Search results for ""Sandstone Press Ltd""

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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In Along the Divide, Chris Townsend embarks on a 700-mile walk along the spine of Scotland, the line of high ground where fallen rain runs either west to the Atlantic or east to the North Sea. Walking before the Independence Referendum of 2014, and writing after the EU Referendum of 2016, he reflects on: nature and history, conservation and rewilding, land use and literature, and change in a time of limitless potential for both better and worse.

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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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MEET DETECTIVE GEREON RATH IN THE BOOKS THAT INSPIRED THE HIT TV SERIES BABYLON BERLIN ‘A gripping evocative thriller set in Berlin's seedy underworld during the roaring Twenties.’ -Mail on Sunday Babylon Berlin is the first book in the international-bestselling series from Volker Kutscher. Detective Inspector Gereon Rath is caught up in a web of drugs, sex, political intrigue, deception and murder as Germany teeters on the edge of Nazism. In 1929, Berlin is the vibrating metropolis of post-war Germany, full of bars, brothels and dissatisfied workers. Arriving in disgrace from Cologne, Gereon Rath is assigned to the Vice Squad. When a body bearing traces of torture turns up in the canal, Rath sees a chance to earn his way back into the homicide division. As he investigates, he discovers a gang of exiled Russians intent on purchasing arms with smuggled gold – but others are trying to get hold of the gold… and the guns. Finding himself up against both paramilitaries and organised criminals, Rath is so far in over his head that he misuses the insider knowledge of Charlotte, a typist in the homicide squad, to get ahead in his investigation. Even though he’s falling in love with her. As Rath’s mistakes and enemies pile up, he becomes the prime suspect in the murder – and he’s running out of time to clear his name. 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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SHORTLISTED FOR THE DONALD MEEK AWARD It’s the kind of story no journalist can ignore, and Roddy Maclean is intrigued by Màiri NicEachairne’s claim that she knew Lee Harvey Oswald and had to flee the States and change her identity to escape JFK’s enemies. But does Màiri’s account stand up, and why has she waited so long to prove Oswald’s innocence?

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Drawing from more than forty years of experience as an outdoorsman, and probably the world's best known long distance walker who also writes, Chris Townsend describes the landscapes and wildlife, the walkers and climbers, and the authors who have influenced him in this lucid and beautiful book. Writing from his home in the heart of the Cairngorms he discusses the wild, its importance to civilisation and how we cannot do without it.

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Alice's life is dictated by her autistic son, Sam, who refuses to leave their remote Lancashire farm. Her only time 'off' is two hours in Lancaster on a Tuesday afternoon - and even that doesn't always pan out to be the break she needs. Husband Duncan brings Larry, a rootless wanderer, to the farm to embark on a money making scheme they've dreamed up. Alice is hostile but Larry beguiles Sam with tales of travel in the outside world and, soon, Alice begins to fall for him, too. By turns blackly comic, heart-breaking and heart-warming, Truestory looks at what happens when sacrifice slithers towards martyrdom. By turns happy and sad, ultimately it is a tale of hope.

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Keith Partridge is probably the world’s most experienced and famous practitioner of a rare trade. His filming has recorded expeditions all over the world in some of its most beautiful and hostile environments. The Adventure Game is the story of his life told through several expeditions ranging from the deep caves of Papua New Guinea to the summit of Mount Everest – Keith’s photography speaks for itself! His story is equally exciting though, with characters we all recognise from film and television. His activities are not restricted to any one field such as mountaineering but include caving, polar travel and, with film and television references which will be familiar to many people. All this he has expressed in a great story. The Adventure Game is a brilliant read as well as a beautiful object.

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William Hutchison Murray (1913 - 1996) was one of Scotland's most distinguished climbers in the years before and after the Second World War. As a prisoner of war in Italy he wrote his first classic book, Mountaineering in Scotland, on rough toilet paper which was confiscated and destroyed by the Gestapo. The rewritten version was published in 1947 and followed by the, now, equally famous, Undiscovered Scotland. In 1951 he was depute leader to Eric Shipton on the Everest Reconnaissance Expedition. In later years he became a successful novelist and pioneer conservationist.

