Search results for ""sandstone press ltd""

What do Motörhead, Black Sabbath, Elvis Costello, Rush and Chumbawamba have in common? Kim Hawes, pioneering female tour manager. Through hard work, hard partying and hard times, Kim hurled a TV through the glass ceiling of the male-dominated music industry. Sleeping on tour buses, kicking superstars offstage and pranking members of the world’s biggest rock bands, Kim has done it all. Lipstick and Leather is no ordinary tale of life on the road.

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LONGLISTED FOR THE WALTER SCOTT PRIZE FOR HISTORICAL FICTION I still don’t know whether he was done for before we met, whether his heart was already claimed, or smashed. Whether the love story pieced together in these pages is mine, or hers. The day after her wedding, Donella Ferguson Watson wakes up shackled to a man haunted by the past. The lonely days become weeks, months. Her husband Hugh, a prison doctor, will offer no explanation for their sexless marriage. She comes to suspect the answer lies with a hunger-striking suffragette who was force fed and held in solitary confinement. But what really happened between Hugh and his prisoner patient? A Petrol Scented Spring is a riveting novel of repression, jealousy and love, and the struggle for women’s emancipation.

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In post-Communist Romania, on the border with Transylvania, the sleepy little town of B. is losing its young people to the West. A young painter returned from Paris and her eccentric great-aunt seem unconcerned with the decline of the town, until a mutilated corpse is found in the family crypt of Prince Vlad the Impaler, better known as Dracula. As the world’s attention turns to B., the mayor and his son take advantage and turn the town into a vampire-inspired theme park. Tourists flock, but beneath the surface ancient horrors live on. Dracula Park by Dana Grigorcea is a breathtaking, atmospheric tale of revenge, extremism and the longing for a strong leader, for a strict, cruel judge - like Dracula.

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Two years into a devastating flu pandemic, food shortages are critical. The streets are full of angry protestors objecting to the government’s proposed rationing. Policing demonstrations is firmly outside the Health Enforcement Team’s remit, but that doesn’t stop their boss sending them in. As the threat escalates, the team find themselves being drawn into a government cover up, investigating a terrorist cell, and tugging at the threads of a global conspiracy. As tensions rise throughout the city and the nation, the stakes have never been higher. Dead Man Driving by Lesley Kelly is the latest book in the Health of Strangers series.

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For over four decades, Cameron McNeish has chronicled Scotland’s majestic landscapes and the outdoor communities who inhabit them. While much has changed, especially in terms of conservation and access, the hills themselves remain little altered, as do the reasons people visit them. In An Eye to the Hills, Cameron collates a collection of essays and diary entries, which shine the light of experience on memory and renew his vision, sharing his insights with the many people who love Scotland’s outdoors.

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Martin Moran was a man of the mountains, inspiring both as pioneer and leader. His is a story of life-changing adventures and dramatic, often near-death experiences, told with humour and verve.

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Full of cutting insights but not at all short on heart-warming humour.' - Independent Colleen and Andrew haven't had sex in eleven weeks and three days [not that anyone's counting]. Their marriage is in crisis, they're drinking too much and both have secrets they're afraid to share. A teetotal week in a remote cottage could solve all their problems. But with the promised beach nowhere in sight, a broken-down car and a sinister landlord, they may not find it so easy to rekindle their romance. In this dark and funny novel, tensions build and tempers fray.

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Hidden within the confines of The Royal Institute of Prehistorical Studies, Sybil is happy enough with her work - and her love life. Then to her dismay, her old adversary, assertive and glamorous Helen Hansen, is appointed Head of Trustees. To add insult, Helen promptly seduces Sybil’s boyfriend. Betrayed and broken-hearted, Sybil becomes obsessed with exposing Helen as a fraud, no matter the cost. Offbeat and darkly funny, The Snow and the Works on the Northern Line is about things lost and found. It is also a story about love, grief and forgiveness: letting go and moving on.

