Polygon imprint: 30 books

This brand new anthology is comprised of creative prose, non-fiction and poetry that ranges from St. Columba to the present day, all linked by the isle of Iona. Featuring specially commissioned work by Meaghan Delahunt, Jennie Erdal, Sara Lodge, Victoria Mackenzie, Candia McWilliam, Ruth Thomas, and...

WINNER OF THE PENDERYN MUSIC BOOK PRIZE 2018In the 1950s and 1960s, Memphis, Tennessee, was the launch pad of musical pioneers such as Aretha Franklin, Elvis Presley, Johnny Cash, Al Green and Isaac Hayes, and by 1968 was a city synonymous with soul music. It was a deeply segregated city, ill at ease...

Detroit 67 is the story of Motor City in the year that changed everything. Twelve chapters take you on a turbulent year-long journey through the drama and chaos that ripped through the city in 1967 and tore it apart in personal, political and interracial disputes. It is the story of Motown, the break-up...

The Colour of Black and White is Liz Lochhead's first collection of poems for more than a dozen years, and, for her, the most important since the award-winning Dreaming Frankenstein and Collected Poems in 1984. The coming of a simple love lyric feels like a proof that some vital stream hasn't dried...

St Andrews, 1583. The young king James VI is confined at Falkland palace, plotting his escape. Dissension rages between Kirk and Crown, the king and his 'lord enterprisers', and between the separate factions of the church. In St Andrews Castle, a bishop in decline plays out his darkest fantasies,...

Three years after his enforced departure to London, Hew is reconciled with King James VI and recalled to Scotland. He elopes to St Andrews with a young Englishwoman. The death of Mary, Queen of Scots has unleashed a wave of anti-English sentiment among the Scottish people, and fear and confusion in...

1579, St. Andrews. A thirteen-year old boy meets his death on the streets of the university city of St. Andrews and suspicion falls upon one of the regents at the university, Nicholas Colp. Hew Cullan, a young lawyer recently returned home from Paris, uncovers a complex tale of passion and duplicity,...

Dark Encounters is a collection of classic and elegantly unsettling ghost stories first published in 1963. A spine-tingling collection, these tales are set in the brooding landscape of Scotland, with an air of historic authenticity – often referring to real events, objects and people. From a demonic...

In this critically-acclaimed fictional memoir of Sir Walter Scott, Allan Massie recreates the life and times of one of Scotland’s greatest writers,convincingly capturing Scott’s humour, stoicism and eccentricity. Combining imaginative plausibility with his own deep knowledge of and love forScott's...

This book is an intimate, fond and funny memoir of one of the greatest novelists of the last century. This colourful, personal, anecdotal, indiscreet and admiring memoir charts the course of Muriel Spark’s life revealing her as she really was. Once, she commented sitting over a glass of chianti...

Liz Lochhead has built an impressive reputation as poet, playwright and performer attracting a large and admiring public. Dreaming Frankenstein and Collected Poems stands as a monument to her early work: four collections Memo for Spring (1972), Islands (1978) and Grimm Sisters (1981) and the title...

'A tremendous story . . . the incursion into the empire of the strangest and most frightening of the barbarian invaders -- and he tells it with great verve and vigour. His prose has a pace, he has a keen eye for the significant detail, and manages the big scenes confidently' -- Allan Massie, The Scotsman Early...

If you haven’t yet met Archie the Alpaca now’s your chance.Prolific writer, social observer, grassiccino drinker, occasional dancer and loyal friend, Archie sees the world like no-one else. Gathered here are his thoughts, feelings, loves, hates and everything in between.From his remarks on the...

If it was me, if I was the murderer, Alice thought, where would I go? What would I do? The job he had set himself was unfinished, he must be aware that his luck could not go on forever. It was a simple calculation; at best, a lifetime in prison, at worst he'd be killed by the police whilst attempting...