Undiscovered Scotland

The Eye of Horus by Ken Lussey (18 June 2024). An atmospheric World War Two thriller with settings that move from the Highlands of Scotland via Gibraltar to Malta. It's June 1943. Bob and Monique Sutherland are on honeymoon in Kyle of Lochalsh when an unexpected visitor arrives to spoil their idyll. They agree to travel to Malta to search for two missing men, a young naval lieutenant and an MI6 officer who has disappeared while looking for him. The aerial siege of the island is over and the tide of war has turned but, after three years of bombing, Malta remains a shattered place.
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The Days of Our Birth by Charlie Laidlaw (27 June 2024). (Amazon paid link.) A book that delves into the intricate bond between Peter and Sarah as they navigate their formative years. Spanning from their sixth birthday through two decades, the narrative unfolds against the backdrop of Sarah’s placement on the autism spectrum. With a blend of humour and poignancy, the book intricately weaves together themes of love and friendship, unravelling the tale of two individuals who grapple with their emotions for each other, even though they remain unacknowledged.
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Lies of the Flesh by F.J. Watson (4 September 2024). (Amazon paid link.) Autumn 1314. In the aftermath of the Scottish victory at the Battle of Bannockburn, the villagers of Warcop wait desperately for the return of loved ones. When brothers Wat and Rob Dickinson bring news of the death of their companion, Adam Fothergill, as they fled home, there is no one to mourn him. But when a monstrous figure is seen in the hills nearby, it seems Adam has returned from the dead to wreak revenge. But for what? A gripping exploration of what happens when identities are challenged within the crucible of war.
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Columba's Bones by David Greig (5 October 2023). (Amazon paid link.) In a bloody, brutal raid, Abbot Blathmac is slain on the steps of his monastery for refusing to give away the location of the sacred relics of St Columba. Following a night of rampage and mayhem, one Viking wakes up the next morning to find himself alone, hungover, and abandoned. He can't swim, there are no boats, and the only surviving monk on the island has taken his sword. With only his wits, he must survive long enough to rejoin his Viking comrades and to find the relics that brought him here in the first place.
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A Song of Winter by Andrew James Greig (29 September 2022). (Amazon paid link.) Edinburgh is basking in an unnaturally warm winter until the snow starts falling. When a student disappears, along with his climate research, and the national government close down all communications, Professor Finlay Hamilton realises there is a link between his own research into dark matter and the freak weather. Suddenly he is in a desperate race to save his wife, Jess, and their young family. His only help is a man from Jess's past, a past he never knew existed. Under the relentless snowfall, only the strong will survive.
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Children of the Mist by Douglas Skelton (6 July 2023). (Amazon paid link.) A memorial service witnessed in the historic Black Wood of Rannoch sets Rebecca Connolly on the trail of a baffling story. Fergus MacGregor told people he was going to Pitlochry for the day. He was never seen again. Five years later his deeply religious mother stills holds a memorial in the place Fergus loved because of its connections to the outlawed MacGregor clan, the Children of the Mist. What happened that day in this last vestige of the great Caledonian forest?
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Nothing Left to Fear from Hell by Alan Warner (6 April 2023). (Amazon paid link.) In the aftermath of the disastrous Battle of Culloden, a lonely figure takes flight with a small band of companions through the mountainous landscapes of the north-west Highlands of Scotland. His name is Charles Edward Stuart: better known today as Bonnie Prince Charlie. In prose that is by turns poetic, comic, macabre, haunting and humane, multiaward-winning author Alan Warner traces the last journey through Scotland of a man who history will come to define for his failure.
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So Many Lives and All of them Are Yours by Ron Butlin (7 September 2023). (Amazon paid link.) After being sacked from his high-power executive job, Morris now has nothing to lose. Determined to devote what time he has left to creating music, his lifelong dream, he returns to his childhood home, ‘to kickstart his life once more – and this time get it right!’ Very soon, however, things start going wrong. Very wrong. Not only does his past catch up with him, but the future that is rushing towards him becomes more threatening by the day. Old bad habits creep back in again. Then he meets Jess.
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Dark Encounters: A Collection of Ghost Stories by William Croft Dickinson (5 October 2023). (Amazon paid link.) Dark Encounters is a collection of classic and elegantly unsettling ghost stories first published in 1963. A spine-tingling collection, these tales are set in the brooding landscape of Scotland, with an air of historic authenticity – often referring to real events, objects and people. From a demonic text that leaves its readers strangled to the murderous spectre of a feudal baron, this is a crucial addition to the long and distinguished cannon of Scottish ghost stories.
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Hex by Jenni Fagan (3 March 2022). (Amazon paid link.) It's the 4th of December 1591. On this, the last night of her life, in a prison cell several floors below Edinburgh’s High Street, convicted witch Geillis Duncan receives a mysterious visitor – Iris, who says she comes from a future where women are still persecuted for who they are and what they believe. As the hours pass and dawn approaches, Geillis recounts the circumstances of her arrest, brutal torture, confession and trial, while Iris offers support, solace – and the tantalising prospect of escape.
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The Sweet Remnants of Summer: An Isabel Dalhousie Novel by Alexander McCall Smith (19 July 2022). (Amazon paid link.) The latest Isabel Dalhousie novel finds our favorite moral philosopher is caught up in a delicate dispute between members of a prominent family as her husband, Jamie, is dragged into his own internecine rivalry. When Isabel is invited to serve on the advisory committee of the Scottish National Portrait Gallery, her husband, Jamie, expresses concern about the demands on her time. Never one to duck an obligation, however, Isabel says she'd be happy to join.
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The Tide Also Takes by R P Carruthers (10 September 2023). (Amazon paid link.) In 1719 a battalion of Spanish soldiers landed on the west coast of Scotland. The Tide Also Takes is a story of adventure, war, intrigue, love and betrayal. It brings to vivid life the destruction of Eilean Donan Castle, the battle of Glenshiel, and, at the novel's very heart, the extraordinary and unexpected love affair between a Spanish officer and the wife of a local laird. Based partly on a Gaelic folk tale as well as historic record, and reflecting moral dilemmas that are universal as they are timeless.
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In a Veil of Mist by Donald S Murray (11 March 2021). (Amazon paid link.) Operation Cauldron, 1952: Top-secret germ warfare experiments are taking place aboard a vessel moored off the Isle of Lewis. Local villagers Jessie and Duncan encounter strange sights on the deserted beach nearby and suspect the worst. And one government scientist wrestles with his own inner anguish over the testing, even if he believes extreme deterrent weapons are needed. When a noxious cloud of plague bacteria is released into the path of a passing trawler, disaster threatens.
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Kinloch Tales: The Collected Stories by Denzil Meyrick (7 September 2023). (Amazon paid link.) Denzil Meyrick’s three Tales from Kinloch are collected here in one paperback volume. From ghostly Vikings, to adventurous voyages, to old scores being settled, these stories are guaranteed to provide a fun-filled escape. The three tales are "A Large Measure of Snow"; "A Toast to the Old Stones"; and "Ghosts in the Gloaming". Denzil Meyrick worked as a police officer, distillery manager, journalist, and company director. He is originally from Campbeltown in Argyll, but now lives on Loch Lomondside.
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Hide and Seek by Ken Lussey (26 May 2023). A fast-paced thriller set in Stirling Castle and more widely across Scotland during World War Two. It’s April 1943. Medical student Helen Erickson is followed from London to her aunt’s farm in Perthshire. What do her pursuers want? Meanwhile Monique Dubois is attending a secret meeting at Stirling Castle when an old adversary is murdered in a chilling echo of a dark episode in the castle’s history. Bob Sutherland and the MI11 team are called in and discover that almost everyone who knew the victim had a motive. Then Helen disappears.
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Sadie, Call the Polis by Kirkland Ciccone (27 October 2022). (Amazon paid link.) In 1976, a heatwave hot enough to melt concrete punishes Scotland. Sadie, Call The Polis is an offbeat story about a Scottish family as seen through the eyes of the indomitable Sadie Relish, whose journey from childhood to adulthood is rendered in hilarious, crushing detail. Her disastrous first date, the late nights at the bus stop with a bottle or two, running away from home, the many hangovers, her first and last job, grief, Covid, and all the drama and darkness squeezed in between.
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The Other Side of Stone by Linda Cracknell (31 March 2021). (Amazon paid link.) This book centres around a Perthshire woollen mill, revisiting it over three centuries through characters as diverse as a 19th Century stone mason and modern-day architect. The primary timeline follows Catharine, a cotton spinner from Paisley and fierce suffragette, who has followed her husband home to the village where he’s taken on a job at the local mill. Both militant members of the Labour movement, it is through her connection to the mill that the interweaving of the other stories is revealed.
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Jump Cut by Helen Grant (28 September 2023). (Amazon paid link.) The Simulacrum is the most famous lost movie in film history – would you tell someone your darkest secrets, just to lay hands on a copy? 104-year-old Mary Arden is the last surviving cast member of a notorious lost film. Holed up in Garthside, an Art Deco mansion reputed to be haunted, she has always refused interviews. Now Mary has agreed to talk to film enthusiast Theda Garrick. The spirit of The Simulacrum walks Garthside by night, and it will turn an old tragedy into a new nightmare...
