A Quaker's faith is tested during the War of 1812 in this "stunning work of historical fiction" (Kirkus Reviews, starred review). Mark Greenhow, a naive and peaceful Quaker, lands on the shores of North America on the eve of the War of 1812, thinking only of finding the missing sister, a missionary whose adventurous spirit he has always admired. His pursuit begins by hitching a ride with the voyageurs who have canoed the rivers, transporting the tons of furs that feed the trade that has made the region a battleground of the French and British empires. Though Mark enters this brave new world with his conscience clean and his convictions sound, his encounters with a place and people he never could have imagined test his rigid upbringing. The backwoods of Canada have certainly led his sister astray; she has been excommunicated from the Society of Friends for running off with a non-Quaker. After her child is stillborn she runs again, deep into...

After fraudulently winning a writing competition, Sidony Redruth is sent by her editor to write the first-ever travel book on Hy Brasil, a near-mythical island somewhere in the Atlantic, whose very existence has been a matter of debate as late as the nineteenth century. Elphinstone's plot takes the island location as its starting point, throws in some old-fashioned piracy, a lost treasure, modern-day drug smuggling, political intrigue, an active volcano and a tragic love affair. Told through Sidony's notes for her book, Hy Brasil has all the elements of an adult adventure story, but it is also a contemporary thriller with literary influences ranging from The Tempest and Treasure Island to Moby-Dick.

Between Grandmother Mountain and the cold sea, Alaia and her family live off the land. But when one of her brothers goes hunting and never returns, the fragile balance of life is upset. Half-starved and maddened with grief, Alaia's mother follows her visions and goes in search of her lost son. Then a stranger from a rival tribe appears on their hearth seeking shelter. Are his stories of a great wave and a people perished really to be believed? What else could drive a man to travel alone between tribes in the depths of winter? Hopes of resolution come when Alaia's mother returns home as a Go-Between, one able to commune with the spirits. But as all the Auk people come together for their annual Gathering Night, who there will listen to the voice of a woman? "The Gathering Night" is a story of conflict, loss, love, adventure and devastating natural disasters. This utterly enchanting pre-historical novel is set deep in our stone-age past, but resonates as a parable of our troubled planet 8000 years on.