Here are 50 books that The Ghost in the Machine fans have personally recommended if you like
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I’ve been writing poems since an inspirational period of study in Stirling in my twenties, when I did a lot of hill walking in the Scottish Highlands. For me, poetry that doesn’t move you, that doesn’t make you feel, is just words on a page. I love poems that make you shiver as they incongruously bear the full load of life’s mystery. I like all kinds of poetry but have a special place reserved for nature poems, poems that find the heart and soul in the landscape, rivers, and wildlife.
I cherish this book and always take it on holiday with me. "Lines Composed a Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey" is probably the best romantic nature poem ever written. The image of how the senses are responsive to, and creative of, the inner life of nature is sublime ("of eye, and ear, - both what they half create, And what perceive”). This poem encapsulates for me the whole nebulous but immeasurably important job of writing poetry, as well as shining a light on what it means to be a human being.
One of the major poets of Romanticism, Wordsworth epitomized the spirit of his age with his celebration of the natural world and the spontanous expression of feeling. This volume contains a rich selection from the most creative phase of his life, including extracts from his masterpiece, The Prelude, and the best-loved of his shorter poems such as 'Composed Upon Westminster Bridge', 'Tintern Abbey', 'I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud', 'Lucy Gray', and 'Michael'. Together these poems demonstrate not only Wordsworth's astonishing range and power, but the sustained and coherent vision that informed his work.
The Victorian mansion, Evenmere, is the mechanism that runs the universe.
The lamps must be lit, or the stars die. The clocks must be wound, or Time ceases. The Balance between Order and Chaos must be preserved, or Existence crumbles.
Appointed the Steward of Evenmere, Carter Anderson must learn the…
I’ve been writing poems since an inspirational period of study in Stirling in my twenties, when I did a lot of hill walking in the Scottish Highlands. For me, poetry that doesn’t move you, that doesn’t make you feel, is just words on a page. I love poems that make you shiver as they incongruously bear the full load of life’s mystery. I like all kinds of poetry but have a special place reserved for nature poems, poems that find the heart and soul in the landscape, rivers, and wildlife.
Alice Oswald is one of our best living poets, renowned for her nature poetry and particularly her long poem about the River Dart in Somerset. I love this first collection, full of heart-stopping attention to detail and transcendental shiver. She follows very much in the tradition of our great poets writing about nature. Try the poem "Mountains" for a Wordsworthian sense of a hidden, almost pantheistic presence in the world.
This is Alice Oswald's first book of poems. More confident and achieved than many first collections, it shows her writing in an already distinct voice. The poems are intensely musical: she recites them from memory. Influenced by the rhythms of Hopkins, they speak passionately of nature and love. They have a religious sense of mystery, and try to express the intangible in marvellously vivid language. A long poem, `The Wise Men of Gotham', which makes up the second part of the book, is, by contrast, a version of the folk-legend about the three men who went to sea in a…
I’ve been writing poems since an inspirational period of study in Stirling in my twenties, when I did a lot of hill walking in the Scottish Highlands. For me, poetry that doesn’t move you, that doesn’t make you feel, is just words on a page. I love poems that make you shiver as they incongruously bear the full load of life’s mystery. I like all kinds of poetry but have a special place reserved for nature poems, poems that find the heart and soul in the landscape, rivers, and wildlife.
The first collection by former Poet Laureate Ted Hughes includes one of the most stunning poems about the connection between poet, pen, and nature in the form of "The Thought-Fox." Hughes has a pared back, often disturbing vision of the world that seizes your attention. If you like this don’t stop, there are plenty of other wonderful books by Hughes, especially his retelling of the "Tales from Ovid" and "The Birthday Letters," his poems about his relationship with his first wife, the equally brilliant Sylvia Plath.
Published in 1957, Hawk in the Rain was Ted Hughes's first collection of poems. It won the New York Poetry Centre First Publication Award, for which the judges were W. H. Auden, Stephen Spender and Marianne Moore, and the Somerset Maugham Award, and it was acclaimed by every reviewer from A. Alvarez to Edwin Muir. When Robin Skelton wrote, 'All looking for the emergence of a major poet must buy it', he was right to see in it the promise of what many now regard as the most important body of work by any poet of the twentieth century.
Magical realism meets the magic of Christmas in this mix of Jewish, New Testament, and Santa stories–all reenacted in an urban psychiatric hospital!
On locked ward 5C4, Josh, a patient with many similarities to Jesus, is hospitalized concurrently with Nick, a patient with many similarities to Santa. The two argue…
I’ve been writing poems since an inspirational period of study in Stirling in my twenties, when I did a lot of hill walking in the Scottish Highlands. For me, poetry that doesn’t move you, that doesn’t make you feel, is just words on a page. I love poems that make you shiver as they incongruously bear the full load of life’s mystery. I like all kinds of poetry but have a special place reserved for nature poems, poems that find the heart and soul in the landscape, rivers, and wildlife.
