THE BEST OF SCOTTISH BOOKS

Mired in grief after tragic recent events, state prosecutor Chastity Riley escapes to Scotland, lured to the birthplace of her great-great-grandfather by a mysterious letter suggesting she has inherited a house.

In Glasgow, she meets Tom, the ex-lover of Chastity’s great aunt, who holds the keys to her own family secrets – painful stories of unexpected cruelty and loss that she’s never dared to confront.

In Hamburg, Stepanovic and Calabretta investigate a major arson attack, while a group of property investors kicks off an explosion of violence that threatens everyone.

As events in these two countries collide, Chastity prepares to face the inevitable, battling the ghosts of her past and the lost souls that could be her future and, perhaps, finally finding redemption for them all.

Breathtakingly emotive, River Clyde is an electrifying, poignant and powerful story of damage and hope, and one woman’s fight for survival.

Rookie detective Joe Finch knows better than most what tragedy looks like. But trying to solve the brutal murder of an entire family? Just another day in Cooper.

Even for the sleazy backwater of Cooper, Nebraska, the multiple murder of an entire family, brutally bludgeoned to death in their beds, is big news.

Detective Joe Finch, raw with guilt over his partner’s traumatic shooting during a routine traffic stop, hopes the case will at least focus his mind. But then he discovers that the crime scene is the house he grew up in, and the ghosts of his own tragic childhood come rushing back to confront him.

As Finch dredges the corrupt and criminal mires of Cooper in a desperate search for the truth, the only certainty is that everyone there is lying. Caught between greedy politicians, a violent cartel boss, an ambitious reporter and a sinister cult lurking in the cornfields on the outskirts of town, Finch is soon out of his depth.

In a town where the law exists only to be bent or broken, can Finch steel himself against entrenched evil and the haunting spectre of his past―and live to serve justice in Cooper?

In 1944, Glasgow received one of the greatest gifts ever made to any city in the world: a collection of over 6,000 artworks of many types spanning centuries and civilisations. The benefactors were Glasgow-born shipping magnate Sir William Burrell and Constance, Lady Burrell.

Burrell’s business success him to amass an extraordinary collection, which he housed in the family home at Hutton Castle in the Scottish borders. When he decided to leave the collection to the nation, he considered donating it to London-based galleries before deciding on Glasgow Corporation, together with the residue of his estate to provide a suitable building. It was many years before the right location was found, and The Burrell Collection finally opened in 1983.

This new biography is based on recent research, full access to the Burrell archive and in-depth knowledge of the collection. Sir William was a complicated and private man who shunned publicity, adored his wife, but had a tumultuous relationship with his daughter. In politics Conservative, he campaigned for better housing conditions as long as this didn’t cause further expense to the taxpayer. The authors take a candid and considered view of who William Burrell the man was, what sparked his passion for collecting, and what his gift continues to mean to the city.

Celebrating 30 years of Rock Trust, Scotland’s only charity committed to tackling youth homelessness, All the Way Home is an anthology of poetry and prose by both young people and established writers which interrogates ideas of ‘home’ and ‘homelessness’ from a variety of perspectives. Contributors include Val McDermid, James Robertson and Scabby Queen author Kirstin Innes.

Across poetry, fiction and essays, the idea of ‘home’ is explored from a variety of perspectives: a thirteen year-old girl comes to terms with her unplanned pregnancy; a group of immigrants from all across the world meet at a weekly Creative Writing class in Glasgow to discuss haiku; a new mother suffering from post-natal depression makes a life-altering decision. Together, this astonishing collection brings to life both the visible and invisible realities of home and homelessness, of family and belonging.

Limbic is Peter Scalpello’s glittering ode to sex, intimacy, and queer discovery. Taking us on slippery nights out fuelled by chemsex, on drunken lads’ holidays, and into the quiet violence of small domestic moments, this is a world where tracksuits hide queer desire, where shame masks vulnerability, where wallets hide wraps of crystal meth.

From the eager trepidation of teenage sex, to the ecstasy of parties, to the stigma around HIV, Limbic is at once a therapy and a celebration, showing how queer learning can be both soft-edged and brutal at once. An exploration of masculinity, addiction and trauma, this is a revelatory collection of poems; wise, tender, and vital.

Oi, you snivelling pig-dogs! Are you ready for a Viking adventure?

Velda is a small girl with a big axe, and she knows how to use it. Alongside her misfit crew, she’s living her best Viking life, sailing the seas in her very own longship and teaching anyone who thinks she’s ‘just a little girl’ a lesson.

But when a raid on the vault of the treasure-obsessed Count Stollenberg goes wrong, Velda is forced into a deal to bring him the legendary Frost Hammer. The only teensy tiny issue is that it belongs to the Frost Giants, who are anything but teensy tiny. Velda and her crew must trek across snow and ice to break into the giants’ mountain home, but it seems the Frost Giants are happier to see them than they expected. A bit too happy, in fact…

Join Velda on her mission as she schemes her way out of scrapes and battles enormous enemies, all while proving she’s the awesomest Viking around.

Esme is annoyed and braced for boredom when she’s sent to stay with her gran for the weekend, until she discovers a terrible mistake. Cora, the abandoned kitten Gran found on the Rothiecraig Estate, is in fact a wild lynx kit and she is growing—fast!

