Mirror, mirror, on the wall. A poem from Cautionary Tales, by HAYLEY SHIELDS …

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A Life, a poem by AILEEN BALLANTYNE …

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Five o’ clock at the Aibbutsfurd, a poem by AILEEN BALLANTYNE …

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Queen Mary’s Clarsach, a poem by AILEEN BALLANTYNE …

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‘At this moment, it’s all about trust, unshakeable confidence that your partner has done his job properly, fixed the belay securely, is ready, fists iron around the rope for that gut-wrenching moment when your life will depend upon him.’

New fiction from KEITH AITCHISON. …

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Dead Boy Denouncing, a poem by NIKI ANDRIKOPOULOU. …

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Watching Sharleen Play (Violin). Poem by JANE GOLDMAN …

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The Nameless Mermaid’s Revenge: A choose-your-own-adventure poem. From Cautionary Tales by HAYLEY SHIELDS. …

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The crowd was hip, the room had black walls and Nick Cave’s larger-than-life face gazed off-screen as he read from his first novel for almost twenty years, The Death of Bunny Munro. HANNAH ADCOCK experiences The Irregulars. …

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As part of a concise overview of how the collections of the National Library of Scotland were built up, KEVIN HALLIWELL focuses on the collections pertaining to South Asia, and within them some ‘curiosities’ relating to Kolkata. …

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Old Portobello Prom
Poem by CATHERINE McDONALD …

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Undoubtedly, the King of Scottish chapbook writers was Dougal Graham, the skellat bellman of Glasgow. He was born at Raploch, Stirling, around the year 1724, and although he was a tiny hunchback he joined the Jacobite army and followed the Prince right through the campaign to Culloden, as a non-combatant.
Dougal Graham’s chapbooks discussed by DAVID FERGUS …

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IAN CAMPBELL talks about his collection of George Douglas Brown’s novel, The House with the Green Shutters. From the Scottish Book Collector archive. …

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‘he just wanted a story of his own, to be a wordjunkie mainlining on pure uncut storygear, a doonward DNA spiral intae genetic linguistics predisposition, cistronomatopoeia, advance word fae the phenotypewriter swimmin ragin burnin against nucleotide riptides…’
Storytailor. New fiction from GRAHAM RAE …

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The body lay face down surrounded by blood spattered paperbacks; the crown of the head staved in by the highest shelf of the toppled bookcase.
‘That’s how I found him,’ said the woman sitting down unsteadily behind the desk. ‘I haven’t touched anything.’
Uncharitable Murder. A new short story from GREG MICHAELSON, author of The Wave Singer. …

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