Showing results by publisher "Saraband" in Literature & Fiction

The year is 1869. A brutal triple murder in a remote community in the Scottish Highlands leads to the arrest of a young man by the name of Roderick Macrae. A memoir written by the accused makes it clear that he is guilty, but it falls to the country's finest legal and psychiatric minds to uncover what drove him to commit such merciless acts of violence. Was he mad? Only the persuasive powers of his advocate stand between Macrae and the gallows. In this, Graeme Macrae Burnet tells an irresistible and original story about the provisional nature of truth, even when the facts seem clear.

It’s the eve of the 1980s. PC Liz Seeley joins the squad investigating the murders. With a violent boyfriend at home and male chauvinist pigs at work, she is drawn to a feminist collective led by the militant and uncompromising Rowena. There she meets Charmaine – young, Black, artistic, and fighting discrimination on two fronts. As the list of victims grows and police fail to catch the killer, women across the north are too terrified to go out after dark.

Highland Scotland was no place for a woman in the early 1500s. Life was turbulent and short, battles were waged, and sisters and daughters were traded as pawns in marriage. Catherine Campbell was one such young bride, betrothed to Lachlan Maclean and sent 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.

An eminent British writer returns to the resort hotel in the Japanese mountains where he once spent a beautiful, snowed-in winter. It was there he fell in love and wrote his best-selling novel, The Waterwheel, accusing America of being in denial about the horrific aftermath of the Tokyo firebombings and the nuclear destruction at Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Human beings can survive for about forty days without food; for about three days without water; for about eight minutes without air. But they can’t live for one single second without hope. That’s what my dad taught us. He said we had to be prepared for what was coming. He said it was better to be ten years too early than one minute too late. That’s why he did what he did, on that morning.

The brutal shooting of a bear cub galvanises ecologist Callis MacArthur into becoming an activist. Dreaming of bears roaming free – even in Scotland, a thousand years after their disappearance – she finds herself exploring Europe’s remotest forests and meeting colourful characters who are as passionate about nature as she is. But as she begins to embrace her wild side, she faces escalating challenges: she must risk her career and endure agonising personal losses to avoid being swept up in events and emotions beyond her control.

Edinburgh, 1942. As war tightens its grip on Britain, young bride Agnes Thorne is trying to adjust to her new city environment, to her husband Jeff's sophisticated, clever friends and colleagues, and to the role expected of her as a university lecturer's wife. She soon discovers that Jeff's dedication to Home Rule in a time of national crisis could land him in prison. His stand against conscription makes Agnes a reluctant witness to arguments that threaten to split the nascent nationalist movement in Scotland.

In an old-fashioned fishing community on Morecambe Bay, change is imperceptibly slow. Treacherous tides sweep the quicksands, claiming everything in their path. As a boy, Arthur had followed in his father’s and grandfather’s footprints, learning to read the currents and shifting sands. Now retired and widowed, though, he feels invisible, redundant. His daughter wants him in a retirement home. No one listens to his rants about the newcomers striking out nightly onto the bay for cockles, seemingly oblivious to the danger. When Arthur’s path crosses Suling’s, both are running out of options.

She used to be someone else, but now she’s arrived in Vegas, where she can start again. It won’t do to let the past leak in. It’s the Sixties now. She’s going to become Joan. She makes a list: Buy a new dress (fitted, floral). Dye her hair (dark). Curl it. Buy red lipstick. Buy cigarettes and a lighter, too: Joan, she decides, is a smoker. There’s no need to dwell on why she’s here, what went before. She is just moving forward, one foot in front of the other, becoming that new person. Joan.

Before Adam Farrer’s family relocated to Withernsea in 1992, he’d never heard of the Holderness coast. The move represented one thing to Adam: a chance to leave the insecurities of early adolescence behind. And he could do that anywhere. What he didn’t know was how much he’d grow to love the quirks and people of this faded Yorkshire resort, in spite of its dilapidated attractions and retreating clifftops. While Adam documents the minutiae of small-town life, he lays bare experiences that are universal.