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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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London: 1963. The lives of a professional shoplifter and a young art student collide. Delia needs to atone for a terrible mistake; Tess is desperate to convince herself she really is an artist. Elsewhere in London, the Krays are on the rise and a gang war is in the offing. Tess’s relationship with her gay best friend grows unexpectedly complicated, and Delia falls for a man she’s been paid to betray. At last, the two women find a resolution together – a performance that is both Delia’s goodbye to crime and Tess’s one genuine work of art.

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SHORTLISTED FOR THE 2017 HIGHLAND BOOK PRIZE All Calum wants is a quiet life, but the past is haunting him. He and his mother Mary still don’t talk about the death of his younger brother Finn, more than twenty years ago. Then Calum’s estranged daughter Catriona arrives with troubles of her own. Simmering resentments rise to the surface, and a family driven apart by silence must confront its secrets.

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Jane Austen and Dorothy Wordsworth were born just four years apart, in the 1770s, in a world torn between heady revolutionary ideas and fierce conservatism, and both were influenced by the Romantic ideals of Dorothy’s brother, William Wordsworth, and his friends. Jane and Dorothy compares their upbringing and education, home lives and loves and, above all, their emotional and creative worlds. Original insights include a new discovery of serious depression suffered by Dorothy Wordsworth, a new and crucial discovery about Dorothy and William’s relationship, and a critical look at the myths surrounding the man who stole Jane’s heart. This is the first time these two lives have been examined together.

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Daniel Defoe’s Incredible Train Journey describes the odyssey undertaken by two eccentric pensioners as they travel on every mile of railway track in the UK. Surreal and poignant by turns, Stuart Campbell describes the people they meet and the unwanted adventures that befall them. He is aided and abetted by the ghost of Daniel Defoe, writer, soldier, businessman and spy who completed his own journey in the 1720s.

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Sean McNicol's best friend Mitch saved his life in Afghanistan, in an act of impulsive heroism. Now Mitch is dead and Sean has left the Royal Marines with a head full of ghosts and guilt. Mitch talks to Sean from beyond the grave, by turns encouraging him, cursing, singing and leading him to question his own sanity on a daily basis.

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B' e seo an cothrom mor. Air turas-ciuil anns na Staitean agus te og bhoidheach ri a thaobh, bha Colman air a dhoigh glan. Cha robh cail a dhuil aige gum biodh e a' teicheadh bhon phoileis, ach a-nis cha robh e a' faicinn doigh as. Touring the US with his band should have been a dream come true, but when guitarist Colman and bass player Seonag become separated from the rest of their band, they are drawn into a world of crime and violence and find themselves wanted by the police. Feur Buidhe an t-Samhraidh (Yellow Summer Grass) follows Colman and Seonag as they struggle to catch up with the band, forced into decisions that lead to greater danger at every turn as they travel through the vast landscapes of America's Mid West. Tim Armstrong takes his characters on a fast-paced, perilous adventure that explores love, ambition and identity.

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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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SHORTLISTED FOR THE SALTIRE SOCIETY FIRST BOOK OF THE YEAR Remzije Sherifi worked as a journalist with Radio Gjilan in Kosova. She lost her job, and almost her life, as the Milosevic regime steadily tightened its grip on the Albanian people who lived there. In Shadow Behind The Sun she recounts her family’s history, shining a new light on the terrible events of the 1990s. Beside the history of the Kosovar people she describes the plight of Asylum Seekers in the here and now. The shadow of past events stands behind the sunrise of every new constitutional or social development. Can they be forgotten? Should they be forgotten? Now a British citizen Remzije has made her commitment to Asylum Seekers and other refugees, working with the Maryhill Integration Network in Glasgow. Through her story, Remzije Sherifi is revealed as a compassionate and visionary presence in difficult and changing times.

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Dorothy Wellesley was a poet, gardener, traveller and heiress; she was also bisexual and a rebel. She became the lover of Vita Sackville-West, wrecking her marriage to the Duke of Wellington. She was the intimate friend of W.B. Yeats in his final years. On the fringes of the Bloomsbury Group, she had a unique view of these iconic writers and artists. Blue Eyes and a Wild Spirit, written by Dorothy’s granddaughter Jane Wellesley, draws on unpublished material, including private Wellesley family papers and hitherto unknown source materials. This is a riveting biography of a complex and fascinating woman.

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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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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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