What can take the fire out of a fever, the ache out of loving and the meanness out of a miser? The answer according to Tearlaich is whisky - the ‘water of life’. And when he suggests to Lillian that the islanders should have their own blend - a ‘Bruach Blend’ - Lillian can see his logic.

For Anna, a carefree and gentle child living in a remote community in the Hebrides, a chance meeting with the mysterious and romantic Jimmy Pearl is to take on a dream-like quality as she grows to womanhood and encounters a hard and often cruel adult world. When Anna’s parents die, and her brother, with his new wife, sells the family croft, Anna is forced into a loveless marriage to the cold and heartless Black Fergus. But life has surprises in store for them, including the reappearance of Jimmy Pearl.

The inspiration for the BBC series of the same name. Fresh out of Glasgow Veterinary College, to the young James Herriot 1930s Yorkshire seems to offer an idyllic pocket of rural life in a rapidly changing world. But from his erratic new colleagues, brothers Siegfried and Tristan Farnon, to incomprehensible farmers, herds of semiferal cattle, a pig called Nugent and an overweight Pekingese called Tricki Woo, James find he is on a learning curve as steep as the hills around him.

New doctor Andrew Manson looks forward to his post in a Welsh mining community, but he finds practicing medicine in such primitive conditions very different from his training. He makes friends, but also enemies. First published in 1937, this book was groundbreaking in its treatment of the contentious theme of medical ethics. It is credited with laying the foundation in Great Britain for the introduction of the Nation Health Service a decade later.

As a child, Elizabeth was sent from her war-torn, rather loveless home in London to stay with a big, boisterous family in a small town in Ireland. There she meets Aisling, and begins what becomes a long-lasting friendship. Over the next 20 years, Aisling and Elizabeth's paths will cross and re-cross. As they face their loves, their marriages, and their disappointments, they realise that not all problems will be solved, nor all wishes granted by lighting a penny candle.