The second Mrs. Hockaday

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James Robertson

Michael Pendreich is curating an exhibition of photographs by his late, celebrated father Angus for the National Gallery of Photography in Edinburgh. The show will cover fifty years of Scottish life but, as he arranges the images and writes his catalogue essay, what story is Michael really trying to tell: his father's, his own or that of Scotland itself? And what of the stories of the individuals captured by Angus Pendreich's lens over all those decades? The homeless wanderer collecting pebbles; the Second World War veteran and the Asian shopkeeper, fighting to make better lives for their families; the Conservative MP with a secret passion, and his drop-out sister, vengeful against class privilege; the alcoholic intelligence officer betrayed on all sides, not least by his own inadequacy; and, the activists fighting for Scottish Home Rule - all have their own tales to tell. Tracing the intertwined lives of an unforgettable cast of characters, James Robertson's new novel is a searching journey into the heart of a country of high hopes and unfulfilled dreams, private compromises and hidden agendas. Brilliantly blending the personal and the political, "And The Land Stay Still" sweeps away the dust and grime of the postwar years to reveal a rich mosaic of 20th-century Scottish life.

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Jorge Volpi

In a story based on actual events in Nazi Germany in which civilians were recruited to exterminate the Jews in their own community, the author presents the group's recruitment, training, and terrible mission without historical context and fused with dark fairy tales.

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Conger Beasley, Jr

Conger Beasley Jr. alternately recounts the events and details of the 1890 massacre of the Lakota Sioux at Wounded Knee and his participation, one hundred years later, in the commemorative Big Foot Memorial Ride. The counterpoint and contrast between the two events produce a powerful effect; the history, including oral accounts from survivors of the slaughter, is sometimes so brutal that the reader needs to be taken away, if only into the cold and wind of a century later. The contemporary ride in 1990 included Indians, Asians, Europeans, and white Americans. In the face of bitterly cold weather and other hardships, the journey became a pilgrimage to lay to rest the chronic turmoil that has haunted generations of Lakota.

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John E. Wills

"In his brief, focused chapters, Jack Wills also shows us ordinary life in the world of 1688. We join the great caravans of Muslims on their annual pilgrimage from Damascus and Cairo to Mecca, witness the suicidal exaltation of Russian Old Believers, and walk the pungent streets of Amsterdam. There we enter the Rasp House, where vagrants, beggars, and petty criminals labored to produce powdered brazilwood for the local dyeworks. And we meet hitherto unnoticed but unforgettable characters: Constantine Phaulkon, a Greek adventurer whose efforts to advance French interests as well as his own with the court of Siam ended in betrayal and a grisly death; and Dona Teresa, a beauty at fifteen, whose chaste loves stirred local legend in the wild mining town of Potosi.". "Told with verve, color, and insight, Wills's book captures an historical moment in which the world seems both strange and familiar, when the global connections of power, money, and belief were ushering in the modern age."--BOOK JACKET.