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The inspiration for thrilling BBC TV show Wisting, from the producers behind Wallander and The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo For four months a body sat undiscovered just a few doors from the home of Chief Inspector William Wisting. Viggo Hansen was a man nobody ever noticed, even though he lived in a close-knit community. His death goes largely unreported, but does catch the attention of Wisting's journalist daughter, Line. She decides to find out who this nondescript man really was. While Line’s research has her digging deep into the dead man’s past, Wisting focuses on the present as the body of another man is found in the forest. Wisting suspects a serial killer is at work – but his investigation only raises more questions. For how long has this killer been active, and across how many countries? When the CIA get involved the stakes rise culminating in a deadly race against time. Winner of The Glass Key for best Nordic crime novel Get your next Scandi crime fix from number one bestselling author Jorn Lier Horst. Praise for the multi-award-winning William Wisting Mysteries: 'Up there with the best of the Nordic crime writers.' -The Times 'Solid, satisfying police procedurals.' -The Sunday Times 'Plotting reigns supreme.' -Financial Times 'Gripping and well executed.' -The Herald 'Immensely impressive.' -Barry Forshaw 'A masterpiece of storytelling.' -Lin Anderson

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As probably the world's most experienced long distance walker who also writes, Chris Townsend has many stories to tell and many photographs to illustrate them with. Of all his adventures, those he enjoyed on America's Pacific Crest Trail in the Eighties are among his favourites. The PCT runs 2,600 miles from Mexico to Canada through desert, forest and mountain wildernesses. In Rattlesnakes and Bald Eagles Chris recounts not only his own six month walk but also the longer story of the Trail, and shares his ideas on how it is developing and where it is all going with his many readers.

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An account of hill-walking in various weathers and up and down every possible terrain, braving Welsh farmers, Knoydart rain, the terrors of the Cuillin, and the real ales of Yorkshire.

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Deep in the Cambridgeshire fens, Laura is living alone with her 12-year old daughter Beth, in the old tollhouse known as Ninepins. She's in the habit of renting out the pumphouse, once a fen drainage station, to students, but this year she's been persuaded to take in 17-year-old Willow, a care-leaver with a dubious past, on the recommendation of her social worker, Vince. Is Willow dangerous or just vulnerable? It's possible she was once guilty of arson; her mother's hippy life is gradually revealed as something more sinister; and Beth is in trouble at school and out of it. Laura's carefully ordered world seems to be getting out of control. With the tension of a thriller, NINEPINS explores the idea of family, and the volatile and changing relationships between mothers and daughters, in a landscape that is beautiful but - as they all discover - perilous.

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Iain Maclean’s Cogadh Ruairidh (Ruairidh’s War) is an account of the first day of the Battle of the Somme through the eyes and the experience of a Highland soldier, Ruairidh, and his two friends. MacLean first describes the waiting period, when the soldiers’ emotions swing between tedium and high tension, fear and naïve overconfidence, and then, clearly and dispassionately, what the three men encounter as they go over the top and advance towards the enemy trenches – and the waiting machine guns. The novel follows Ruairidh through his convalescence in France and his journey home, where he struggles to come to terms with what has happened on that awful day. Cogadh Ruairidh is a powerful evocation of one of the grimmest days in the history of modern warfare. As an indictment of the brutality and futility of war, it is all the more effective for the fact that MacLean lets the events speak for themselves. With chapter-by-chapter glossaries and summaries to assist Gaelic learners, this is a most impressive debut novel from yet another talented young Gaelic author.

