LITMIR.BIZ

He’s in the middle of nowhere, Alaska, because his Eskimo mother has moved home, and Cesar, a seventeen-year-old former gang banger, is convinced that he’s just biding his time ‘til he can get back to LA. His charmingly offbeat cousin, Go-boy, is equally convinced that Cesar will stay. And so they set a wager. If Cesar is still in Unalakleet in a year, he has to get a copy of Go-boy’s Eskimo Jesus tattoo.Go-boy, who recently dropped out of college, believes wholeheartedly that he is part of a Good World conspiracy. At first Cesar considers Go-boy half crazy, but over time in this village, with his father absent and his brother in jail for murder, Cesar begins to see the beauty and hope Go-boy represents. The choice.This is a novel about a different Alaska than many of us have read about in the past, about a different kind of wilderness and survival. As Cesar (who later assumes his Eskimo name, Atausiq) becomes connected to the community and to Go-boy, the imprint he bears isn’t Go-boy’s tattoo but the indelible mark of Go-boy’s heart and philosophy, a philosophy of hope that emphasizes our similarities to one another as well as a shared sense of community, regardless of place. As Go-boy says to Cesar, “Sometimes we’re always real same-same.”

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This fall, the film festival circuit will be introduced to the indomitable Luli McMullen in Hick, the new film made from the acclaimed novel by Andrea Portes, who also adapted the screenplay. The film—directed by Derick Martini—stars Chloë Grace Moretz, Blake Lively and Eddie Redmayne and features Rory Culkin, Anson Mount, Juliette Lewis and Alec Baldwin in supporting roles.Hick is the story of Luli (Moretz), a bright kid from a hick town who’s had enough and strikes out on her own with some “borrowed” cash, a .45 and her wits. On the road, Luli is taken under the wing of a glamorous young grifter named Glenda (Lively), who has experienced worlds barely imaginable to Luli. As the two make their way across the American landscape, they encounter a captivating and dangerous young man named Eddie Kreezer (Redmayne), a disturbing criminal subculture, and some hard truths about what it means to be a young woman on the run, grasping at a future.Hick the movie is produced by Lighthouse Entertainment and Taylor Lane Productions, with Stone River Productions serving as executive producer.Though its first-person narrating voice is fast-paced, powerful and unquestionably authentic, Hick is a debut novel.Beyond this voice, what makes the book so extraordinary is that, although all of the worst things imaginable do befall this 13-year-old girl, she is never defeated by them. Luli always fights back; she always resurfaces.Set as a coming-of-age novel, Hick tracks the real perils that modern teenagers so often face. And it does so with bright wit, energy, and an indomitable spirit.This is a book that will grab the reader from the first page and not let go.And it is written by a woman who is becoming a cultural force in the hippest parts of Los Angeles.

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Introduced by Donald Smith.
Set in Rome during Nero’s reign of terror, The Blood of the Martyrs is a disciplined historical novel tracing the destruction of one cell of the early church. With a cast of slaves, ordinary Roman people, exiles and entertainers, it is thorough in its historical interpretation and in its determination to make the past accessible and readable.
Written in 1938-9, the novel contains many symbolic parallels to the rise of European fascism in the 1930s and the desperate plight of persecuted minorities such as the Jews and the left-wing activists with whom Naomi Mitchison personally campaigned at the time. With the invasion of Britain a real possibility, she felt compelled to write a testament to the power of human solidarity which, even faced with death, can overcome the worst that human evil can achieve.
The Blood of the Martyrs is the least autobiographical of Mitchison’s major works of fiction, yet, with its implicit credo, is her most passionately self-revealing.
‘ . . . when a novelist is historically faithful in these treacherous waters of the human psyche, the results are tremendous. As a twentieth-century woman, it no doubt hurt Naomi Mitchison a good deal to describe the savagery of the early Christian persecution in The Blood of the Martyrs . . . But it is the pain that gives the history its lifeblood. The imagination that is a novelist’s fuel must be harnessed to serve history as history was, not as anyone wishes it had been.’ Joanna Trollope

