Old Mortality

At twilight, a schoolmaster’s solitary walk leads him to a deserted graveyard, where the clink of a hammer breaks the hush. The weathered stones keep alive a fierce memory of Scotland’s religious conflicts.

In Walter Scott’s 1816 historical novel, the story turns to southwest Scotland in 1679, where Covenanter unrest threatens to draw the country into bloodshed. Henry Morton, a young man torn between love for a Royalist woman and the Presbyterian cause, must find his way through loyalties that leave little room for safety or compromise. Around him, conviction hardens into conflict, and the old graves seem to warn that the past is not finished with the living. How far will Morton go when love and conscience demand opposite things?

With centuries of literature, it's inevitable that some will fall through the cracks. We hunt down public domain works and restore them so they're not lost to the world.

Who are we? We're Cairn Press. Our background is in design, publishing, typography, and technology. These skills fuel our mission to create the highest quality Public Domain eBooks available online, at an affordable price. We give them the treatment they deserve; our proprietary process restores books for a better overall user experience in design, readability, and e-reader compatibility.