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Polygon Books

Birlinn Limited
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Polygon publishes a wide range of fiction, poetry and biography and even the occasional cookbook. Best known as publishers of Alexander McCall Smith.
    Birlinn Limitedmenambahkan buku ke rak bukuPolygon Books5 bulan yang lalu
    As elegant and witty as it is disturbing.' — The Daily Telegraph 'Accomplished and gloriously black comedy' — Allan Guthrie 'Lovely, sparse, elegant writing, highly original plot and ever— building tension make this book irresistible. There's sex and drugs and rock-and-roll, a whiff of true evil and a scream-out loud finale. Wow!' — Australian Women's Weekly 'Scary and stylish slice of urban noir' — Boyd Tonkin, Independent 'Colourful characters, dramatic plot twists and vibrant vernacular … a great read' The Bookseller 'Brilliant, shocking and unputdownable' — Sydney Morning Herald Bronny, a young Australian, finds herself down and out in London. She's a sweet girl who has spent her teenage years in a fearful, cautious bubble. She's never taken drugs, had sex or killed anyone. Within six weeks she's done all three. A group of backpackers break into an abandoned London townhouse seeking a rent-free life of debauchery. They don't realise someone's already there: a terrified woman bound and gagged in the basement. “The Devil's Staircase” combines a chick-lit voice and a dark crime noir environment. Not for the faint-hearted, “The Devil's Staircase” is funny, sexy and disturbing — it will keep you on the edge of your seat from start to finish.
    Birlinn Limitedmenambahkan buku ke rak bukuPolygon Books5 bulan yang lalu
    “A strong collection showing a highly skilled poet on top of her craft, using language and imagery in a sensitive but candid way.” —Brian McCabe Vividly evoking the landscape of Scotland, particularly the brooding presences of the Scottish islands and Sutherland, these poems also touch on personal love and loss—combining nature with human themes in a collection that is both intimate and celebratory. Presented in English and Gaelic, the poems build on Meg Bateman’s established flair for uniting intense emotion and feeling with a classic, restrained control and structure that harkens back to Gaelic song-poetry and the beauty in a poem’s inevitability.“The poems have the strength and simplicity of art made for a community rather than an elite, though they are far from artless.” —The Guardian“The end result of this beautifully constructed and paced collection is a universal evocation of commonalities fused by human consideration . . . The title Transparencies hints at ephemeral moments caught. The poet suggests she aspires to a ‘palimpsest’ of emotions recalled and now renewed upon the page. She succeeds.” —The Herald “Meg Bateman’s embrace of Gaelic has awakened her poetry to a noble passionate candor rare in today’s over-ironical English.” —Les Murray
    Birlinn Limitedmenambahkan buku ke rak bukuPolygon Books5 bulan yang lalu
    Faced with a choice between her harsh farming life and the seductive but distant world of books and learning, Chris Guthrie eventually decides to remain in her rural community, bound by her intense love of the land. However, the intervention of the First World War leaves her choice in tatters. Chris is now a widowed single mother: her farm, and the land it occupies, is altered beyond recognition — trees torn down, people displaced. But although the novel describes a way of life which is in decline, it also presents a strong image of hope. Chris adapts to her new world, displaying an intuitive strength which, like the land which she loves, endures despite everything. “Sunset Song” is a testament to Scotland's agricultural past, to the world of crofters and tradition which was destroyed in the First World War. It is a powerful description of life in the first few decades of the century through the evocation of change and the lyrical intensity of its prose. Renowned expert Ian Campbell has produced the first new scholarly text for fifteen years and has the blessing of the Lewis Grassic Gibbon estate.
    Birlinn Limitedmenambahkan buku ke rak bukuPolygon Books5 bulan yang lalu
    Europe is marching blindly into the First World War and Berlin is in a storm of nationalist marches and army recruitment. Albert Einstein anticipates the carnage to come when his university colleagues begin work on poison gas to 'shorten the war'. He is also struggling with the collapse of his marriage in the wake of an illicit affair. Increasingly isolated, Einstein finds his academic work sidelined with few people entertaining his outlandish new way of understanding the universe. Meanwhile, in the trenches of the western front, a devoutly religious young Belgian Georges Lemaitre vows to become both a physicist and a Catholic priest if he survives. When the war ends, Einstein does make his breakthrough and is thrust into the international limelight. Lemaitre confronts him with a startling concept: that buried in the maths of the theory of relativity is a beginning of space and time, a moment when the universe came into existence — a day without yesterday. But can the priest be trusted? Or is he simply trying to foist a version of Biblical Genesis onto Einstein's now world famous theory.
