Search results for ""sandstone press ltd""

In The Ancient Pinewoods of Scotland, Clifton Bain gives a personal and passionate account of the human interventions that have shaped the ancient pinewoods and on the triumph of their conservation and renewal. Details are provided on how to reach each of the sites, some in the farthest mountain glens and others easily accessed by public transport, with well-marked routes and visitor facilities. A journey to the pinewoods offers a natural spectacle alongside a rich cultural heritage, all described in this comprehensive and beautifully illustrated guide.

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Voices from the Hills by Steve Chilton is the story of the barriers encountered by the first female fell runners who fought to participate in the early days of this male-dominated sport. Despite experiencing discouragement and resistance, these women responded with personal courage and self-confidence. Thanks to them, women now compete at traditional fell races, international mountain races and endurance challenges such as the Bob Graham Round in increasing numbers. Told predominantly through interviews with pioneering female athletes who recount their lives and running careers, this is the story of a fight for equality of opportunity and reward.

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Josephine Tey was the pen-name of Elizabeth MacKintosh (1896-1952). Born in Inverness, MacKintosh lived several lives: Best known as Golden Age Crime Fiction writer Tey, she was also successful novelist and playwright Gordon Daviot. During her exceptional career, she had plays on simultaneously in the West End in London and on Broadway, and even wrote for Hollywood, all from her home in the north of Scotland. Celebrating the 125th anniversary of MacKintosh’s birth, this updated edition of the definitive biography includes a new preface.

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Seven years after her mother’s death, Leonie Charlton is still gripped by memories of their fraught relationship. In May 2017, Leonie trekked through the Outer Hebrides in the company of a friend and their Highland Ponies in search of closure. When Leonie’s pony has a serious accident, she begins to realise that finding peace with her mother is less important than letting go. Leonie Charlton blends travel and nature writing with intimate memoir in this beautifully written account of grief and acceptance.

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‘Of course it’s a bloody lie. It’s an advertising campaign.’ James Marlowe has a gift for selling people things they don’t need. As he strives to meet the demands of rival colleagues, amoral clients and his young family, James has to raise his game. A cocktail of cocaine and alcohol fuels his ambition, but when body and mind can’t take any more, he plunges into a surreal world darker than the one he’s fallen from. ‘Grippingly dark and ultimately moving.’ Alison Moore ‘A little Mad Men and a lot American Psycho.’ The Skinny

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‘Original, adept and confident... What can I say, except that I wish I had written it myself?’ -Hilary Mantel May 1907. Young Stalin – poet, bank-robber, spy – is in London for the 5th Congress of the Russian Communist Party. As he builds his powerbase in the party, Stalin manipulates alliances with Lenin, Trotsky, and Rosa Luxemburg under the eyes of the Czar’s secret police. Meanwhile he is drawn to the fiery Finnish activist Elli Vuokko and risks everything in a relationship as complicated as it is dangerous.

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A charming gift book of pleas, put downs, misplaced career guidance and character assessments collected from the school reports and memoirs of celebrities and ordinary people from across the UK and Ireland. Featuring household names such as Benedict Cumberbatch, David Bowie, Sandi Toksvig, Sir Billy Connolly, and even members of the Royal family, this collection will have readers laughing and digging out their own school reports.

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A Nobel laureate struggles to write a convincing suicide note; a hobo sings of hope in the darkest hours after the Grenfell disaster; in a strange post-death waiting room, Anna Karenina and Emma Bovary exchange confidences, and a scientist finally discovers the appalling truth about a boyhood friendship. Unpredictable, haunting, with a streak of black humour, this collection ranges across the world, from Petersburg to Guyana, Syria to London, Argentina to Edinburgh. Its diverse characters are caught up in wars or revolution, escaping the past or finally returning to confront it.

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The first round of the Munros in winter in a single journey was accomplished by Martin Moran 1984, ably supported by his new wife, Joy. Martin's account of the adventure has since become a Scottish outdoor classic. This reissue is awaited by a substantial section of the outdoor/mountaineering market in Britain.

