A timely and vivid look at Scotland’s long and difficult road to nationhood, re-exploring some cherished myths and unearthing a wealth of fascinating new detail.This edition contains a limited number of illustrations.Magnus Magnusson’s starting point is Sir Walter Scott’s classic version of Scotland’s history, ‘Tales of a Grandfather’ (1827-29), which has moulded the views of generations of Scottish schoolchildren. Like Scott, Magnus Magnusson is a master story teller. In investigating the many questions raised by the nation’s turbulent and often poignant past, he gives full weight to the living treasure of local legends and tradition which he believes has as much resonance as academic analysis.Where did the ‘Scots’ come from? What is the truth about such historical figures as Macbeth, William Wallace and Robert Bruce? What was the significance of the tragic reign of Mary Queen of Scots? What was the impact of Bonnie Prince Charlie and his brutal defeat at Culloden?Incorporating the findings of many leading modern historians, ‘Scotland: The Story of a Nation’ casts the nation’s history in a fascinating new light. It is essential reading for anyone with an interest in Scotland at this pivotal moment in its history.
‘A gripping portrayal of a family caught on the wrong side of the law’ JANE CORRYThe USA Today and #1 eBook bestseller of The Girl Who Lied and Sister SisterHAVE YOU SEEN THIS GIRL?When fourteen-year-old Poppy vanishes on a family boating trip, suspicion soon turns close to home – to the two people who should do everything to keep her safe, her parents, Kit and Neve.Neve has a secret. Kit is lying.Everyone is watching.Who do you believe?
***THE NO.1 EBOOK BESTSELLER***‘This book is not only gripping, but it ends with a gasp-out-loud twist’ Closer‘Tense, convincing … kept me guessing’ Caz Frear, bestselling author of Sweet Little LiesA teenage girl is missing. Is your daughter involved, or is she next?When Karen Finch’s seventeen-year-old daughter Sophie arrives home after a night out, drunk and accompanied by police officers, no one is smiling the morning after. But Sophie remembers nothing about how she got into such a state.Twelve hours later, Sophie’s friend Amy has still not returned home. Then the body of a young woman is found.Karen is sure that Sophie knows more than she is letting on. But Karen has her own demons to fight. She struggles to go beyond her own door without a panic attack.As she becomes convinced that Sophie is not only involved but also in danger, Karen must confront her own anxieties to stop whoever killed one young girl moving on to another – Sophie.A taut psychological thriller, perfect for fans of Laura Marshall and Cara Hunter.Praise for Sam Carrington‘A gripping exploration of twisted family secrets’ Cass Green, author of The Woman Next Door‘Saving Sophie is a twisted rollercoaster of a debut . . . Sam Carrington is definitely one to watch out for’ Lisa Hall, author of Between You and Me‘A tense, pacy read. This story’s enough to put you off social media!’ Isabel Ashdown, author of Beautiful Liars‘I was hooked … I devoured this story in one sitting. Louise Jensen, author of The Sister
A classic Agatha Christie short story, available individually for the first time as an ebook.Bunch, engrossed in her flower arrangements for the church is rather dully placing the chrysanthemums when she sees a man crumpled over on the chancel steps, dying. The man can only utter one word, ‘Sanctuary’. Nothing can be done, and his final words ‘please, please’ can’t help anyone at the vicarage to understand what has happened. But, when his relatives arrive very promptly to pick up his possessions Bunch can’t get the word Sanctuary out of her head and she knows just who to turn to, her godmother, Miss Marple. What Bunch and Miss Marple discover is rather more exotic and exciting than can ever be expected to happen in a sleepy village like Chipping Cleghorn, who is this man and what does Sanctuary mean?
