Category Archives: Travel Guides
Under Fishbone Clouds
“Under Fishbone Clouds” is a love story and family saga interwoven with traditional folktales and stories from ancient Chinese history. Set against the backdrop of dramatic events of recent Chinese political history, we follow the lives of Jinyi and his wife Yuying.
The English German Girl
This powerful, meticulously researched novel is a moving tale of one girl`s struggle against a world in turmoil. In 1930s Berlin, choked by the tightening of Hitler`s fist, the Klein family are gradually losing everything that is precious to them. Their fifteen-year-old daughter, Rosa, slips out of Germany on a Kindertransport train to begin a
The Art of Hearing Heartbeats
A poignant and inspirational love story set in Burma, `The Art of Hearing Heartbeats` spans the decades between the 1950s and the present. When a successful New York lawyer suddenly disappears without a trace, neither his wife nor his daughter Julia has any idea where he might be – until they find a love letter
Fatty O`Leary`s Dinner Party
It takes a lot to get under the skin of Cornelius `Fatty O`Leary, but then there is a lot of skin to get under. The heroically proportioned Fatty can normally take life as it comes. Right at home in easy-going Fayetteville, Arkansas, he is happily married to his childhood sweetheart Betty, and likes nothing better
Sixty Degrees North: Around the World in Search of Home
Stanfords Adult Book of the Month June 2016`Sixty Degrees North is a story that we tell, both to ourselves and to others. It is a story about where – and perhaps also who – we are.`The sixtieth parallel marks a kind of borderland. It wraps itself around the lower reaches of Finland, Sweden and Norway;
The Un-Discovered Islands: An Archipelago of Myths and Mysteries, Phantoms and Fakes
Winner of the Destinations Show Illustrated Travel Book of the Year 2016.Critically acclaimed author Malachy Tallack returns in the autumn of 2016 with The Un-Discovered Islands, an exploration of some of the world`s strangest places.Gathered in the book are two dozen islands once believed to be real but no longer on the map. These are
Chance Developments: Unexpected Love Stories
In this beguiling book, Alexander McCall Smith casts his eye over five chanced-upon photographs from the era of black-and-white photography and imagines the stories behind them. Who were those people, what were their stories, why are they smiling, what made them sad? What emerges are surprising and poignant tales of love and friendship in a
Escape to Ikaria: All at Sea in the Aegean
Leaving their Welsh hill farm behind, Nick, Ros and their children arrive on the little-known island of Ikaria in 1978, having impulsively boarded the first ferry leaving Athens. Escape to Ikaria tells the story of how they become involved with the islanders and their way of life. Nick tries his hand at anything to get
The Translator
Sammar is a young Sudanese widow, working as an Arabic translator at a British university. Following the sudden death of her husband, and estranged from her young son, she drifts, grieving and isolated. Life takes a positive turn when she finds herself falling in love with Rae, a Scottish academic. To Sammar, he seems to
Peaks and Troughs: In at the Deep End, High in the Hills
As 1970 dawns Jack, brother Nick and his family set off from swinging London to fulfil their dream of living off the land in the wild unforgiving hills of North Wales. They know nothing of farming or what battles lie ahead with the weather and their neighbours, or the ingenuity needed to survive.But armed with
The Bureau of Second Chances
Shortlisted for a 2018 Edward Stanford Travel Writing Award.Is going back the only way to start again?After more than thirty years in London, recently-widowed Thomas Imbalil returns to India. He spends his first months in uncluttered isolation in his house overlooking the Arabian Sea, in a small fishing village in Kerala. But when he agrees
Trains and Lovers: The Heart`s Journey
Imagine you`re on a train. Think about all the other people on the train with you, what their lives are or have been, and the different experiences you`ve all had. But there is one more thing that you undoubtedly all share: you have all been in love at one time or another. In this surprising
Hunt the Banker: The Confessions of a Russian Ex-Oligarch
Alexander Lebedev is best known as the Russian businessman and public figure who bought the Evening Standard and The Independent newspapers in the UK. A former KGB intelligence officer in the USSR`s London Embassy, his book covers the years from his birth in 1959 to 2016.Written in a wry and humorous manner, the book is
The Pearl-fishers
When the beautiful pearl-fisher, Effie Williamson, arrives in a rural Scottish village, with her grandparents and siblings, the residents react in many different ways, from hospitable warmth to outright rejection, exacerbated when the religious, gentle Gavin Hamilton takes the family into his home, the Old Manse. A difficult love blossoms gradually between Effie and Gavin
John MacNab
In 1925, John Buchan published his second most famous novel, “John MacNab”; three high-flying men – a barrister, a cabinet minister and a banker – are suffering from boredom. They concoct a plan to cure it. They inform three Scottish estates that they will poach from each two stags and a salmon in a given
Sick Heart River
“Sick Heart River” is John Buchan`s most powerful novel and his last, completed days before his death. It was published posthumously in 1941. Buchan`s rich descriptions of the rugged Canadian Northwest Territories are influenced by his real-life voyage down the Mackenzie River in 1937. At that time, Buchan was Governor-General of Canada. The main character,
Greenmantle
With an introduction by Christopher Hitchens. Richard Hannay is tasked to investigate rumours of an uprising in the Muslim world and takes off on a hair-raising journey through German-occupied Europe to meet up with his old friend Sandy Arbuthnot in Constantinople, where they must thwart the Germans` plans to use religion to help them win
The Thirty-nine Steps
With an introduction by Stuart Kelly. Recently returned from South Africa, adventurer Richard Hannay is bored with life, but after a chance encounter with an American who informs him of an assassination plot and is then promptly murdered in Hannay`s London flat, he becomes the obvious suspect and is forced to go on the run.
Up, Up, Up
This airborne adventure takes readers ballooning over lands near and far, all the way to the stars. The singalong song on the accompanying CD keeps spirits high, while the rhyming and playful text introduces all sorts of settings and vocabulary-building words.
Good To Be God
Using the credit card and identity of a handcuffs salesman, professional failure Tyndale Corbett arrives in Miami for a law enforcement conference to discover the joys of luxury hotels and above all the delight of being someone else, someone successful. Feeling his previous lack of success might be due to insufficient ambition, Tyndale decides on