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From her apartment window, Doreen Durand witnesses a horrific accident. The police want to know what she saw. Doreen doesn’t want to tell them – or anyone. But when she runs away it’s straight into the fantastic world of the wealthy and mysterious Violet Cascade. With one rogue police officer in pursuit, and life becoming more bizarre by the day, Doreen is caught up in a surreal game of cat and mouse.

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In Come By The Hills Cameron McNeish shares his journeys through Scotland on foot, by bike and in his wee red campervan. He is still an adventurer, but these days things are a bit different. Reaching summits is still enjoyed, but no longer a priority. Instead, he takes us on a wide exploration of Scotland’s hills, forests, and coastlines, and the ancient tales that bring a turbulent history to life. He takes us into the loveliest of glens, Etive and Lyon, to our most distant islands in the Hebrides and Shetland, and reminisces on wonderful characters such as Dick Balharry, Finlay MacRae, and the early working-class climbers when they first took to the hills.

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WW1 is over. As a nurse at the front, Clementine has found and lost love, but has settled for middle class marriage. Vincent had half his face blown off, and wants more than life offers now. Drawn together by their shared experiences at the Front, they have a compulsive relationship, magnetic and parasitic, played out with blackmail and ending in disaster for one of them.

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Keen to see some of Europe, queer couple Lilith and Abigail get on their old bikes and start pedalling. Along flat fens and up Swiss Alps, they will meet new friends and exorcise old demons as they push their bodies – and their relationship – to the limit.

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A woman granted a superpower discovers it’s more trouble than it’s worth. A neighbourhood forum becomes the setting for a bizarre ghost story. A children’s entertainer wrestles with problems that are nothing to joke about. A harassed dad attempts to meet the challenge of the primary school cake competition. By turns tender and satirical, witty and bizarre, the stories in this debut collection cast a fresh eye on first-world problems. Funny and humane, they zoom in on the absurdities and poignancies in work, family, love and loss in our frenetic modern lives.

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When Scotland’s leading virologist goes missing, Mona and Paterson from the Health Enforcement Team are dispatched to London to find him. In a hot and unwelcoming city, Mona has to deal with a boss who isn’t speaking to her, placate the Professor’s over-bearing assistant, and outwit the people who will stop at nothing to make sure the academic stays lost. Meanwhile, back in Edinburgh, Bernard is searching for a missing prostitute, while Maitland is trying to keep the Chair of the Parliamentary Virus Committee from finding out quite how untidy the HET office is.

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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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“I came to the Sahara to be buried.” After witnessing the collapse of the World Trade Centre, Jeehan Nathaar leaves her New York life with her sense of identity fractured and her American dream destroyed. She returns to Morocco to make her home with a family that’s not her own. Healed by their kindness but caught up in their troubles, Jeehan struggles to move beyond the pain and confusion of September 11th. On this desiccated landscape, thousands of miles from Ground Zero, the Dune sings of death, love, and forgiveness.

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Johnny Jackson has just turned 75. He used to be famous, but his dead brother Duke was a hero. Self-made and unmade, film director and tycoon, all people remember about Johnny is the Music Hall monkey. Exiled for years, he’s heading home from his Japanese bunker, reluctantly - one last blockbuster and a civic honouring. But forget the adulation, the protests about his company and the concern of his security that he may be a target, Johnny just can’t shake Duke. This is a novel about brothers, lovers and all that’s lost in the longing to get what you want.