    Birlinn Limitedmenambahkan buku ke rak bukuPolygon Books7 bulan yang lalu
    A sensitively written and memorable novel of youth by one of Scotland's most distinguished twentieth century writers. Malcolm, studious, imaginative, footballing, shy, sexually aware but uncomfortably innocent, is in his last term at school on a Hebridean island during the Second World War. His awkward relationship with his teachers, his widowed mother and younger brother, his friends — and with Janet whom he loves from a distance and the less comely and warmer, but to him still enigmatic, Sheila, are marvellously realised. Above all, this is the story of a boy, on his own, trying to discover himself and through himself to find his way in life.
    Birlinn Limitedmenambahkan buku ke rak bukuPolygon Books5 bulan yang lalu
    The acclaimed author travels across Ethiopia collecting folktales in this travelogue featuring many of the fabulous stories she heard.In 1967, at the age of 23, Elizabeth Laird set off for Addis Ababa, Ethiopia’s capital city, to start her first teaching job. She was introduced to Emperor Haile Selassie, made a pilgrimage across the mountains on foot to the ancient city of Lalibela, hitched a ride on an oil tanker across the Danakil Desert, and was arrested—briefly—for a murder she did not commit.Back in Britain, Laird established herself as a major author of fiction for children and young adults, but she always wanted to return to Ethiopia. Her chance came in the late 1990s, when the British Council in Addis Ababa invited her to collect folk stories from every region of the country. Encountering ex-guerrilla fighters, camel traders, Coptic nuns and tribespeople en route, Laird has written a remarkable account of her journey interwoven with a treasure trove of stories featuring princes and maidens, snakes and lions, zombies and hyena-women.
    Birlinn Limitedmenambahkan buku ke rak bukuPolygon Books7 bulan yang lalu
    'Confidently-written, warm and accessible… a fun and pacey book' — The Herald 'This is a laugh-out-loud, feel-good story which demands a follow-up *****' — News of the World It's 1975 and Britain is a country in political flux. In Glasgow the dirty old Victorian slums have been razed to the ground, replaced with brand new slums twenty storeys high. Chips are a health food and the very mention of filet mignon would spark a riot on the Govan Road. As its citizens struggle to adapt to their changing world, they wonder what will replace the steel mills and the shipyards, whether they look stupid in flares and what the lyrics of the Bay City Rollers' 'Shang-A-Lang' actually mean? Ten-year-old Steve Duff longs to be poor and neglected like his friend Wally, whose parents are incapable drunks. Frustratingly for Steve, he's saddled with a conventional, stable and middle-class family. Then, over the course of a year, his father has a fling with a barmaid and leaves home, his mother's response is to start a psychology degree, his sister is arrested for demanding money with menaces and his brother gets a girl pregnant.As if the normal indignities of growing up weren't bad enough…This is a funny touching and heart-warming debut novel that will strike a chord with anyone who has been an awkward kid at least once in their life.
    Birlinn Limitedmenambahkan buku ke rak bukuPolygon Books7 bulan yang lalu
    At the end of John Buchan’s classic adventure John Macnab, three friends in search of excitement have just completed an epic feat of poaching. Now their celebrations are unexpectedly interrupted by the appearance of their old comrade Richard Hannay. His arrival marks the beginning of a new and even more hazardous challenge. A foreign dignitary has been abducted while on a secret visit to Scotland and his life hangs in the balance. It is up to Hannay and the Macnabs to rescue him before Europe in plunged into a new and ruinous war. For the man they must rescue was once their greatest foe — the Kaiser.This time the stakes are higher, the risks are greater, and the fate of a nation will be decided.
