a film of it? And how about writing a book? As usual, Gavin was neither the first nor the quickest but Downhill from Here is his real triumph, written in such an engaging and witty voice the reader accompanies him every step of the way.

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Fallow is a tense, thrilling literary novel combining elements of dark comedy and surrealism. At its heart is the relationship between two brothers bound by a terrible crime. Paul and Mikey are on the run, apparently from the press surrounding their house after Mikey's release from prison. His crime, child murder, committed when he was a boy. As they travel, moving from one disturbing scenario to the next, they encounter a group of dishonest archaeologists, an unhinged born-again Christian, two American tourists researching their genealogy, the inhabitants of a peace camp and a religious cult headed by the powerful Brother Terry. Gradually, the brothers' relationship begins to change and we realise there is more to their history than Paul has allowed us to know.

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Anne Scott has never housed her books in order of theme or author yet she knows where each of them is and the kind of life it has led. Some have been gifts but most have been chosen in bookshops unique in their style and possibilities. They have been observers of discovery, decisions, and marvels with her, following the line of her time and place. Some are everyday shops with a shelf of books in a corner, some are beginning again after long lives as churches, printing presses, medieval houses, a petrol-station. There are a few the author is too late to see: early print-houses and booksellers here too in this book, searched for and described, side by side with all the bookshops open now and busy with readers. Not one is like another. In one way, the book is a sequence about writing. But first it is a map of books and a life.

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Jonas Mortensen wants to be liked. Adam Fletcher wants to be forgotten. Jonas, a freewheeling Norwegian, has been living in a quiet English village for years, an eccentric everyone has an opinion about. Then the real owner of his house turns up. Fletcher, a traumatised veteran of the Afghan War, has come to claim his inheritance. The two men live side by side in an increasingly bizarre standoff, until a teenage girl goes missing and suspicion falls on Jonas. As the hunt intensifies, it's clear both men are concealing past lives that won't stay hidden much longer.

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Weary of her Yorkshire county life of grouse moors and hunt balls, Amelia Dalton threw herself instead into running a deep sea trawler amongst the closed community of fishermen in NE Scotland in the '90s. Unprepared by her background in cookery and antiques, she had to negotiate red tape, oversee shipyards and deal with engineers and industrial tribunals, while coping with demanding shareholders and drunken employees. What began as a love affair with the romance of the sea became a battle to stay afloat - financially and literally. This is a lively account of an adventure like no other - and a voyage of self-discovery.

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Only child Robyn was born and brought up in Balloch, Alexandria, though now lives in her own flat in Glasgow, working in a mid-range Furniture and Home Accessories shop - think 'Habitat' as was, but not as good quality. Her planned autumn holiday to the sun with Richard is cancelled as his Dad is being moved into a Nursing Home in England. Robyn decides to use the week to explore unchartered territory - North of Balloch. She boards the morning train - Glasgow - Mallaig at Dumbarton Central with an open agenda and no mobile phone. She soon meets attractive, woman of the world, Fi, sitting opposite and eventually asks if she can accompany her in the hills from Corrour. Robyn is out of her depth in many ways, and when she and Fi eventually reach The Bothy, she is exhausted and vulnerable. Ex-army, Jake, greets them with brusque bravado and bad language. Paulo, from Italy, arrives later - caught in Jake's man-trap. The sun has long gone down, the four have eaten and drank a bit and the vibe is good with a warm stove in the corner. Why not share personal stories, never before revealed to others? Why not, indeed?But, you might tell the 'wrong' story and that might seriously offend with unexpected consequences.

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This tender and personal memoir by the poet Joanna Ramsey of George Mackay Brown gives an account of some aspects of the last eight years of his life in Stromness, Orkney, and of the friendship between them. It also provides a background to his poem 'A New Child: ECL 11 June 1993' (included in the anthology Following a Lark), which he wrote for Joanna's daughter. There are many small details of George's day to day life in those last years that are not included in any other account. Also included are an unpublished poem written for Joanna, and a number of birthday acrostics written for her and her daughter, Emma. In his final years George Mackay Brown rarely travelled beyond Stromness, but many of his friends visited him there; the book is also peopled by George's other friends, and paints a portrait of a man who remained very dear and important to others until his death and beyond it.

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The Old Man of Hoy is a 449 foot high sandstone pillar located just off Hoy, second largest of the Orkney Islands. Highly subject to the North Atlantic weather it was carved by erosion from the nearby cliffs and will eventually, perhaps soon, collapse into the sea. It was first climbed by the crack team of Bonington, Baillie and Patey in 1966 and remains one of the premier challenges of British rock climbing. From the moment he watched the televised ascent of the Old Man of Hoy, Red Széll knew his life would be incomplete until he too stood atop Europe’s tallest sea stack. Those dreams went dark at nineteen when he learned he was going blind, and for twenty years he ignored the pangs of regret and desire every time the Old Man appeared again in his life. He was still climbing, but only indoors until he shared his dream with his buddies, Matthew and Andres, and, with an ever growing following looking on, they set out to confront the Orcadian giant. The Blind Man of Hoy is his story.