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MEET DETECTIVE GEREON RATH IN THE BOOKS THAT INSPIRED THE HIT TV SERIES BABYLON BERLIN ‘[Kutscher's] trick is ingenious...He's created a portrait of an era through the lens of genre fiction.’ -The New York Times Following international bestseller Babylon Berlin, Volker Kutscher takes us back to Berlin in the second Gereon Rath Mystery. In The Silent Death, Inspector Rath investigates crime and corruption in the shadow of the growing Nazi movement. March 1930. The film industry is changing rapidly, with talking films taking over the silver screen. Celebrated actress Betty Winter is killed when a spotlight falls on her during the filming of a new talkie. It looks like an unfortunate accident at first, but Gereon Rath finds clues that other detectives miss, all suggesting it was murder. The prime suspect is a runaway lighting technician, but the Rath’s investigation points to a different explanation. Soon he is out on his own as tensions rise between rival film studios, and violence breaks out between Communists and Nazis. It’s no time for distractions, so naturally that’s when his father asks him for help with a case of blackmail, and ex-girlfriend Charly Ritter reaches out to talk about getting back together. With personal and professional destruction on the line, Rath will find himself fighting for the truth and his own life as all around him political factions fight for the soul of Berlin. About the Gereon Rath Mysteries 1930s Berlin is a hotbed of vice and organised crime. When Inspector Gereon Rath leaves Cologne to join Berlin’s murder squad, he cannot begin to imagine the brutality and complexity of the world he is stepping into as communists and Nazis struggle for power.

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A young man working for a Scottish hedge fund company witnesses at first hand the effects of their unethical investment policies when he's sent to Namibia as part of a PR stunt to build a school for the native people displaced by a diamond mine. Meanwhile he is trying to come to terms with a childhood marred by poverty and his mother's mental illness, and to work out what he really wants to do with his life.Lasag's series of Gaelic readers offers young adults a range of engaging, easy-to-read fiction, with English chapter summaries and glossaries to assist Gaelic learners.

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Joseph Staines, an unemployed chef, has left Edinburgh with the tallybook of the late debt collector, Isa Stoddart. Her son Lachie thinks Stainsie killed her, but Lachie has apparently committed suicide. To his surprise, Stainsie is the sole beneficiary of Lachie's will and has inherited a dilapidated mansion. Isa's debtors and the local priest who paid Stainsie to leave town want him gone. A certain young mum, Marianne (whose uncle, Wheezy, is Stainsie's drinking buddy) does too, and his old school-friend, Detective Sergeant Jamieson, wants to interrogate him about the deaths. Why are the lawyers lying to him, and who's the bruiser asking about him down the pub?

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In the final days of the British Raj a young Hindu woman, Asha, finds herself deeply in love with Firoze, a Muslim, but when Asha and Firoze's newly independent nation is brutally cleaved into India and Pakistan Asha and her family must flee. She loses her father, mother and brother, as well as the secret baby she carries in her womb, arriving in a Delhi of cramped, diseased refugee camps. In 1998, as India and Pakistan race to join the nuclear club, a newly widowed Asha travels to New York to visit her daughter Priya and her granddaughter Lana, who is to marry a Pakistani Muslim called Hussain. When Asha meets Hussain, she discovers his grand-uncle is Firoze. Will they put family before self, or choose a love that might destroy all they have so painstakingly created?

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'I have a gift for you and Nancy.' She put her hand into her pocket and pulled out two little plastic bags. There were two strings of rosary beads, black and shiny like a line of beetles. All families have secrets, but Bernadette's are more dangerous than most. On holiday in Northern Ireland in 1982, she and her older sister discover their family is involved with disappearances and murder. Thirty years later Nancy makes a disastrous return to the farm with her own family. The events of the past gradually and menacingly reveal why those sisters have not spoken to each other since that last disturbing summer together.

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It’s a Hill, Get Over It tells the story of fell running from its nineteenth-century origins to the present day. Exponents of the sport through the ages have maintained not only an amateur ethos, but also a wariness of change and public attention. As a result, many of their greatest achievements have not always been given the credit they deserve. To complete this detailed history, Steve Chilton has included in-depth conversations with many of the greats including Tommy Sedgwick, Jeff Norman, Pauline and Kenny Stewart, Helene Whitaker and Rob Jebb.

