Search results for ""Author Sally Magnusson""

'WONDERFUL. ONE NEVER MESSES WITH THE FAERIES' Melanie Reid, The Times'AN ABSOLUTE TRIUMPH' Sarah Haywood, author of The Cactus 'A BRILLIANT TOUR-DE-FORCE -RIVETING' Alistair Moffatt, author of The Hidden Ways 'EXTRAORDINARILY VIVID' Michelle Gallen, author of Big Girl Small TownA spellbinding novel combining Scottish folklore with hidden history, by the Sunday Times bestselling author Sally Magnusson.Loch Katrine waterworks, 1856. A Highland wilderness fast becoming an industrial wasteland. No place for a lady. Isabel Aird is aghast when her husband is appointed doctor to an extraordinary waterworks being built miles from the city. But Isabel, denied the motherhood role that is expected of her by a succession of miscarriages, finds unexpected consolations in a place where she can feel the presence of her unborn children and begin to work out what her life in Victorian society is for. The hills echo with the gunpowder blasts of hundreds of navvies tunnelling day and night to bring clean water to diseased Glasgow thirty miles away - digging so deep that there are those who worry they are disturbing the land of faery itself. Here, just inside the Highland line, the membrane between the modern world and the ancient unseen places is very thin. With new life quickening within her again, Isabel can only wait. But a darker presence has also emerged from the gunpowder smoke. And he is waiting too. Inspired by the mysterious death of the seventeenth-century minister Robert Kirke and set in a pivotal era two centuries later when engineering innovation flourished but women did not, The Ninth Child blends folklore with historical realism in a spellbinding narrative.*PRAISE FOR THE SEALWOMAN'S GIFT*'I enjoyed and admired it in equal measure' SARAH PERRY'An extraordinarily immersive read' Guardian'Richly imagined and energetically told' Sunday Times'An epic journey' Zoe Ball Book Club

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Sally Magnusson brings together thirty well-known names together to discuss their most sacred spots.Including James Cosmo, Judy Murray, Anna Campbell-Jones, Val McDermid, Kieron Achara, Chris Hoy, Linda Bauld, Rhona Cameron, Eddi Reader, Clive Russell, Gordon Campbell Gray, John Colquhoun, Nati Dreddd, Kezia Dugdale, Janice Kirkpatrick, Sue Lawrence, Gemma Lumsdaine, Shauna MacDonald, Catriona Matthew, Danni Menzies, Gordon & Vanessa Quinn, Roza Salih, Richard Scott, Tony Singh, Victoria Stapleton, Alexander Stoddart, Grant Stott and Laura Young.Through in-depth interviews we delve into the minds of each personality as they explore the joyful, treasured, painful and inspirational moments we all share throughout life. Alongside stunning photography by Susie Lowe, My Perfect Place in Scotland is a captivating collection which highlights the importance of supporting mental health and wellbeing and reveals the special places where we choose to spend our time, which mean so much more than just a pretty view.A royalty of 5% of net receipts from the sale of every copy of My Perfect Place in Scotland sold will be made to SAMH (Scottish Association for Mental Health, Scottish Charity No. SC-008897)

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'REMARKABLE' Sarah Perry | 'EXTRAORDINARILY IMMERSIVE' Guardian | 'EPIC' Zoe Ball Book Club | 'A REALLY, REALLY GOOD READ' BBC R2 Book Club' | 'LYRICAL' Stylist | 'POETIC' Daily Mail1627. In a notorious historical event, pirates raided the coast of Iceland and abducted 400 people into slavery in Algiers. Among them a pastor, his wife, and their children.In her acclaimed debut novel Sally Magnusson imagines what history does not record: the experience of Asta, the pastor's wife, as she faces her losses with the one thing left to her - the stories from home - and forges an ambiguous bond with the man who bought her. Uplifting, moving, and sharply witty, The Sealwoman's Gift speaks across centuries and oceans about loss, love, resilience and redemption.SHORTLISTED FOR THE HWA DEBUT CROWN | THE BEST FIRST NOVEL AWARD | THE MCKITTERICK PRIZE | THE PAUL TORDAY MEMORIAL PRIZE | THE WAVERTON GOOD READ AWARD | A ZOE BALL ITV BOOK CLUB PICK'Sally Magnusson has taken an amazing true event and created a brilliant first novel. It's an epic journey in every sense: although it's historical, it's incredibly relevant to our world today. We had to pick it' Zoe Ball Book Club'Richly imagined and energetically told' Sunday Times 'The best sort of historical novel' Scotsman 'Compelling ' Good Housekeeping'An accomplished and intelligent novel' Yrsa Sigurðardóttir, author of Why Did You Lie?'Vivid and compelling' Adam Nichols, co-translator of The Travels of Reverend Ólafur Egilsson