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The Last Witch of Scotland by Philip Paris (13 April 2023). (Amazon paid link.) Scottish Highlands, 1727. In the aftermath of a tragic fire that kills her father, Aila and her mother, Janet, move to the remote village of Loth. Aila, who was badly burned in the fire, attracts the eye of suspicious and superstitious villagers. Then arrives a motley troupe of travelling entertainers from Edinburgh, led by the charismatic but mysterious Jack, further unsettling peace in the village and stoking something new in Aila. Trouble is brewing, and if Aila and Janet aren't careful, everything may yet end in flames.
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The Projectionist by Kirsti Wishart (25 February 2022). (Amazon paid link.) Seacrest is a seaside town for movie buffs that exists in a perpetual film festival. Luke Howard, keeper of the Cameron Fletcher Archive, devotes himself to the memory of the deceased film critic. Now Fletcher is back from the dead, guest of honour of the 85th Seacrest Film Festival. However, this Fletcher is a fake, an actor hired by a powerful cinema boss determined to turn the town into a multiplex. But Arthur follows his own script and reveals the dangers of a life too much in love with the silver screen...
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Too Near the Dead by Helen Grant (1 July 2021). (Amazon paid link.) For Fen Munro and her fiancé James, it is a dream come true: an escape from London to a beautiful house in the stunning Perthshire countryside. Barr Dubh house is modern, a building with no past at all. But someone walks the grounds, always dressed in lavender. Under a lichenous stone in an abandoned graveyard, a hideous secret lies buried. And at night, Fen is tormented by horrifying dreams. Someone wants Fen’s happiness, and nothing is going to stop them - not even death....
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The Running Wolf by Helen Steadman: Audible Audiobook (8 October 2021). (Amazon paid link.) When a smuggler from Solingen in Germany is imprisoned in Morpeth Gaol in the winter of 1703, why does Queen Anne's powerful right-hand man, the Earl of Nottingham, take such a keen interest? At the end of the 17th century, the ties that bind men are fraying, turning neighbour against neighbour and brother against brother. The Running Wolf takes us deep into the heart of rebel country in the run-up to the 1715 Jacobite uprising.
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Weak Teeth by Lynsey May (4 May 2023). (Amazon paid link.) Ellis’s life has crumbled without warning. Her boyfriend has fallen in love with someone else, her job’s insecure, her bank account’s empty and she has a mouthful of unreliable teeth. During a long, hot Edinburgh summer, Ellis’s world spins out of control. She’s dogged by toothache, her ex won’t compensate her for the flat and somehow she’s found herself stalking his new lover on Facebook. Will Ellis realise before it’s too late that the bite she was born with is worth preserving?
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Arguing with the Dead by Alex Nye (25 July 2019). (Amazon paid link.) The year is 1839, and Mary Shelley - the woman who wrote Frankenstein - is living alone in a tiny cottage on the banks of the river Thames in Putney. As she sorts through her husband's papers she is reminded of their past: the half-ruined villas in Italy, the stormy relationship with Shelley and her stepsister Claire, the loss of her children, the attempted kidnapping of Claire's daughter Allegra from a prison-like convent in Florence. And finally, her husband's drowning.
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The Peacock by Isabel Bogdan (1 March 2021). (Amazon paid link.) Take a dilapidated castle in the Scottish Highlands; add a peacock gone rogue, a group of bankers on a teambuilding trip, an overwhelmed psychologist, a housekeeper with a broken arm, and an ingenious cook; get Lord and Lady McIntosh to try and keep it all together; and top it off with all sorts of animals soon no one will know exactly whats going on. Selling 500,000 copies, Isabel Bogdans book is a big hitter in Germany and now now in English translation it is coming home to roost.
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The House With 46 Chimneys by Ken Lussey (10 November 2020). Life changes dramatically for Kaleb, Jude and Sequoia when they move to live with their aunt in a rural corner of central Scotland. It’s the beginning of April 2020, the early days of the coronavirus lockdown. Three local children they meet – in a socially distanced way – draw them into a two-century old family mystery involving the haunting of the nearby ruins of Dunmore Park. Do they try to right a wrong that was done in 1828, a wrong that has had consequences ever since? Or is doing so simply too dangerous?
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The People's City for the One City Trust (13 January 2022). (Amazon paid link.) Edinburgh is steeped in literary history. To celebrate the city, its literature, and more importantly, its people, Polygon and the One City Trust have brought together writers – established and emerging – to write about the place they call home. Based around landmarks or significant links to Edinburgh each story transports the reader to a different decade in the city’s recent past. Through these stories each author reflects on the changes, both generational and physical, in the city in which we live.
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The Stockholm Run by Ken Lussey (26 May 2022). A fast-paced thriller set largely in Edinburgh and Stockholm during World War Two. It's March 1943. The death of an intruder in a hidden bunker leads to a much larger secret buried beneath Edinburgh Castle. As the mystery unravels, Bob Sutherland and Monique Dubois are sent to Stockholm, a city supposedly at peace in a world at war, to take delivery of a message of critical national importance. Or is it a trap? Can their relationship survive what they uncover? Will they live long enough for that to matter?
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Love in the Time of Bertie by Alexander McCall Smith (8 February 2022). (Amazon paid link.) In the microcosm of 44 Scotland Street, all of life's richness is found. There's Domenica, who has honed her observations of her neighbors; Matthew, whose growing triplets are more than a handful; Bruce, whose challenge as ever is thinking of anything but himself; and Big Lou, who may just have found her shot at romance. And of course, there's young Bertie Pollock, whose starry-eyed explorations of Edinburgh's New Town are a touching reminder that life itself is an adventure and there's always joy to be found.
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The Night Before Morning by Alistair Moffat (1 July 2021). (Amazon paid link.) June 1945. Hitler has triumphed, Britain is under German occupation and America cowers under the threat of nuclear attack. In the dead of night, a figure flits through the ruins of Dryburgh Abbey, searching for a hidden document he knows could change the course of history. The journal he discovers, by a young soldier, David Erskine, records an extraordinary story. When Allied victory seems imminent, Erskine is in Antwerp, where he witnesses a world-changing reversal of fortune as a huge mushroom cloud rises over London.
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Animal Fairm: Illustratit Edition by George Orwell, Thomas Clark, Bob Dewar (30 January 2023). (Amazon paid link.) It didnae seem unco when Napoleon wis seen daunderin aboot the fairmhoose gairden wi a pipe in his mooth... Frae the instant o its first publication ower seeventy year syne, Animal Fairm has come tae be oor socio-political urtext – oor wan-singer-wan-sang, oor collective pairty piece, the script we’re doomed tae keep repeatin... George Orwell’s faur-kent novel Animal Fairm has been translatit intae Scots for the verra first time by Thomas Clark.
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Common Cause by Kate Hunter (1 July 2019). (Amazon paid link.) It's 1915 and Britain is at war as Kate Hunter's sequel to The Caseroom opens on the next stage in the lives of Iza Orr, skilled compositor, and the workers in Edinburgh's print industry. At a time of momentous events, we step alongside Iza as she copes with unexpected complexities of patriotism, women's suffrage, worker victimisation and a historic wartime lockout. Printers are denied reserved occupation status but, with bankruptcies looming, the jobs of Edinburgh's dwindling number of female hand typesetters are on the line.
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The Green Lady by Sue Lawrence (10 March 2022). (Amazon paid link.) 1567, Scotland: no place for a woman. Mary, Queen of Scots, is forced to abdicate in favour of her infant son. She can rely only on the loyalty of her ladies-in-waiting, chiefly Marie Seton. Meanwhile the political turmoil in the country is mirrored behind the walls of beautiful Fyvie Castle. Lilias’s marriage to Marie’s nephew, the ruthlessly ambitious Alexander Seton, goes awry after the birth of yet another daughter. He blames her, and contemplates drastic action. To what lengths will a man go to secure a son and heir?
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Pignut and Nuncle by Des Dillon (24 May 2021). (Amazon paid link.) Des Dillon mixes familiar with surreal to explore the dark side of humanity's soul. Jane Eyre, beloved heroine of Charlotte Bronte's novel, finds herself alone and lost on a stormbound moor. Her only hope comes when she finally stumbles across two men trying to find shelter. There's only one problem, they claim to be King Lear and his faithful fool. Thinking the old man insane, Jane tries to convince him that King Lear is a fictional character while, in turn, Lear thinks Jane is a madwoman.
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Everyday Magic by Charlie Laidlaw (26 May 2021). (Amazon paid link.) Carole Gunn leads an unfulfilled life and knows it. She's married to someone who may, or may not, be in New York on business and the family's deaf cat has just been run over by an electric car. But Carole has decided to do something different. She's decided to revisit places that hold special significance for her. She wants to better understand herself, and whether the person she is now is simply an older version of the person she once was. Instead, she's taken on an unlikely journey to confront her past, present and future.
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The Call of the Cormorant by Donald S Murray (20 October 2022). (Amazon paid link.) This novel is a remarkable ‘unreliable biography’ of Karl Kjerúlf Einarsson: an artist and an adventurer, a charlatan and a swindler. As a child in the windswept, fog-bound Faroe Islands in the late nineteenth century, Karl Einarsson believes he is special, destined for a life of art and adventure. But when his adventures find him in 1930s Berlin, he is forced to reckon with something much bigger than himself. As the Nazis rise to power around him, his wilful ignorance becomes unwitting complicity, even betrayal.