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The Takayanagi family of art dealers have long been associated with the artist Yuichiro Kozu (1878-1953). In Paris, the founder of the Midori Gallery knew him when he painted his tragic, married lover, Yumiko. Even more controversially, Kozu's painting in Indochina during the Japanese occupation 'looks past the cruelty - to see the horror'. He had no compunction in using people, whether servants or lovers, to set his scenes, no fear of dissection or execution. His paintings testify to a criminal indifference. With the war over interest is renewed in the art of Yuichiro Kozu, but can the truth really be understood from a painting? Is direct observation and accuracy enough? Perhaps a story is also required.

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Edwin Morgan is Britain's premier living poet. He has published many collections of poetry, criticism, essays and translations. Now in old age Morgan continues to produce and amaze. His "A Book of Lives" was awarded the Sundial Scottish Arts Council Poetry Award for 2008. This is the first major biography.

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It is hard to imagine that the busy townscape of South London was once a great wood, stretching almost seven miles from Croydon to Deptford or that, scattered through the suburbs, from Dulwich to Norwood, a number of oak woodlands have survived since before the Norman Conquest. These woods were intensively managed for a thousand years, providing timber for construction, furniture and shipbuilding, and charcoal for London’s blacksmiths, kilns and bakeries. Now they afford important green space, a vital habitat for small mammals, birds and insects. In The Wood That Built London, historian C.J. Schüler draws on a wealth of documents, historic maps and environmental evidence to chart the fortunes of the North Wood from its earliest times: its ecology, ownership, management, and the gradual encroachment of the metropolis.

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Being paid to explore sounded like a dream job. From Norway to Madagascar, by campervan, taxi, boat and small plane, Amelia Dalton hunted down remote archipelagos, deserted beaches and tiny local museums to create expedition holidays with a difference. On the way she was abandoned on an unpopulated island and escaped a hotel fire – and worse. Pages from my Passport is a memoir of adventures, disasters and occasional triumphs, all infused with Amelia’s unquenchable enthusiasm.

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MEET DETECTIVE GEREON RATH IN THE BOOKS THAT INSPIRED THE HIT TV SERIES BABYLON BERLIN ‘Tough, gritty and altogether superb, Goldstein is a worthy addition to the addictive Gereon Rath series.’ -William Ryan, author of The Constant Soldier Volker Kutscher continues his Gereon Rath Mystery series with Goldstein. Inspector Gereon Rath investigates crime and corruption in decadent 1930s Berlin as the Nazi movement grows around him. Berlin, 1931. Infamous American gangster Abraham Goldstein takes up residence at the Excelsior, Berlin’s most expensive and exclusive hotel. Gereon Rath is assigned to keep Goldstein under surveillance as a favour to the FBI. Seeing this as a waste of his time, Rath takes on a private case for Johann Marlow, a morally dubious friend, and finds himself in the middle of a street war. Meanwhile, Rath’s on-off girlfriend, Charly, lets a young woman prisoner escape, unknowingly entangling their professional lives once more. With corruption and violence all around, Berlin is a divided city where two worlds are about to collide: the American gangsters and the expanding influence of Nazism. And both Rath and Charly are caught in the crossfire… About the Gereon Rath Mysteries 1930s Berlin is a hotbed of vice and organised crime. When Inspector Gereon Rath leaves Cologne to join Berlin’s murder squad, he cannot begin to imagine the brutality and complexity of the world he is stepping into as communists and Nazis struggle for power.

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The armistice is months past but the memories won't go away. 'A harlequin, leaning against a tree stump and with a goblet of ale clasped in one outstretched hand. Beaumont felt chilled suddenly, in spite of the fire...Most likely it was the thing's mouth, red-lipped and fiendishly grinning, or maybe its face, which was white, expressionless, the face of a clown in full greasepaint.' Dennis Beaumont drove an ambulance in World War One. He returns home to London, hoping to pick up his studies at Oxford and rediscover the love he once felt for his fiancee Lucy. But nothing is as it once was. Mentally scarred by his experiences in the trenches, Beaumont finds himself wandering further into darkness. What really happened to the injured soldier he tried to save? Who is the figure that lurks in the shadows? How much do they know of Beaumont, and the secrets he keeps?

