THE BEST OF SCOTTISH BOOKS

Charles E McGarry is a Scottish author. His first novel in the Leo Moran series of detective fiction, The Ghost of Helen Addison, was published in July 2017 to rave reviews. The follow-up, The Shadow of the Black Earl, was published in September 2018. His third Leo Moran book, The Mystery of the Strange Piper, was published by BackPage Press in September 2021. Charles is also the co-author of the critically-acclaimed The Road to Lisbon, a novel set against the backdrop of Celtic’s victory in the European Cup in 1967.

Iain Maloney is the author of eight books, including the critically acclaimed The Only Gaijin in the Village (Birlinn, 2020), a memoir about his life in rural Japan.

He is also a freelance editor and journalist, mainly for The Japan Times. 

He was born and raised in Aberdeen, Scotland and he currently lives in Japan. He studied English at the University of Aberdeen, graduated from the University of Glasgow’s Creative Writing Masters in 2004, and holds a PhD from the University of Sunderland.

He is also the lead guitarist of Red Flag Waltz.

Denzil Meyrick is from Campbeltown on the Kintyre Peninsula in Argyll. After studying politics, he enjoyed a varied career as a police officer, distillery manager, and director of several companies. He is the No.1 bestselling author of the DCI Daley series, and is now an executive producer of a major TV adaptation of his books. Denzil lives on Loch Lomondside in Scotland with his wife Fiona and their cats.

His other series of books include the Kinloch Tales series and the Frank Grasby Mysteries.

Photograph by Kirsty Anderson.

David Alston is a Historian and Independent Researcher. He is the author of Ross & Cromarty: A Historical Guide (1997) and My Little Town of Cromarty: The History of a Northern Scottish Town (2006). He was a Highland Councillor and from 1991–2003 was curator/manager of Cromarty Courthouse Museum.

His book Slaves and Highlanders: Silenced Histories of Scotland and the Caribbean won the Saltire Society Scottish Book of the Year in 2022.

Tariq Ashkanani is a writer based in Edinburgh, Scotland. His debut thriller, Welcome to Cooper, won the Bloody Scotland Debut Award and was shortlisted for the CWA New Blood Dagger. The Cooper-verse continues in the prequel novel, Follow Me to the Edge.

When he’s not writing, his dulcet tones can be heard interviewing other writers on the podcast Page One, which he co-hosts.

Photo credit Michael Rummey.

Mairi Kidd is the Director of The Saltire Society. She leads on delivery of the Society’s programmes championing the arts and culture of Scotland. She has previously worked at Creative Scotland providing strategic leadership for literature, languages and publishing, as CEO of Moat Brae and of Seven Stories, and as Managing Director of children’s book publisher Barrington Stoke.

A fluent Gaelic speaker, she has an MA in Celtic Studies from Edinburgh University. As CEO of Stòrlann, the National Gaelic Education Resource Agency, she worked with Scottish Government, Bòrd na Gàidhlig and local authorities. Mairi is a contributor to BBC Radio nan Gàidheal’s books coverage and writes for broadcast, including Gaelic comedy series FUNC.

She began writing books with histories for children but released her first novel, The Specimens in 2024.

Kirsti has a Ph.D in Scottish Literature from the University of St Andrews and received a New Writers Bursary from the Scottish Arts Council in 2005. Her short stories have appeared in New Writing Scotland, 404 Ink, Glasgow Review of Books, Product Magazine, The Seven Wonders of Scotland anthology and Biopolis: Tales of Urban Biology. She’s been a Hawthornden Fellow, a contestant in Literary Death Match and is a regular contributor to The One O’clock Gun, a literary free-sheet once found in the darker recesses of Edinburgh pubs. Her novels include The Knitting Station and The Projectionist. She lives and walks in Edinburgh.

Iain Hood was born in Glasgow and grew up in the seaside town of Ayr. He attended the University of Glasgow and Jordanhill College, and later worked in education in Glasgow and the west country. He attended the University of Manchester after moving to Cambridge, where he continues to live with his wife and daughter. His first novel, This Good Book, was published in 2021.

John Gerard Fagan is a writer from Glasgow / Scotland who writes in Scots, Scottish Gaelic, and English.

His debut memoir Fish Town about leaving Scotland to live in Japan was published by Guts Publishing.

