Hello! I have just recently found this forum and I am ecstatic! I'm a "stay-at-home" mom (which is a misnomer because I'm almost never 'at home')of four children (ages ranging 4-20). Previously I have been employed in construction/design in the Atlanta area. (Yankee born) Reading has always been a big part of my life since I was a small child. I've enjoyed many different genres, historical fiction is likely my favorite with fantasy being my least. My reading is smattered with biographies, and non-fiction, but fiction definitely tops everything. I have a tendancy to go on reading jags and then take a month or so off from reading, but I always come back. Presently I am on a "big read" quest to read every book on the Pulitzer Prize winning list for fiction. I also need to finish the Diana Gabaldon's Outlander series, somewhere along the way she has published three more books without my knowing...guess I haven't been paying attention. My favorite author is Kaye Gibbons. I often post "on the fly" so I apologize ahead of time if sometimes I don't make sense...thank you and have a nice day!

lacey, the books by F J Macdonald are very gentle reads about his simple life growing up on a remote croft on Harris (it's worth looking it up on a map just to see how far it is from the centre of population). I remember he describes his Grandfather, the Kirk Elder, who lived in the 'town' of Tarbert, having the first flushing WC installed and soon wondering what had happened to the wonderful oyster harvest in the sea-loch. The price of progress! I think JFM must have been born at the end of WW1 or early '20's and his story takes him up to WW11 . . .hence the Lysander . . . He used to give talks on the BBC and when I read his work I could 'hear' his Highland lilt coming through. 'Scots' or 'Scottish' are fine. I don't think 'Scotch' is correct; it's a drink. I can't help you on your second request (unless it's Robert Louis Stevenson and the 'Kidnapped' stories) but the Abe books site below might jog your memory. Here is a link that might be useful: Some books about the Highlands

dedtired, many place-names in Scotland begin with Auchter . . .something or other. I wouldn't have said it was 'common' perhaps a glance through a phone-book might prove me wrong! I think the original of Monarch of the Glen was by Scottish writer Compton Mackenzie. His Whisky Galore (book and later film) is a classic, based on a true story when during WWII a ship carrying thousands of barrels of whisky was wrecked of the Isle of Eriskay and the devious means by which the islanders hid the loot from the Customs men! nb the correct spelling of whisky; the true Scottish way. ;-)

Friedag, the only work I have on Hereward is Peter Rex's Hereward: The Last Englishman. It's history rather than fiction, and (it's been a while since I read it) demolishes the legend that "the Wake" means the 'Watchful" or something like that. Wake or Wac was apparently a family name. As for other historical novels, here are some without organizing them much in time: The Ivory Mischief by Arthur Meeker. Two aristocratic sisters in 17th cen. France. Not my period or place, but so exceedingly well done I've read it several times. Everything in it is from diaries of the period, and not a single event is invented. Quite fine. The Trees. The Fields. The Town. A trilogy by Conrad Richter about the settling of the American Midwest. Sweet Will. The Cleopatra Boy. A House of Women. by Eric Malpass. A fine trilogy about Shakespeare. Enemy Women by Paulette Jiles. A southern woman, not rich, during the American Civil War. She's written several others, good, but this one really stayed with me. The Homesman by Glendon Swarthout. (who also wrote The Shootist, made into John Wayne's last movie). I stumbled across this book, and it is quite good--grim, but good. Set in the American Midwest in early days of settlement of the prairie. I'll look for others by him. Pretty much anything by Mari Sandoz--Indians mostly (Crazy Horse is my favorite, one based on her father, Old Jules.) A.B. Guthrie series (all independent) on the settlement of the west. The Big Sky. The Way West. These Thousand Hills. Anything by Alan Furst--you probably know these--astonishingly well done novels set just before or during WW II--lesser people caught up in the war--nobody famous. I have limited shelf space, but I keep all of his. Flanders by Patricia Anthony. I don't know how or why this astonishing novel of WWI fell so fast into obscurity, but everyone I've recommended it to has been knocked out. And hard to imagine it is written by a woman. WW I has never really called to me, but this novel is deeply powerful. Maurice Druon's series on 13/14th cen. French kings, called Les Rois Maudit. The Accursed Kings, the first being The Iron King. It's being reissued in paperback after long being unavailable. George R.R. Martin (The Game of Thrones author) has said it was always his inspiration. Druon bends the facts slightly--going for the historically unaccepted, like the curse of the Templars--but it's very good reading. Nasty people, but good reading. And another Viking-- Meadowland by Thomas Holt, a tale within a tale--Varangian guard in Byzantine Empire, and the story told of Leif Erikson's settlement in NA. No need to mention Mary Renault, I'm sure. The queen of fiction of Ancient Greece. Awen by Susan Mayse, early medieval Wales. Good, but again has fallen into obscurity. And for those who really like American history, Allan W. Eckert some years ago wrote a series on the settlement America, beginning with The Frontiersman. Eckert says he has invented nothing, not even dialog, that everything comes from memoirs and diaries of the periods. There are copious footnotes, but they read like novels. And most people know of Rolvaag's Giants in the Earth. Peder Victorious. Their Father's God. What's unique about these books on the Norwegian settlement of the Great Plains is that Rolvaag wrote them in Norwegian and then they were translated into English. The first is the best known, and perhaps the best of the three. If I think of more that I've omitted, I'll post. Happy reading everyone!