New fiction inspired by the sea, commissioned exclusively for the National Maritime Museum, to mark the 70th anniversary of its opening.

Between Grandmother Mountain and the cold sea, Alaia and her family live off the land. 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.

Between Grandmother Mountain and the cold sea, Alaia and her family live off the land. 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. Then a stranger from a rival tribe appears on their hearth seeking shelter. Are his stories of a great wa

This new edition of An Apple from a Tree, with additional stories previously published elsewhere, provides the reader with the opportunity to revisit some of Margaret Elphinstone's early writing. Themes and motifs which have come to characterise much of her subsequent work are already evident. Her writing resonates with a deep and underlying concern with the way we understand and relate to our ...

Sidony is a young English woman who, after fraudulently winning a writing competition, is sent by her editor to write a travel book on the near-mythical island of Hy Brasil. She comes across piracy, lost treasure, drug smuggling, political intrigue, an active volcano and a tragic love affair.

The quiet hardworking lives of the people at the mill are disturbed by the arrival of a wandering Spanish Friar. What is going on between the miller and his wife, and the Friar?

In A Sparrow's Flight, her second novel, first published in 1989, Margaret Elphinstone is already occupying her characteristic location on the borderlands which were to become familiar territory in her subsequent writing. The novel is set in the 'debatable lands' between Scotland and England but explores more elusive borders between waking and dreaming, sanity and madness, myth and reality, and ..

May, 1831, and on a island off the Isle of Man, a lighthouse provides a living for a family. Lucy and Diya, husbandless and with three children, watch over the ancient light on Ellan Bride. Meanwhile the Scottish engineer, Robert Stevenson, is modernising the nation's lighthouses. When surveyors arrive to assess the light, tension escalates.

In 1810 Mark Greenhow leaves his Northern England home to find his sister who is a missionary and has been reported as lost somewhere in North America. Mark's journey as a Quaker is hard, Canada is on the brink of war with the USA and the continent is vast. He is forced to rely on fur traders and their canoeing skills.

Tells of an 11th-century Viking exploration of the North Atlantic from the viewpoint of one extraordinary woman. Gudrid lives at the edge of the known world, in a landscape where the sea is the only connection to the shores beyond. She then takes a multi-layered voyage into the unknown.