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TO THE EDGE OF THE SEA
CHRISTINA HALL
How do I describe the land of my birth? The place where we say up south and down north? The island of South Uist is both beautiful and ugly. A heavenly place on a calm early morning, in Kilpheder, looking across the Gortain and Clach Ghlas towards Carisheval when the call of the curlew and the distant sigh of the sea seem to be the only sounds left on earth...

In this enchanting and moving memoir, Christina Hall writes with sharp observation about her childhood on the Hebridean island of South Uist in the 1940s and 1950s. Humour and anguish reflect the spirit of a girl living through a time of dramatic change in her life, her family and the land that she loves. Beginning with her earliest memories, the book recounts her life up to the end of secondary school and is set in Uist, Benbecula, Barra and Fort William.

While it is fundamentally her story, To the Edge of the Sea is also interwoven with the culture, characters and events of the islands from that time.

AN ISLAND ODYSSEY
HAMISH HASWELL-SMITH
There are few collections of islands in the world more suited to exploration and discovery than the islands of Scotland, and there are few chroniclers better qualified to describe an odyssey among them than Hamish Haswell-Smith, inveterate island-collector and acclaimed author of the best-selling The Scottish Islands. Casting off in his forty-one-foot sloop Jandara with his sketchpad and a copy of Martin Martin's classic 1703 A Description of the Western Islands on board, Haswell-Smith's voyage takes him to fifty-two different islands around the Scottish coast, from Ailsa Craig in the Firth of Clyde around the Hebrides and the Northern Isles to the Bass Rock in the Firth of Forth. Described with an engaging blend of history, legend and anecdote, each of the islands is illustrated in full colour by one of the author's distinctive and stylish water-colours, and accompanied by key maps and pencil-line sketches.

Based on the hugely popular 'Island of the Week' series in The Herald, An Island Odyssey is a delightful way to discover and re-discover the romance, beauty and inescapable magnetism of the Scottish islands.