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Jan 6, 2025 | 
bigissue.com | Doug Johnstone
Books We Are All Ghosts in the Forest is a finely crafted story set in a sumptuously created world by: Doug Johnstone The modern publishing industry is very keen to keep authors in their lanes, writing more or less the same book as their last one. But for anyone of a creative disposition – such as Scottish author Lorraine Wilson – that kind of formula is surely anathema.
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Jan 6, 2025 | 
bigissue.com | Doug Johnstone
A remarkable diversity of style and content is to be found in James Sallis’s story collection What You Were Fighting For. The American author is best known as the writer of the novel Drive, adapted into the successful Ryan Gosling-starring movie of the same name. But Sallis is a veteran of multiple genres, from crime to science fiction, poetry to criticism, with dozens of books in his backlist.
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Oct 21, 2024 | 
bigissue.com | Doug Johnstone
Recently announced on the Booker Prize longlist, Richard Powers’ 14th novel, Playground, entertains similar themes to his last two books – the transcendent The Overstory and Bewilderment. Set in a near future, the story revolves around three characters and the tiny Polynesian atoll of Makatea, ravaged by mining and threatened by climate change, yet with the offer of economic salvation by a multi-national company keen to use it as a base to build autonomous, floating cities.
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Sep 25, 2024 | 
bigissue.com | Doug Johnstone
Books Rowlands' latest blends personal experience of living with dogs with some serious philosophical inquiry by: Doug Johnstone Just like a novel, a good non-fiction book can change the way you look at the world, even if just a little bit. The best and smartest non-fiction is the stuff that looks at something that seems everyday and normal, then casts a whole new light upon it. The Happiness of Dogs by Mark Rowlands does just that.
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Sep 24, 2024 | 
bigissue.com | Doug Johnstone
Award-winning author and Edinburgh-based GP Gavin Francis’s The Bridge Between Worlds is the latest in a very diverse non-fiction back catalogue, from travel writing to medical memoirs, with books on the art of physical recovery and the NHS into the bargain. It’s subtitled A Brief History of Connection and the cover picture – of the famous Forth Bridge – gives away that this is an intriguing and super-smart examination of bridges, both literally and metaphorically.
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Aug 21, 2024 | 
bigissue.com | Doug Johnstone
Books The third novel from the Scottish-Egyptian writer of The Pharmacist documents the fall-out among a group in search for spiritual enlightenment by: Doug Johnstone One of the great joys of speculative fiction is that it can tackle big themes without being as hamstrung by the minutiae of the everyday world as so-called realism. This week we have two cracking books that fall into this category, novels that create vivid, off-kilter worlds that live long in the memory.
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Aug 20, 2024 | 
bigissue.com | Doug Johnstone
Books The Korean novelist's first novel to be translated into English examines a quick descent into panic and anarchy by: Doug Johnstone Korean author Ewhan Kim’s The Black Orb is his 12th novel but his first to be translated into English (by Sean Lin Halbert. It follows Jeong-Su, a self-centred guy in his thirties who is confronted at the start of the book with a two-metre black orb that eats his neighbour, then slowly comes after him.
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Jul 12, 2024 | 
l8r.it | Chris W Whitaker |Doug Johnstone |Elizabeth Macneal |Kate Riordan
Buy from our bookstore and 25% of the cover price will be given to a school of your choice to buy more books. *15% of eBooks. "Beautifully readable, moving, and quite simply described as a masterpiece, this LoveReading Star Book is one that we will spend the rest of our lives recommending." View All Editions £20.00 £18.00 This title will be released on 16/07/2024. Pre-order now.
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Jun 27, 2024 | 
bigissue.com | Doug Johnstone
Books A travelling circus of so-called ‘freaks’ arrive and turn the lives of the locals in a small Scottish town upside down by: Doug Johnstone Berlin-based Scottish author Jane Flett’s macabre debut novel Freakslaw is set in a small Scottish town called Pitslaw in the 1990s, where a travelling circus of so-called ‘freaks’ arrive and turn the lives of the locals upside down.
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Jun 25, 2024 | 
booksfromscotland.com | Doug Johnstone
ABOUT THIS BOOK PUBLISHER: Orenda Books ISBN: 9781916788268 RRP: £9.99 PAGES: 276 PUBLICATION DATE: September 12, 2024 By (author) Doug Johnstone Drones, gangland vendettas, a missing choir singer, disturbances in the cemetery, PTSD, panpsychism, and secrets from the past – this can ONLY mean one thing! The Skelfs are back, and things are as nail-biting, tense and warmly funny as ever! ‘Hurroo! The Skelfs – Edinburgh funeral directors and part-time private eyes – are back – the persistence of...