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An accident in the school chemistry lab uncovers a hidden memory that shatters Sarah Campbell’s confidence. As if it isn’t bad enough that her relationship with her boyfriend has broken down, she doesn’t know which of her friends she can trust with news of this terrible event, or even if her own memories are reliable. Suddenly she is no longer the person she thought she was, and she doesn’t know if she’ll ever find the strength to face up to her past and get her life back on track. David Eyre explores the fragile nature of self-confidence and in this touching story about a young woman’s attempts to understand her past, her present and her own character.

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John McPake, a former teacher, has a diagnosis of schizophrenia. Soon after his marriage fell apart he started hearing voices and eventually moved into an Edinburgh hostel for men with enduring mental health problems. An earlier obsession with the works of Breughel develops into a full blown delusion, and he assumes the personna of Johannes, a 16th century Dutch weaver who travels with his friends, Balthazar and Cornelius, in pursuit of his son who has been abducted by the Spanish mercenaries. This is an echo of John's real life quest to be reunited with his brother. People with a diagnosis of psychosis often hear multiple voices. To the hearer the voices are as real as if they were listening to someone standing next to them. The voices, often unpleasant, can have completely different characters. John's voices jostle and bitch with each other for the right to tell his story.

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In May 2013 it will be exactly 1450 years since the arrival on Iona of Columba, the imperious and energetic Irishman of royal descent who founded its famous monastery and became Scotland's best known Celtic saint. To celebrate this important anniversary, Iona Cathedral Trust has commissioned a new book by the historian Rosalind K. Marshall. Using a wide variety of sources and taking into account the results of the most recent historical and archaeological research, she charts the many developments on Iona throughout the centuries, investigating why it has had such an enduring influence on Scottish life. In our own apparently secular age, thousands of people visit the tiny and remote Hebridean island each year to experience its unique atmosphere of tranquil spirituality. Columba's wood and wattle buildings have long since vanished, replaced by a Benedictine abbey of stone, but after the Reformation it fell into neglect, languishing for two hundred years as no more than a romantic ruin. In the early twentieth century, however, it was restored by the Church of Scotland's Iona Cathedral Trust and by the charismatic, controversial George MacLeod, founder of the Iona Community, an experiment in Christian living which flourishes to this day.

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Not all of Hamish Brown's many travels about Scotland have taken up mountains or into wild and wind swept places, but he has found himself in some pretty odd locations. Now he has listed them, placing them in their regions, complete with references and directions to produce this beautiful and fascinating book that will take you around Scotland to places you never dreamed of. Beutifully designed by Heather MacPherson of Raspberryhmac, and with maps by David Langwell, The Oldest Post Office in the World is a book you will want not only for the car but for the coffee table and the book shelf. It's one to use and one to treasure.

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Jessie is an aspiring actress who has moved to London to try to make a breakthrough into the big time but is finding the going tough. She has to work in a hotel to make ends meet and is about give up when she stumbles, with the help of her friend Curtis, on a novel way of using her acting talents for gain. Jessie’s series of imaginative ‘scenarios’, designed to help her clients through sticky patches in their lives, are brought alive vividly in this entrancing tale. In Cleasan a’ Bhaile Mhòir, Catriona Lexy Campbell has created a wide range of interesting characters and their relationships, which she describes with humour and insight. Underlying it all is a tender, understated love story.

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‘Funny, fierce, and full of joy and pain.’ Queer. Muslim. Arab American. A proudly Fat woman. Randa Jarrar is all these things. In this provocative memoir she explores how to claim joy in an unravelling and hostile world.

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The red deer, majestic monarch of the glen, is Britain’s largest land mammal and undisputed king of woodlands and glens. Common across the Scottish Highlands and resident elsewhere, the animal is emblematic of our wild country and a beloved icon. Yet to some, red deer are seen as little more than pests. Born into a family of deer stalkers, Neil McIntyre has been fascinated by red deer all his life. They have been central to his career as a wildlife photographer and, in this stunning collection of photographs, he invites you to know and respect them as he does.

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Mark Chadwick is cycling home, eager to get back to his family, when he sees the police calling at his house. Mark cycles on — he knows why they’re there. The secrets he has buried for twenty years are coming to confront him. Unless he can stay out of sight long enough to persuade his former lover to retract her confession to murder, Mark is going away for a very long time.

