Summerwater is a devastating story told over twenty-four hours in the Scottish highlands, and a searing exploration of our capacity for both kinship and cruelty in these divided times. On the longest day of the summer, twelve people sit cooped up with their families in a faded Scottish cabin park. The endless rain leaves them with little to do but watch the other residents. A woman goes running up the Ben as if fleeing; a retired couple reminisce about neighbours long since moved on; a teenage boy braves the dark waters of the loch in his red kayak. Each person is wrapped in their own cares but increasingly alert to the makeshift community around them.

One particular family, a mother and daughter without the right clothes or the right manners, starts to draw the attention … More

Born OTD in 1868, James Connolly. From Fianna Fail and Sinn Fein, to conservative Irish nationalists and the Church, many groups have claimed Connolly as their own, his ideas and strategies used and distorted to justify particular political positions. Kieran Allen breaks this mould, assessing the founder of the Irish Marxist movement ideas from a revolutionary socialist perspective.

Allen considers the strengths and weaknesses of Connolly’s revolutionary strategy, the effect of his commitment to international socialism on his … More

Born OTD in 1671, Scottish outlaw, who later became a folk hero, Rob Roy MacGregor. From its first publication in 1816 Rob Roy has been recognised as containing some of Scott’s finest writing & most engaging, fully realised characters. The outlaw Rob Roy MacGregor was already a legendary, disputed figure by the time Scott wrote – a heroic Scottish Robin Hood to some, an over-glamorised, unprincipled predator to others.

Scott approaches Rob Roy indirectly, through the adventures of his fictional hero, Frank Osbaldistone, amid the political turmoil of England … More

In this masterpiece of nature writing, Nan Shepherd describes her journeys into the Cairngorm mountains of Scotland. There she encounters a world that can be breathtakingly beautiful at times and shockingly harsh at others. Her intense, poetic prose explores and records the rocks, rivers, creatures and hidden aspects of this remarkable landscape. Shepherd spent a lifetime in search of the ‘essential nature’ of the Cairngorms; her quest led her to write this classic meditation on the magnificence of mountains, and on our imaginative relationship with the wild world around us. Composed during the Second World War, the manuscript of The Living Mountain lay untouched for more than thirty years before it was finally published.

New release available in store and online.

The Hebrides hold a remarkable place in the imaginations of Scotland & England… these iconic islands form part of Europe’s boundary. Because of their unique position, they have been at the centre of a network of ancient shipping routes which has led to a history of cultures colliding & merging.

Home to a long and rich Gaelic tradition, they have attracted saints and sinners, and artists and writers, inspiring awe … More

Connolly was a peerless organizer, sharp polemicist, & highly original thinker. His positions on the relationship between national liberation & socialism, revolution in colonized & under developed economies, & women’s liberation in particular were often decades ahead of their time.

“James Connolly was an uncompromising fighter for Irish freedom and a socialist for all the world. He lived in tumultuous … More

Gradually it has become clear that the entire eco-system has been thrown out of balance by the elimination of a top predator.

In The Last Wolf, Jim Crumley explores the place of the wolf in Scotland – past, present and future – … More

How Late loosens a torrent of furious stream-of-consciousness prose that never lets up. Beaten savagely by Glasgow police, the shoplifting ex-con Sammy is hauled off to jail, where he wakes to a world gone black.

One Sunday morning in Glasgow, shoplifting ex-con Sammy awakens in an alley, wearing another man’s shoes and trying to remember … More