Download or read book The Last Pearl Fisher of Scotland written by Julia Stuart and published by Random House. This book was released on 2016-08-25 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the bestselling author of Balthazar Jones and the Tower of London Zoo comes the story of one man's quest to find a pearl, save his marriage – and track down a missing rabbit named Frank 'The Last Pearl Fisher of Scotland is a gently comic, gently tragic novel, full of lyricism, humanity and the pearl that is love. Read it at once' A. L. Kennedy Brodie McBride is having a tough time. The last expert in the ancient art of pearl fishing, he’s on a quest to track down the pearl that will complete a necklace for his wife, Elspeth, convinced that the love token will save their marriage. But Scotland’s rivers are running out of mussels, Elspeth is running out of patience, and their daughter, Maggie, is running wild with her moustachioed pet rabbit. And when Maggie takes matters into her own hands, determined to keep the family together, the McBrides are soon at the centre of international commotion that will change everyone’s lives forever.

Download or read book The Last Pearl written by Leah Fleming and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2016-01-28 with total page 416 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: FROM THE ACCLAIMED AUTHOR OF THE CAPTAIN'S DAUGHTER AND DANCING AT THE VICTORY CAFE, this is a beautiful novel about one magnificent gem, and three lives bound together by fate ... 1879, York.Greta Costello must rely on her wits to survive. She finds refuge as a Saturday girl for an old jeweller, Saul Abrahams, and her eye for detail, her long fingers and appreciation of beauty persuade Saul to train her as a pearl stringer. This skill will lead her through hardship and pain towards a new life. 1879, Scotland. Jem Baillie knows the immense power of a perfect pearl. His father was a fisher on a tributary of the Tay river in Perthshire, Scotland, and together they found the rarest of pearls, a great white pearl they call Queenie. When this is stolen from them, Eben vows revenge. Spanning generations and continents, tracing the rivers of Scotland and the Mississippi, The Last Pearl is a sweeping novel of desire and revenge, of family and freedom, and of one woman's journey to open the shell she has built around herself to reveal the true beauty within. Praise for Leah Fleming 'I enjoyed it enormously.It's a moving and compelling story about a lifetime's journey in search of the truth' RACHEL HORE 'A born storyteller' KATE ATKINSON

Download or read book The Pearl fishers written by Robin Jenkins and published by Casemate Publishers. This book was released on 2011-06-01 with total page 156 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An outsider arrives in rural Scotland, but finds her hopes for a new home elusive in a novel by the author of The Cone-Gatherers: “A remarkable writer.” —The Times When the beautiful pearl-fisher Effie Williamson arrives in a rural Scottish village with her traveler grandparents and siblings not long after the end of World War II, the residents react in many different ways, from hospitable warmth to outright rejection—and tension is exacerbated when the religious, gentle Gavin Hamilton takes the family into his home, the Old Manse. Gavin quickly finds himself drawn to the young woman, but a match with someone like Effie would certainly set off gossip, or worse, among some of the villagers. A difficult love will blossom gradually between Effie and Gavin—under the scrutiny of the watchful locals—in this insightful, emotional novel by a prize-winning author. “As a storyteller, Jenkins has few equals.” —Tribune

Download or read book The Pigeon Pie Mystery written by Julia Stuart and published by Bond Street Books. This book was released on 2012-08-07 with total page 317 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When Indian Princess Alexandrina is left penniless by the sudden death of her father, the Maharaja of Brindor, Queen Victoria grants her a grace-and-favor home in Hampton Court Palace. Though it is rumored to be haunted, Alexandrina and her lady's maid, Pooki, have no choice but to take the Queen up on her offer. Aside from the ghost sightings, Hampton Court doesn't seem so bad. The princess is soon befriended by three eccentric widows who invite her to a picnic with all the palace's inhabitants, for which Pooki bakes a pigeon pie. But when General-Major Bagshot dies after eating said pie, and the Coroner finds traces of arsenic in his body, Pooki becomes the #1 suspect in a murder investigation. Princess Alexandrina isn't about to let her faithful servant hang. She begins an investigation of her own, and discovers that Hampton Court isn't such a safe place to live after all. With her trademark wit and charm, Julia Stuart introduces us to an outstanding cast of lovable oddballs from the palace Maze Keeper to the unconventional Lady Beatrice (who likes to dress up as a toucan--don't ask) as she guides us through the many delightful twists and turns in this fun and quirky murder mystery. Everyone is hiding a secret of the heart, and even Alexandrina may not realize when she's caught in a maze of love.

