ANDREW GREIG

This novel of obsession, passion and death occupies the borderlands between the supernatural novels of Scott, Hogg and Stevenson, and the psychological novels of Rendall and Highsmith.An unknown woman walks out of a border mist with an old satchel over her shoulder. Spied on by the factor of the estate, she enters a cottage that has been locked and empty for more than twenty years since the violent deaths of its previous inhabitants. The woman, who will claim to be the daughter of the dead couple, is carrying a set of antique plates that tell the story of adultery, betrayal and murder implicit in the most famous of the sixteenth century Border Ballads: The Twa Corbies. She believes these plates can tell her the truth both about what happened here in the past and what she is to do now. Who is this powerful woman intent on revenge? It is possible she doesnt know the truth about herself as she works to ensnare the son and heir of the estate, break the factor to her will, seduce the young mans fiancee, and harry the estate owner, Sim Elliot to an early death. This novels genius is to marry the atmosphere of the Border Ballads - stark, poetic and timeless - with a story at once ancient and contemporary, told through the highly charged and erotic Corbie Plates. Written in prose of extraordinary power and beauty, When They Lay Bare is a gripping, dreamlike narrative, at the heart of which is a burning love story and mystery.

A stunning novel set in the stark beauty of Orkney and the heady atmosphere of Penang in the 1930s

Andrew Greig is a storyteller and a poet, and in this new novel both strands of his talent combine to create an enchanting tale set in two very different worlds. In the early nineteen thirties, an ambitious young Scotsman sets out on the long sea voyage to Penang, eager to take up his post running a maternity hospital in the colony, and eager for the new opportunities that will open up for him there. He very quickly makes the acquaintance of two sisters, both very beautiful young women, one looking for a husband, the other married. In the confines of the ship, when conventional morality is shelved for the duration, the seeds of a scandal which will rock the close island community of Penang are sown. Seventy years later, forty-something engineer Edward Mackay, recuperating from illness on the wild isolated island of Orkney, begins to unravel the story of a man he thought he knew: his father, the respectable Doctor Alexander Mackay, now years dead after a long and blameless career. What he discovers astonishes him, and begins to shed light on his own existence.