Carnbeg Piccalilli

by Ronald Frame, Dorothy Stirling (Illustrator)

Ronald Frame returns to his fictional Highlands spa resort, Carnbeg - with forays to twin towns in India and Australia - and comes up with another highly compelling collection of short stories. Travel 'true north' to be entertained by these humane narratives of very diverse lives, some everyday and others far from ordinary.A TV chef who watches helplessly as his career goes into freefall – warring Santa Clauses in rival department stores – a personal make-over with unexpected consequences – the couple who decide to live as 1940s people – the back-story of a gent’s panama hat found in a charity shop. A world-famous violinist makes a discovery in a TA drill hall – a dreaded royal visitor walks into Mr ffinch’s antiques shop – an eminent archaeologist is haunted beyond reason by his own past – a piano teacher finds she has a wunderkind on her hands – a vintage Chanel suit remains frustratingly out of reach for its keenest admirer. The results range from sinister to romantic to tragic to downright farcical. For seasoned devotees, one reading is unlikely to be enough ...

297 pages, Kindle Edition

First published November 1, 2011

About the author

Ronald Frame was born in Glasgow, Scotland in 1953, and educated there and at Oxford. He is the author of thirteen internationally published works of fiction, is an award-winning television and radio scriptwriter, and has recently received international recognition for his short stories set in the fictitious Scottish spa town of Carnbeg.

In 1984 he was joint-winner of the first Betty Trask Prize for fiction. In 1999 his novel The Lantern Bearers was longlisted for The Man Booker Prize and won the 2000 Saltire Award for Scottish Book of the Year.

In August 2001 he delivered the inaugural Saltire Lecture at the Edinburgh International Book Festival, which received wide press coverage. He spoke at the New York Public Library in late October 2001 following appearances at the Toronto International Festival of Authors. The American Library Association named Ronald Frame as winner of the Barbara Gittings Honor Award in Fiction for 2003.