Showing results by author "Margaret Elphinstone" in All Categories

Edinburgh, 1736. In the town’s grim prison, the Heart of Midlothian, two prisoners await execution. Captain Porteous of the Town Guard has been sentenced to death for ordering his soldiers to open fire on Edinburgh citizens. He hopes for reprieve. The people want revenge. Effie Deans, wrongly accused of killing her newborn baby, will die unless her sister, Jeanie, tells a lie. Jeanie, determined to save her sister, makes a terrifying journey as Effie’s life hangs in the balance.

Edward Waverley is an English officer in the army of King George, but will his love for Flora, the beautiful Scottish rebel, lead him to betray his king? Life with his regiment in Scotland is dull until he visits his uncle's friends in the Highlands, where he meets Fergus McIvor and his sister Flora. Attracted by the wild freedom and romance of the Scottish clans, Edward finds himself in a difficult and dangerous position. His new friends are Jacobites, planning to overthrow King George and restore the Stuart monarchy.

An unusual love story set in the Middle Ages, Gato is the story of a young child brought up in a mill. The quiet hardworking lives of the people at the mill are disturbed by the arrival of a wandering Spanish friar. What is going on between the miller and his wife, and the friar? The child at the centre of the story tries to understand.The only creatures the child is close to are the mill cats. After the friar's stay, there is always one called Gato, Spanish for "cat".

Frank hates working in his father's office. He swaps places with his cousin Rashleigh. But what is Rashleigh up to? Who are his mysterious friends? Frank has to find some missing papers to save his father's business. The search takes him to Scotland, where he finds that his life is in danger. But who is it that wants to kill him? Frank meets the outlaw Rob Roy and heads for the Highlands, where he's seized by soldiers looking for Jacobite rebels. Whose side is Rob Roy really on? And how can Frank recover the papers which will save his father?

Running away to sea brings adventure and wealth, but then come shipwreck and a desperate struggle for survival. Defying his parents, Robinson Crusoe goes to sea. He is captured by pirates but escapes to Brazil. He makes a fortune using slave labour to grow tobacco and sugar. He sails to Africa to bring back more slaves but is shipwrecked on an uninhabited island. Everyone else is drowned. For more than twenty years, he lives alone. He learns to hunt and fish and make shelter.