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Happiness is Wasted on Me by Kirkland Ciccone (29 October 2020). (Amazon paid link.) Cumbernauld was built to be the town of the future...that is, if the future looked like a really rubbish episode of Doctor Who. It's also home to Walter Wedgeworth, a child stuck in a uniquely dysfunctional family. When 11-year-old Walter discovers the corpse of a baby inside a cardboard box, he resolves to ignore it. But the child's fate haunts Walter. Walter's journey will lead him from childhood to adulthood; school, college, bereavement, Britpop, his first job, Blackpool, the Spice Girls, and finally...face-to-face with a child killer.
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Home by John MacKay (15 June 2021). (Amazon paid link.) Built for the new age, the house stood boldly upright on the edge of the ocean, nurturing and protecting the family within. It had absorbed the tears and echoed the laughter. The sweeping saga of one family through a momentous century. Different people, divergent lives and distinctive stories. Bound together by the place they called home. But one of them was missing, lost to the world. An unknown grandchild, born to a son who’d gone off to war and never came back. Who is he? Where is he? Will he ever come home?
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Katharina: Deliverance by Margaret Skea (18 October 2017). (Amazon paid link.) Following the death of her mother, five-year-old Katharina is placed in the convent at Brehna. Sixty-five miles away, Martin Luther, a promising young law student, turns his back on a lucrative career in order to become a monk. The consequences of their meeting in 1523 will reverberate down the centuries. A compelling portrayal of Katharina von Bora, set against the turmoil of the Peasant’s War and the German Reformation ... and the controversial priest at its heart.
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The Lost Lights of St Kilda by Elisabeth Gifford (5 March 2020). (Amazon paid link.) 1927: When Fred Lawson takes a summer job on St Kilda, little does he realise that he has joined the last community to ever live on that beautiful, isolated island. During the smmer he falls in love with island woman Chrissie. 1940: Fred has been captured behind enemy lines in France and finds himself in a prisoner-of-war camp. When Fred makes his daring escape, prompting a desperate journey across occupied territory, he is sustained by one thought only: finding his way back to Chrissie.
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The Secret of Ardnish: A Novel by Angus MacDonald (5 May 2022). (Amazon paid link.) A letter from his grandfather mark the beginnings of a journey that leads Peter Angus Gillies from his mundane job in Canada to Ardnish, the land of his forebears, on the rugged and remote west coast of Scotland. As Peter Angus explores the places where his ancestors eked out a living and listens to stories about them, he learns of treasure lost centuries before from a ship transporting French gold to help the Jacobite cause. Completely bewitched by the spell of Ardnish, he sets out to find the hidden gold.
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Dance to the Storm by Maggie Craig (20 February 2020). (Amazon paid link.) Edinburgh, December 1743: Redcoat Captain Robert Catto is between the Devil and the deep blue sea. His investigations have turned up compelling evidence of a real threat posed to the House of Hanover by a plan to restore the House of Stuart to the British throne. His duty is to draw out as many Jacobite supporters as he can find in Scotland's capital and gather evidence against them. The problem is that this risks his personal happiness and the family of the woman he loves.
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Bloody Orkney by Ken Lussey (29 June 2021). Bloody Orkney is a fast-paced thriller set in Scotland during World War Two. It’s November 1942. Bob Sutherland, Monique Dubois and the Military Intelligence 11 team fly in to review security in Orkney, home to one of the most important and most heavily defended naval anchorages in the world. But an unidentified body has been found. It becomes clear that powerful men have things they’d rather keep hidden and MI11’s arrival threatens the status quo. Then Bob stumbles over a ghost from his past and things get far too personal.
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The Everliving Memory of John Valentine by Ross Sayers (30 July 2021). (Amazon paid link.) 2019: It’s Hannah Greenshields’s first day at Memory Lane, a memory clinic in the centre of Edinburgh. She soon learns that Memory Lane possesses advanced technology which allows clients to relive their favourite memories for a substantial fee. 1975: John Valentine, a Memory Lane client, is reliving his wedding day over and over again, hoping to change one key event he can’t forget. However, as proceedings become less and less familiar, John realises his memory isn’t such a safe place after all.
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The Private Life of Spies by Alexander McCall Smith (9 February 2023). (Amazon paid link.) During WW2 there was a rumour that German spies were landing by parachute in Britain, dressed as nuns... Conradin Muller was an unusual spy. He was recruited in June 1943 and sent on his only mission in late September that year. From a highly reluctant German spy who is drawn to an East Anglian nunnery as his only means of escape, to the strange tale of one of the Cambridge spy ring's adventures with a Russian dwarf, these are Alexander McCall Smith's stories from the world of espionage.
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Even the Birds Grow Silent by Alex Nye (26 August 2021). (Amazon paid link.) Meet Death, as you have never met her before. This is collection of narrative fragments told by Death herself. Death feels she gets a very bad press and is keen to tell her side of the story. From Leonard Cohen to Virginia Woolf, to the tragic life of Lady Jane Grey, Death has walked in their shadows and now shares her insights on them. She was there at the dawn of time, when the first cave paintings were created, and she will be with us until the end. However, she does have one final surprise up her sleeve…
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The Sewing Machine by Natalie Fergie (7 February 2019). (Amazon paid link.) It is 1911, and Jean is about to join the mass strike at the Singer factory. For her, nothing will be the same again. Decades later, in Edinburgh, Connie sews coded moments of her life into a notebook. More than 100 years after his grandmother's sewing machine was made, Fred discovers a treasure trove of documents. His family history is laid out before him in a patchwork of unfamiliar handwriting and colourful seams. He starts to unpick the secrets of four generations, one stitch at a time.
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Ghosts in the Gloaming: A Tale from Kinloch by Denzil Meyrick (6 October 2022). (Amazon paid link.) It’s December 1968. Having cheated Sandy Hoynes out of a rowing race and navigation certificate when they were young, Dreich MacCallum makes an unexpected return to Kinloch. With the Girl Maggie awaiting urgent repairs, Hoynes takes to his bed, the memory all too much. When first mate Hamish persuades his skipper to get up and put the fishing boat back into the water, there are unexpected consequences that put Hoynes’ liberty and reputation at risk. Has Dreich won the day again?
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The Tick and the Tock of the Crocodile Clock by Kenny Boyle (3 May 2022). (Amazon paid link.) An aspiring writer from the Southside of Glasgow, Wendy is in a rut. She tries to brighten her call-centre job by shoehorning as many long words as possible into conversations with customers. But her manager isn’t amused by that and Wendy walks out. She finds consolation in a surprise friendship with wild-child painter Cat. It’s just what Wendy needs. Kenny Boyle’s debut novel takes us deep into the psyche of a likeable misfit who treads a fine line between reality and fantasy.‍
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Miss Blaine's Prefect and the Weird Sisters by Olga Wojtas (17 March 2022). (Amazon paid link.) Fifty-something librarian Shona is a proud former pupil of the Marcia Blaine School for Girls. Impeccably educated and an accomplished martial artist, linguist and musician, Shona is selected by Marcia Blaine herself to travel back in time for a crucial mission involving Macbeth, the weird sisters and a black cat. Unsure which version of history she’s in, Shona tries to figure out who she’s here to save. But between playing the Fool and being turned into a mouse, things don’t always go her way.
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Three Fires by Denise Mina (3 August 2023). (Amazon paid link.) In Three Fires, award-winning author Denise Mina re-imagines the 'Bonfire of the Vanities', a series of fires lit throughout Florence at the end of the fifteenth century. Denise Mina brings a modern take to this fascinating historical story - drawing parallels between medieval Florence and the culture wars of the present day. In dramatising the life and last days of Savonarola she explores the neverending tensions between wealth, inequality, and freedom of speech that so dominate our modern world.
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Russian Doll by Lucy Lloyd (8 May 2018). (Amazon paid link.) A smart, romantic novel, set in an alternative contemporary independent Scotland. Shortly after independence, Russia lays claim to a remote part of Scotland. As Russia attempts to manipulate the media, a Scottish radio producer fights back. Despite her best intentions, she falls in love with a Russian diplomat tasked with delivering Scotland into Moscow's hands. As the country progresses towards war, her love affair pits her against Russia, and tests her belief in the man she loves.
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Chrysalis by Jeremy Welch (11 January 2018). (Amazon paid link.) Sebastian is a self-absorbed financier who spends his time wallowing in a social ambiance he despises. When Sebastian is fired from his job, he turns to his ex-lover Zoe who urges him to pursue his passion for writing. Following her advice, Sebastian moves to Amsterdam. Sebastian befriends the ethereal owner of a travelling Spiegeltent called Chrysalis. Sebastian surprises himself by intervening in the assault of a prostitute. So opens the gateway to the underworld of Amsterdam and the possibility of his redemption.
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The Devil Upstairs by Anthony O'Neill (3 September 2020). (Amazon paid link.) If your neighbour was making your life hell, would you call upon the devil? Cat Thomas, a brilliant fraud investigator, has just relocated from Florida to a dreamy flat in historic Edinburgh. Everything seems perfect. Except for the unbelievably noisy wannabe rockstar upstairs. Soon Cat's blissful new life is in ruins. Desperate, she's willing to try anything. When all else fails, she makes an appeal to Satan. And suddenly everything is eerily quiet. But her nightmare has only just begun...
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The Unreliable Death of Lady Grange by Sue Lawrence (19 March 2020). (Amazon paid link.) Edinburgh, January 1732: It's Lady Grange's funeral. Her death is a shock: still young, she'd shown no signs of ill health. But Rachel is, in fact, alive and kicking. She's been brutally kidnapped by the man who has falsified her death - her husband of 25 years, a pillar of society with whom she has raised a family. Her punishment, perhaps, for railing against his infidelity - or for uncovering evidence of his treasonable plottings against the government. A novel based on real events.