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The last survivor of a dying Earth is on a mission to find a new planet where the human race can start again. She implants herself with the embryos she has brought with her and begins a new life on what appears to be a hospitable planet, but she soon discovers that she isn’t alone. There are two warring tribes here, both with eerily human characteristics, and the Voyager and her children are in danger. Is e an Taistealach an tè mu dheireadh às an t-saoghal aice, a’ siubhal tro thìm is farsaingeachd a’ lorg dachaigh ùr air planaid fhreagarrach. Tha e fa-near dhi clann a bhreith agus an cinneadh aice a thoirt air adhart, ach chan eil i na h-aonar. Tha creutairean eile an seo, dà threubh dhiubh, agus cunnart air gach taobh dhith.

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Kings of a Dead World is Jamie Mollart's latest dystopian novel. The Earth’s resources are dwindling. The solution is The Sleep: periods of hibernation imposed on those who remain with only a Janitor to watch over the sleepers. In the sleeping city, elderly Ben struggles with his limited waking time and the disease which is stealing his wife from him. Outside, lonely Janitor Peruzzi craves the family he never knew. Around them both, dissatisfaction is growing. The city is about to wake.

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Light, portable and high in value, amber is an ideal commodity for long-distance trade. An Amber Route, comparable to the Silk Road, ran from the Baltic to the Mediterranean for thousands of years. In Along the Amber Route, C.J. Schüler follows this route by bus, train and boat for 2,500 kilometres along river valleys, forest paths and Roman roads. His journey traces both the greatest fault lines of European geopolitics and his own family’s history. As he explores lands contested by Romans and Vandals, Teutons and Slavs, lost empires and the former Iron Curtain, Schüler must also confront his own family history, Nazism and the Holocaust.

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The public think Ava’s a monster. Ava thinks she’s blameless. In prison, they called her Butcher Bird – but Ava’s not in prison any more. Released after 25 years to a new identity and a new home, Ava finally has the quiet life she’s always wanted. But someone knows who she is. The lies she’s told are about to unravel.

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Cynthia Rogerson’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. Wonderfully witty and refreshingly candid, Wah! is an unflinching look at life in all its uncertain and messy glory.

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All or Nothing At All by Steve Chilton is the life story of Billy Bland, fellrunner extraordinaire and holder of many records including that of the Bob Graham Round until it was broken by the foreword author of this book, Kilian Jornet. It is also the story of Borrowdale in the English Lake District, describing its people, their character and their lifestyle, into which fellrunning is unmistakably woven. Filled with stories of competition and rich in northern humour, All or Nothing At All is testimony to the life spent in the fells by one of their greatest champions, Billy Bland.

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‘She belongs to me – property rights would prevail.’ Evie is a near-perfect bioengineered human. In a broken-down future England where her kind has been outlawed, her ‘husband’ Matthew keeps her safe but hidden. When her existence is revealed, she must take her chances on the dark and hostile streets where more than one predator is on the hunt.

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Like many young people of his generation, Craig Weldon came of age on hills all around the British Isles, but especially the Munros in Scotland. With his friends he braved the high mountains of the Cuillin and the lower tops of Gloucestershire, wild Welsh farmers and even wilder midges in the Highlands. Usually funny, sometimes dangerous, more often wet, one thing was for sure: life was never boring!

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Anders Bortne has a nice life in Oslo. Married to a wonderful woman, with two delightful children, his days are occupied by his creative work. Not all is well though, Anders has been sleepless for sixteen years, and it is taking its toll on his life and his family. No remedy has gone untested: sleeping pills, yoga, herbs, acupuncture, hypnosis, but none has worked. What do we know about the most important hours of the day? What is the history of sleep, and how is our health affected? Sleepless is a book for everyone who lies awake at night and wonders what to do about it. Anders’s last resort was just across the street.

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The Health Enforcement Team is struggling with the aftermath of IT specialist Bryce’s sabotage of government systems. As Bryce threatens to shoot a civil servant every day until his demands are met, the civil service is in melt-down. Tasked with finding out who ‘turned’ Bryce, the team track down the last two groups he was monitoring – a group of student eugenicists who think the Virus should be allowed to take the weak, and a former progressive rock musician, now a survivalist. It’s getting dangerous – and not just for the team.

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Hamish Brown, who occupies a special place as a Scottish writer and traveller, turns his wealth of experience into captivating narratives of fascinating people and places; sometimes serious, at times laugh aloud in this new volume. Chasing the Dreams is a companion to Walking the Song, with the same kaleidoscopic range and variety, telling of treks in Scotland, the Alps, Atlas and Himalaya, of ventures by canoe and sailing, ski-ing and cycling.

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