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  • Birlinn Limitedmenambahkan buku ke rak bukuPolygon Books7 bulan yang lalu
    “An emotionally resonant, semi-autobiographical story about growth and change and coming to terms with loss” from the Writers’ Guild Award-winning author (The Herald).Vanish to a different land with Sissy Olikara. Sissy is twelve years old, living with her parents and baby brother on a school campus outside of Lusaka. It is 1978, and the political situation in Zambia is becoming volatile. The family enjoy a gentle life until, suddenly, Sissy’s father leaves and returns to India.His departure brings about a chain of events which force Sissy into the adult world and have profound, long-lasting consequences.Moving back and forth in time as the adult Sissy reflects on her childhood, The Wild Wind is a haunting, absorbing coming-of-age tale of lost loves and lost innocence—one that takes readers on a journey into a young woman’s past and its repercussions on her future.Featured on The Guardian’s “Not the Booker Longlist, 2019”“A finely structure family story . . . It is written with serious respect for its characters and their story. There are no villains. It is about people in credible situations and people who are almost all trying to behave well. This is difficult to bring off and Kalayil is evidently a novelist of real talent.” —Yorkshire Post“Follows Sissy Olikara, a US-based translator reflecting on her 1970s childhood in the outskirts of the Zambian capital Lusaka. The end result is profound and long-lasting.” —Sunday Post
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  • Birlinn Limitedmenambahkan buku ke rak bukuPolygon Books7 bulan yang lalu
    All over Britain, POW camps are filling up with defeated German soldiers. Every day, thousands more pour in on ships from France. But only the most dangerous are sent to Camp 21 — ‘black’ prisoners — SS diehards who’ve sworn death before surrender. Nothing will stop their war, unless it’s a bullet.As one fanatic plots a mass breakout and glorious march on London, Max Hartmann dreams of the oath he pledged to the teenage bride he scarcely knows and the child he’s never met. Where do his loyalties really lie? To Hitler or to the life he left behind in the bombed ruins of his homeland?Beneath the wintry mountains, in the hell of Black Camp 21, suspicion and fear swirl around like the endless snow. And while the Reich crumbles — and his brutal companions plan their assault — Max’s toughest battle is only just beginning.Inspired by terrifying actual events, Black Camp 21 takes readers on a gut-wrenching journey from the battlefields of France to its shocking climax in a camp which still stands today.
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  • Birlinn Limitedmenambahkan buku ke rak bukuPolygon Books7 bulan yang lalu
    How do you start a new life when the person you love is about to die?At the age of thirty-six, Gordon Darroch’s wife was diagnosed with breast cancer. It was a devastating blow just as he, and their two children with autism, were preparing to move to her native Holland. Eighteen months later, as their plans seemed to be back on course, came the second blow: Magteld was terminally ill and possibly had only a few months to live. As her health rapidly deteriorated, they became caught up in a race against time to get a dying mother home and give their children a future in a country they hardly knew. How could they build a new life in the midst of grief and loss? How would their two sons adjust to such enormous changes? And what would remain of Magteld once she was gone? All the Time We Thought We Had is a story of love and loss and a meditation on grief and memory. It's about how events shape our lives and how we cope with them. And it raises important questions about what we value in life and the legacies we leave behind.
    Birlinn Limitedmenambahkan buku ke rak bukuPolygon Books7 bulan yang lalu
    Charlie Gavin was abducted as a baby. He didn’t know who he was or where he came from. His mission was to find himself. And when he did, he decided to spend his life finding other lost souls by opening the Be Kindly Missing Persons Bureau.Martha Walters, his assistant, has had her fifteen minutes of almost fame and failed. Now, dealing with her guilt and pain, she lives with her mum and dotes on her young daughter. Charlie appears to be a man who is a loser and dreamer, but, hey, his office is near her house, she can lie in of a morning, take her kid to school and the work isn’t too heart-breaking. Or is it . . . ?
    Birlinn Limitedmenambahkan buku ke rak bukuPolygon Books7 bulan yang lalu
    In Glasgow, a single mom with a secret life gets caught up in murder: “A gripping whodunit [with] a good measure of comedy” (Scottish Field).   Annette Somerville, a young single mother, earns her living giving men massages—along with a few extra services—at a high-class Glasgow sauna, scrupulously keeping her respectable home life separate from her professional activities. Then, during a series of seemingly unconnected murders in the city, Annette realizes that all the victims have been regular customers.   No one else seems interested, and her boss makes it clear that going to the police will cost Annette her job. But Annette’s new boyfriend, a former customer of the sauna, could be the murderer’s next victim . . .   This is a unique and witty crime thriller from the author of Close Quarters, praised as “excellent reading” by Scots Magazine.