A collection of four stunning ebooks from the author of the runaway bestseller, THE KASHMIR SHAWL.THE WHITE DOVE: Born an aristocrat, beautiful Amy Lovell leads a whirlwind life of extravagant parties and balls. But Amy is ill-suited to a life of indulgence, and eagerly embraces a nursing career, where she is drawn into the radical politics of the day. As the spectre of war looms, Amy's bittersweet love for the proud miner Nick Penry leads them to the conflict in Spain, where love and pain become inseparable agonies.THE POTTER’S HOUSE: Olivia Giorgiadis has left her English roots behind to live on a tiny Greek island, married to a local man, mother to two small sons. But when an earthquake devastates the island, a stranger appears in the aftermath: an Englishwoman, destitute but for the clothes she wears. As she melts into the family and the village community, so Olivia begins to sense that her mysterious visitor threatens all she holds dear…CELEBRATION: For Bell Farrer, rising wine journalist, it was the break of her career. To interview both reclusive Baron Charles de Gillesmont of Chateau Reynard and business genius Valentine Gordon of California's Dry Stone Wineries. But suddenly Bell's career is the last thing on her mind. Because Charles and Valentine are not just opposites but enemies, locked in lethal rivalry by their only common bond, the women they choose to love. Once, Charles's wife; now Bell. How can Bell, loving one, still feel the draw of the other?WHITE: One Love. One Chance. Once Sacrifice. For Sam McGrath, a brief encounter with a young woman changes his life. On impulse, he vows to follow her – all the way to Nepal. Finch Buchanan, flying out as doctor, reaches the Himalayas only to be reunited with a man she has never been able to forget. Al Hood has made a promise: once he has conquered this last peak, he will leave the mountains behind forever. And the passionate relationship between Finch, Al and Sam – two men driven by their own demons, and a woman with a dream of her own – begins to play itself out, with tragic consequences…
A collection of four stunning ebooks from the author of the runaway bestseller, THE KASHMIR SHAWL.STRANGERS: Annie and Steve are from different worlds and do not know each other exists until one morning, they become victims of a bomb blast, thrown together to fight for their lives. As they lie in the darkness, the hours slowly tick by. To ward off fear and death they talk of everything, and so a bond is created that binds them deeper than family, than friends, than lovers. With such strange intimacy, how can they get through the future without each other?BAD GIRLS, GOOD WOMEN: In London, on the brink of the Sixties, two runaways plunge into Soho nightlife. Mattie faces the hard slog of a sleazy strip-club in search of fame. But when it comes, stardom is not enough, and the love that Mattie desires seems to elude her. Julia choose marriage and Ladyhill, a beautiful Dorset manor house. But when tragedy strikes, she realises that she must risk her marriage and her child for true freedom…A WOMAN OF OUR TIMES: Harriet Peacock has everything. From shopkeeper and betrayed wife, she has made herself the City's darling, her name linked in gossip columns with film stars. She has come a long way from Simon Archer, the man who invented a brilliantly simple game of chance and skill in a prison camp forty years ago, a game that is the foundation of Harriet's business empire. But when things start going wrong, Harriet finds that in love, as in the game, the quickest way to a goal can be the riskiest…ALL MY SINS REMEMBERED: Jake, Clio and Julius and their cousin Lady Grace Stretton formed a charmed circle in those lost innocent days before the Great War, before circumstances tore them apart: Jake's wartime experiences as a doctor; Clio and Grace, flappers flitting through bohemian Fitzrovia; the music that drowned out the crash of jackboots in Berlin for Julius. But Clio remembers a different story. Desperate lies, bitter secrets; hopeless love and careless betrayal. And above all, the truth about Grace, beautiful, destructive siren at the centre of the circle.