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As he works his way through his medical training, Ike Anya’s grandmother reassures him, ‘Everything worthwhile is achieved small by small.’ Small by Small charts the triumphs and failures of Ike’s student days through to his first demanding year as a house officer. A medical memoir unlike any from the West, this is filled with the colour and vibrancy of tempestuous 1990s Nigeria, where political unrest, social change and a worsening economy make a doctor’s life particularly challenging. Full of compassion and insight, often humorous and always moving, this is a unique doctor’s journey.

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Beneath the sea, over millennia, sentient beings await our final mistakes: soon they will make their move. Manfred, an amateur seaweed collector, is convinced that algae are taking over the human race. Haunted by his past, Manfred falls in love with Nora, who has her own ideas about seaweeds and her own troubled history. From a Cornish fishing village to the Spanish coast, up to the blinding glacial landscape of the Arctic, human society falls under the microscope in Rob Magnuson Smith’s genre-bending existential drama Seaweed Rising.

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Say ‘Eh-oh!’ to Nikky Smedley and Laa-Laa Over the Hills and Far Away follows Nikky through the Teletubbies years, from her role as a bistro table during her audition to the show’s international success and the accompanying hounding by the press. In this warm, funny, affectionate look back at life on the Teletubbies set, Nikky reveals all, including tales about dogs and asthma, raging arguments about fruit, and the games the cast and crew played to amuse themselves during long shoots in their massive costumes. Join Nikky and Laa-Laa on their extraordinary journey from the very beginning to handing the torch to another performer for the next generation.

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In January 2020, leading epidemiologist Professor Mark Woolhouse learned of a new virus taking hold in China. He immediately foresaw a hard road ahead for the entire world, and emailed the Chief Medical Officer of Scotland warning that the UK should urgently begin preparations. A few days later he received a polite reply stating only that everything was under control. In this astonishing account, Mark Woolhouse shares his story as an insider, having served on advisory groups to both the Scottish and UK governments. He reveals the disregarded advice, frustration of dealing with politicians, and the missteps that led to the deaths of vulnerable people, damage to livelihoods and the disruption of education. He explains the follies of lockdown and sets out the alternatives. Finally, he warns that when the next pandemic comes, we must not dither and we must not panic; never again should we make a global crisis even worse. The Year the World Went Mad puts our recent, devastating, history in a completely new light.

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‘I’m scared of anyone with a knife and a grudge’ New Year dawns and something is rotten in Kingsleigh. With a body on the bypass and pet cats going missing, supermarket sleuths Ant and Bea have a new case. But juggling problems at work and home takes its toll – and as they near the truth, more than one secret is going to come out.

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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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When a wealthy client visits Mathilde’s dressmaking shop, she finds herself drawn into the only surviving circle of luxury left in a barren London. Attending parties offers a welcome escape from life governed by ration cards and a strictly enforced child policy. Here she meets enigmatic government minister, George, and piano-playing Jaminder, with whom an intense friendship blossoms. As their relationship grows stronger, George’s grip on Mathilde tightens, as she tries to discover where the illicit food is coming from, where women disappear to, and what price she must pay to avoid bringing a child into a cruel, ever-changing world.

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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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Paris: May, 1969. Scents of spring blossom, coffee and high-octane petrol. Irish diplomat Marty Ransom has been summoned to meet Charles J. Haughey, the Irish Minister for Finance – what’s decided between them will change the course of Irish history. The Minister wants a go-between with the new IRA faction in the North: he knows a key player is Marty’s cousin Ignatius. He has no idea Marty is reporting to MI5 in Dublin. As the deadly endgame draws near, Marty must choose between the past and all he holds dear.

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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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Approaching the end of his nine year stint as a BBC journalist in Beijing, Michael Bristow decided he wanted to write about the country’s modern history. To assist him he asked for the help of his language teacher, who was born just two years after the communist party came to power in 1949. The changing fortunes of his life have mirrored the ups and downs of his country, which has moved from communist poverty to capitalist wealth in just a single generation. It came as a surprise though, to learn that the teacher was also a cross-dresser. Michael gradually realised that the teacher’s story is the story of modern China.

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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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