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Edited and introduced by Douglas Gifford.
The Three Perils of Man is regarded as Hogg’s most ambitious work of fiction. The book’s extraordinary combination of the fantastic, the funny, the serious and the historically realistic must be unique in literature.
The adventures of its characters, told with the author’s characteristically bold simplicity, are many, mad, and breathtakingly fast. Ranging from Galloway to Northumberland, the main focus of the book is to be found in the Scottish Borders. Hogg knew and loved the Borders well, and the book is full of their oral tradition and local lore. In his attempt to synthesise this material with history, romance and the high literary ideals of his time, Hogg’s nearest modern parallels would be a combination of Tolkien and Iain Banks.
Hogg’s fusion of traditional folklore and innovative style was viewed as an anachronism by his contemporaries, and it is only now that his work is recognised s one of the most original and masterly in the Scottish canon.

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This huge novel, closer in scope to a Russian epic than to any English counterpart, opens at the turn of the century in the extreme poverty of the Rhinns of Galloway, an agricultural backwater of the southern-most part of Scotland.
With a loving regard for the land and its people, Barke traces the lives of David and Jean Ramsay who, full of hope, painstakingly uproot themselves and their family in the search for prosperity. Their efforts to retain respect and a decent way of life are thwarted by unemployment in increasingly hostile circumstances, and a harsh environment inevitably leaves its mark.
But a new generation emerges to question the authority of an uncaring society and, even as Fascism rages through Europe, a new hope is born.
‘Barke’s characters are both intelligent and spirited.’ Times Literary Supplement
‘An elegy for the old way of life.’ New Statesman

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Introduced by Christopher Harvie.
Set against the religious struggles of seventeenth-century Scotland, with Montrose for the king against a convenanted kirk, John Buchan’s Witch Wood is a gripping atmospheric tale in the spirit of Stevenson and Neil Munro.
As a moderate Presbyterian minister, young David Sempill disputes with the extremists of his faith. All around, the defeated remnants of Montrose’s men are being harried and slaughtered by the faithful, and Sempill’s plea for compassion, like his love for the beautiful Katrine Yester, is out of joint with the times.
There are still older conflicts to be faced however, symbolised by the presence of the Melanudrigill Wood, a last remnant of the ancient Caledonian forest. Here there is black magic to be uncovered, but also the more positive pre-Christian intimations of nature worship.
In such setting, and faced with the onset of the plague, David Sempill’s struggle and eventual disappearance take on a strange and timeless aspect in what was John Buchan’s own favourite among his many novels.
‘Set in the Borders which he knew so well, this story of 17th-century Scotland shows the qualities which have enabled Buchan’s thrillers to last so well, and which still persuade serious readers to regard him more highly than many apparently more ambitious novelists.’ Independent

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Introduced by Naomi Mitchison.
Set over two thousand years ago on the clam and fertile shores of the Black Sea, Naomi Mitchison’s The Corn King and the Spring Queen tells of ancient civilisations where tenderness, beauty and love vie with brutality and dark magic.
Erif Der, a young witch, is compelled by her father to marry his powerful rival, Tarrik the Corn King, so becoming the Spring Queen. Forced by her father, she uses her magic spells to try and break Tarrik’s power.
But one night Tarrik rescues Sphaeros, an Hellenic philosopher, from a shipwreck. Sphaeros in turn rescues Tarrik from near death and so breaks the enchantment that has bound him. And so begins for Tarrik a Quest – a fabulous voyage of discovery which will bring him new knowledge and which will reunite him with his beautiful Spring Queen.
‘This breathtaking recreation of life in the ancient world welds the power of myth and magic to a stirring plot.’ Ian Rankin

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Edited and introduced by P.H. Scott & Ian Gordon.
Galt’s two great political novels date from around the passing of the Reform Act of 1832. The Member has claims to be the first political novel in the English language and is a tour de force of wit, observation, and a devastating critique of political self-seekings. Its hero is a Scot, newly returned from India, who purchases a seat in a rotten borough. As a study of the corruption of the pre-reform parliament it is unsurpassed.
The Radical is a study of narrow-minded, humour-less fanaticism. Galt’s aim is to demonstrate the fragility of the existing order and the closeness of anarchy to the surface of society. This is the first republication of The Radical since its original edition.

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