Rosemary has been cultivated since ancient times, once playing a central role in many traditional rites and ceremonies. It has been valued for its medical, culinary and cosmetic properties for thousands of years.This traditional ‘cure all’ folk remedy is also one of the most popular essential oils. Rosemary oil is principally used to invigorate and stimulate the body, and provides a good counterbalance to calming oils, such as lavender. In this new guide, Julia Lawless explains why the oil is so versatile and how to use it therapeutically.Employed for a variety of purposes from liver tonic to the treatment of muscular aches and pains, rosemary is beneficial for many other common health conditions including:• Rheumatism• Arthritis• Headaches• Sinusitis• Low blood pressure• Hair loss• Dandruff
Following on from his epic ‘1812: Napoleon's Fatal March on Moscow’, bestselling author Adam Zamoyski has written the dramatic story of the Congress of Vienna.In the wake of his disastrous Russian campaign of 1812, Napoleon's imperious grip on Europe began to weaken, raising the question of how the Continent was to be reconstructed after his defeat. There were many who dreamed of a peace to end all wars, in which the interests of peoples as well as those of rulers would be taken into account. But what followed was an unseemly and at times brutal scramble for territory by the most powerful states, in which countries were traded as if they had been private and their inhabitants counted like cattle.The results, fixed at the Congress of Vienna in 1815, not only laid the foundations of the European world we know; it put in place a social order and a security system that lie at the root of many of the problems which dog the world today. Although the defining moments took place in Vienna, and the principle players included Tsar Alexander I of Russia, the Austrian Chancellor Metternich, the Duke of Wellington and the French master of diplomacy Talleyrand, as well as Napoleon himself, the accepted view of the gathering of statesmen reordering the Continent in elegant salons is a false one. Many of the crucial questions were decided on the battlefield or in squalid roadside cottages amid the vagaries of war. And the proceedings in Vienna itself were not as decorous as is usually represented.Drawing on a wide range of first-hand sources in six languages, which include not only official documents, private letters, diaries and first-hand accounts, but also the reports of police spies and informers, Adam Zamoyski gets below the thin veneer of courtliness and reveals that the new Europe was forged by men in thrall to fear, greed and lust, in an atmosphere of moral depravity in which sexual favours were traded as readily as provinces and the 'souls' who inhabited them. He has created a chilling account, full of menace as well as frivolity.
The definitive account of Barack Obama’s life before he became the 44th president of the United States – the formative years, confluence of forces, and influential figures who helped shaped an extraordinary leader and his rise – from the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of ‘Bearing the Cross’.Barack Obama's keynote speech at the 2004 Democratic National Convention instantly catapulted the little-known state senator from Illinois into the national spotlight. Three months later, Obama would win election to the U.S. Senate; four years later he would make history as America’s first black president. Now, at the end of his second presidential term, David J. Garrow delivers the most compelling and comprehensive Obama biography – as epic in vision and rigorous in detail as Robert Caro’s ‘The Power Broker’.Moving around the globe, from Hawaii to Indonesia to the American Northeast and Midwest, ‘Rising Star’ meticulously unpacks Obama’s life, from his tumultuous upbringing in Honolulu and Jakarta, to his formative time as a community organizer on Chicago’s South Side, working in some of the roughest neighborhoods, to Cambridge, where he excelled at Harvard Law School, and finally back to Chicago, where he pursued his political destiny. In voluminous detail, drawn from more than 1,000 interviews and encyclopedic documentary research, Garrow reveals as never before the ambition, the dreams, and the all-too-human struggles of an iconic president in a sure to be news-making biography that will stand as the most authoritative account of Obama’s pre-presidential life for decades to come.
A short, sharp intervention in the crucial debate about the future of democracy, which has been brought to a head by events from Brexit to the Trump phenomenon.We live in strange days in the history of democracy.Every serious politician in the Western world supports democracy. Yet when the EU Referendum and American Elections both delivered the ‘wrong’ result, elites challenged the merit of the people’s will, and some even tried to block it. Preferring unelected institutions, from technocrats to the courts, self-appointed higher minds questioned whether voters are fit to be trusted with their own futures. Ours is the age of “I support democracy, but…”And yet the answer will never be to impose limitations. Popular democracy must offer better choices, rather than removing choice altogether. It’s time to defend democracy and fight for more it, with no ifs, buts or backtracks.