His second book Silent Riders of the Sea about a miner in 1930 who leaves for the Arctic after the death of his son was published by Cybirdy Publishing.

On publication of her debut novel, The Emergence of Judy Taylor, Angela Jackson was named one of UNESCO City of Literature’s emerging writers. The novel won Edinburgh International Book Festival’s First Book Award, and was also Waterstones Scottish Book of the Year.

A former psychology lecturer, she is now a tutor in creative writing for OCA. Her second novel, The Darlings, was published in 2021. Her one-woman show, The Darling Monologues, premiered at Edinburgh Fringe, to critical acclaim.

David Keenan is the author of six critically-acclaimed novels; the cult classic This is Memorial Device, which won the London Magazine Prize; For the Good Times, which won the Gordon Burn Prize and was shortlisted for the Encore Award; The Towers The Fields The Transmitters, Xstabeth, which was shortlisted for the Dublin Literary Award, Monument Maker, which was a Rough Trade Book of the Year and Industry of Magic & Light. He is also the author of England’s Hidden Reverse, a history of the UK’s post-punk and Industrial music scenes. He has been writing about music since he was seventeen years old, most consistently for The Wire, and between the years 2004-2014 he co-ran the cult Glasgow record shop Volcanic Tongue. His selected music writing was published in 2025 as the collection Volcanic Tongue.

Photo by Katherine Anne Rose / Guardian / eyevine

Ross Sayers is a writer of Scottish fiction. His debut novel for young adults, Mary’s the Name, was released in 2017.

Since then, he has written other young adult novels Sonny and Me and Daisy on the Outer Line, and an adult novel The Everliving Memory of John Valentine.

Ross graduated from the University of Stirling in 2014, with a BA (Hons) in English Studies (first class), and graduated again in 2015 with an M.Litt in Creative Writing (distinction).

His stories and poems have featured in magazines such as Quotidian and Octavius, and his short story, ‘Dancin’ has been used on West College Scotland’s Higher English course.

Kirstie Blair moved to Strathclyde University in August 2016, after working for the Universities of Stirling and Glasgow. Her primary area of research is Victorian literature, particularly poetry and poetics, working-class writing, literature and religion, Scottish literature, and literature and medicine.  Her published works include Working Verse in Victorian Scotland: Poetry, Press, Community published by Oxford University Press.

Kapka Kassabova is a poet and writer of narrative prose. At the core of her work is a quest for transformative encounter with places and people. Margins, confluences, aftermaths – those are her places. In the last decade she has created a body of work which organically grew into the Balkan quartet. Each book takes her into a region of the southern Balkans in, and bordering, Bulgaria. These are rich human and natural ecosystems scarred by political trauma. The first pair are Border (2017) and To The Lake (2020). They explore collective histories. The final pair are Elixir (2023) and Anima (2024). They explore how humans, plants and animals are bound in a vitalising interdependence.

She was born in November 1973 in Sofia to scientist parents and studied at the French Lycée. In 1992, her family emigrated to New Zealand where she studied Linguistics and French Literature at Otago University and English Literature and Creative Writing at Victoria University. She started writing poetry in early childhood. In the first years of life in New Zealand, she moved uneasily from her mother tongue Bulgarian to English as a new literary language. Her first published books reflect this fractured state – the poetry collections All roads lead to the sea and Dismemberment, and the novels Reconnaissance and Love in the Land of Midas. This early work was awarded a Commonwealth Writers’ Prize and a NZ Montana Book Award.

In 2005 she emigrated to Edinburgh, Scotland, where she wrote Street Without a Name (2008). This is a coming-of-age story in the twilight years of Communism and a journey across post-Communist Bulgaria.

Twelve Minutes of Love (2011) blends a tale of obsession with a history of the Argentine tango.

Villa Pacifica (2011) is a novel set in coastal Ecuador and came out at the same time.

Her last poetry books are Someone else’s life and Geography for the Lost.

Border (Granta) is a journey with the people and the histories of the triple borderlands of Bulgaria, Turkey and Greece.

To The Lake (Granta) delves into the ancestral geography of Lakes Ohrid and Prespa. A personal journey to the roots of her maternal family line became a meditation on conflict and reconciliation.

