Item category 1: Read Past/Discover Future

Three women, one shared ambition: to join the ATS and do their bit for King and country. Bea has grown up part of a large, boisterous East End family. But her sweetheart is missing in action, and her mother is controlling her life. She needs to escape. Edie inhabits a world of wealth and privileg...

On the night of the 28th of December 1879, a violent storm batters the east coast of Scotland. Close to the city of Dundee, Ann Craig - a wealthy woman - expects her mill owner husband to return home. But as she waits on the train, she can only look on in horror as the railway bridge collapses in...

This is a collection of stories about Para Handy, who originally appeared in the Glasgow Evening News nearly 100 years ago. The mariner and his crew recall the age of puffers sailing between West Highland ports and Glasgow.

At the bitter end of the 1960s, after surviving multiple assassination attempts, President John F. Kennedy has created a vast federal agency, the Psych Corps, dedicated to maintaining the nation's mental hygiene by any means necessary. Soldiers returning from Vietnam have their battlefield trauma...

When Charles Edward Stuart, commonly known as the Young Pretender, sailed from France to Scotland in July 1745, and with only a handful of supporters to claim the throne for his exiled father, few people within Britain were alarmed. But after he raised the Stuart standard at Glenfinnan in the Wes...

Words are grained into our landscapes, and landscapes are grained into our words. 'Landmarks' is about the power of language to shape our sense of place. It is a field guide to the literature of nature, and a glossary containing thousands of remarkable words used in England, Scotland, Ireland, an...

Edgar Hill is 35 and caught in his own headlock. Overweight slob, under-performing husband and reluctant father - for Ed, the world may as well have already ended. So when it does end in a catastrophic asteroid strike, Edgar and his family find refuge in an Edinburgh army barracks. But nothing's ...

Few landscapes in the British Isles are as iconic as the islands that lie off the north-western Scottish coast. Over a period of six years, Madeleine Bunting returned again and again to the Hebrides, exploring their landscapes, histories and magnetic pull. With great sensitivity and perceptivenes...

Walter Stephen takes an uninhibited look at the misery and toil of WWI through a collection of 12 diverse stories. Providing a Scottish perspective, he analyses tales from home and abroad with scepticism, delving deeper to unveil the unencumbered truth. Recalling Siegfried Sassoon's words, he rev...