From the author of The Trickster, an unnerving tale of latterday alchemy and the horrors brooding beneath the placid surface of life in one small town in America.

He is a shape-shifter. He is as old as time. He kills without mercy.

Meet the Clanswomen... International bestselling authors Jenny Colgan, Isla Dewar, and Muriel Gray lead off this dazzling collection of stories by popular and rising Scottish women authors. A sometimes wild, sometimes poignant romp through the lives of Scotswomen, Scottish Girls About Town revels in the universal hilarity and strife of being a girl! They're looking for something moor. In Jenny Colgan's "The Fringes," a hapless heroine heads to the Edinburgh "Fringe" -- a massive theatrical and musical festival -- for a night of her own disastrous drama. Isla Dewar offers up "In the Garden of Mrs. Pink," one woman's look back at her girlhood and the life lessons she learned from an eccentric neighbor. In Muriel Gray's "School-Gate Mums," a single mother with killer instincts settles the score with one of the mothers at her son's school. Whether they're racing their flatmates in a weight-loss contest, reconnecting with long-lost friends, or grappling with the men in their lives, these daughters of Scotland prove that no one can top their audacious spirit and Highland charm.

The comtemporary workplace is filled with traps but none more dangerous than those we set for ourselves. With compelling precision this book shows how even the most effective among us can undermine our careers by falling into our own private traps.

Dark tales inspired by J. M. Barrie's classic stories of Neverland, Captain Hook, Tinkerbell, and of course Peter Pan, from some the masters of science-fiction, horror and fantasy including A. C. Wise, Claire North, Lavie Tidhar and more. The award-winning Marie O’Regan & Paul Kane bring together the masters of fantasy, science-fiction and horror, to spin stories inspired by J. M. Barrie’s classic tale. A murder investigation leads a detective to a strange place called Neverland; pupils attend a school for Peters; a young boy loses his shadow and goes to desperate lengths to retrieve it. These eighteen stories take the original tales of Peter & Wendy, the Lost Boys and Tinkerbell, twisting and turning them. From dystopias to the gritty streets of London, these stories will keep you reading all night and straight on ‘til morning. Featuring stories from: Lavie Tidhar Claire North Premee Mohamed Kirsty Logan Edward Cox Anna Smith Spark Alison Littlewood A. C. Wise Rio Youers Gama Ray Martinez Juliet Marillier Robert Shearman A. K. Benedict Laura Mauro Cavan Scott Guy Adams Paul Finch Muriel Gray

We need good writers to tackle hard topics. Maternity pay, public transport, gap year students, poor housing - things that matter to us all. Muriel Gray tells us why they do, and what needs to be done. You might agree with her or you might not - but you certainly won't be bored when you read these articles from her regular Sunday Herald column.

Among mountains of steaming trash in the backstreets of Lima, three young boys are trying to raise an ancient demon from a bizarre little doll. Their incantations aren't working, they think, not waiting to see the body stirring, an unseen force sucking it deep into the ooze. Now something is stirring in the bowels of the M.V. Lysicrates, a three-quarter-mile-long Brazilian tanker filled with garbage. A rotting mélange of dead human and animal flesh, twisted scrap metal, shards of broken glass and chunks of putrid meat, it feeds on death, blood and sewage. Lloyd Skinner, the ship's American captain, has no idea he has a hungry stowaway. Neither does Matthew Cotton, the gin-soaked second-in-command. Only Esther Weiss, an American anthropology student hitching an ultra-cheap ride on the aging tanker, knows what it is...what unimaginable evil it is capable of... The Ancient is Muriel Gray's newest cinematic suspense-horror, the story of perduamo, an ancient deity, who, after centuries of feeding on the fetid waste of careless civilizations, has a dark power like no other. Muriel Gray, already a blockbuster author in Britain, is quickly building an international reputation as one of the most original, and completely horrifying storytellers of our time. Her blend of supernatural forces and psychological terror that marked The Trickster and Furnace--her two previous novels--is unstoppable, an irresistible rush of fear that has readers both recoiling and reaching for more.

We need good writers to tackle hard topics. Maternity pay, public transport, gap year students, poor housing - things that matter to us all. Muriel Gray tells us why they do, and what needs to be done. You might agree with her or you might not - but you certainly won't be bored when you read these articles from her regular Sunday Herald column.