Dr. Caithlin 'Cate' Sutherland --- historian, scholar of British history, author of Mary Queen of Scots: A Woman's View, recently married to novelist Iain Charles Sutherland and expecting their first child --- falls asleep at her husband's side after making love.
Startled awake in the middle of the night by the sounds of an angry argument between two men, one her husband, Iain, the other a stranger, speaking Old English, Cate bolts out of bed, races down the long second-floor hallway, and barges into Iain's study, into a blinding wall of swirling snow and a savage beating.
Cate regains consciousness, covered with snow blowing into the room through the open French doors. Lifting her head, Cate sees Iain kneeling in the center of the room, slumped back on his heels, head bowed as if in prayer. Driven into the floor in front of him is his ancient claymore: the massive five-foot long, two-handed Scottish sword with its broad hilt creates the eerie image of a Celtic cross in a snowy cemetery.
Cate struggles to her knees. Her nightgown is blood-soaked. She tries to stand, cries out in pain and falls to her hands and knees. Crawling to Iain, Cate kneels beside him and cradles him in her arms. Iain falls limp against her. Dead. Cate's primordial scream shatters the cathedral quiet of dawn. Outside, as if in refrain, a man's hideous laugh is heard, knifing deep into Cate's heart, before fading into the wind. Never to forgotten.
Widowed, childless, her storybook life little more than shards of broken dreams, Iain's comment after they made love that night --- "Pray for a Bonnie daughter, lass, for she will be free of the wind as no son of ours can ever be" --- echoes in Cate's mind like the refrain of a prophetic curse, fueling her unspoken desire for revenge.
In a fierce and bloody battle across time and over the Scottish Highlands, woman against man, swordsmanship and wits -- Tartan and Steel -- Cate Sutherland will accomplish what no man has been able to do in 300 years: she will set free a mysterious Highlander from his prison in the Edge of the Wind, avenge the murder
of her husband and unborn son, and find love and a new life in the Highlands.
04/24 Miners' Lung: A History of Dust Disease in British Coal Mining (Studies in Labour History) Arthur McIvor and Ronald Johnston explore the experience of coal miners' lung diseases and the attempts at voluntary and legal control of dusty conditions in British mining from the late nineteenth century to the present. In this way, the book addresses the important issues of occupational health and safety within the mining industry; issues that have been severely neglected in studies of health and safety in general. The authors examine the prevalent diseases, notably pneumoconiosis, emphysema and bronchitis, and evaluate the roles of key players such as the doctors, management and employers, the state and the trade unions. Throughout the book, the integration of oral testimony helps to elucidate the attitudes of workers and victims of disease, their 'machismo' work culture and socialisation to very high levels of risk on the job, as well as how and why ideas and health mentalities changed over time. This research, taken together with extensive archive material, provides a unique perspective on the nature of work, industrial relations, the meaning of masculinity in the workplace and the wider social impact of industrial disease, disability and death. The effects of contracting dust disease are shown to result invariably in seriously prescribed lifestyles and encroaching isolation. The book will appeal to those working on the history of medicine, industrial relations, social history and business history as well as labour history. 【本文抜粋】