Download or read book The Rotarian written by and published by . This book was released on 1975-07 with total page 56 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Established in 1911, The Rotarian is the official magazine of Rotary International and is circulated worldwide. Each issue contains feature articles, columns, and departments about, or of interest to, Rotarians. Seventeen Nobel Prize winners and 19 Pulitzer Prize winners – from Mahatma Ghandi to Kurt Vonnegut Jr. – have written for the magazine.

Download or read book Summer Walkers written by Timothy Neat and published by Birlinn. This book was released on 2016-04-27 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Summer Walkers is the name the crofters of Scotland's North-west Highlands gave the Travelling People - the inerrant tinsmiths, horse-dealers, hawkers and pearl-fishers who made their living 'on the road'. These people are not gypsies - they are indigenous Gaelicspeaking Highlanders who are heirs to a vital and ancient culture. This book documents their way of life and explores their customs, superstitions, unique language, stories, poetry and songs rough photographs and remembrances. The result is a poignant and deeply moving record of a way of life now on the verges of living memory.

Download or read book The Captain s Daughter written by Leah Fleming and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2012-01-19 with total page 576 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: FROM THE ACCLAIMED AUTHOR OF THE LAST PEARL AND DANCING AT THE VICTORY CAFE, this is a beautiful novel about family secrets, betrayals and redemption. The secrets in a woman's heart are deeper than the ocean… For May Smith, travelling with her husband and baby girl Ellen, stepping foot on the Titanic marks the start of an incredible journey, one which is destined to take her from the back streets of Bolton to the land of opportunity: the United States. But when the 'unsinkable' Titanic hits an iceberg one cold dark night, May's dreams are instantly shattered. Jumping from the sinking ship at the last minute, May loses sight of Joe and Ellen. Distraught, she is pulled into a lifeboat. Minutes later, the real-life Captain Smith swims to the lifeboat and hands May a baby swaddled in blankets. This rescue is witnessed by fellow survivor, Celeste Parkes, married to an American industrialist who is on her way back to Ohio after her mother's funeral. In horror, they both watch the death throes of the mighty ship; May traumatised, knowing her husband has drowned, Celeste wishing her bully of a husband had been on board and out of her life. As the dawn comes up, and the two women are rescued by the Carpathia, a friendship is formed, one which is destined to transcend the Atlantic and social differences between them and last a lifetime. Then May makes a shocking discovery and a split-second decision which will change the lives of many. Praise for Leah Fleming 'I enjoyed it enormously.It's a moving and compelling story about a lifetime's journey in search of the truth' RACHEL HORE 'A born storyteller' KATE ATKINSON

Download or read book The Book of Vanishing Species written by Beatrice Forshall and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2022-10-13 with total page 257 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: __________________ Our Earth is more beautiful and more diverse than we can possibly conceive of. The Book of Vanishing Species is a stunning homage to the planet's most mysterious, bizarre and wondrous creatures and plants. Their stories are captivating, from the eyeless and tiny dragonlike olm to the hawksbill turtle, whose gender will be determined by the temperature of the sand it is born in. These species may have survived for hundreds of thousands of years by cleverly adapting to their environments, but their future remains far from certain. The book brings to life red cranes as they dance and bow for the sheer joy of movement, trees that breathe out a haze of misty atmosphere for insects that only feast on one kind of flower, a deep-ocean snail quietly building its shell from iron... and each one of them is illuminated with an exquisite illustration. As you turn the pages, there emerges a network of life that stretches across and around the planet in a dazzling web of existence. This is both a love letter to life on Earth, and an urgent summons to protect what is precious and lovely in this world.

