The tale of lives won from a cruel sea and crueller landlords. The dawning of the herring fisheries brought with it the hope of escape from the Highland Clearances, and this story paints a vivid picture of a community fighting against nature and history, and refusing to be crushed.

Horrific experiences of the blitz in wartime London and the spiritual bankruptcy of her lover and his Marxist acquaintances are seen through the eyes of Nan, a young Scotswoman, who has returned to her native Highlands to recover from a nervous breakdown. Her letters to her lover from the warm and friendly ambience of a widowed aunt's farmhouse reflect her innermost thoughts on the essence of being and the restorative effects of the quiet rhythm of country life. The shadows of the immediate past begin to recede, but her return to health is rudely interrupted by news of the brutal murder of a neighbouring crofter and the unsolicited attentions of a sinister stranger. The inevitable relapse brings her aunt, a practical and cultured woman, into contact with both lover and stranger and pits her optimistic, human and emotional approach to life against the theories and bleak logic of the two men. The recovery of the young woman brings aunt and niece even closer together in their understanding of life, but the final denouement, although imbued with hope, is inconclusive and leaves the reader to imagine the eventual outcome. This is a subtly thoughtful and gripping novel, written with all the power of a master hand. Although written over fifty years ago, the book has a strange relevance to today's events. The blight of terrorism, the dominance of consumerism in everyday life, the absence of a spiritual dimension in domestic affairs and fears of the harmful effects of globalisation on the freedom and development of small communities, are symptoms of an uneasiness with regard to world stability and the erosion of traditional values and beliefs.

Kenn returns to the Highlands of his youth, back to the river which has haunted his dreams since boyhood. Determined to walk all the way back to its source, Kenn embarks on a journey that will lead him deep into the wilderness of his own heart. Profound and moving, Highland River is a stirring tale of what is lost and what endures, and the unexpected ways we can be renewed.

From this evocative title comes a powerful novel set in the city of Glasgow in 1939. This is indeed a bleak stage, and yet how does this title, with its implication of freedom and flight, meld with a depressed city at the outbreak of war? The main character, a journalist, finds that a glimpse of wild geese catalyses the development of his thinking on various levels - social, political and psychological. The contrast of urban and rural life, characteristically penetrating dialogue, remarkable insight, physical violence...all are included and take the reader on an absorbing and enlightening journey to the story's denouement. Another outstanding novel from the creative pen of Gunn.

This witty, erudite and often lyrical toast to uisgebeatha, the Celts' 'water of life', takes us back into the mists of time when some happy man chanced upon the technique of producing a distillation from barley that rivalled the mead of the gods. But it is also a lament for the days when every self-respecting Highlander had his own pot still as of right. Good malt whisky, brewed and distilled in the time-honoured way, excites the same appreciation as fine wine, and there could be no more discerning guide than Neil M. Gunn, a native of Caithness and one of Scotland's leading twentieth-century novelists. Whisky and Scotland describes in loving detail the traditional techniques, still used today, whereby barley grains become an amber spirit unequalled in the world. For a purist, Scotland's own barley gives the finest results, 'communicating a soft maturing excellence', and no water can compare with that which has flowed off the peat, imparting a subtle flavour that survives years in the cask. True connoisseurs can identify the products of individual distilleries, for each derives its own distinctive character from the surrounding soil and water. A classic since its original publication, Whisky and Scotland reads as freshly and relevantly as it did then. Good single whiskies can still be found by the searcher, and the fire of Scottish national pride burns as brightly as ever. This new edition, with decorative drawings by Fred Van Deelen based on archive photographs, will enlighten and entertain all who share the author's delight in a brew that recalls 'the world of hills and glens, of raging elements, of shelter, of divine ease.'