Peter MacAulay sits down to write his will. The process sets in motion a compulsive series of reflections: a history of his own lifetime and a subjective account of how key events in the post-war world filter through to his home, Stornoway. He reveals his passions for history, engines and fish, and witnesses changing times – and things that don’t change – in the Hebrides.

Peter MacAulay sits down to write his will. The process sets in motion a compulsive series of reflections: a history of his own lifetime and a subjective account of how key events in the post-war world filter through to his home, Stornoway. He reveals his passions for history, engines and fish, and witnesses changing times – and things that don’t change – in the Hebrides.

This study explores the religious consequences of the so-called “end of history” and “triumph of capitalism” as they have impinged upon key institutions of social reproduction in recent times. The book explores the imposition of managerial modernity upon successive sectors of society and shows why many people now feel oppressed by systems of management that seem to leave no option but conformity.

Twenty-one years after his wife and daughter were murdered in the bombing of a plane over Scotland, Alan Tealing, a university lecturer, still does not know the truth of what really happened on that terrible night. Obsessed by the details of what he has come to call The Case, he is sure that the man convicted of the atrocity was not responsible, and that he himself has thus been deprived not only of justice but also of any chance of escape from his enduring grief.

When Willa’s handsome sailor-husband Tommy sets off on an exotic round-the-world tour with the Royal Navy she is left behind in a small Edinburgh flat with a baby and a controlling mother-in-law. Her only escape is through reading books and it is at the local library that she meets Richard Fitzwilliam, whose friendship gradually begins to open up new horizons. A new life is being offered to her. But can she take it when Tommy’s steady progress around the world will eventually bring him home?

The battle with the Morrigan may be over but Jack Flint’s quest is only just beginning. As the Morrigan struggles with our three adventurers, she hurls Corriwen Redthorn through a gateway and into an unknown world. Jack and Kerry know they must follow and find her – and, unlike Corrie who is alone and afraid, they have the Book of Ways to help them.

THE WHITE PORCUPINE is a virtuoso novel. It is a mystery, and an exploration of loyalties: father and daughter, lovers and friends, soldiers and nations. Set in Java in the 1940s and the Netherlands in the 1970s, it tells the peculiar story of Ben Pinksterbloem, a military radio expert caught up in a post-colonial drama.

Gaelic Scotland is one of the world’s great treasure-houses of song. In this anthology Anne Lorne Gillies has gathered together music and lyrics from every corner of the Gaelic-speaking Highlands and Islands: an extraordinary tradition that stretches in an unbroken link from the bardic effusions of ancient times to the Celtic fusions of today’s vibrant young Gaelic musicians and poets.