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MEET DETECTIVE GEREON RATH IN THE BOOKS THAT INSPIRED THE HIT TV SERIES BABYLON BERLIN ‘Kutscher captures the zeitgeist with chilling accuracy.’ -The Guardian Longlisted for the CWA Crime Fiction in Translation Dagger 2021 Berlin, 1933: A homeless former solider is found stabbed under the railway arches. Gereon Rath is on the case, but struggles to find clues. No one seems interested in solving the murder of a penniless veteran. Meanwhile, Rath’s fiancée Charly has been assigned the case of fifteen-year-old Hannah Singer. Hannah killed her father and six others by starting a house fire but has now been declared mentally unfit to stand trial. When a connection is discovered between Hannah and the dead ex-soldier, the two cases overlap. It’s up to Rath and Charlotte to find justice for the dead man, and for Hannah even as the Nazis continue their rise to power and the Reichstag burns. The new Germany is a frightening place, but policework must go on even through book-burning and marching, paranoia and fear. About the Gereon Rath Mysteries 1930s Berlin is a hotbed of vice and organised crime. When Inspector Gereon Rath leaves Cologne to join Berlin’s murder squad, he cannot begin to imagine the brutality and complexity of the world he is stepping into as communists and Nazis struggle for power.

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The Round: In Bob Graham's Footsteps by Steve Chilton is not only a history of the Bob Graham Round, but also an exploration of the what, why and how of this classic fell endurance challenge. After covering the genesis of the Bob Graham Round in detail, it documents its development from a more-or-less idle challenge to its present status as a rite of passage for endurance runners. Interspersed with this detail of the round are extensive profiles of many of the event’s most significant individuals: innovators, record setters, recorders and supporters. Some links to resources for potential Bob Graham Round completers are be included. The Round is emphatically not a ‘how to’ guide, but it is a terrific follow up to Steve Chilton’s hugely popular first book, It’s a Hill, Get Over It.

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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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She loves you. She respects you. She just can’t stay married to you. Luke Greenwood is in crisis. His wife of 32 years, Selena, is leaving him for a much younger man. Then local gangsters set their sights on his café and take an interest in what’s left of his family.

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Three senior civil servants are dead or missing. As their brief is management of the deadly Virus, Bernard, Mona and the rest of the hard-pressed Health Enforcement Team are fighting not just a pandemic, but government secrets.

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The story of the National Youth Orchestra of Iraq is here told by its musical director from its inception to its eventual end. The NYOI came through the most difficult and dangerous of times to produce fine music not only in Iraq but also in Britain, Germany and France. A beacon of hope and achievement the young musicians and their tutors made bridges across their own ethnic divisions, made great music in the most trying and tragic of circumstances, and became their country’s best ambassadors in 5000 years.

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When Shona’s teenage daughter goes missing, she’s certain her ex-husband is the culprit. Her mother, Greta, is no help as she’s too obsessed with being chased by the devil. Her uncle, Jimmy, is fresh out of prison and has never been entirely straight with her. Then there’s the shaman living in her shed. All Shona wants is a simple life with her young son, and to get free of Maynard, the ex who’s still living in the house. But nothing is ever straightforward and Shona soon discovers that the secrets she buried are as dangerous as the family curse that haunts her mother.

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Jack and Milly meant to live the American Dream – but in sixty years the dream has changed for their country and for them. From the aches and indignities of old age Wait for Me, Jack takes us back to the exhilarating days when they first met, in an insightful, funny and, at times, devastating dissection of Jack and Milly’s marriage, revealing what makes people stay together – despite everything.

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