    Birlinn Limitedmenambahkan buku ke rak bukuPolygon Books7 bulan yang lalu
    In this critically-acclaimed fictional memoir of Sir Walter Scott, Allan Massie recreates the life and times of one of Scotland's greatest writers, convincingly capturing Scott's humour, stoicism and eccentricity. Combining imaginative plausibility with his own deep knowledge of and love for Scott's work, Massie reveals the intimate thoughts of a man at odds with his popular image: good and courageous, but also an enigma to those around him. By turns a ghost story and an examination of the Scottish character, The Ragged Lion is utterly enthralling.cided to spend his life finding other lost souls by opening the Be Kindly Missing Persons Bureau.
    Birlinn Limitedmenambahkan buku ke rak bukuPolygon Books7 bulan yang lalu
    Birlinn Limitedmenambahkan buku ke rak bukuPolygon Books7 bulan yang lalu
    This book is an intimate, fond and funny memoir of one of the greatest novelists of the last century. This colourful, personal, anecdotal, indiscrete and admiring memoir charts the course of Muriel Spark's life revealing her as she really was. Once, she commented sitting over a glass of chianti at the kitchen table, that she was upset that the academic whom she had appointed her official biographer did not appear to think that she had ever cracked a joke in her life. In Appointment in Arezzo Alan Taylor sets the record straight about this and many other things.
    With sources ranging from notebooks kept from his very first encounter with Muriel and the hundreds of letters they exchanged over the years, this is an invaluable portrait of one of Edinburgh's premiere novelists.
    The book is published to celebrate the 100th anniversary of Muriel's birth in 2018.
    Birlinn Limitedmenambahkan buku ke rak bukuPolygon Books7 bulan yang lalu
    First published in 1963 by Harvill Press, Dark Encounters is an elegantly spine-tingling collection of ghost stories set in the brooding landscape of Scotland and often referring to real people, places and objects.
    From a demonic book that brings its readers to an early death to the murderous spectre of a feudal baron, these tales are a welcome addition to the long and distinguished canon of Scottish ghost stories.
    For those who seek the unnerving and the inexplicable, Dark Encounters is guaranteed to raise the hairs on the back of your neck.
    Birlinn Limitedmenambahkan buku ke rak bukuPolygon Books7 bulan yang lalu
    MacNeil’s alpaca shares a diary full of wisdom and humor, that also promotes mindfulness while giving you a laugh. If you haven’t yet met Archie the Alpaca now’s your chance. Prolific writer, social observer, grassiccino drinker, occasional dancer, and loyal friend, Archie sees the world like no-one else. Gathered here are his thoughts, feelings, loves, hates, and everything in between. From his remarks on the volume of phone conversations to friendship with cats, tributes to great art and artists, and the joy of being Salvador Dali, his diary will teach you to think about everything you know just a little bit differently.
    Birlinn Limitedmenambahkan buku ke rak bukuPolygon Books7 bulan yang lalu
    In the 1950s and 1960s, Memphis, Tennessee, was the launch pad of musical pioneers such as Aretha Franklin, Elvis Presley, Johnny Cash, Al Green and Isaac Hayes, and by 1968 was a city synonymous with soul music. It was a deeply segregated city, ill at ease with the modern world and yet to adjust to the era of civil rights and racial integration. Stax Records offered an escape from the turmoil of the real world for many soul and blues musicians, with much of the music created there becoming the soundtrack to the civil rights movements.
    The book opens with the death of the city's most famous recording artist, Otis Redding, who died in a plane crash in the final days of 1967, and then follows the fortunes of Redding's label, Stax/Volt Records, as its fortunes fall and rise again. But, as the tense year unfolds, the city dominates world headlines for the worst of reasons: the assassination of civil rights leader Martin Luther King.
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  • Birlinn Limitedmenambahkan buku ke rak bukuPolygon Books7 bulan yang lalu
    Leaving their Welsh hill farm behind, Nick, Ros and their children arrive on the little-known island of Ikaria in 1978, having impulsively boarded the first ferry leaving Athens. Escape to Ikaria tells the story of how they become involved with the islanders and their way of life. Nick tries his hand at anything to get by: night fishing out in the Aegean, unloading the potato boats from Samos, mixing cement for wayward house-builder Datsun Jim, and tending the gardens of the old monastery where a solitary nun, Sister Ulita, controls the village's water supply.
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