Margaret Elphinstone

A haunting, compelling historical novel, The Sea Road is a daring retelling of the 11th-century Viking exploration of the North Atlantic from the viewpoint of one extraordinary woman. Gudrid lives at the remote edge of the known world, in a starkly beautiful landscape where the sea is the only connection to the shores beyond. It is a world where the old Norse gods are still invoked even as Christianity gains favor, where the spirits of the dead roam the vast northern ice-fields, tormenting the living, and Viking explorers plunder foreign shores. Taking the accidental discovery of North America as its focal point, Gudrid's narrative describes a multilayered voyage into the unknown, all recounted with astonishing immediacy and rich atmospheric detail.

The Sea Road

A Novel

A Sparrow's Flight

Julia Langley

The Holistic Gardener

Tom Pow

Apple from a Tree and Other Early Stories

After fraudulently winning a writing competition, Sidony Redruth is sent by her editor to write the first-ever travel book on Hy Brasil, a near-mythical island somewhere in the Atlantic, whose very existence has been a matter of debate as late as the nineteenth century. Elphinstone's plot takes the island location as its starting point, throws in some old-fashioned piracy - a lost treasure, modern-day drug smuggling - political intrigue, an active volcano and a tragic love affair. Told through Sidony's notes for her book, Hy Brasil has all the elements of an adult adventure story, but it is also a contemporary thriller with literary influences ranging from The Tempest and Treasure Island to Moby Dick.

Hy Brasil

a novel

Light

Voyageurs

Islanders

From the author of Voyageurs, a contemporary thriller with literary influences ranging from The Tempest and Treasure Island to Moby-Dick After fraudulently winning a writing competition, Sidony Redruth is sent by her editor to write the first-ever travel book on Hy Brasil, a near-mythical island somewhere in the Atlantic, whose very existence has been a matter of debate as late as the 19th century. Elphinstone's plot takes the island location as its starting point, throws in some old-fashioned piracy, a lost treasure, modern-day drug smuggling, political intrigue, an active volcano, and a tragic love affair. Told through Sidony's notes for her book, Hy Brasil has all the elements of an adult adventure story, but it is also a contemporary thriller with literary influences ranging from The Tempest and Treasure Island to Moby-Dick.

In the untamed hills in winter you must stick together to survive. So when Alaia's brother goes hunting and never returns, her family is thrust into turmoil. Then a stranger appears with a story of a great wave that has destroyed his people. Is he to be believed? What else could drive a man to travel alone between tribes in the depth of winter? A tale of conflict, love, loss and natural disasters, this mesmerising drama brings to thrilling life our Mesolithic past. A celebration of wildness, The Gathering Night also resonates as an ecological parable of our planet 8000 years on.

The Gathering Night

On the brink of the War of 1812, fought across the Canadian border with the US, Rachel Greenhow, a Quaker missionary from England disappears in the uncharted wilderness beyond the settled territories. Everyone gives her up for dead. But her brother Mark refuses to give up hope and embarks on an unforgettable search across a vast landscape.The young Canada—its fledging cities and staggering landscape—is brought vividly to life as Mark sets off with the ‘voyageurs', the men who canoe immense distances on the fur-trade route, to discover the truth of Rachel's final journey. As Mark struggles to maintain his religious beliefs in non-violence while all around him men take up arms, he is further disoriented by a young woman who pitches his emotions into turmoil.In VOYAGEURS, Margaret Elphinstone has created a gripping and hugely enjoyable adventure set against the magnificent backdrop of nineteenth-century Canada.

A "vivid tale" of prehistoric Scotland: "rival kin groups, loyalty, love and betrayal, salted by dangerous hunts and equally risky shamanistic ceremonies" (Adam Thorpe, The Guardian, UK). In the Mesolithic period, Alaia and her family live off the land between Grandmother Mountain and the cold sea. But when one of her brothers goes hunting and never returns, the fragile balance of life is upset. Half-starved and maddened with grief, Alaia's mother follows her visions and goes in search of her lost son in this "complex tale of love, revenge, murder and honor" ( The List, UK). The Gathering Night is a story of conflict, loss, love, adventure and devastating natural disaster. This gripping novel by the acclaimed author of The Sea Road is set deep in our stone-age past but resonates as a parable for our troubled planet 8,000 years on. "Employing her considerable skills as a historical novelist, Elphinstone imagines the lives of the hunter-gatherers who thrived in the period from the end of the Ice Age until the adoption of agriculture...Imagination is well-woven with avid research [in] Elphinstone's beguiling prose."—Anita Sethi, Independent on Sunday, UK

May, 1831, and on a tiny island off the Isle of Man a lighthouse provides a harsh living for an unusual family. Lucy and Diya, husbandless and with three children between them, watch over the ancient light on Ellan Bride. Meanwhile the Scottish engineer, Robert Stevenson, is modernising the nation's lighthouses, and Ellan Bride and the future of the family, are under threat. When two surveyors arrive to assess the light, tension escalates to danger point.

Margaret Elphinstone

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