As part of the One Book - One Edinburgh citywide reading campaign, where the UNESCO City of Literature Trust is giving away 25,000 free copies of "Kidnapped", we've decided to set some copies free at random locations across the city.

Stevenson is a fantastic storyteller and an Edinburgh lad - "Kidnapped" is a cracking tale of low skulduggery and high adventure!

Find out more at www.cityofliterature.com

RELEASE NOTES:

I found this copy of "Kidnapped" in Dreamcatcher Internet Cafe on South Clerk Street. I was working in the cafe at the time, and found the book lying on a table; and although I supposed that it was probably intended to be picked up by a customer, I snatched it for myself and have recently set about devouring it. Up until now, I had only experienced R.L. Stevenson's "English" work, "Jekyll and Hyde" being the only one of his novels I had read: so I am grateful for the chance to take a look at one of his more local stories, partly because the places depicted in it are so much more familiar than those in "Jekyll and Hyde", but mostly because Stevenson is wise enough to infuse the book with a Scottish element of such strength that it reaches beyond whatever novelty value it might have, and instead serves to reinforce the character of the book as a whole. More specifically -- and most enjoyably -- his decision to take the Jacobite rebellion as the backdrop for the narrative pins a general sense of danger and urgency to a very specific place and time, in a way that takes what would otherwise be little more than a "tall tale" and gives it enough local, factual, and factual credibility to make it as historically believable as it is broadly entertaining. And with all that in store, what better book to select for free distribution in the "One Book, One Edinburgh" campaign?

CAUGHT IN EDINBURGH MIDLOTHIAN SCOTLAND