a bitter-sweet, gentle novel, not given to grandstanding or preaching, but shot through with humour and compassion. Totally authentic, agonisingly nostalgic, this poignant everyday story of Fifties folk has the power to lay bare everyone's susceptibility to the ghosts that forever teem around the scenes of our childhood - Daily MailĪ celebration of childhood as well as a mourning for the loss of innocence. The Nautilus, a strange building shaped like the chambered shell of the same name, was built in South London in the early 1930s. the author has set out a rite of passage which will leave few readers unaffected - Spectator

Shena Mackay has brought off something quite rare. Listen now Shena Mackay, Can Books Beat the Stock Market, and American Pioneer Reading Clinic Mariella Frostrup talks to Shena Mackay, the author of Heligoland, about her new short story.

The Orchard on Fire is probably Mackay's most perfect book, produced with a technical adroitness and shapeliness which one can only envy - Guardian

Heligoland by Shena Mackay