Saraband is an award-winning independent publisher of outstanding fiction, absorbing nature writing, pressing environmental issues and compelling memoir. Our brilliant prize-winning authors from across Scotland include Graeme Macrae Burnet, Chitra Ramaswamy, Donald S Murray, Olga Wojtas, Ever Dundas and Jim Crumley. These and writers from other parts of the UK and overseas have been recognised in major national and international prizes, including the Booker Prize, as well as the Saltire Society Awards, which highlight Scotland’s literary talent.
We publish authors with deep knowledge of the culture, local landscapes, wildlife, folk traditions and history in regions around the UK. Our fiction includes literary, historical and contemporary stories reflecting national and international perspectives – some with a sense of humour, some gritty or dark, others thought-provoking – all engaging and vital.
From our inception, we have provided a platform for underrepresented and marginalised voices that are often overlooked, and discovered original perspectives and talent. We’ve championed diversity and inclusion as part of our wide-ranging commitment to excellence – and to our readers of all ages, backgrounds and personal identities, wherever they may live.
We publish across all print and digital formats, with ancillary content in our podcast, video and social channels. For more information on our authors and titles, head over to our website, www.saraband.net, subscribe to our podcast, Cabin Fever Fables, follow us on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook and sign up to our monthly Good News newsletter here: http://eepurl.com/gZhSij
This inspirational guide is bursting with invaluable know-how on Scotland's wild harvest, covering what, where, when and how you can use your bounty in sustainable ways - from the most useful and widespread of species to the less well-known, and from leaves and berries to saps, seeds, seaweeds, mosses and wood.
A Scots Dictionary of Nature brings together - for the first time - the deeply expressive vocabulary customarily used to describe land, wood, weather, birds, water and walking in Scotland.
An entertaining memoir of rain, midges, petty authority figures and minor humiliations, lightened with music, booze, anarchy and an array of eccentric characters.
Longlisted for the Desmond Elliott Prize, Castles from Cobwebs follows one girl's transition from youthful innocence to understanding as she navigates questions about family, identity and race.
Tracing our environmental impact through time, David Howe demonstrates how humanity's exploitation of the Earth's natural resources has pushed our planet to its limit and asks: what's next for our depleted planet?
The Mahogany Pod is a deeply moving account of falling in love with someone who only has a few months to live. Through honest prose, Jill Hopper's story explores the joy and pain of loving and losing, and the beginnings that come after endings.
A poisoned breeze blows across the waves ... Operation Cauldron, 1952: Top-secret germ warfare experiments on monkeys and guinea pigs are taking place aboard a vessel moored off the Isle of Lewis. Local villagers Jessie and Duncan encounter strange sights on the deserted beach nearby and suspect the worst.
Cottongrass Summer is a collection of 52 essays by a world-renowned naturalist, author and broadcaster on subjects ranging from birdsong to beavers, and our role as stewards of the land.
The final instalment in the acclaimed "Seasons" series, which interrogates how climate change has disrupted the natural rhythm of the seasons. It has attracted widespread praise and prize attention; Jim's passionate stance on climate chaos and the need for rewilding chimes with an increasingly eco-aware public.
Haley and Ben's father, with inside knowledge of a new and deadly pandemic, kidnaps them and takes them to his prepper compound for their own safety. They have no contact with the outside world and face deeply conflicting views of reality with no reliable source of news. Will they survive, save their mother, deter intruders and keep everyone safe?
Femke, her mother and grandfather have very different ideas about how to run their family farm; Femke wants to switch to sustainable growing, whilst her mother considers this an attack on tradition. Shocked Earth investigates what it means to have your identity entwined with your place of birth and your principles at odds with your closest kin.
In 2020, Britain is at breaking point, society on the edge. The country is a bomb waiting to explode... and then it does. This provocative literary thriller cleverly lays bare the true state of our nation with an all-too-plausible `what if?' scenario. Told from the wildly differing perspectives of a myriad of voices, it is a parable for our times.
As Peter MacAulay writes his will, he reflects on his life and how world events filter through to his home, Stornoway. He reveals his passions for history, engines and fish, and witnesses changing times - and things that don't change - in the Hebrides. It's about stories, a litany of small histories witnessed during one very individual lifetime.
HWA Debut Crown shortlist. Edinburgh, 1942. As war tightens its grip, Agnes Thorne finds that her new husband's obsession with Home Rule threatens to land him in jail, and gives her an unwanted role in the nationalist movement. As hidden forces of state break cover, Agnes is caught in a triangle of passion, politics and secrecy.
Finding herself at a crossroads and in need of a change from her job and domestic responsibilities, Helen Moat set herself the challenge of a lifetime: she got on her bike and embarked on an epic cycle ride across Europe, all the way to Istanbul, accompanied by her eighteen-year-old son.
With his own demons threatening to engulf him, Doug's already fraught relationship with DS Susie Drummond is tested to the limit when a brutal murder resurrects the spectre of a drunken one-night stand that has undermined her dignity, dogged her career and now compromises her judgement.
Sir Edward Strathairn returns to the Japanese hotel where he wrote his renowned novel 'The Waterwheel', which accused America of being in denial about the Hiroshima bombing. But as we learn about Sir Edward's earlier life and his marriage to an American artist, we realise that he too may be in denial. And that his past is now catching up with him.
A Glasgow student is found dead in a city-centre alley, kickstarting a trail of brutality that drives DI Ray McBain to the very edge, staring into the abyss...
In the Encounters in the Wild series, renowned nature writer Jim Crumley gets up close and personal with British wildlife - here, the badger. With his inimitable passion and vision, Jim relives memorable encounters with some of our best-loved native species, offering intimate insights into their extraordinary lives.