Shona MacLean leaves behind her historical thrillers in her new stand alone novel, The Cromarty Library Circle, which tells us of a year in the life of a community in the Highlands in 1871. It will be a year when the political upheavals around the world affects the close knit twon and the lives they’ve always known. In this extract, we meet the committee that decides on the town’s library books, giving us a glimpse into the dynamics and personalities of Cromarty.

The Cromarty Library Circle
By Shona MacLean
Published by Quercus

‘I believe you are in receipt of the ladies’ selection, Mr Gilfeather?’

Mr Gilfeather nodded. He was in receipt of the ladies’ selection, all right. Miss Elspeth Rose had handed it to him in the street, as if presenting him with an overdue butcher’s bill. He proceeded to read aloud the list.

‘Lady Charlotte: De Bourrienne’s Memoirs of Napoleon.’ Willie Hossack snorted and Mr Gilfeather, while privately deploring anything associated with the Corsican, shot the man a look charged with forty years of contempt. Sir William asked whether he was quite certain that had been his wife’s choice. ‘I wonder whether she did not mean rather to ask for a biography of the Empress Josephine?’

‘No, no,’ he said. ‘Both title and author are written out quite exactly, and the translation recently brought out by Constable specified.’

Sir William said something to the effect that he would never quite understand his wife, and the listing of the ladies’ choices continued. Mrs Mackay had requested Sir Walter Scott’s Anne of Geierstein. It was the general apprehension of the community that the minister might not have his young wife entirely under his control. Rachel Mackay had been too clever for a lady’s maid and governess, and she might be too clever for a minister’s wife as well, but Sir Walter Scott could hardly be objected to.

Next came the choice of Miss Elspeth Rose. There would be no grounds for concern here: if something were to be disapproved of it would be Miss Elspeth who would do the disapproving. Her choice must be therefore, de facto, acceptable to all. ‘Miss Elspeth requests Mrs Hemans’ Records of Woman: with Other Poems.’

‘Heaven preserve us,’ murmured Farquhar Hossack from behind a copy of the Inverness Journal, ‘poetry! Don’t tell me the old bluestocking has discovered she has a heart. I had half-expected she would ask for Frankenstein.’

Willie Hossack coughed as if he had a beetle in his throat and Mr Fordyce hastened to fill the moment of awkwardness. ‘Miss Rose has made a fine choice, and I daresay that she has already read Mrs Shelley’s novel in any case.’

Dr Fraser turned to Farquhar Hossack. ‘No doubt Frankenstein is required reading amongst the anatomy students at Aberdeen, Fachie, if only as a warning against meddling with things that are better left alone.’

Farquhar lowered his newspaper. ‘You would have us remain in ignorance, sir?’

‘I would have our kirkyards left unmolested, sir,’ responded the minister.

No one in the room could have been unaware of what it was that Dr Fraser alluded to. The horrors perpetrated only three years since by William Burke and William Hare in the closes of Edinburgh were still fresh in the minds of everyone. How could they not be? Every week the papers continued to tell of suspected abductions and murders up and down the country, all to meet the insatiable demand for corpses of the anatomy professors that even grave-robbing could not satisfy.

The imputation was all too clear to Farquhar, who cast aside his newspaper and stood up. ‘Your kirkyards? It’ll be your pews that are unmolested, if you persist in your slavish devotion to superstition in the place of science.’ Having shocked the room, Fachie left, giving no farewells, even to his stupefied father.

Willie Hossack attempted to bluster something, but Mr Gilfeather ignored him and, as if there had been no unfortunate interruption, passed from the choice of Miss Elspeth Rose to that of her sister Anna, who had requested a copy of Miss Ferrier’s Marriage. The gentle amusement at this settled the company and threatened to start conversations, but Mr Gilfeather hurried on: Donal Deacon’s lobster boat would not wait in the harbour for ever. ‘Finally, we have the choice of Mrs Cameron, who has requested The Youth and Manhood of Cyril Thornton.’

On hearing his mother’s selection, Ludovic Cameron groaned.

‘Bear up, Ludo,’ murmured the schoolmaster, from behind the sofa occupied by his friend.

‘Bear up? Cyril Thornton is a cautionary tale of a young man who, a disappointment to his parents, neglects the studies for which he was sent away and learns some bitter lessons by a career in the army. He returns home, a little too late to be of any great use to those he left behind, but in time to marry the dependable girl he should have married in the first place.’

‘Perhaps,’ persisted the schoolmaster. ‘But Hamilton writes an excellent comic character. He’ll soon have your good lady mother in fine form.’ The sequence of looks provoked around the room by this remark suggested that the idea of the austere Janet Cameron being elevated to the condition of ‘fine form’ was not one that persuaded anybody.

Sir William hastily suggested moving on to the gentlemen’s choices.

‘For myself, I should say Croker’s Boswell’s Life of Johnson,’ he began, ‘if only to see whether there is anything in the controversy stirred up amongst the reviewers.’

‘Ach, they are all so tight in with the booksellers,’ said Dr Fraser. ‘They do nothing but puff their favourites and manufacture controversies. It’s all contrived in order to sell more books.’

This point conceded, the selections continued. Isaac Fordyce, predictably enough, requested the first two volumes of Moore’s Life of Byron; Dr Fraser, to general surprise, asked for Heber’s Poetical Works. Mr Gilfeather turned now to Ludovic Cameron. His assistant clerk at the bank could be relied upon to be sensible. Ludovic requested Basil Hall.

‘The Travels in North America?’ queried Willie Hossack, alert that mention was finally made of something he had heard of. How on earth had the fellow got himself in here? Mr Gilfeather wondered. And then Hossack himself was piping up that he would like The Aberdeen Magazine ordered on his behalf. On his behalf! It would be his wife who was after it, thinking no doubt that she might one day read of Fachie’s exploits amongst its pages. As if there weren’t enough periodicals brought into the reading room as it was. Mr Gilfeather did not waste time on quibbling, however, and with a sniff at Willie Hossack’s choice, wrote it down.

The Cromarty Library Circle by Shona MacLean is published by Quercus, priced £22.00.