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A Christmas Gift by Ruby Jackson (9 October 2014). (Amazon paid link.) The third in a series of books featuring four young women whose lives will be forever changed by WWII. Sally Brewer has always dreamed of stardom. She joins the newly-formed ENSA, the Entertainments National Service Association and is soon raising morale all over the bombed-out city – there is little time for love.
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The Man Who Loved Islands by David F. Ross (20 April 2017). (Amazon paid link.) In the early '80s, Bobby Cassidy and Joey Miller were inseparable; childhood friends and fledgling business associates. Now, both are depressed and lonely, and they haven't spoken to each other in more than ten years. A bizarre opportunity to honour the memory of someone close to both of them presents itself, if only they can forgive ... and forget. Absurdly funny, deeply moving and utterly human, The Man Who Loved Islands is an unforgettable finale to the Disco Days trilogy.
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A Large Measure of Snow: A Tale From Kinloch by Denzil Meyrick (1 October 2020). (Amazon paid link.) It's December 1967, and the town of Kinloch is cut off by heavy snow. With all roads closed, the only way to feed and water the townsfolk is for the fishing fleet to sail to Girvan for much needed supplies. But the skipper of the Girl Maggie, Sandy Hoynes, has a problem. First mate Hamish has, to everyone's astonishment, been awarded a prize by a Glasgow newspaper. Marooned in the town and with one eye on a scoop, their reporter decides to join the fishing crew on their mercy mission.
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The Mermaid and The Bear by Ailish Sinclair (16 October 2019). (Amazon paid link.) Isobell needs to escape. She has to. Her life depends on it. She has a plan and it’s a well thought-out plan to flee her privileged life in London and the cruel man who would marry her, and ruin her, and make a fresh start in Scotland. Her dreams seem to be coming true, until the past catches up with her. Set in the late sixteenth century, at the height of the Scottish witchcraft accusations, The Mermaid and The Bear is a story of triumph over evil, hope through adversity, faith in humankind and of love.
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Across the Bridge by Morag Joss (5 September 2011). (Amazon paid link.) When a bridge collapses in the Highlands, many people are killed. A car hired by a woman tourist was filmed pulling onto the bridge moments before it fell. Now numbered among the missing, the woman seizes her chance to start her life over. Her new path takes her to a wooden cabin on the riverbank, where she seeks rebirth and freedom.
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Stay Mad, Sweetheart by Heleen Kist (13 November 2019). (Amazon paid link.) Data scientist Laura prefers her books to the real world. But when her best friend Emily becomes the victim of horrific cyberbullying, she makes it her all-engulfing mission to track down the worst culprits. Petite corporate financier Suki is about to outshine the stupid boys at her firm. Event planner Claire is left to salvage the start-up's annual conference after her colleague Emily fails to return to work. As the women's paths intertwine, the insidious discrimination they each face comes to light and they join forces to seek revenge.
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How to be both by Ali Smith (28 August 2014). (Amazon paid link.) How to be both is a novel all about art's versatility. Borrowing from painting's fresco technique to make an original literary double-take, it's a fast-moving genre-bending conversation between forms, times, truths and fictions. There's a renaissance artist of the 1460s. There's the child of a child of the 1960s. Two tales of love and injustice twist into a singular yarn.
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A Suitable Lie by Michael J Malone (15 September 2016). (Amazon paid link.) Andy Boyd thinks he is the luckiest man alive. Widowed with a young child, after his wife dies in childbirth, he is certain that he will never again experience true love. Then he meets Anna. Feisty, fun and beautiful, she's his perfect match... And she loves his son, too. When Andy ends up in the hospital on his wedding night, he receives his first clue that Anna is not all that she seems. He ignores it; a dangerous mistake that could cost him everything.
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Festival Fireworks by Ann Burnett (9 January 2020). (Amazon paid link.) Aussie Jill arrives in Edinburgh at Festival time, at the start of a gap year. Unfortunately, her boss at the temporary job she's taken turns out to be her grumpy neighbour, Andrew. As the Festival fireworks explode over the city every night, they start to fall in love. Then Jill has to return suddenly to Australia. Can their romance survive or will the fireworks fizzle and die? Ann Burnett has been writing for many years and covers many genres, including over 100 programmes for BBC children's TV and radio.
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House Of Spines by Michael J Malone (15 September 2017). (Amazon paid link.) A terrifying psychological thriller cum Gothic mystery, as a young man with mental health issues inherits an isolated mansion, where all is not as it seems. Ran McGhie's world has been turned upside down. A young, lonely and frustrated writer, suffering from mental-health problems, he discovers that his long-dead mother was related to one of Glasgow's oldest merchant families and he has inherited Newton Hall, a vast mansion that belonged to his great-uncle.
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2020 by Kenneth Steven (25 May 2017). (Amazon paid link.) In 2020 Britain is at breaking point. In a country sorely divided, what happens to empathy and tolerance, to generosity of spirit? And can hope survive? The country is a bomb waiting to explode. Then it does. As the nightmare unfolds, a myriad of voices from across the political and social spectrum offer wildly differing perspectives on the chaotic events. Thoughtful, compassionate and sometimes provocative, 2020 is a parable for our times.
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Miss Blaine's Prefect and the Vampire Menace by Olga Wojtas (14 February 2020). (Amazon paid link.) The intrepid librarian Shona McMonagle, erstwhile Marcia Blaine Academy prefect and an accomplished linguist and martial artist, finds herself in an isolated French mountain village, Sans-Soleil, which has no sunlight because of its topography. It's reeling from a spate of unexplained deaths, and Shona has once again travelled back in time to help out. Shona is soon drawn into a full-blown vampire hunt, involving even Count Dracula himself.
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Tales for Twilight: Two Hundred Years of Scottish Ghost Stories by Alistair W.J. Kerr (5 October 2023). (Amazon paid link.) Tales for Twilight offers a spine-tingling selection of unnerving tales by writers from James Hogg in the early eighteenth century to James Robertson in the twenty-first. Perhaps it’s because of the tradition of oral storytelling that has stretched over centuries, including poems and ballads with supernatural themes. The golden age was during the Victorian and Edwardian period, but the ghost story has continued to evolve and remains popular to this day.
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Son of a Jacobite by T. J. Lovat (28 November 2019). (Amazon paid link.) Thomas Lovat enters the world on the same day his father departs, killed in action at Culloden. The aftermath will have a profound effect on his life. He suffers from confused identity and heritage as he grows into a young man. Travelling to the Middle East, he meets and marries his first love. Thomas subsequently joins the British Army, then goes to America. As the American Revolution plays out, the tension between Thomas's Jacobite heritage and his duties as an officer come dramatically to the fore.
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The Royal Burgh by Steven Veerapen (3 August 2018). (Amazon paid link.) King James V is dead, and Scotland is thrown into turmoil. Out of favour with their master, Simon Danforth and Arnaud Martin escape the discontent in Edinburgh and travel to Stirling, hoping to find peace. Instead they find murder, and must pit themselves against a shadowy killer. Investigating the brutal death of a mysterious, beautiful woman, Danforth finds himself locking horns with a master criminal whose identity is shrouded in secrecy, but who has his own private army of enforcers.
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The Things We Learn When We're Dead by Charlie Laidlaw (26 January 2017). (Amazon paid link.) A surrealist, sci-fi comedy. When Lorna is run over, she wakes in a hospital in which her nurse looks like a young Sean Connery, she is served wine for supper, and everyone avoids her questions. It soon transpires that she is in Heaven, or on HVN. Because HVN is a lost, dysfunctional spaceship, and God the aging hippy captain. She seems to be there by accident... Or does God have a higher purpose after all?
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By Sword and Storm by Margaret Skea (31 July 2018). (Amazon paid link.) The eagerly-awaited third volume in the Munro saga. 1598. The French Wars of Religion are drawing to an end, with the Edict of Nantes establishing religious freedom everywhere but in Paris. The exiled Adam and Kate Munro are looking forward to a new life free from past troubles, despite their nostalgia for Scotland and the friendship of the Montgomeries. But when the family are called to court they find that religious tensions remain high, and Paris holds dangers as well as delights.
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The Last Blast of the Trumpet by Marie Macpherson (24 August 2020). (Amazon paid link.) In this final installment of her trilogy about the fiery reformer John Knox, Macpherson tells the story of a man and a queen at one of the most critical moments in Scottish history. Knox returns to a Scotland on the brink of civil war. Victorious, he feels confident of his place leading the reform until the charismatic young widow, Mary Queen of Scots returns to claim her throne. She challenges his position and initiates a ferocious battle of wills as they strive to win the hearts and minds of the Scots.
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The Aeronaut's Guide to Rapture by Stuart Campbell (19 May 2016). (Amazon paid link.) Three people in three countries in three different eras. Ursule in 1864 lives the life of a kitchen skivvy in Paris. Dexter in 1965 is an American GI in Vietnam. Dante in 2015 is a Catholic priest in Palermo, Sicily. For Ursule the Prussians are closing in. For Dexter it's the Vietcong. For Dante it is the mafia. How can they escape but, more than that, how can misery become rapture?
