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'They say he brought back some Spanish gold and others say he didn't bring anything except the rags he was wearing but had the power to turn stone into gold and that the two stories somehow got mixed up.'Did Olghair MacKenzie steal alchemical secrets from the Egyptians? Or was he a rebel pirate who found refuge on a small Scottish island after the Armada? Does his treasure still lie hidden there? Six hundred years after MacKenzie's death, an ex-footballer returns to the island where he spent his youth. As the first frosts of winter arrive, Jack moves into a fisherman's cottage fragrant with the scent of the sea. After many restless years, it is a true homecoming. Delighting in his employment as postie, he starts to reconnect with himself, with his family and with this tiny community. The tale of Olghair MacKenzie has fascinated Jack since childhood and he resolves to discover the truth behind the legend. To do so, he must unlock the secret of a bridge the shape of a perfect wave, understand the significance of stone number 759 and find out what is meant by the eighth moon. Can Jack trust the dreams of the local seer, or grasp the clue in the old Gaelic way of counting the months? Jack's quest is truly magical, for it will lead him into very personal territory, unveiling links that tied him to the island long before he ever set foot there. more...

'In pencil-written and drawing-spattered notebooks intended for her Australian granddaughter, an elderly woman, now in Edinburgh, remembers and relives her Hebridean childhood. The community thus recreated is one where modernity – its emblem the Electricity of Angus Peter Campbell's title – collides and overlaps with all sorts of linguistic, cultural and other continuities. But this is no sentimental or elegiac excursion into a long-gone past. What's evoked here is a powerful sense of what it was, and is, to grow up amid family, neighbours and surroundings of a sort providing, for the most part, both security and happiness.'JAMES HUNTER more...

A precious golden souvinier has disappered from Kismuil Castle in the Island of Barra. The historic brooch was given as a gift by the Chief of Clanranald to MacNeil of Barra in the 16th century. Or perhaps it was treasure found from a shipwrecked galleon from the Spanish Armada... The local constable, P.C. Murdo set outs to find who dunnit. He has seven suspects, but in his search for the truth of the theft discovers that suspicion and prejudice make poor detectives. Help comes from smart officers from the mainland, whose most difficult challenge is Murdo himself. In this short, humorous novel mystery and psychology are lightly mixed, revealing that folk's actions and characters are as contradictory as they are complex. PC Murdo would find himself at home in both Whisky Galore and in Para Handy. The novel is a compassionate examination of how attitudes predicate actions which make or break communities. more...

A face is nothing without its history. Gavin and Emma live in Manhattan. She's a musician. He works in Artificial Intelligence. He's good at his job. Scarily good. He's researching human features to make more realistic mask-bots - non-human'carers'for elderly people. When his enquiry turns personal he's forced to ask whether his own life is an artificial mask. Delving into family stories and his roots in the Highlands of Scotland, he embarks on a quest to discover his own true face,'uniquely sprung from all the faces that had been'. He returns to England to look after his Grampa. Travels. Reads old documents. Visits ruins. Borrows, plagiarises and invents. But when Emma tells him his proper work is to make a story out of glass and steel, not memory and straw, which path will he choose? What's the best story he can give her? A novel about the struggle for freedom and personal identity; what it means to be human. It fuses the glass and steel of our increasingly controlled algorithmic world with the memory and straw of our forebears'world controlled by traditions and taboos, the seasons and the elements. more...

I loved her from the moment I saw her, and that love has never wavered. It has encased every choice I have ever made, and I have never done anything in my life which didn't involve her image somewhere… I'm so sorry for it all This is the latest English-language novel from award-winning Gaelic poet, novelist, journalist, broadcaster and actor, Angus Peter Campbell, and the first to be published simultaneously in Gaelic and English. Vividly evoked Scottish tale of chance encounters and of family memories, regret, love and loss. Combines myth, music and linguistics to recount the memory of a hazy summer's day on the Isle of Mull. more...

Archie genuinely believes the old legends he was told as a child. Growing up on a small island of the Scottish coast and sheltered from the rest of the world, despite all the knowledge he gains as an adult, he still believes in the underlying truth of these stories. After years of unemployment, to escape his selfish wife and to stop the North Wind from blowing so harshly in winter, Archie leaves home to find the hole where the North Wind originates. Funny, original and very moving, Archie and the North Wind demonstrates the raw power of storytelling. more...