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'A fine book' The Sunday Times 'Powerful' Guardian 'Wonderful' The Telegraph'Moving, funny, warm' Mail on Sunday'Brave, compassionate, tender and honest' Metro'This book began as an attempt to hold on to my witty, storytelling mother with the one thing I had to hand. Words. Then, as the enormity of the social crisis my family was part of began to dawn, I wrote with the thought that other forgotten lives might be nudged into the light along with hers. Dementia is one of the greatest social, medical, economic, scientific, philosophical and moral challenges of our times. I am a reporter. It became the biggest story of my life.' Sally MagnussonSad and funny, wise and honest, Where Memories Go is a deeply intimate account of insidious losses and unexpected joys in the terrible face of dementia, and a call to arms that challenges us all to think differently about how we care for our loved ones when they need us most.Regarded as one of the finest journalists of her generation, Mamie Baird Magnusson's whole life was a celebration of words - words that she fought to retain in the grip of a disease which is fast becoming the scourge of the 21st century. Married to writer and broadcaster Magnus Magnusson, they had five children of whom Sally is the eldest. As well as chronicling the anguish, the frustrations and the unexpected laughs and joys that she and her sisters experienced while accompanying their beloved mother on the long dementia road for eight years until her death in 2012, Sally Magnusson seeks understanding from a range of experts and asks penetrating questions about how we treat older people, how we can face one of the greatest social, medical, economic and moral challenges of our times, and what it means to be human.Facebook.com/WhereMemoriesGo

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Eric Liddell is famous for being the man who would not compromise his religious principles and refused to compete in the Olympics on a Sunday - despite the fact that he was the red hot favourite for the gold. Instead he entered a different event that was not being competed on the Sabbath... and won a gold anyway. One of Scotland's finest athletes, Liddell was feted throughout the United Kingdom. At the height of his fame, however, he slipped quietly out of the limelight to become a missionary in China, where he later came to an unpleasant end in a Japanese internment camp.

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'A wonderful and moving story, beautifully told . . . an episode of history brought vividly to life' Clare Chambers, author of Small PleasuresJamesina Ross is long finished with men. But one night a stranger seeking lodgings knocks on the door of her tenement flat. He doesn't recognise her, but she remembers him at once. Not that she plans to mention it. She has no intention of trusting anyone enough to let herself be vulnerable again. A lifetime ago Jamesina Ross was bent on becoming a writer. She had a facility with words. She made up songs about the Highland glen where she lived and the kin who had worked that land for generations. When her community was threatened with eviction, she gave voice to that too. The women stood together, defiant and determined, but Jamesina's music was no match for one of the most brutal confrontations of the Highland Clearances. Jamesina has borne the disfigurements of that day ever since, on her face and inside her head. It marked the end of a life of promise and the beginning of a very different one. Her lodger thinks that if she would only dare to open the past, she might have the chance of a future. A beautiful exploration of unlooked-for love in later life, its contrariness and its awkward, surprising joys, this is a story about resilience, memory, resurrection - and those parts of who we are that nobody can take away.

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''Wonderful and moving'' Clare Chambers''Utterly absorbing'' Sunday PostSHORTLISTED FOR THE WINSTON GRAHAM HISTORICAL PRIZELONGLISTED FOR THE WALTER SCOTT PRIZEJamesina Ross is long finished with men. But one night a stranger seeking lodgings knocks on the door of her tenement flat. He doesn''t recognise her, but she remembers him at once. Not that she plans to mention it. She has no intention of trusting anyone enough to let herself be vulnerable again. A lifetime ago, growing up in a Highland glen, Jamesina Ross wrote songs about the land and the kin who had worked it for generations. But her music was no match for the violence her community faced in the Highland Clearances. Jamesina has borne the disfigurements of that day ever since, on her face and inside her head. Her lodger thinks that if she would only dare to open the past, she might have the chance of a future. This is a story about resilience, memor

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When the moon is full and the sky lights up with fire, beware the Ghost Dog. Pity nobody told Horace the Haggis. When he sets off to the Secret Loch to teach the accident-prone Professor Nut the bagpipes, our hair-gelled hero has no idea what is lurking among the dark trees. In this second book of adventures all the old Acre Valley friends are back - Martha Mouse, Ferdy Fox, Major Mole, Ronald Rook and, of course, Stacey and Tracey, the Tweeting magpies. Horace's arch-enemy, The Cat With No Name, is never far away either, along with her fearsome allies Skull, Fang and Needletooth. Be Scared. Be Very Scared. (But have a laugh, too.).

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Horace the Haggis, homeless and hunted, finds refuge among the animals of Acre Valley. But Angus McPhee, chief of the haggis-hunters, and his deadly cat are out to trap him. Can a flower-eating fox, a loyal mouse, a gossipy rook, two magpies on Twitter and the bumbling efforts of the Mole Patrol help Horace escape before he is caught in a net and boiled for dinner? With his bagpipes (which, to the alarm of his new friends he has just begun learning), his trusty hair-gel and his fondness for eating heather, Horace will find a place in any child's heart. Friendly, timid, a little bit greedy and ever so slightly vain, he spends much of the Battle of Nettle Farm with his eyes tight shut, as he and his friends try to escape the clutches of Angus McPhee and The Cat With No Name. "Horace the Haggis" gives children a world of fun, adventure, secrets and unforgettable characters and is both comfortingly timeless and engagingly modern. And in Acre Valley the exploits of Horace and his friends will have you laughing one minute and on the edge of your seat the next.Illustrated by the author's husband and based on ideas from their own children, this is a family book for other families to read together and enjoy.

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