Shadows and Silhouettes (Book 1) was re-released at the beginning of the month with the promise that the sequel - Book 2 Blanco y Negro would be available from this week. 

Blanco y Negro continues to explore contemporary Spain by asking: What happens when you remove the sky blues, verdant greens and sandy yellows from this hybrid country?

The answer can be found in the contrast of dramatic images and the revelatory words of different travellers as they have arrive on these shores. Download, put your feet up, slow down and enjoy this new book.

Yup, thats right, a NEW updated and revised edition of Silhouettes and Shadows comes out this week and it's free. Usually 2.49 - Shadows and Silhouettes (Book 1 in the series of 4) is downloadable right now to anyone who shares or tweets it this week 

You say Tomay-toes and I say Tomar-toes!
Got an ipad, tablet or smartphone? Then e-Pub is probably your choice? Got a laptop or desktop? Then maybe its PDF. Can't decide? Well, worry not as both are in the same convenient zipped package. E-pub and PDF huddled together for comfort.

Pick a selection of choice quotes from writers on Spain and match them to a series of gorgeous images and a theme begins to emerge. Shadows and Silhouettes is the first theme in a series of 4 that explores Spain by contrasting the written word and the image. Do this, and another Spain becomes visible - one that previously lay hidden. 

Each book takes a different theme, but builds from the previous one. Shadows and Silhouettes introduces the series, Blanco Y Negro (book 2) builds on the theme of light and contrast, whilst book 3: Speaking and Shouting talks about, well...speech. Finally Book 4 deals with harmony and balance in a country that is too often seen as a society in conflict. But these are not text books, they are photo books with succulent words that ooze from the edges of the page. These are books to devour over a glass of something, accompanied by a garlicky olive or two. 

Yup. For the next week its free. All I ask in return is that you share the book. That means send out a tweet or share on Facebook to get a copy. Don't worry if you don't have a twitter account or FaceBook account (really, you don't?) - just let me know and I'll get a copy to you by other means. It's not obligatory to share - it's just a nice thing to do. (Plus it saves you 2.49). 

Emmm, sure. If you prefer. 

Blanco Y Negro comes out at the end of this month. Make sure you are subscribed to the site to be notified. Its bigger and better. and Blanco Y Negro (out Feb 25th 2014) takes the contrasts of Shadows and Silhouettes and investigates Spain from a perspective stripped of colour. Find out what is left when colour is removed from a country that is synonymous with Miro, sunsets and blue skies. You'll be surprised.

Death´s Other Kindom by Gamel Woolsey was not - as popular myth speculates - referring to living in Spain under the leadership of the Partido Popular -  but rather the Spain of 1936 during the immediate aftermath of the July Military Uprising.

Written from the relative safety of their Churriana Cortijo (In Malaga) Woolsey relates how she and her husband - Hispanist Gerald Brenan  (of South of Granada fame) - lived those first few tumultuous months of the civil war, before the invasion by Nationalist forces and the infamous exodus of the city of Malaga.

What gives the book its unique perspective for anyone interested in this revolutionary period of Spanish history, is that unlike other tales of the civil war by foreigners (Orwell, Lee, Bethune) Woolsey treads what she believes is a fine line between the Republicans and Nationalists. She exhibits both sympathy and outrage with her village - her 'pueblo' - as she wobbles precariously on the shaky fence of impartiality.

One unexpected outcome of this posturing, is her lucid depiction of the sadness, frustration and futility of wars as it affects all men irrespective of sides, perhaps referencing her chosen title here - taken as it is from T.S. Eliots poem: The Hollow Men.

As her 'pueblo' attempts to protect, defend, and finally bring to trial their own people, her humanity and compassion guides her though the successive waves of violence and vengeance in each chapter. Whilst the forces of rebellion made ground, allegiances become more fluid, or - as often the case as pressure mounts - set in stone as the war stumbles blindly forward.

It is a moving and intimate portrayal of those crucial few months of 1936, and unlike almost any other account of the war in English, it is told perceptively from someone who not only saw the scars opening on the horizon in front of her, but engaged with those who lives she was connected to, and whose lives were thrown so dramatically into turmoil by such events.

Gamel Woolsey returned again to Spain after the Civil War with Gerald Brenan, but her life as a writer and spiritual Hispanist would be forever eclipsed by the success of her husbands more analytical writings on the origins of conflict and his time living in the Alpujarras. (The Spanish Labyrinth and South of Granada).

Like Brenan, Woolsey was buried in the English Cemetery in Malaga.