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Ghost by Helen Grant (19 February 2018). (Amazon paid link.) Langlands House is haunted, but not by the ghost you think. Augusta McAndrew lives on a remote Scottish estate with her grandmother, Rose. For her own safety, she hides from outsiders, as she has done her entire life. Visitors are few and far between - everyone knows that Langlands House is haunted. One day Rose goes out and never returns, leaving Augusta utterly alone. Then Tom McAllister arrives - good-looking and fascinating, but dangerous. What he has to tell her could tear her whole world apart.
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Sight Unseen: A Sarah Sutherland Thriller by Sandra Ireland (13 August 2020). (Amazon paid link.) Sarah Sutherland wanted to be an archaeologist but now she is struggling to cope with the demands of work and caring for her elderly father. Her fascination with the past still remains, and she feels a special affinity with Alie Gowdie, the Kilgour Witch, who lived in Sarah's cottage until her unjust execution for sorcery. As Alie and Sarah's stories collide, can Sarah uncover the truth in order to right a centuries old wrong? And what else might modern-day Kilgour be hiding?
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A Book of Death and Fish by Ian Stephen (18 June 2015). (Amazon paid link.) Peter MacAulay sits down to write his will. The process sets in motion a compulsive series of reflections: a history of his own lifetime and a subjective account of how key events in the post-war world filter through to his home, Stornoway. He reveals his passions for history, engines and fish, and witnesses changing times - and things that don't change - in the Hebrides.
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The Walrus Mutterer by Mandy Haggith (21 March 2018). (Amazon paid link.) Northern Britain, Iron Age. Rian, a carefree young woman and promising apprentice healer, is enslaved by a spiteful trader and forced to make a perilous sea voyage. They are in search of the fabled hunter known as the Walrus Mutterer, to recover something once stolen. The limits of Rian's endurance are tested not only by the cruelty of her captor, but their mysterious fellow passenger Pytheas The Greek and the merciless sea that constantly endangers both their mission and their lives.
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The Daughter of Lady Macbeth by Ajay Close (16 February 2017). (Amazon paid link.) Freya and Frankie's longing for a baby has put their marriage under strain. IVF is their last hope but how do you bring a child into the world if you don't know who you are? Freya's mother Lilias (an actress on and off stage) will tell her nothing about her father, not even his name. When Freya signs on at a fertility clinic, she discovers a new capacity for deception in herself, while Lilias is forced to confront the limits of pretence.
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What We Did in the Dark by Ajay Close (13 February 2020). (Amazon paid link.) "I made what may be called a rash and foolish marriage to a man I scarcely knew. In reality... it was a desparately rational act." 1904: Cathie longs for adventure. A whirlwind romance with soldier and artist Herbert Jackson offers this and more, but Herbert is violently jealous and she is soon fighting for her freedom - and her life. A fictionalised account of Catherine Carswell's first marriage, What We Did in the Dark is a compelling portrait of a trail-blazing writer.
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The Wolves of Langabhat by D.A. Watson (2 August 2015). (Amazon paid link.) Five old friends come to Lewis. Cal's stag is the perfect way for them to reunite, and comes as a welcome distraction for Ian, the troubled musician tormented by his own twisted existence. As a giant hill dweller with murder on his mind stalks the group, something very strange is happening out at the ancient Calanais Standing Stones, and an inhuman horror from the distant past begins to stir.
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In the Blink of an Eye by Ali Bacon (11 April 2018). (Amazon paid link.) In1843, Edinburgh artist, David Octavius Hill, is commissioned to paint the portraits of 400 ministers who have broken away from the Church of Scotland. Only when he meets Robert Adamson, an early master of the art of photography, does this daunting task begin to look feasible. Hill is soon bewitched by the art of light and shade. He and Adamson become the darlings of Edinburgh society, immortalising people and places with their subtle and artistic images. In the Blink of an Eye is a re-imagining of Hill’s life.
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The Adventures of John Carson in Several Quarters of the World by Brian Doyle (13 April 2017). (Amazon paid link.) The young Robert Louis Stevenson, living in a boarding house in San Francisco while waiting for his beloved's divorce from her feckless husband, dreamed of writing a soaring novel about his landlady's globe-trotting husband. Brian Doyle brings Stevenson's untold tale to life, braiding the adventures of seaman John Carson with those of a young Stevenson, wandering the streets of San Francisco, gathering material for his fiction.
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Ardnish: A Novel by Angus MacDonald (9 July 2020). (Amazon paid link.) Ardnish, the Highlands, 1944. During his 85 years Donald John Gillies has witnessed much - world wars, the loss of family, and the daily struggles of a small remote community. His mind travels back to South Africa in 1901, where he fought as a Lovat Scout during the Boer War, and where he met the woman who was the love of his life. Now he is dying. An unexpected visitor arrives at Ardnish. making it more imperative then ever for DJ to come to terms with the past while there is still time.
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Peace, Love & Petrol Bombs by D. D. Johnston (21 July 2011). (Amazon paid link.) Wayne Foster is fed up. How long can you work a dead-end job as a full-time burger-flipper in a small town in Scotland before you start to wonder what comes next? Rife with dry wit and disaffected humor, Peace, Love, and Petrol Bombs is the perfect antidote to "serious" political fiction.
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The Studio Game by Peter Burnett (22 November 2012). (Amazon paid link.) Guy Poynting's lover is dead and she has left 58 artworks that are increasing in price each day. Guy's mission is to satisfy his lover's last wishes and destroy all 58 pieces, before the last one can be sold for the most astronomical sum of all. Set in contemporary galleries, studios and offices, The Studio Game portrays an art world in danger of imploding.
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The Cyber Puppets by Angus McAllister (15 May 2018). (Amazon paid link.) His life was like a soap opera, but that was only the start of his troubles... Scott Maxwell was worried. Not about his wife Fiona's unfaithfulness, or about his brother-in-law Wilson Laird's scheming. Scott was more concerned about his lack of free will, his frequent memory lapses, and the fact that no-one noticed when his father-in-law Hector was replaced by an imposter. And when the reality around him collapsed, plunging him into a devastated future world, it was time for Scott to be seriously alarmed!
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The Crazy Psychologist by Miller Caldwelln (28 August 2015). (Amazon paid link.) Dr Angie Lawrence is appointed Director os the new Hazlenut Assessment Centre for difficult adolsescents on theisland of Rousay in Orkey. Her husband Sam is an artist delighted to be on Orkney. But Sam is becoming increasingly concerned about Angie's unorthodox treatment plans, and events begin to reveal her tragic background. Can Angie find herself before it is too late?
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Churchill's Angels by Ruby Jackson (23 May 2013). (Amazon paid link.) It is 1939 and in the town of Dartford, Grace, Sally and twins Daisy and Rose, are determined to do their bit when war is declared. Grace, desperate to get away from her sad home life, signs up for the Land Army. Sally’s dream of stage school is thwarted by the war, but she finds hope in an unexpected place. This is the first in a series of novels about four female friends during World War Two.
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The Backstreets of Purgatory by Helen Taylor (12 July 2018). (Amazon paid link.) Finn Garvie’s life is one spectacular mess. He spends most of his time in a makeshift Glasgow studio, failing to paint his degree portfolio, while his girlfriend Lizzi treats him like one of her psychology patients. To top it all, Finn is worried that someone is hanging around, spying on him, laughing at him and eating his leftover curry. Things take a turn for the strange when he finally encounters the person who’s been bugging him, and it seems to be none other than Caravaggio himself, Finn's all-time hero.
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Last Train to Waverley by Malcolm Archibald (4 August 2014). (Amazon paid link.) March 1918. The Germans launch their final major offensive of the war and push the British back thirty miles. One unit of the 20th Royal Scots are cut off. This book follows the personal dilemmas of Douglas Ramsay, the officer in charge as he leads the survivors back through the German lines to try and reach the always moving British positions.
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Down to the Sea by Sue Lawrence (21 February 2019). (Amazon paid link.) When Rona and Craig buy a large Victorian house up from Edinburgh's Newhaven district once teeming with fishing boats they plan to renovate and set it up as a luxury care home. But something is not quite right: disturbing sounds can be heard when the sea mists swirl; their unpredictable neighbour makes it clear that the house was not always a happy family home. And their characterful' historic pile has a gloomy cellar harbouring relics from days gone by. Meanwhile, back in the 1890s...
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The Space Between Time by Charlie Laidlaw (20 June 2019). (Amazon paid link.) Emma Maria Rossini appears to be the luckiest girl in the world. She's the daughter of a beautiful and loving mother, and her father is one of the most famous film actors of his generation. She's also the granddaughter of a rather eccentric and obscure Italian astrophysicist. But as her seemingly charmed life begins to unravel, and Emma experiences love and tragedy, she ultimately finds solace in her once-derided grandfather's theorem on the universe.
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Wave Me Goodbye by Ruby Jackson (7 November 2013). (Amazon paid link.) The second in the "Churchill's Angels" series takes up the story of orphan Grace. For her, the war is a chance to start afresh. She’s always has a soft spot for Sam Petrie, brother of Daisy and Rose, but realising that he is in love with their friend Sally, she puts her own feelings aside, and signs up for life as a Land Girl.
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The Other Mrs Walker by Mary Paulson-Ellis (23 March 2017). (Amazon paid link.) An old lady dies alone and unheeded in a cold Edinburgh flat on a snowy Christmas night. A faded emerald dress hangs in her wardrobe. A few days later a middle-aged woman arrives back in the city she thought she’d left behind. She finds herself a job at the Office for Lost People, tracking down the families of those who have died neglected and alone. But what Margaret Penny cannot yet know, is just how entangled her own life will become in the death of one lonely stranger.
