Orkney (Pevensey Island Guides) (Pevensey Island Guides)
The essential guide for the discerning tourist and island devotee, the "Pevensey Island Guide: Orkney" describes everything the visitor needs to know about the islands' heritage, landscape, climate, flora and fauna. It contains fascinating information about all the key places of interest, from areas of outstanding beauty such as heather covered hills, to the ancient capital steeped in history. It is illustrated with over 100 superb colour photographs showing every aspect of the island and its people.

Venus as a Boy

Short-listed for the 1999 Whitbread Prize for his first novel, "Jelly Roll", Sutherland has already hit a literary and emotional nerve with readers, who can only be captivated by this strange and wonderful creation. The book is set in Orkney.

"This is the story of a boy with a gift - the gift to touch people with love, giving them visions of heaven.

"He is generous with his gift, offering his body up to be used and abused, perhaps because he knows how good receiving that love feels, having seen the visions once himself.

"However, while he's able to give love to others, the love he desires remains elusive to him. Though he goes through life hopeful of getting that feeling back, we know it's too late as he is telling his story from his death bed where he is slowly turning into gold.

"As another reviewer has commented, this book could well be a modern-day fairy tale, apart from that fairy tales are not usually associated with harsh reality and squalid backdrops.

Despite its sordid "surroundings", this is a beautiful book. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

Private Angelo (The Orkney Edition)
Eric Linklater

Eric Linklater's Private Angelo lacks military courage, but finishes the war with two wives and three children fathered by other men. He serves with the Italian, German and British Armies and seeks to desert each with varying degrees of success. At one stage he fled his British patrol on the back of an ox. Linklater's economic prose keeps the reader absorbed and entertained. The writing crosses boundaries of satire, farce, romance and tragedy. This book is a gripping read. --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

The Boy With the Bronze Axe

Synopsis

Kathleen Fidler's classic story is set in the ancient Stone Age village of Skara Brae on Orkney, now a major tourist attraction. This is a fascinating and vividly portrayed story of life nearly 3,000 years ago. Kali and Brockan are in trouble. They have been using their stone axes to chip limpets off the rocks, but they've gone too far out and find themselves trapped by the tides. Then, an unexpected rescuer appears, a strange boy in a strange boat, carrying a strangely sharp axe of a type they have never seen before. Conflict arises as the village of Skara must decide what to do with the new ideas and practices that the boy brings. As a deadly storm threatens, the very survival of the village is in doubt. The daily life, landscape and rituals of Skara have been meticulously researched, and are brought to life in striking, compelling detail.

Seven for the Sea
W. Towrie Cutt

A short journey into the thick fog surrounding their boat takes two young cousins back in time to witness the tragic story behind the family nickname "Selkie."

An Orkney Murder
Alanna Knight

Alanna Knight is the author of twelve novels set in Victorian Edinburgh and chronicling the cases of Chief Inspector Faro. Now she is setting down the equally diverting-but rather different-cases of his intrepid daughter, the female private detective Rose McQuinn. In contrast to the usual Edinburgh setting, this one takes Rose back to her roots on Orkney and her first visit there for many years. She is visiting her sister Emily, who is now married to the widower Erland Yesnaby, the well-off scion of an ancient Orcadian family. But soon her innocent holiday turns out to be anything but, as a body has been unearthed by archaeologists from a nearby peat bog, but instead of the longed-for Maid of Norway it is somebody rather more recent, and very close to home. This makes Rose wonder just how much she knows about her old home, and her own family.

Memoirs and documentary

The Orkney Chronicles, 1900 and 1989
Anne Buxton, Jacqueline McEwen, Jacqueline McEwan

Synopsis
Two diaries of a journey around the Orkney Islands, one in 1900 and the other in 1989. It compares and contrasts the places visited and describes the changes that have been made over the 89 years. This book looks at the Orkneys from an environmental angle, and examines the impact oil has made.

The Very Rich Hours: Travels in Orkney, Belize, the Everglades and Greece
Emily Hiestand

Synopsis
The author describes her travels to Belize, Greece, the Everglades, and the Orkney Islands, sharing her observations on the human history of the regions and the diverse landscapes of the world.

From the Publisher
Description and Praise
Poet, writer, artist and naturalist Emily Hiestand takes us to four far-flung corners of the globe and gives us some of the most sensual, learned, and witty writing about place to appear in years. Unlike male travel writers who tend to chronicle solitary adventures in exotic lands, Hiestand approaches travel as a companionable activity, often a journey toward those we love. Her writing on the natural world reflects a keenly poetic eye; hers is a rare ability to make the ancient, human history of the land come alive.

Shoal and Sheaf: Orkney's Pictorial Heritage
David M.N. Tinch

Read it and see! An excellent combination of superb early photography and literary commentary by an Orcadian with special insight and first hand knowledge gleaned from a lifetime spent in these magical islands.

The Diary of Patrick Fea of Stove, Orkney, 1766-96 (Sources in Local History S.)
Alexander Fenton (Foreword), Patrick Fea, W.S. Hewison (Editor)

Synopsis
Agricultural improvements of a systematic kind did not come to Orkney until the 1840s, generally speaking, so Patrick Fea's diary provides a detailed day-to-day log of old-style, pre-improvement farming, and of the social life of Orkney folk. The book is a source of socio-economic history of Orkney and Scotland as well. Three major international conferences have been held on farmers' diaries, pinpointing how the little worlds of the diarist can intermesh with the greater outside world in an unselfconscious way that provides insights into time and place that have, as a result, increased validity.