'Moving, poetic and quietly provocative' - The Independent. City life in the early nineteenth century was never short of drama: poverty and pollution preyed on all but the lucky few, and 'resurrection men' prowled the streets to procure corpses for anatomists to experiment on. Life is improving, however, for young William Lang, who begins courting Jenny, a fine needlewoman, and forms an unlikely friendship with botanist Dr Thomas Brown while working in the physic garden for a leading professor of surgery. At first, William relishes the opportunity to extend his knowledge of plants and their...

The Jewel is set largely during the dramatic years of Jean Armour and Robert Burns's courtship in Mauchline, their married life at Ellisland and in Dumfries, and Robert s early death, all against a background simmering with political intrigue and turmoil. Jean, a beautiful young woman with the voice of a nightingale, has been inexplicably neglected by biographers and historians. At first, her stonemason father tried to protect the young Jean from the advances of the mercurial ploughman-poet, whose roving eye and even delusions of grandeur were notorious. Nevertheless, she fell for him...

The island of Gigha is a small gem, the most southerly of the true Hebridean islands, lying just off Tayinloan on Scotland s Kintyre peninsula. Gigha s good harbours, fertile land, mild climate and strategically useful position have given it a fascinating history. Catherine Czerkawska relates the sometimes turbulent story of the people of Gigha, from the settlers of prehistoric times, through successive incomers including the Celts, the Vikings, and the McNeill lords of this island."