Download or read book Jewels written by Victoria Finlay and published by Random House Trade Paperbacks. This book was released on 2007-08-14 with total page 506 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Throughout history, precious stones have inspired passions and poetry, quests and curses, sacred writings and unsacred actions. In this scintillating book, journalist Victoria Finlay embarks on her own globe-circling search for the real stories behind some of the gems we prize most. Blending adventure travel, geology, exciting new research, and her own irresistible charm, Finlay has fashioned a treasure hunt for some of the most valuable, glamorous, and mysterious substances on earth. With the same intense curiosity and narrative flair she displayed in her widely-praised book Color, Finlay journeys from the underground opal churches of outback Australia to the once pearl-rich rivers of Scotland; from the peridot mines on an Apache reservation in Arizona to the remote ruby mines in the mountains of northern Burma. She risks confronting scorpions to crawl through Cleopatra’s long-deserted emerald mines, tries her hand at gem cutting in the dusty Sri Lankan city where Marco Polo bartered for sapphires, and investigates a rumor that fifty years ago most of the world’s amber was mined by prisoners in a Soviet gulag. Jewels is a unique and often exhilarating voyage through history, across cultures, deep into the earth’s mantle, and up to the glittering heights of fame, power, and wealth. From the fabled curse of the Hope Diamond, to the disturbing truths about how pearls are cultured, to the peasants who were once executed for carrying amber to the centuries-old quest by magicians and scientists to make a perfect diamond, Jewels tells dazzling stories with a wonderment and brilliance truly worthy of its subjects.

Download or read book American Baroque written by Molly A. Warsh and published by UNC Press Books. This book was released on 2018-03-20 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Pearls have enthralled global consumers since antiquity, and the Spanish monarchs Ferdinand and Isabella explicitly charged Columbus with finding pearls, as well as gold and silver, when he sailed westward in 1492. American Baroque charts Spain's exploitation of Caribbean pearl fisheries to trace the genesis of its maritime empire. In the 1500s, licit and illicit trade in the jewel gave rise to global networks, connecting the Caribbean to the Indian Ocean to the pearl-producing regions of the Chesapeake and northern Europe. Pearls—a unique source of wealth because of their renewable, fungible, and portable nature—defied easy categorization. Their value was highly subjective and determined more by the individuals, free and enslaved, who produced, carried, traded, wore, and painted them than by imperial decrees and tax-related assessments. The irregular baroque pearl, often transformed by the imagination of a skilled artisan into a fantastical jewel, embodied this subjective appeal. Warsh blends environmental, social, and cultural history to construct microhistories of peoples' wide-ranging engagement with this deceptively simple jewel. Pearls facilitated imperial fantasy and personal ambition, adorned the wardrobes of monarchs and financed their wars, and played a crucial part in the survival strategies of diverse people of humble means. These stories, taken together, uncover early modern conceptions of wealth, from the hardscrabble shores of Caribbean islands to the lavish rooms of Mediterranean palaces.

Download or read book Regeneration written by Andrew Painting and published by Birlinn. This book was released on 2021-05-26 with total page 325 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 1995 the National Trust for Scotland acquired Mar Lodge Estate in the heart of the Cairngorms. Home to over 5,000 species, this vast expanse of Caledonian woodlands, subarctic mountains, bogs, moors, roaring burns and frozen lochs could be a place where environmental conservation and Highland field sports would exist in harmony. The only problem was that due to centuries of abuse by human hands, the ancient Caledonian pinewoods were dying, and it would take radical measures to save them. After 25 years of extremely hard work, the pinewoods, bogs, moors and mountains are returning to their former glory. Regeneration is the story of this success, featuring not only the people who are protecting the land and quietly working to undo the wrongs of the past, but also the myriad creatures which inspire them to do so. In addition, it also tackles current controversies such as raptor persecution, deer management and rewilding and asks bigger questions about the nature of conservation itself: what do we see when we look at our wild places? What should we see?