Elixir (Cape) is a search for collective healing through ultimate presence. The journey took her into a symbiotic web of people and plants along the Mesta River.

Anima, a wild pastoral (Cape 2024) is a tale of extinction and salvation, and a portrayal of the modern transhumance shepherds. It is set on the flanks of Pirin Mountain where she lived with a small pastoral community for a season.

The Insides of Our Lives, a found-footage film by Misja Pekel with her words premiered in 2024 at the Movies That Matter Festival in the Hague.

Her books are translated into 20 languages. She remains bilingual with English her primary literary language and Bulgarian second.

She has served on the jury panels for the Makedox Documentary Film Festival, le Prix Jan Michalski, the Highland Book Prize, the Neustadt Prize, the 2019 Jihlava Documentary Film Festival, and the International Dublin Book Award. In 2020-2021, she was non-resident Fellow at the Vienna Institute for Human Sciences (IWM).

For the last fifteen years she has lived by the Beauly River in the Highlands of Scotland. In April 2026 she will publish her first book with a Scottish setting, starring my glen: Borrowed Land, a highland story (Cape).

Andrew Redmond Barr is a writer and artist from Edinburgh with a keen interest in Scottish history, literature and culture. He is the author of multiple books, and has worked on a number of hand-drawn illustration projects, including book design, murals and solo exhibitions.

In the run-up to 2020 he played a key role in preparations for the Declaration of Arbroath’s 700^th anniversary, and launched The Illustrated Declaration of Arbroath. Since then he has published Atlas of Scotland: A Vision of a Nation.

Andrew has worked in collaboration with national cultural institutions such as the Saltire Society, the National Records of Scotland and Historic Environment Scotland.

His work has been featured in a number of publications including The National, The Sunday National, The Scotsman, The Courier, The Press & Journal, The Herald, The Sunday Herald, the Scottish Review of Books, The Scots Independent, The Sunday Post, and a number of local papers across Scotland.

Francine Toon grew up in Sutherland and Fife, Scotland. Her poetry, written as Francine Elena, has appeared in The Sunday Times, The Best British Poetry 2013 and 2015 anthologies (Salt) and Poetry London, among other places. Her debut Pine, was longlisted for the Deborah Rogers Foundation Writers Award and won the 2020 McIlvanney Prize.

On Pine: “In the shadow of the Highland forest, Francine Toon captures the wildness of rural childhood and the intensity of small-town claustrophobia. In a place that can feel like the edge of the word, she unites the chill of the modern gothic with the pulse of a thriller. It is the perfect novel for our haunted times.”

She lives in London and works in publishing.

Douglas Watt was born in Edinburgh and brought up there and in Aberdeen. He was educated at Edinburgh University where he gained an MA and PhD in Scottish History. Douglas is the author of a series of historical crime novels set in late 17th century Scotland featuring investigative advocate John MacKenzie and his side-kick Davie Scougall. He is also the author of The Price of Scotland, a prize-winning history of Scotland’s Darien Disaster. He lives in Midlothian with his wife Julie.

Leela Soma was a Scottish-based writer who was born in Madras (former name for Chennai) in India, and lived in Glasgow. She came to Glasgow in 1969 with her husband. She worked, until her retirement, as a teacher of Modern Studies. During this time she took up creative writing under the tutelage of Laura Marney. She followed this with Creative Writing Classes in the Department of Adult and Continuing Education at the University of Glasgow. She wrote novels, poetry and short stories which were published in a number of anthologies and publications, including The Scotsman, The Grind, New Voices, and Gutter magazine. In her novel, Murder at the Mela, she drew masterfully on her own dual-heritage to capture Glasgow’s richly multi-cultural nature in a work which is fascinating, engaging and intense. She died in 2022.

From industrial designer to tour guide to gardener; Alistair’s life has taken him through many twists and turns from his origins in Glasgow until he settled in Arran 20 years ago. His interest in local history and culture inspired him to take his first steps into learning Gaelic. It was love at first sight and from then on there was no turning back.

He has been a regular contributor of essays, reviews, poetry and short stories to the online Gaelic magazine Dàna. In 2018 he was a winner of The New Writers Awards and has worked on a range of materials since then including; fiction, poetry, and play writing. At the Gaelic Literature Awards 2020 he won Best Unpublished Manuscript for Adults for Linne Dhomhainn.