Naomi, the enigmatic fiddler, arrives in Clachanpluck, bringing her music and the ominous potential of an incomer. Her unexpected arrival enriches this remote forest village even as she disrupts it. This is a story of an all-consuming love of the land; the power of friendship; the seasonal round of creation and death; and the physical thrill of storm and rhythm, fire and candlelight. The impending sense of catastrophe - global and personal - which haunts this world, finally erupts in violence: trust and love are the casualties. The Incomer follows in the tradition of the ballads: fantasy...

This new edition of An Apple from a Tree, with additional stories previously published elsewhere, provides the reader with the opportunity to revisit some of Margaret Elphinstone's early writing. Themes and motifs which have come to characterise much of her subsequent work are already evident. Her writing resonates with a deep and underlying concern with the way we understand and relate to our environment while at the same time it is always ready to challenge conventional perceptions of myth and reality. By restructuring paradigms and demonstrating the impermanence of accepted boundaries she...

Islanders is Margaret Elphinstone's first novel, written when she lived at Northbanks, Papa Stour in 1979. It is the author's expression of the seven years she lived in Shetland, during which she explored Shetland by land and sea, discovered the sagas while working in Shetland Library, learned to watch birds on Fair Isle, Noss and other islands, and spent several summers as a volunteer on a dig at Da Biggings, Papa Stour, excavating a Norse farm. The novel was re-written in the early 1990s, partly in the National Library of Scotland, partly in Shetland, and partly (thanks to a Scottish Arts...

A haunting, compelling historical novel, The Sea Road is a daring retelling of the 11th-century Viking exploration of the North Atlantic from the viewpoint of one extraordinary woman. Gudrid lives at the remote edge of the known world, in a starkly beautiful landscape where the sea is the only connection to the shores beyond. It is a world where the old Norse gods are still invoked even as Christianity gains favor, where the spirits of the dead roam the vast northern ice-fields, tormenting the living, and Viking explorers plunder foreign shores. Taking the accidental discovery of...

In the early 1800s, Rachel Greenhow, a young Quaker, goes missing in the Canadian wilderness. Unable to accept the disappearance, her brother Mark leaves his farm in England, determined to bring his sister home. What follows is a gripping account of Mark's odyssey and his travels with the voyageurs - the men who canoe Canada's fur-trade route.

Between Grandmother Mountain and the cold sea, Alaia and her family live off the land. But when her brother goes hunting and never returns, the fragile balance of life is upset. Half-starved and maddened with grief, Alaia's mother follows her visions and goes in search of her lost son.

The Gathering Night is a story of conflict, loss, love, adventure and devastating natural disaster. This gripping novel is set deep in our stone-age past, but resonates as a parable for our troubled planet 8,000 years on.