Item category 1: Read Past/Discover Future

The World Controllers have created the ideal society. Genetic science has brought the human race to perfection. From the Alpha-Plus mandarin class to the Epsilon Semi-Morons, man is bred and educated to be content with his pre-destined role.

On a clear day, you could see 'America' from Edinburgh's Castle Rock - or so said Alice Munro's great-great-great-grandfather, James Laidlaw, when he had taken drink. This is the story of those Ettrick shepherds and their descendants, among them the author herself.

Hutchinson tells the moving story of a stubbornly heroic resistance and of extraordinary personal achievement. It is the story of a statement made from the depths of one man's heart in the most practical and indisputable of ways against the unnecessary destruction of his homeland.

Alfred Day wanted his war. In its turmoil he found his proper purpose as the tail-gunner in a Lancaster bomber; he found the wild, dark fellowship of his crew, and - most extraordinary of all - he found Joyce, a woman to love. But that's all gone now - the war took it away. Maybe it took him, too.

In the first two books of her autobiography, Jess Smith told the story of her wandering years on the road with the last of Scotland's travellers, hawkers and gypsies. This third volume in the trilogy is Jess's at-times painful farewell to the travelling lifestyle which she loved.

This is an affectionate and humorous look at the life of the small Aberdeenshire farmer through the 19th and 20th centuries. It is full of folk wisdom and anecdotes from the people who made that farming community the prosperous thing it became from Nature's rather meagre bounty.

One of the greatest post-apocalyptic novels ever written, 'The Death of Grass' shows the disintegration of the familiar world - and the terrible price of survival.

A team of explorers and a National Geographic photographer unearth the remains of 500 year old Dominican monk. Etched on his cross is a strange message. His secret tells of something wondrous and terrifying waiting to be unearthed.