Good news if you, or someone you know, is a Robertson, or a descendent of one. The Robertsons: Clan Donnachaidh in Atholl has just come back into print. It’s a meticulously researched history of the clan written by its current chief, James Irvine Robertson. The clan includes Duncans and Reids in addition to Robertsons. You…
It’s a mute point. The Wright Brothers of the US are renowned for having made the first flight, but could that be down to them having had better spin-doctors (and a controversial agreement with a museum)? Did a young pioneering Scot, Preston Watson, actually beat them to it? Alastair Blair and Alistair Smith’s fascinating biography of…
We love it when Bookwitch enjoys one of our authors’ books, as here with Follow Me. Victoria Gemmell‘s YA novel is a cracker. It’s unsettling and insightful. Actually, perhaps it would be more accurate to say that it allows insight. It doesn’t tell us things, it shows us them (the best writers do), leaving the interpretation to us.…
If washing powders can be ‘new and improved’, why not book covers? We’ve tweaked this one for the reprint. But now, if you hold it to the window, it’ll be so white that it’s blue… Did that ever make sense to anyone?
Great excitement at Strident towers… We’ve just heard that the ebook of Theresa Talbot‘s Penance is the #1 Best Seller on Amazon’s Religious Mystery chart! Congratulations, Theresa! You deserve to celebrate your success with a seat on a BBC sofa after that! (John Beattie, looking on, would appear to agree.)
We were excited to see The Irish Times covering the background to Theresa Talbot’s sparky crime novel Penance today. Ask most people and they’ll assume that all Magdalene Laundries were a) in Ireland and b) Catholic-run. Not so. Thus their headline – A Magdalene laundry that was neither Irish nor Catholic, and novel it inspired
We’ve always loved the cover of this book – have a good look at what’s in the trees and you’ll see why. But what’s inside the cover is what really counts, and it’s one of the best dystopian novels we’ve read. The comes from the state-backed One Church that dominates politics in the book’s parallel…
Theresa Talbot was a guest on BBC Radio Scotland’s The Janice Forsyth Show yesterday, talking about Magdalene Institutions and the writing of her sociological crime novel Penance. Interesting stuff. And if you click on this link you’ll be able to listen to the full interview.
Victoria Gemmell’s Follow Me has been described as ‘a striking debut young adult novel’ in The Herald/Sunday Herald by crime novelist Alex Gray in her end-of-year recommendations. It ‘has layer upon layer of mystery as a teenage girl struggles to find the truth behind her twin sister’s apparent suicide. The insight into teenage angst and…
Victoria’s forthcoming Young Adult novel Follow Me is a gem, something special. And there’s a great story to how it came about. You can read about it here on the Notes from the Blunder Ground blog.
This cracker from great new talent Victoria Gemmell was inspired by her research into the Factory that Andy Warhol established. We suspect Follow Me will bring Victoria at lot more than 15 minutes of fame… What is the deadly allure of the Barn? 17-year-old Kat Sullivan has been devastated by the loss of her twin sister, Abby, the…
Stephen King and TT from BBC Radio Scotland. Eh…what’s the link (we hear you ask)? Well, it suddenly occurred to us that Theresa Talbot‘s This Is What I Look Like is to Traffic and Travel presenting what Stephen King’s On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft is to putting pen to paper: both are entertaining memoirs…
Theresa outlines the rather odd suggestion that gave rise to her book…
Theresa Talbot, Kirsty Wark, Christopher Brookmyre and James Naughtie. All on the same pavement at the same time, and all in Pitlochry. Ok, they’re not there in person. Not yet. But they will be soon – Winter Words at Pitlochry Festival Theatre runs 13-21 Feb 2015. Theresa will be main attraction at the Literary Lunch…
The final instalment of D A Nelson‘s brilliant DarkIsle trilogy is now available as an ebook as well as in paperback. Inspired by a huge stone dragon in Irvine, on the west coast of Scotland, this series has captured the imagination of readers around the world with its combination of fantasy, adventure and humour. [metaslider id=1749]…