Search results for ""saraband / contraband""

Learn from Britain's leading dragonfly expert how to invite dragonflies and damselflies into your garden and create the conditions for them to thrive.In this compact and accessible wildlife primer, Dragonfly Ambassador' Ruary Mackenzie Dodds shows how to set up a tranquil garden haven for dragonflies, with straightforward, easy-to-follow guidance on preparing your pond, what plants to include in it, and how to manage and enjoy it.With stunning colours and phenomenal flying abilities, dragonflies are beautiful creatures that are also vital to our ecosystem. This book outlines, too, how caring for something as specific and delicate as a dragonfly can provide a welcome respite from the everyday demands of life. We can, as always, learn so much from the natural world, even and sometimes especially from its smallest creatures.Learn how to transform your garden into a haven for dragonflies and damselflies, nurturing your own mental health and protec

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The President is dead.Cal Drummond is hiding out deep in the woods of the American South when he hears the news. Once a famous talk show host, he is now a disgraced man living a solitary existence in a cabin, drinking Jack Daniels, enjoying the cover of the trees, and getting on with life as Hank MacPhearson.But this news and the journalist who delivers it will have consequences that reach far back into Cal's past. They threaten his new life and identity, but they also throw him one final chance: it was an interview that brought about his downfall, but could it be another one, this time with him in the hotseat, that could bring him back to life?Taking the reader from Scotland to Mexico and from California to Georgia, The Interview is a novel not only about speaking truth to power, but also about speaking truth to oneself.

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A wronged woman's voice is reclaimed in this gripping tale of revenge and romance; a medieval Gone Girl'.Highland Scotland was no place for a woman in the early 1500s. Life was turbulent, brutal, short. Chiefs waged war, while their sisters and daughters were traded as pawns in marriage. Catherine Campbell was one such young bride, betrothed to Lachlan Maclean and despatched from her fine home to join him on the Isle of Mull, to bear his sons and heirs.But Lachlan proved to be nothing like the man of Catherine's dreams, and she was forced to resign herself to enduring life with him for the sake of duty Until the day when he threatened to take away the one thing she couldn't sacrifice: her daughter.Casting a fascinating light on the ruthless clan system, this compelling drama by one of Scotland's best-loved novelists explores love, ambition, betrayal and revenge and highlights the precarious position of 16th-century women.

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Past andpresent converge asLinda Cracknelldoubles back to follow in the footsteps of others.Across Norway, Kenya, the Isle of Skye and Lindisfarne,DoublingBacktraces the contours of history. Following paths long mythologised bywriters and relatives gone before, Linda Cracknell charts how placesimmortalised in writing and memory create portals; wrinkles in time andgeography that allow us to walk in the footsteps of others.Join Linda as she traverses the dangerous crevasses of the Swissalps to retrace the mountaineering past of the father she barely knew, follows the escape route ofaNorwegian scientist on the run in the second world war,or simplycelebrates the joy found in the friendly paths' of her local, regular terrain, and the ritual of returning home.Originally published in 2014 to rave reviews and serialised on BBC radio, this revised edition includesan account of a new journey through northern Scotland's Flow Country,the peatlandth

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Introducing Detective Georges GorskiFrom twice Booker-listed author of His Bloody Project and Case Study.Manfred Baumann is a loner. Socially awkward and ill at ease, he spends his evenings surreptitiously observing Adèle Bedeau, the sullen but alluring waitress at his local bistro. But one day, she vanishes into thin air. When Detective Georges Gorski begins investigating her disappearance, Manfred's repressed world is shaken to its core and he is forced to confront the dark secrets of his past.The Disappearance of Adèle Bedeau effortlessly conjures up an otherworldly atmosphere that simultaneously intrigues and unsettles. A compelling psychological portrayal of a peculiar outsiderpushed to the limit by his own feverish imagination, it is byturns haunting, strange and mesmeric Graeme Macrae Burnet's acclaimed debut, a literary mystery novel that is well on its way to achieving cult status.

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Chief Inspector Gorski returns In the unremarkable French town of Saint-Louis, a mysterious stranger stalks the streets; an elderly woman believes her son is planning to do away with her; a prominent manufacturer drops dead. Between visits to the town's hostelries, Chief Inspector Georges Gorski ponders the connections, if any, between these events, while all the time grappling with his own domestic and existential demons.Graeme Macrae Burnet once again pierces the respectable bourgeois façade of small-town life in this, the concluding part of his trilogy of Gorski novels. He injects a wry humour into the tiniest of details and delves into the darkest recesses of his characters' minds, but above all provides an entertaining, profound and moving read.

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Hearing you say my name was a way of seeing myself as I had never seen myself you gave my name new meaning, new weight.'Nerdy and shy, scholarship student Daniel de La Luna arrives at college nervous to meet his golden-haired, athletic roommate, whose Facebook photos depict a boy just like those who made Daniel's school years hell.Sam Morris is not what he had imagined, though. As the two settle into college life they drink tequila under the stars, go on long runs through snow-covered hills,explore freshmannightlife, and inch closer until they find themselves in love.But their blissful first year is over all too soon. Daniel's summer in his ancestral homeland of México becomes a rollercoaster of revelations, before his life is brutally upended by the unimaginable.How We Named the Starsis atale oflove, heartache and learning to honour the dead.Daniel and Sam will leave you forever changed.

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Community. It's a word we are used to hearing everywhere from political speeches to fast-food advertisements. But can we really define it?Using her own experiences, joyful or painful, in communities, as well as a strong analysis of political and cultural shifts, Casey Plett shows how overuse of the word has caused it to become disconnected from the reality it signifies. Here, Plett suggests an alternative, moving towards a definition that acknowledges community as necessary for our existence a source of comfort, knowledge and love even while it has the potential to become dogmatic, cliquey or outright harmful. On Community does crucial work in pushing harder on words and ideas we take for granted. It invites us to be more careful and intentional with our language, to consider how we relate to those we know and to those we don't know at all.

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A cartoon fried egg. An eye. The tiniest of black holes. It needed a professional eye to be seen, but once pointed out it was undeniable. My own little Big Bang. The beginning of it all.When Chitra Ramaswamy discovered she was pregnant, she longed to read something that went above and beyond a biology book or prescriptive manual; something that, instead, got to the heart of this thrilling, bewildering, overlooked, and often misrepresented experience. Expecting is a creative memoir. Through nine chapters exploring the nine months of pregnancy and birth, Ramaswamy takes the reader on a physical, intellectual, emotional, literary, and philosophical journey through the landscape of pregnancy. Childbearing and childbirth are experiences defined both by the measurable monthly changes to one's life and body, and by those immeasurable, often obscured and neglected changes in perspective which are accessed through metaphor, art, and emotion. Ramaswamy bears witness to the individual and col

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Poet and essayist Kenneth Steven takes us on a series of meditative quests in search of his atoms of delighttreasures, both natural and spiritualthrough some of Scotland's most beautiful landscapes.The short pieces in this captivating collection, whose title pays homage to Scottish Renaissance writer Neil Gunn, invite readers to accompany Steven as he seeks out crystal-clear waters, a glimpse of an elusive bird, delicate orchids, plump berries, or pebbles polished by time and tide. Appreciative of the grace of silence and the value of solitude and simplicity, he takes journeys that prompt introspection and provoke memories as we pause, breathe, and discover alongside him the transformative power of nature''s small gifts and wild places.This is an evocative book that will inspire you to pay close attention as you explore your environment and reflect on the fleeting moments of pure joy that nature has brought into your life. As you set out on your own pi

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