100 traditional airs, hornpipes, jigs, reels, schottisches, polkas, and waltzes for soprano or tenor recorders or tin whistle D.

Piping brings happiness and undeniable positive value to our lives... or at least it should. Pipers of every level of experience and ability can feel incredibly frustrated and lost in the dark about an instrument they want to play well, but can't. It doesn't have to be this way. Join me as I guide you through a commonsense approach, which I call the Five Phases of Bagpipe Freedom, to liberate every aspect of your musicianship and rediscover your joy of playing the bagpipes.

The Piper Calls the Tune is an account of the life and works of David Boyd (1902-1989), a significant and highly regarded yacht designer, who experienced both great success and great frustration through his 60 year career. The book reviews Boyd's contribution to the maritime heritage of the Clyde Estuary and celebrates his enduring legacy through the 50 years of close racing and camaraderie enjoyed by his classic Piper One Design fleet. David Boyd FRINA spent his formative years as a yacht designer at Fife's of Fairlie under the guidance of William Fife III. During this period he worked on the lines and design details of many of the most beautiful yachts ever to be launched at the yard. In particular, he became a specialist in respect of the level-rating International classes in the 12, 8, and 6 Metre bands, which were developed to a high level of sophistication during this period. David Boyd moved to Robertson's of Sandbank in 1929 and remained as in-house designer and later Managing Director until 1968. Robertson's yard was one of the best boatyards anywhere in the World during this period. In the post-WW2 years, David Boyd was as famous as any naval architect might become in the UK. His high-profile racing yachts had won some of most prestigious competitions of his era. His 6 Metres won three Seawanhaka Cups, the One Ton Cup, the Marstrand Trophy, six Solent Silver Medals, top-scoring individual boat in the British Americas Cup and more. He could also claim the season's champion in 5.5 Metres and a number of champion Windermere 17s. These winners are, of course, in addition to Boyd's best known work from the 1950s and 1960s - the three sublime, yet polemic 12 Metre yachts designed for the America's Cup. David Boyd was primarily a designer of one-off boats with a common and unique aesthetic. He bore the creative spark of Watson, Barnett, Fife and Mylne through decades of economic depression, conflict and post-war austerity and he was never prepared to sacrifice good looks for marginal gains. Boyd designed just one, one-design class. It carries the pedigree of the larger more glamorous racing boats and is the Piper of our title. The publication year of 2016 marks the 50th birthday of the Piper Class. The Piper story is told from the gestation of the design through to the present day. The Piper Calls the Tune is a nostalgic insight into a wonderful world of inspired designers, beautiful yachts, eccentric owners and skilled craftsmen. It records the memories of a generation of proud old men who have been pleased to revisit the golden age they experienced, before it is swept away in the revisionist accounts of today that sometimes seem to focus only on Fife, Watson and Charles E. Nicholson.

“Kirby has mastered the art of short fiction…A stunning collection from a writer whose talent and creativity seem boundless.” —NPR “Kirby takes joy in subverting the reader’s expectations at every turn. Her characters might be naïve, even reckless, but they aren’t about to be victims: They’re strong, and brave, and nearly always capable of rescuing themselves.” —New York Times Book Review Margaret Atwood meets Buffy in these funny, warm, and furious stories of women at their breaking points, from Hellenic times to today. Cassandra may have seen the future, but it doesn't mean she's resigned to telling the Trojans everything she knows. In this ebullient collection, virgins escape from being sacrificed, witches refuse to be burned, whores aren't ashamed, and every woman gets a chance to be a radioactive cockroach warrior who snaps back at catcallers. Gwen E. Kirby experiments with found structures--a Yelp review, a WikiHow article--which her fierce, irreverent narrators push against, showing how creativity within an enclosed space undermines and deconstructs the constraints themselves. When these women tell the stories of their triumphs as well as their pain, they emerge as funny, angry, loud, horny, lonely, strong protagonists who refuse to be secondary characters a moment longer. From "The Best and Only Whore of Cym Hyfryd, 1886" to the "Midwestern Girl Is Tired of Appearing in Your Short Stories," Kirby is playing and laughing with the women who have come before her and they are telling her, we have always been this way. You just had to know where to look.