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The Danger of Life by Ken Lussey (12 August 2024). (Amazon paid link.) It’s October 1942. Group Captain Robert Sutherland's first week in charge of Military Intelligence 11's operations in Scotland is not going smoothly. An investigation into a murder at the Commando Basic Training Centre in the Highlands take an even darker turn that draws Bob in personally. He is also trying to discover who was behind an attempt to steal an advanced reconnaissance aircraft; and then Monique Dubois in MI5 asks for his help with an operation of hers in Glasgow that has gone badly wrong.
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The Danger of Life by Ken Lussey (12 August 2024). (Amazon paid link.) It’s October 1942. Group Captain Robert Sutherland's first week in charge of Military Intelligence 11's operations in Scotland is not going smoothly. An investigation into a murder at the Commando Basic Training Centre in the Highlands take an even darker turn that draws Bob in personally. He is also trying to discover who was behind an attempt to steal an advanced reconnaissance aircraft; and then Monique Dubois in MI5 asks for his help with an operation of hers in Glasgow that has gone badly wrong.
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John McPake and the Sea Beggars by Stuart Campbell (19 June 2014). (Amazon paid link.) John McPake, has a diagnosis of schizophrenia. Soon after his marriage fell apart he started hearing voices and moved into an Edinburgh hostel for men with mental health problems. An earlier obsession with the works of Breughel develops into a full blown delusion, and he assumes the personna of Johannes, a 16th century Dutch weaver.
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One Sweet Moment by Maggie Craig (9 March 2015). (Amazon paid link.) Edinburgh—1822. The city is at the height of its power. Alongside the eager students and high-class society, however, lies the Old Town. There, prostitutes and resurrection men ply their trade. Catriona “Kate” Dunbar lives in the Old Town with her young brother Andrew. Both are slaves in all but name to their grasping aunt and abusive uncle, Chrissie and Michael Graham.
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The Other Monarch of The Glen by Peter Kerr (26 November 2017). (Amazon paid link.) A quirky Caledonian caper from the bestselling author of Snowball Oranges. Lord Strathsporran, the chinless-wonder laird of a Highland estate, plays host to a motley mix of international house guests who are paying sweetly to join him on a grouse-shoot. Fortune favours the devious when the seriously skint laird and two of his visitors juggle their disparate skills to pull off what promises to be an extremely lucrative scam. But lucrative for whom?
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Dandy Gilver and a Spot of Toil and Trouble by Catriona McPherson (13 July 2017). (Amazon paid link.) Scotland, 1934. Aristocratic private detective Dandy Gilver arrives at Castle Bewer, at midsummer, to solve the tangled mystery of a missing man, a lost ruby and a family curse. The Bewer family's latest wheeze to keep the wolf from the door is turning the castle keep into a theatre. Meanwhile, Dandy and her sidekick Alec Osborne begin to unravel the many secrets of the Bewers and find that, it's behind the scenes where the darkest deeds are done.
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Silma Hill by Iain Maloney (20 May 2015). (Amazon paid link.) A fast-paced historical thriller where a rural village is ripped apart by accusations of witchcraft. The Reverend Burnett, the unpopular minister at Abdale, lives with his sixteen year old daughter Fiona who he treats no better than a servant. Behind the manse lies Silma Hill, crowned with a circle of ancient standing stones. An old pagan symbol is found, and death follows.
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As the Women Lay Dreaming by Donald S Murray (8 November 2018). (Amazon paid link.) In the small hours of 1 January 1919, the cruellest twist of fate changed the lives of an entire community. Tormod Morrison was there. He was on board HMY Iolaire when it smashed into rocks and sank, killing some 200 servicemen on the very last leg of their long journey home from war. Two decades later, Alasdair and Rachel are sent to the windswept Isle of Lewis to live with Tormod in his traditional blackhouse home, a world away from the Glasgow of their earliest years.
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Fallow by Daniel Shand (17 November 2016). (Amazon paid link.) At the heart of this tense and at times times darkly comic novel is the relationship between two brothers bound by a terrible crime. Paul and Mikey are on the run, apparently from the press surrounding their house after Mikey s release from prison. His crime child murder, committed when he was a boy. As they travel, they move from one disturbing scenario to the next, eventually involving themselves with a bizarre religious cult.
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His Father's Son by Tony Black (15 May 2014). (Amazon paid link.) Australia is the Lucky Country, and Joey Driscol knows it. It's a far cry from his native Ireland, but he believes this is the place he and his wife can make a new life and forget the troubles of the past. And for a time, they do just that. This is a touching and beautiful story of a family struggling to come to terms with their past, their present and an uncertain future.
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Fulfilment by Anne Stormont (3 May 2020). (Amazon paid link.) The path of true love rarely runs smoothly. When former Edinburgh police detective Jack Baxter met local author and crofter Rachel Campbell on the Scottish island of Skye, they fell in love. It was a second chance at happiness for both of them. They both had emotional baggage. Jack helped Rachel cope with unimaginable grief after the death in combat of her soldier son, and Rachel was there for Jack after a criminal with a grudge almost ended his life. Fulfilment is the third and final part in Rachel & Jack: The Skye Series.
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The Finest Years & Me by Mark Woodburn (1 October 2015). (Amazon paid link.) It is 1942, and the war is not going well for Britain. Winston Churchill faces enemies across the world, inside his own parliament, and within his very body and soul. His former "batman" Jamie Melville, having left London in 1919 to build a life of his own, has been struck with bitter tragedy. It takes an unexpected proposal from the Minister of Information to return Jamie to London, to stand beside his old colonel at his time of greatest need.
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The Blogger Who Came in from the Cold by Gordon Lawrie (12 June 2018). (Amazon paid link.) A romantic spy comedy set in contemporary Edinburgh. Danny Marwick is a 'blogger'. But if his blogging is world-class, his song-writing is awful. So, too, is his love life. He's approached by a mysterious woman who offers him a lot of money to write holiday brochures for unlikely destinations. Somehow the two of them take to each other. In no time at all he's caught up in a world of spies where nobody is quite what they seem, and he finds his life in real danger...
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The Spider and the Stone: A Novel of Scotland's Black Douglas by Glen Craney (27 October 2013). (Amazon paid link.) As the 14th century dawns, Scotland’s survival hangs by a spider’s thread. Edward Longshanks of England schemes to annex the ancient northern kingdom to his Plantagenet realm. But one frail, dark-skinned lad stands in the brutal monarch’s path. James Douglas is cherished by his fellow Scots as the Good Sir James. Yet his daring raids across the border inflict such havoc that the English brand him the Black Douglas and nearly bankrupt their treasury to capture him.
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The Jewel by Catherine Czerkawska (5 May 2016). (Amazon paid link.) A historical novel about Robert Burns' wife, Jean Armour. The Jewel is set largely during the dramatic years of their courtship in Mauchline, their married life at Ellisland and in Dumfries, and Robert's early death, all against a background simmering with political intrigue and turmoil. How Jean lived with - and frequently without - her famous husband is surely Scotland's greatest love story.
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Island of Wings by Karin Altenberg (31 March 2011). (Amazon paid link.) On the ten-hour sailing west from the Hebrides to the islands of St Kilda, everything lies ahead for Lizzie and Neil MacKenzie. Neil is to become the minister to the small community of islanders and Lizzie, his new wife, is pregnant with their first child.
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Chiff Chaff by David Barnard (4 January 2018). (Amazon paid link.) Alexander A. Alexander doesn't have a watch, doesn't have a faether. Ephraim doesn't need a faether but needs that watch. Mister Flett has something they both want. Poor Mister Flett? In this original book, David takes stock of life through the eyes of 16-year-old narrator Alexander A. Alexander in part one, `Chiff', and then as a 27 year old in part two, `Chaff'. The book takes readers on a comedic and childlike journey with twists and turns and teases like the West Mainland coast road.
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The Making of Mickey Bell by Kellan MacInnes (15 September 2016). (Amazon paid link.) Two pivotal weeks in the life of Mickey Bell: HIV, on the dole, living in the high flats in Drumkirk. Mickey's got a secret: he's been climbing Scotland's highest mountains, the Munros. When Mickey's ex, Jonnie, grasses him to the benefit fraud hotline, Mickey runs away. Accompanied by Tyke a wee collie dug and pursued by an investigator from the DSS, Mickey sets out to climb his last Munro.
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A Capital Union by Victoria Hendry (29 August 2013). (Amazon paid link.) Einburg, 1942. Newlywed Agnes Thorne is struggling with married life in the big city and a husband more determined to fight for Scottish independence than against Hitler. His obsession makes Agnes a reluctant participant in the nascent nationalist movement, With the turbulent times causing ever greater stresses, Agnes is about to make a discovery that will change the course of her life forever.
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The Posy Ring by Catherine Czerkawska (12 April 2018). (Amazon paid link.) When antiques seller Daisy Graham inherits an ancient house on the Hebridean island of Garve, she is daunted by its size and isolation. She is attracted to Cal Galbraith, who is showing an evident interest in the house and its new owner, yet she s suspicious of his motives with good reason, it seems. In parallel with their story runs that of sixteenth-century cousins Mateo and Francisco, survivors from the ill-fated Spanish Armada who find safe passage to the island.