Download or read book The Road to Rannoch and the Summer Isles written by Thomas Ratcliffe Barnett and published by . This book was released on 1926 with total page 260 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Jewels A Secret History written by Victoria Finlay and published by Sceptre. This book was released on 2022-11-03 with total page 499 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 'Glorious . . . anecdote and information accumulate with marvellous abundance and a passionate sense of the fascination of jewels' Spectator Amber is the tears of prehistoric trees. One gem links Queen Victoria and a skeleton. Cleopatra drank a pearl to win a bet. A man turned into a diamond. When we put on jewels, what are we really wearing? Victoria Finlay travels the world to tell the true stories of these miraculous oddities of nature. 'Filled with eye-catching incidents and stories . . . Finlay's evidence glitters from every page' Sunday Telegraph 'A fascinating and exhaustive travelogue' Times Literary Supplement

Download or read book The Influence of Man on Animal Life in Scotland written by James Ritchie and published by . This book was released on 1920 with total page 598 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book The Material Landscapes of Scotland s Jewellery Craft 1780 1914 written by Sarah Laurenson and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2023-06-29 with total page 305 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Shortlisted for the History Book Award in Scotland's National Book Awards, 2023 During the long 19th century, Scotland was home to an established body of skilled jewellers who were able to access a range of materials from the country's varied natural landscape: precious gold and silver; sparkling crystals and colourful stones; freshwater pearls, shells and parts of rare animals. Following these materials on their journey from hill and shore, across the jeweller's bench and on to the bodies of wearers, this book challenges the persistent notion that the forces of industrialisation led to the decline of craft. It instead reveals a vivid picture of skilled producers who were driving new and revived areas of hand skill, and who were key to fostering a focused cultural engagement with the natural world – among both producers and consumers – through the things they made. By placing producers and their skill in cultural context, the book reveals how examining the materiality of even the smallest of objects can offer new and multifaceted insights into the wider transformations that marked British history during the long 19th century. Uniting a vast array of jewellery objects with a range of other sources – including paintings, engravings, newspaper reports, letters, inventories of big houses and small workshops, sketchbooks, novels, works of literary geology and early travel writings – this book provides a deep dive into the cultural history of jewellery production through accessible thematic studies. In doing so, it sets out innovative methodologies for writing about the histories of craft production, the natural environment and the material world. Now available in a paperback edition, it will be an important addition to the bookshelf of cultural historians and those interested in Scotland's wild landscapes and natural objects.

Download or read book Pearls written by Alexander E. Farn and published by Elsevier. This book was released on 2013-10-22 with total page 169 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Pearl: Natural, Cultured and Imitation discusses some aspects, distinction, and authenticity of pearl. This book is divided into 10 chapters that cover the origin, anatomy, sources, and prices of this precious gem. The first five chapters are devoted to natural pearls, their unique features, origin, history, structure, anatomy, and source. The next two chapters cover cultivation and testing of cultured pearls, as well as their market value. A chapter focuses on the properties of various imitation pearls. The concluding chapters deal with the pricing of pearls, primarily based on an elaborate method using a base price referred to as the “unit base price . These chapters also consider other pearl uses other than necklaces, such as borders to brooches and festoons. This book will be of great value to pearl traders, manufacturers, and users.

Download or read book Pearl written by Fiona Lindsay Shen and published by Reaktion Books. This book was released on 2022-10-24 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From their creation in the maw of mollusks to lustrous objects of infatuation and conflict, a revealing look at pearls’ dark history. This book is a beautifully illustrated account of pearls through millennia, from fossils to contemporary jewelry. Pearls are the most human of gems, both miraculous and familiar. Uniquely organic in origin, they are as intimate as our bodies, created through the same process as we grow bones and teeth. They have long been described as an animal’s sacrifice, but until recently their retrieval often entailed the sacrifices of enslaved and indentured divers and laborers. While the shimmer of the pearl has enticed Roman noblewomen, Mughal princes, Hollywood royalty, mavericks, and renegades, encoded in its surface is a history of human endeavor, abuse, and aspiration—pain locked in the layers of a gleaming gem.