Jenn Scott

The Men of Warre examines the clothes, weapons and accoutrements of the Scots at war between 1460 and 1600 using a wide range of sources to present a clear picture of the what the highland and lowland Scots were wearing and fighting with in this crucial and turbulent period in Scotland's history. Scott has carefully drawn together a myriad of sources to present a picture of the Scots from the late medieval to the cusp of the early modern period and the material culture of war.

All the Tiny Beauties follows five characters in California as their lives intertwine.All the Tiny Beauties begins with a kitchen fire that sends the reclusive Webster Jackson to the home of his new neighbor, Colleen, who discovers him on her doorstep wearing a lacy peignoir, his house in flames. Unwilling to take responsibility for the lonely eccentric, Colleen reaches out to Webb’s estranged daughter, Debra. She also helps him find a live-in companion, a young adult reeling from the loss of her childhood friend. Moving among perspectives and generations, we see the longings and vulnerabilities that drive and impede these characters as their stories intertwine—Webb’s first love clashing with his last; Colleen embarking on a secret affair with Debra; the older Webb and his young housemate, Hannah, forming a bond over tragedy, guilt, and his passion for baking. Confronting the many ways they’ve failed others as well as themselves, Webb, Colleen, Hannah, and Debra slowly find ways forward and ways out. While exploring the fragile nature of our connections to one another, All the Tiny Beauties asks larger questions about the constraints society imposes that warp and wound, leading us to deny those things that make us wholly ourselves.

This book throws new light on the men who fought for the Stuarts in Scotland from the beginning of the Jacobite cause in 1689 to Glenshiel in 1719 by drawing on the work of historians and a wide range of primary sources and therefore presenting a picture based on the evidence available. I am minded to rise looks at the variety of clothing and weapons used by the different Jacobite armies in this time period as well as their material culture used by them to show their allegiance to the Stuarts and the Jacobite cause. This book will appeal to those interested in the Jacobite Risings reenactors, wargamers, fans of Outlander, anyone with an interest in Scottish clothing from 17th and 18th centuries and the Scottish diaspora who, thanks to a growing interest in family history, are keen to know more about their Scottish heritage.

The characters who populate Jenn Scott’s debut collection are both trapped and adrift. Stuck in dead-end jobs or stagnant relationships or simply caught in the grip of their own inertia, they opt out, act out, and strike out, searching for emotional sustenance in a landscape of pointless patterns and dwindling hopes. Cuttingly clever remarks and excoriating observations act as shields—thrown up to protect an aching vulnerability, a bewildering sense of loss . . . of being lost in a world rife with expectations, where responsibility is ritualistic and meaning elusive. “The beauty of being young was, in fact, the ability to project all that might happen. She recognizes, suddenly, how less grandiose the projection of her plans has become. It’s like she was once standing looking an expanse of field, but now she’s trapped in a hallway hung with too many pastel prints of landscapes that refuse to interest her. It’s as if she’s moved her entire life inside a dental office, minus the gas that sings a person to sleep while their cavities are filled, their roots fixed.” Assumed identities, Russian mail-order brides, pie theft, lost (and found) cleavers, coworkers who commit murder, the sudden ballooning of breasts, conversations with the (surprisingly opinionated) vegetables in a restaurant’s walk-in cooler: in stories sharply funny and deeply poignant, situations that delight and discomfit, Scott explores “the complicated, or simple, ways in which we settle.”