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The Gryphon at Bay by Louise Turner (9 March 2017). (Amazon paid link.) It is a year after the old king’s death, and his son now sits upon the throne. Hugh, 2nd Lord Montgomerie has achieved great things in this short time. He’s been granted a place on the Privy Council, and given authority in the King’s name throughout Lennox and the Westland. Success is a double-edged sword. The old king’s murder has left its scars and there’s rebellion in the Westland. Now Montgomerie must choose between his king and loyalty to his kinsmen, the Darnley Stewarts, treading a dangerous path between pragmatism and treason.
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Dark Loch by Charles P. Sharkey (23 October 2014). (Amazon paid link.) Dark Loch is an epic tale of the effects of the First World War on the lives of the residents of a small Scottish rural community. The main characters are the tenant crofters who work the land leased to them by the Laird. The crofters live a harsh existence in harmony with the land and the changing seasons, unaware of the devastating war that is soon to engulf Europe.
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Her Sister's Gift by Isabel Jackson (18 February 2016). (Amazon paid link.) When Isa's little sister is killed in a rail accident she carries the guilt for the rest of her life. As Isa grows up, more tragedy strikes: her mother dies of a broken heart after giving birth to a stillborn son, and her father finds solace in heavy drinking. Isa moves away, but when her father returns home from the First World War paralysed and suffering memory loss, she must return home to take care of her family once more.
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The Amber Seeker by Mandy Haggith (21 March 2019). (Amazon paid link.) Northern Britain, Iron Age. Pytheas of Massalia, the famed Greek explorer, roves the icy northern lands of Celtic Britain and beyond, in search of amber and other precious goods. He also craves another encounter with Rian, the slave he fell in love with. But Rian won't give up her freedom, without a fight. Will Pytheas succeed in finding what he set out for? In the second volume of this trilogy, Mandy Haggith takes on an epic saga ranging from the Sub-Arctic to the Mediterranean.
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An Experiment in Compassion by Des Dillon (14 March 2011). (Amazon paid link.) An Experiment in Compassion shifts between Stevie's life as an alcoholic and his sober life where he forges a relationship with his girlfriend and estranged son. Encompassing a myriad of characters and their stories, this book provides an emotional and intense insight into the world of alcoholism whilst exploring the themes of revenge and forgiveness.
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The Treacle Well by Moira Forsyth (21 May 2015). (Amazon paid link.) Daniel and Caroline are closest to each other, twins for whom the rest of the world is always distant. After the death of their mother and their father's remarriage they are sent to separate boarding schools, then a dramatic accident when they are students divides them again. The repercussions last for years, as they cut themselves off from the relatives who raised them.
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The Mile by Craig Smith (21 November 2013). (Amazon paid link.) It’s a week before 2014’s referendum on Scottish independence. Three friends: a nationalist, a unionist and a swing-voter meet for a pub crawl down Edinburgh’s historic Royal Mile. Can Ian convince Euan to vote for independence or is he just gambling with all their futures? Will Euan’s defence of the union break Ian’s resolve, or is he just hanging on to another struggling marriage?
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Bella's Betrothal by Anne Stenhouse (25 September 2013). (Amazon paid link.) Set in Edinburgh in 1826. While she is travelling north to find sanctuary from malicious gossip, Lady Isabella Wormsley’s room in a Dalkeith inn is invaded by handsome Scottish Laird, Charles Lindsay. Charles has uncovered a plot to kidnap her, but Bella wonders if he isn’t a more dangerous threat.
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The Fast Men by Tom McNab (19 November 2015). (Amazon paid link.) Butch Cassidy and Sundance make way, here come Buck Miller and Billy Joe Speed, the fastest men in the West, but not with their guns. With their coach and mentor, the Honorable Professor Moriarty, they con their way from Kansas City to Mexico in 1870s America. They don't play by the rules and sometimes only their vaunted speed gets them out of town ahead of the lynch mob.
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Another Time, Another Place by Jessie Kesson (31 May 2017). (Amazon paid link.) A new edition of a Scottish classic. In the summer of 1944, three Italian prisoners of war are billeted in a remote village in the north-east of Scotland. For most of the locals, their arrival is of little interest. But for the young farm-worker's wife who has to look after them, the Italians bring with them a tantalising glimpse of another, more exotic world. A moving portrayal of the tragic consequences of a clash of cultures, from one of Scotland's finest authors.
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The Inn at the Edge of the World by Alice Thomas Ellis (16 August 2012). (Amazon paid link.) Five strangers gather at Eric's inn on a remote Hebridean island after he advertises in the London weeklies for "Christmas at the edge of the world." Each has their own reasons for escaping the usual festivities, but the refuge of the island is complicated as Eric's wife Mabel flounces out at the last minute and the locals and visitors mingle and clash.
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The Key-Stone Of The Bridge by Craig Meggy (6 June 2014). (Amazon paid link.) Set in the highlands of Scotland, in a remote glen in the grip of mid-winter, four old friends have shelved their differences and dropped off the grid on one vital mission. They have gathered together, sheltered in a mountain bothy with a plan. To fulfill a last request, and scatter the ashes of their friend on the adjacent mountain; they had no idea of the consequences.
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The Ice Twins by S. K. Tremayne (29 January 2015). (Amazon paid link.) A year after one of their identical twin daughters died in an accident, Angus and Sarah Moorcraft move to the tiny Scottish island, hoping to put together the pieces of their shattered lives. But when their surviving daughter claims they have mistaken her identity their world comes crashing down once again. What really happened on that fateful day one of their daughters died?
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A House Divided by Margaret Skea (15 October 2015). (Amazon paid link.) Scotland 1597. The truce between the Cunninghame and Montgomerie clans is fragile. And for the Munro family, living in hiding under assumed names, these are dangerous times. While Munro risks his life daily in the army of the French King, the spectre of discovery by William Cunninghame haunts his wife Kate. A sweeping tale of compassion and cruelty, treachery and sacrifice, set against the backdrop of a religious war, feuding clans and the Great Scottish Witch Hunt of 1597.
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The Pheasant Plucker by Bill Daly (15 July 2013). (Amazon paid link.) Once you've got your tongue round the not-to-be-Spoonerised title (no point in alarming your granny when she asks what's that book you can't put down) you'll find this thriller is a superb read - pacy, witty, sophisticated and for good measure pretty informative about the south of France and the city of Montpellier, where most of it is set. Unlikely, improbable, but who's caring?
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The Highland Lass by Rosemary Gemmell (24 September 2015). (Amazon paid link.) Eilidh Campbell returns to her Scottish roots from America with one burning ambition: to discover the identity of her real father. But her mother's past in Inverclyde is a mystery with family secrets, a book of Robert Burns' poems with a hidden letter and a photograph link to the Holy Loch at Dunoon when the American Navy were in residence.
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Scotland the Brave: A Tragedy by Ivar Alastair Watson (19 June 2014). (Amazon paid link.) A contemporary novel featuring the running down of the Clyde shipbuilding industry and the question of Scottish independence. Watson's fictional story is highly relevant to the current situation in Scotland and takes, as its starting point, the murder of Charlie Armstrong in 1950s Inchnadamph.
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The Liberation of Celia Kahn by J. David Simons (17 January 2011). (Amazon paid link.) Glasgow, 1915. Set against the background of anti-war sentiment and a revolution brewing in Russia, a young Jewish woman from the Gorbals gains her first taste for protest. Distraction comes with a love affair, exposing her to the prospect of a new life in communal settlements taking root in British-mandate Palestine.
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Tombstoning (Paperback) by Doug Johnstone (3 Aug 2006). (Amazon paid link.) Your best mate just fell off a cliff in mysterious circumstances and you were the last person to see him alive, what do you do? Well, if you're David Lindsay from Arbroath, you get the hell out of there and don't return...
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Flanagan's Run by Tom McNab (17 July 2014). (Amazon paid link.) It is depression-era America and notorious huckster, Flanagan, plans the ultimate race. At the starting line 2,000 audacious hopefuls line up from every walk of life and all ends of the globe, each with something to prove. Their different stories, ambitions and dreams converge through a shared determination which will inspire you to push on to the finishing line.
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Face the Wind and Fly by Jenny Harper (19 January 2014). (Amazon paid link.) Kate Courtenay is a wind farm engineer who finds herself in a tricky position. After fifteen happy years of marriage, Kate discovers that her charismatic novelist husband is spending more and more of his time with a young fan. She throws herself into her work, a controversial wind farm that’s stirring up tempers in the local community.
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The Casual Vacancy by J. K. Rowlingn (27 September 2012). (Amazon paid link.) J. K. Rowling's much anticipated first adult novel. When Barry Fairbrother dies in his early forties, the town of Pagford is left in shock. Pagford is, seemingly, an English idyll, with a cobbled market square and an ancient abbey, but what lies behind the pretty facade is a town at war. Rich at war with poor, teenagers at war with their parents, wives at war with their husbands, teachers at war with their pupils...
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Lord James by Catherine Hermary-Vieille (6 December 2010). (Amazon paid link.) A well told historical novel recounting the story of James Hepburn, 4th Earl of Bothwell. It focuses on his intense and deeply ill fated relationship with Mary Queen of Scots that culminated with their ill judged marriage. Their story is one of the great tragedies of Scottish history, and this book brings it vividly to life.
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The Caseroom by Kate Hunter (31 May 2017). (Amazon paid link.) Edinburgh is at the heart of Britain's print industry and St Leonards and Canonmills ring with the clamour of print works. Determined to follow her father and older brothers into the print trade, Iza Ross enters the caseroom of Ballantynes' Pauls works in Causewayside as a callow thirteen-year old.Set in the thick of workers lives in Edinburgh s thriving print industry, The Caseroom follows Iza into the arcane world of the caseroom where she learns the intricacies of a highly-skilled trade.
