Letters on Shetland (Northus Shetland Classics)

History

Jamieson, Peter

Europe

Michael Walmer

Descend Again

Literature & Fiction

Burroway, Janet

Literary

Rock-Bound: A Story of the Shetland Isles (Northus Shetland Classics)

Saxby, Jessie M.E

Genre Fiction

Nakiketas and other poems

Sinclair, May

Poetry

Leone Leoni

SAND, GEORGE

Romance

One of Cleopatra's Nights (Zephyr Books)

GAUTIER, Théophile

Gösta Berling is a failed parson in nineteenth century rural Sweden, too fond of pleasure and the drink, torn by conflicting aims — the charm and deceit, love and laziness in him fighting for supremacy. He teams together with a group of sometimes dissolute, often well-meaning freemen of their district to evict the seemingly mad owner of a great rambling house at the centre of its own semi-feudal estate, Ekeby. This group call themselves the cavaliers.In her telling of what happens next, Lagerlöf creates a strange fusion between the realism of authors like Ibsen and Strindberg and the mythic force of the Scandinavian sagas. Gösta’s great loves, his enemies, those to whom he teaches lessons about life, either intentionally or accidentally, and others whose stories he has only a small part in, all start up from the page into a strange, elemental clarity, creating a sprawling mosaic of romance and realism.This first novel from the deeply original mind of the 1909 Nobel Prize winner weaves a balance between everyday rural reality and underlying dreams and fable to create a patchwork of extraordinary complexity and looming fascination, in which the reader can detect the author’s passion for the stories of her country, and her sceptical warmth for the troubled human spirit.

Gosta Berling's Saga

Lagerlöf, Selma

It is the late 1920s, and beautiful young Eve Wentworth is in a sticky situation. Both Harold and Hubert have asked her to marry them, and her inability to decide on either of them speaks volumes.Then Hugh Erskine, her sister Serena's husband, receives a letter from Jeremy Vaughan, a young family friend. He invites all three of them to join him on a tour of the Nile, sailing on a traditional dahabeah, but with all the mod cons of course. It seems the perfect solution to Eve's dilemma, and a delightful escape into the bargain.But things turn out to be not quite so simple. Eve has always liked Jeremy; she's known him since she was a little girl and he a slightly older boy. Soaking up all his knowledge of ancient Egypt, and enormously moved by the exotic beauty of an extraordinary and powerful landscape, slowly she registers that her feelings toward him are changing. To her chagrin, though, she can't help noticing that Jeremy seems very taken with Isobel Page, a wealthy young American they meet along the way.With delicately witty dialogue and amusing situations, Stella Tennyson Jesse takes us on an entertaining tour, not only of these tentatively perched emotions, but also of the magnificent and romantic remains of one of the world's great civilisations. Eve in Egypt is the sparklingly satisfying answer to a fascinating question: can one turn a travelogue into a beguiling novel? Jesse proves that one can, brilliantly.

Eve in Egypt

Jesse, Stella Tennyson

Humor & Satire

On first publication in 1958, The Daily Telegraph's reviewer said "Hugo Charteris' Europeans are neurotic, frightened, clinging to their fragmented patterns...the sheer intensity of the whole book is terrifying." In the wilds of British West Africa, in the 1950s, as colonialism is dying, a small group of whites administer and work a diamond mine, with African help. They are typical of their era in their casual racism, their preoccupation with British modes; the atmosphere can sometimes be likened to 'a Thames country club, circa 1938.' Around the mine are places where Africans from the surrounding area and neighbouring French territory also prospect for the valuable stones. This blasted landscape is the place from which the ferment of insurrection and dissatisfaction, which will bring about the colony's coming independence, arises. Porokorro, in particular, has been a troublespot lately. MacPherson, the local Provincial Commissioner, is nearing the end of his career. Wanting to spread a raft of calm upon these troubled waters, and wanting to show, from his intimate knowledge of the local people, that relations will never truly sour, he organizes what can only loosely be called a picnic - an outing to prove that all is well. With slowly coiling tension, Charteris loads the scene with many and varying points of view: Barber, the head of the mine, whose gregarious ease hides a calculated vision of exactly where the flashpoints might be hiding; Meyer, a diamond dealer, and survivor of Buchenwald, whose outward coolness hides a troubled marriage and a scarred psyche; Isobel, his much younger and seethingly restive wife, over on a visit; Warner, an idealistic journalist, who senses a story and is prepared to risk disaster in pursuing it; and Paul MacPherson, the Provincial Commissioner's young son out from school in Britain, who chases butterflies with his net, fascinated by the glimpse his father is giving him of a lifestyle which is slowly but surely ceasing to exist. The 'picnic' to Porokorro will change them all, and one of them won't come back alive. The spare, snakelike prose of Hugo Charteris' fourth novel explores the late colonial mindset with fascinating depth and unusual candour, creating a harshly vivid portrait of people trapped in the ending of an era.

Picnic at Porokorro

Charteris, Hugo

Noted Murder Mysteries (Belles-Lettres)

Biographies & Memoirs

Lowndes, Marie Belloc

True Crime

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Books by Michael Walmer