18 year-old John MacNeil witnesses a massacre and later returns to the scene to find the sole survivor, a small boy, too frightened to speak. Pursued by soldiers, John and the boy set off together on a terrifying journey through the mountains.

But who is the boy and what is John to do with him when they reach safety?

When 18 year-old Fin Carpenter sees a body falling through the mist from a bridge he’s convinced that it wasn’t an accident. But the more he investigates, the more he discovers that there’s something rotten at the heart of the remote island community where he lives.

London, 1920. Elliot Taverley is an ambitious young psychoanalyst specialising in the new and controversial field of handwriting analysis. When he receives a visit from a man who seems to change personality when he copies others’ handwriting, Elliot is intrigued and soon becomes obsessed with the man and his mysterious disorder.

In her extraordinary collection, Kathleen Jamie examines her native Scotland – a country at once wild and contained, rural and urban – and her place within it.

With her poet’s eye and naturalist’s affinity for wild places, Kathleen Jamie reports from the field in this enthralling collection of fourteen essays whose power derives from the stubborn attention she pays to everything around her. Jamie roams her native Scottish “byways and hills” and sails north to encounter whalebones and icebergs.

Neal Ascherson chronicles the tumultuous history of the sea where East meets West. He recalls Ovid’s exile on its shores, charts Scythian wayfarers, Stalinist purges and Hitler’s vision of a German Gothic Crimea. His thoughtful book ends by considering the sea’s damaged ecology – perhaps to be its final tragedy.

Life is seriously good for Sassy Wilde – she’s had her first kiss, she has the two bestest bezzies ever and her rock-chick dreams are on the verge of coming true.

But just as everything’s set to take off, her new boyfriend starts acting weird – and then the record company turns Sassy’s world upside down!

Sassy feels like giving it all up – until a real disaster strikes. Now’s not the time for Sassy to pack away her guitar, cos her talents are needed more than ever …

Robyn Carruthers has yet to venture far from the familiar. She works in a Glasgow shop, is in a relationship but remains closely tied to her parents in Balloch. She sets out for a few days off her beaten track and has no idea where it might lead or whom she might meet. In a bothy in a remote glen Robyn feels dangerously out of her depth.