Sherry Ross is an American poet who writes about loss, motherhood, and rebirth. Her nature poems reverberate with extraordinary detail and imagery, for instance, the running girl who finds the field has ended in a "party dress of hunter green," where "the trance of sunlight breaks, brings forgetfulness of open fields, distant voices, summer games." She ventures into the forest, with its ‘palate of light and dark’. Read these poems for their aching blend of sadness and joy.
POET magazine says of Ms. Ross' poetry that she is able to "extend the everyday moment into deep mythology, using the commonplace as an avenue into the emotions." In SEEDS OF THE POMEGRANATE, Sherry uses the ancient Greek myth of Persephone as a metaphor for her own life. In the myth of Persephone, which is retold in the book's forward, Persephone is abducted by Hades, the god of the underworld. Her mother, the earth goddess Demeter, is both grief stricken and enraged at her daughter's disappearance. Obsessed with finding her daughter she neglects her duties and the land dries up…
I’ve always had a fascination with the past. After graduating with an Honors degree in English Literature, with a minor in History, I spent years working as an English Language Teacher, while I wrote stories in my free time. Writing is a compulsion for me. It’s my escape and entertainment – my solace in tough times. Now, as a full-time author, I’m lucky enough to get to spend my days in Ancient and Medieval Scotland. I write the kind of stories I love to read: with vibrant characters, richly researched settings, and action-packed adventure romance that transports readers to forgotten times and imaginary worlds.
I know this is 'another’ Scottish time travel historical romance – but I’d been looking for a novel in this genre and this one was great. There are also touches of humor throughout that were reminiscent of Gabaldon’s writing style. Single and pregnant (yes pregnant!) museum-worker, Melanie gets transported to 16th Century Scotland when she examines an ancient wooden box. There, she meets Darcy – a brave yet innocent young man who becomes her unlikely protector when she’s accused of witchcraft. This novel grips you from the first page. Gage evokes the setting and time period brilliantly, and the romance is realistically portrayed and emotional.
Single-and-pregnant museum worker Melanie voices an idle wish while examining a Scottish artifact, that a Highland warrior would sweep her off her feet and help her forget her cheating ex. The last thing she expects is for her wish to be granted. Magically transported to the middle of a clan skirmish in the sixteenth-century Highlands, she comes face to face with her kilted fantasy man.
Tall, handsome, and heir to his uncle's lairdship, Darcy Keith should be the most eligible bachelor in Ackergill. Instead, thanks to a prank played on him in his teenage years, he is known for being…
A British writer and editor who developed a love of Greece from childhood holidays and Ancient Greek classes at school, and a passion for hidden and little-known places, I felt myself called back and moved ten years ago to the Dodecanese, a remote and rugged group of islands at the southeast edge of Europe. Wandering on foot around islands whose populations emigrated in their thousands over the last hundred years leaving refuges of wild and quiet, I began to be fascinated by things left behind on the landscape and differences from one island to the next. I explored in this way for five years and wrote the stories in my third book set in Greece, Wild Abandon: A Journey to the Deserted Places of the Dodecanese.
There’s a deep poignancy to this book about Ansell’s wanderings in the Rough Bounds where the highlands of Scotland meet the Atlantic in a series of rugged peninsulas, a ‘place apart’ thanks to its remoteness and inaccessibility; not only because it originally inspired his love of nature and being solitary in nature, but also because he’s now losing his hearing, and with it his relationship with the joys of birdsong, which became particularly important to him when he lived alone in a cottage in mid-Wales. The Rough Bounds have been called Britain’s last great wilderness, and yet the area has a long history of settlement, and in some of his walking he explores the gradual depopulation of the Western Highlands, inhabited from ancient prehistory through generations and thriving communities until only a couple of hundred years ago. Instead of being a scientific exploration, it’s meditative and meandering; ‘sometimes a little…
Neil Ansell's THE LAST WILDERNESS is a mesmerising book on nature and solitude by a writer who has spent his lifetime taking solitary ventures into the wild. For any readers of the author's previous book, DEEP COUNTRY, Robert Macfarlane's THE OLD WAYS or William Atkins THE MOOR.
'A gem of a book, an extraordinary tale. Ansell's rich prose will transport you to a real life Narnian world that C.S.Lewis would have envied. Find your deepest, most comfortable armchair and get away from it all' Countryfile
The experience of being in nature alone is here set within the context of a…
A Duke with rigid opinions, a Lady whose beliefs conflict with his, a long disputed parcel of land, a conniving neighbour, a desperate collaboration, a failure of trust, a love found despite it all.
Alexander Cavendish, Duke of Ravensworth, returned from war to find that his father and brother had…
I’ve always had a fascination with the past. After graduating with an Honors degree in English Literature, with a minor in History, I spent years working as an English Language Teacher, while I wrote stories in my free time. Writing is a compulsion for me. It’s my escape and entertainment – my solace in tough times. Now, as a full-time author, I’m lucky enough to get to spend my days in Ancient and Medieval Scotland. I write the kind of stories I love to read: with vibrant characters, richly researched settings, and action-packed adventure romance that transports readers to forgotten times and imaginary worlds.