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The Incident by Kenneth Macleod (5 April 2012). (Amazon paid link.) "Certainly there are ghosts in these towers. For me they are the ghosts of two children. And even now - ten years later and seven hundred miles away - I still wake most nights with the muffled echo of their cries in my ears and the weight of their deaths on my conscience..."
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The Likeness by Bill Kirton (24 October 2016). (Amazon paid link.) Aberdeen, 1841. Woodcarver John Grant has been asked to create a figurehead to feature onstage in the nautical melodramas of a newly-arrived theatre group. Simultaneously, he’s also trying to unravel the mystery of the death of a young woman, whose body has been found in the filth behind the harbour’s fish sheds. His loving relationship with Helen Anderson, which began in The Figurehead, has grown stronger but, despite the fact that they both want to be together, she is uneasy about the restrictions of conventional marriage.
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The Silver Bough by Lisa Tuttle (5 July 2012). (Amazon paid link.) A superb novel in which reality drifts into folklore. Appleton is a small town nestled on the coast of Scotland. In a hidden orchard a golden apple dangles from a silver bough, an apple believed lost for ever. The apple is part of a legend, promising either eternal happiness to the young couple who eat from it secure in their love - or a curse, for those who take its gift for granted.
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The Last Tour of Archie Forbes by Victoria Hendry (16 July 2015). (Amazon paid link.) Returning from active service in Afghanistan, Archie's life has fallen apart. Suffering from severe PTSD, he's lost his job and his family and now he's on the streets, trying to cope in a hostile world that doesn't understand the horror of war. Archie has a chance to rebuild his life with his new exercise class, ironically called 'Slim for Jesus', until a friend goes missing and Archie becomes the prime suspect.
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Shop Front by Samuel Best (24 March 2014). (Amazon paid link.) Out of university and out of luck, Ben Hamilton moves back in with his parents to stack shelves at the local supermarket. There he meets a group of friends and quickly finds himself dragged into heavy drinking, and a violent feud. Trouble flares as the boys test the limits of their own behaviour, small-town mentalities and childhood dreams, leading to a startling climax.
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Stonemouth by Iain Banks (3 January 2013). (Amazon paid link.) Stewart Gilmour is back in Stonemouth for the funeral of patriarch Joe Murston, and even though the last time Stu saw the Murstons he was running for his life, staying away might be even more dangerous than turning up. An estuary town north of Aberdeen, Stonemouth can be beautiful on a sunny day. On a bleak one it can seem to offer little more than seafog, gangsters and cheap drugs.
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The First Blast of the Trumpet by Marie Macpherson (5 March 2013). (Amazon paid link.) Book One in the Knox trilogy focuses on Elisabeth Hepburn, daughter of the Earl of Bothwell, godmother of John Knox and Prioress of St. Mary's Abbey, Haddington. In a daring attempt to shed light on unanswered questions about John Knox's early, undocumented life, this novel throws up some startling claims and controversial conjectures.
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On a Wing and a Prayer by Ruby Jackson (9 April 2015). (Amazon paid link.) Rose Petrie is desperate to do something for the war effort in WW2. Determined to get away and make a new start, Rosie decides to put her mechanical skills, learned from her father and brothers, to good use and signs up for the Women’s Auxiliary Service, or ATS. But Rose discovers that delivering fruit and veg in her father’s greengrocer’s van is very different to driving trucks for the army in a country under siege.
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A Petrol Scented Spring by Ajay Close (17 September 2015). (Amazon paid link.) The day after her wedding, Donella Ferguson Watson wakes up shackled to a man haunted by the past. The lonely days become weeks, months. Her husband Hugh, a prison doctor, will offer no explanation for their sexless marriage. She comes to suspect the answer lies with a hunger-striking suffragette who was force fed and held in solitary confinement. But what really happened between Hugh and his prisoner patient?
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Black Rigg by Mary Easson (15 November 2014). (Amazon paid link.) Black Rigg is set in a Scottish mining village in the year 1910 in a period of social and economic change. Working men and women began to challenge the status quo but landowners, the church and the justice system resisted. Issues such as class, power, injustice, poverty and community are raised by the narrative in powerful and dramatic style.
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The Incomers by Moira McPartlin (14 March 2012). (Amazon paid link.) Mission-raised Ellie Amadi leaves home in West Africa to join her white, estate factor, husband James in the Fife mining village of Hollyburn. In 1966 Fife, mixed marriages are unusual, and Ellie soon experiences the villagers' ignorance of outsiders in a story that draw deep parallels between the cultures of West Africa and Scotland.
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The Haunted by Niki Valentine (13 October 2011). (Amazon paid link.) Arriving in the Scottish highlands, Martin and Sue decide to escape their luxury hotel, heading out for a night of back-to-basics living in an abandoned shack. When a storm strikes, they find themselves stranded in the simple hut, miles from anywhere and completely isolated. As gentle bickering leads to arguments, Sue starts to sense they are not truly alone.
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If I Touched the Earth by Cynthia Rogerson (21 August 2012). (Amazon paid link.) When Alison Ross loses her son Calum in a car crash, her world turns upside down. In her struggle to cope, she does some strange and uncharacteristic things starting with a one-night stand with her ex-best friend, Neal and sets in motion a chain of events that will lead her on a journey she could never have imagined.
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The Red Man Turns to Green: An Assortment of Short Stories by Dickson Telfer (5 June 2013). (Amazon paid link.) A world where killing a spider triggers vivid flashbacks; where unrequited love is never forgotten; where a shopping trip to Asda is a form of counselling; where the sheep are very often blue; and where tea is the answer. In this enigmatic debut collection, Dickson Telfer plunges his characters into profound and occasionally unsettling situations.
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More Full of Weeping by Susan Delaney (25 February 2012). (Amazon paid link.) From the grimy streets of 1920s Glasgow to the peat fires of the Outer Hebrides during the Great Depression, This is the story of Hugh MacSoirbheas. He begins life as that rarest of things: a happy orphan, learning Gaelic from a caretaker at the orphanage. He is intrigued when he learns that he is to be taken in as a foster child on a Gaelic-speaking island off the Scottish coast.
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Sunset Song (Paperback) by Lewis Grassic Gibbon (2 Mar 2006). (Amazon paid link.) Divided between her love of the land and the harshness of farming life, young Chris Guthrie finally decides to stay in the rural community of her childhood.
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Silver Linings by Millie Gray (16 October 2015). (Amazon paid link.) Set in the darkest days of the Second World War, Silver Linings is based in the shipyards of Leith and follows the ups and downs of the Anderson family as they struggle to survive through war, hunger and loss. As the war begins to gather pace in 1940, the unexpected death of Sandra Anderson dramatically and changes forever the lives of the family she leaves behind.
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Dragon Land by Maureen Reynolds (10 April 2014). (Amazon paid link.) Lizzie Flint learns things a ten-year-old shouldn't know during WW1. Dragon Land is an epic story set across generations of the Flint family as they battle war and conflict throughout the world as the Great War, the Japanese invasion of China and finally the Second Word War rage on around them and rips the family apart. It is a story of love, hope and survival.
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The One That Got Away by Zoë Wicomb (19 January 2011). (Amazon paid link.) An array of characters inhabits a complexly interconnected, twenty-first century universe. The author explore a range of human relationships: marriage, friendship, family ties, and relations with those who serve us. Wicomb’s fluid, shifting technique questions conventional certainties and makes for exhilarating reading.
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Winston & Me by Mark Woodburn (19 October 2012). (Amazon paid link.) A teenage soldier's adventures at the side of his battalion commander, Winston Churchill, in the trenches of Flanders during the First World War and afterwards. Lying about his age to join the army, poor Edinburgh teenager Jamie Melville comes to the attention of his battalion's new colonel, Winston Churchill, who is seeking redemption in the trenches as an ordinary soldier after his resignation over the Dardanelles fiasco in 1915.
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A Message From the Other Side by Moira Forsyth (20 July 2017). (Amazon paid link.) When Catherine moves several hundred miles away from her sister Helen, phone calls aren't enough, but they make it easier to edit the truth. Helen can dismiss Gilbert and his enchanted Factory as weird, and Catherine thinks Helen foolish for loving the unreliable and dangerous Joe. Neither sees the perils concealed in the secretes they keep, or guesses at the sinister connection between their lives. A novel about love and marriage, but even more about hatred.
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The Sunlight Pilgrims by Jenni Fagan (7 April 2016). (Amazon paid link.) Set in a Scottish caravan park during a freak winter – it is snowing in Jerusalem, the Thames is frozen, and an iceberg separated from the Fjords in Norway is expected to arrive off the coast of Scotland – The Sunlight Pilgrims tells the story of a small Scottish community living through what people have begun to think is the end of times. How will Dylan, newly arrived from London, and longer term residents Constance and Stella cope?
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This Road is Red by Alison Irvine (1 March 2011). (Amazon paid link.) It is 1964. Red Road is rising out of the fields. To the families who move in, it is a dream and a shining future. It is 2010. The Red Road Flats are scheduled for demolition. Inhabited only by intrepid asylum seekers and a few stubborn locals, the once vibrant scheme is tired and out of time. Between these dates are the people who filled the flats with laughter, life and drama.
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