In Lyrics Alley, Leila Aboulela takes readers to the heart of what it means to have faith in an unforgiving world. Moving from the alleys of Sudan to cosmopolitan Cairo and a decimated post-colonial Britain, this sweeping tale of desire and loss, faith, despair, and reconciliationis one of the most accomplished and evocative portraits ever written of Sudanese society at the time of independence.

"The characters are astutely shaded, and their varying relations to Islam are beautifully rendered." – The Guardian

From the moment when, as a little girl, she realizes that her skin is a different colour from that of her beloved mum and dad, to the tracing and finding of her birth parents, her Highland mother and Nigerian father, the journey that Jackie Kay undertakes in Red Dust Road is full of unexpected twists, turns and deep emotions.

"Red Dust Road is a fantastic, probing and heart-warming read" - The Independant

The waif-like figure peering from Bonnard's "The Breakfast Room" instils a sense of mystery and marginality in the title poem of Stewart Conn's The Breakfast Room. Among other portents of transience in his latest collection are two briefly glimpsed duck shooters. Responses to music, tinged with warmth and humour, highlight the redeeming power of art. The book concludes with a group of love poems imbued with tenderness and a treasuring of the here and now.

"Characteristically restrained, subtly lyrical and filled with gentle humour ... a beautiful and moving collection." — The Sunday Herald

In Sue Peebles novel The Death of Lomond Friel, Rosie, a successful radio presenter, hears that her father has had a stroke she finds herself making reckless decisions that make little sense to those around her. As she strives towards building some kind of future for herself and her father, he quietly plots his own death. Set on the east coast of Scotland, the novel covers events in the weeks following the stroke and the lives of this small cast of captivating but very real characters.

"Peebles’s prose is consistently startling – there isn’t an ordinary or hackneyed sentence or sentiment in the book." – The Telegraph