If you haven’t picked up a book by Grace Burrowes before, you’re in for a treat! The Laird is a tender, nuanced historical romance set in Scotland. But it’s also a confronting, and at times haunting, story that addresses some sensitive issues. The hero, Michael, returns home after nine years at war, to find his bride, Brenna, furious at his prolonged absence – and far more beautiful than he remembers. Both Michael and Brenna are strong, likable, characters, and their story is both heart-rending and beautiful…and, as always, Burrowes’s writing evokes strong emotion.
New York Times and USA Today bestselling author Grace Burrowes delivers another passionate Regency romance…
He left his bride to go to war…
After years of soldiering, Michael Brodie returns to his Highland estate to find that the bride he left behind has become a stranger. Brenna is self-sufficient, competent, confident―and furious about Michael's prolonged absence.
Now his most important battle will be for her heart
Brenna is also hurt, bewildered, and tired of fighting for the respect of those around her. Michael left her when she needed him most, and then stayed away even after the war ended. Nonetheless,…
Horror was never something that appealed to me when I was younger. However, in adulthood, I realised the fascination of the unsettling. As I began writing, I realised that true horror is not all about monsters and gore but about breaking our everyday complacency and realising the possibility that the world is bigger than us and how we are unprepared to deal with it. This is why I write horror. Not to shock you with a jump-scare, but you leave you thinking about my words long after the lights have gone out.
One night, a gaunt woman stumbles into the road in front of Lauren and her father. They take her home, but the next day she is gone, and only Lauren can remember she was ever there.
The best supernatural horror works because it reflects the terrors of real life. Francine Toon’s Pine is the story of Lauren, a young girl growing up in rural Scotland with an alcoholic father and only the memory of a mother who disappeared when she was a child.
And while the supernatural is always present, it is the isolation and actions of the living that create true horror.
WINNER of the McIlvanney Prize 2020 Shortlisted for Bloody Scotland's Scottish Crime Debut of the Year 2020 Longlisted for the Highland Book Prize 2020
'Hugely atmospheric, exquisitely written and utterly gripping' LUCY FOLEY, author of The Hunting Party 'It's both eerie and thrilling at once, and had me under its spell until the end' SOPHIE MACKINTOSH, author of Blue Ticket and The Water Cure ______________
They are driving home from the search party when they see her. The trees are coarse and tall in the winter light, standing like men.
Lauren and her father Niall live alone in the Highlands,…
I love everything Scottish. My grandfather was Scottish. I never met him, but mom passed the pride of her heritage and culture to me. Mom used to throw out an occasional phrase or poem that I thought was Gaelic. (I later learned it was Scotts but that’s another story.) I decided I wanted to learn the language and found a short course at a small college on the Isle of Skye and it changed my life. After that short course I committed to learning the language and enrolled in the distance learning program. I travel to Skye for the short courses between my semesters and have made lifelong friends.
This is the first in the Whisky Business Mystery series. I loved this series and was sad to see it end. I swear I know at least two of the characters personally. There is enough romance to make this romance reader happy but there was also a great murder mystery sprinkled—or should I say—splattered with humor. I loved it.
Abigail Logan never expected to inherit a whisky distillery in the Scottish Highlands. But in the first novel of an engaging new series blending fine spirits with chilling mystery, Abi finds that there are secrets lurking in the misty glens that some will go to any lengths to protect...even murder.
When Abi inherits her uncle's quaint and storied single malt distillery, she finds herself immersed in a competitive high-stakes business that elicits deep passions and prejudices. An award-winning photojournalist, Abi has no trouble capturing the perfect shot - but making the perfect shot is another matter. When she starts to…
It is April 1st, 2038. Day 60 of China's blockade of the rebel island of Taiwan.
The US government has agreed to provide Taiwan with a weapons system so advanced that it can disrupt the balance of power in the region. But what pilot would be crazy enough to run…
I freely admit to reading romances―"Nurse Janes," as one of my teachers used to call them―whenever I need a break from heavier material or just from life. While I have some favorite authors (who doesn't?), I do not limit myself to any particular era or style of romance. To me, romance has many shades and flavours, and I enjoy them all. Believe you me, choosing just five to recommend was no piece of cake.
Karen Marie Moning'sKiss of the Highlander had me itching to find myself a hunky Druid, even if I had to fall into a hole and end up in the past to do it. I could picture in my mind's eye those rippling muscles, luscious lips, and penetrating eyes. Sigh.
Enchanted by a powerful spell, Highland laird Drustan MacKeltar slumbered for nearly five centuries hidden deep in a cave, until an unlikely savior awakened him. The enticing lass who dressed and spoke like no woman he’d ever known was from his distant future, where crumbled ruins were all that remained of his vanished world. Drustan knew he had to return to his own century if he was to save his people from a terrible fate. And he needed the bewitching woman by his side....