Suddenly, Esme find herself on a dangerous mission to rewild Cora, along with Callum Docherty for company, the school’s ‘bad boy’, and Shug, the worst guard dog in the world.

The situation takes a terrifying turn when the children pitch their tents on a bleak Highland moor and hear wolves howling outside…

‘After a couple of weeks, I found myself standing outside the voids in the middle of the night listening for human activity, for any sign of life at all. Voids are flats that have been vacated, that will never be lived in again. But there never were any signs of life. Only the wind whistling through vacant interiors.’

In a condemned tower block in Glasgow, residents slowly trickle away until a young man is left alone with only the angels and devils in his mind for company. Stumbling from one surreal situation to the next, he encounters others on the margins of society, finding friendship and camaraderie wherever it is offered, grappling with who he is and what shape his future might take.

The Voids is an unsparing story of modern-day Britain, told with brilliant flashes of humour and humanity.

In 1968, Vashti Bunyan gave up everything and everybody she knew in London to take to the road with a horse, wagon, dog, guitar and her then partner.

They made the long journey up to the Outer Hebrides in an odyssey of discovery and heartbreak, full of the joy of freedom and the trudge of everyday reality, sleeping in the woods, fighting freezing winters and homelessness.

Along the way, Vashti wrote the songs that would lead to the recording of her 1970’s album Just Another Diamond Day, the lilting lyrics and guitar conveying innocent wonder at the world around her, whilst disguising a deeper turmoil under the surface.

From an unconventional childhood in post-war London, to a fledgling career in mid-sixties pop – recording a single written by Mick Jagger and Keith Richards – to the despair and failure to make any headway with her own songs, she rejected the music world altogether and left it all behind. After retreating to a musical wilderness for thirty years, the rediscovery of her recordings in 2000 brought Vashti a second chance to write, record and perform once more.

One of the great hippie myths of the 1960s, Wayward, Just Another Life to Live, rewrites the narrative of a barefoot girl on the road to describe a life lived at full tilt from the first, revealing what it means to change course and her emotional struggle, learning to take back control of her own life.

When Ropa Moyo discovered an occult underground library, she expected great things. She’s really into Edinburgh’s secret societies – but turns out they are less into her. So instead of getting paid to work magic, she’s had to accept a crummy unpaid internship. And her with bills to pay and a pet fox to feed.

Then her friend Priya offers her a job on the side. Priya works at Our Lady of Mysterious Maladies, a very specialized hospital, where a new illness is resisting magical and medical remedies alike. The first patient was a teenage boy, Max Wu, and his healers are baffled. If Ropa can solve the case, she might earn as she learns – and impress her mentor, Sir Callander.

Her sleuthing will lead her to a lost fortune, an avenging spirit and a secret buried deep in Scotland’s past. But how are they connected? Lives are at stake and Ropa is running out of time.

Where Decay Sleeps lays 36 poems on the undertaker’s table, revealing to us the seven stages of decay: pallor mortis, algor mortis, rigor mortis, livor mortis, putrefaction, decomposition and skeletonisation. Readers are summoned to walk the Gothic ruins of monsters, where death and decay lie sleeping.

Tread carefully through Satan’s garden. Feast your eyes on the Le Chateau Viande menu (before your eyes are feasted upon). Read the bios of monsters on Tinder. Discover the unpleasant side effects of a werewolf ’s medication.

Blending traditional Gothic imagery, modern technology and Chinese folklore, Where Decay Sleeps is the debut poetry collection from the haunted mind of Anna Cheung.

I Am Not Your Eve is the story of Teha’amana, Tahitian muse and child-bride of the painter Paul Gauguin. She shares her thoughts as he works on one of his masterpieces, The Spirit of The Dead Keeps Watch, a work so important to Gauguin that it haunts his later self -portrait. As Teha’amana tells her story, other voices of the island rise: Hina goddess of the moon, a lizard watching from the eaves, Gauguin’s mask of Teha’amana carved from one of the trees.

Woven in are the origin myths that cradled Polynesia before French colonists brought the Christian faith. Distant diary entries by Gauguin’s daughter Aline – the same age as her father’s new ‘wife’ – recall the other hemisphere of his life. This is a novel that gives Teha’amana a voice: one that travels with the myths and legends of the island, across history and asks now to be heard.

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.

Hex is a visceral depiction of what happens when a society is consumed by fear and superstition, exploring how the terrible force of a king’s violent crusade against ordinary women can still be felt, right up to the present day.

Mary, Queen of Scots’ marriage to the Earl of Bothwell is notorious. Less known is Bothwell’s first wife, Jean Gordon, who extricated herself from their marriage and survived the intrigue of the Queen’s court.

Daughters of the North reframes this turbulent period in history by focusing on Jean, who became Countess of Sutherland: the most powerful woman in the north.

The twelve stories in Letting Go take us on a journey through landscape, language and turbulent times, from the mid-19th century to the present day, and into the future. Stevenson’s array of characters from many walks of life and nationalities – including a traveller, a wood carver, chicken farm workers, a nurse, an architect and a magician – meet and part, some becoming reacquainted. Themes exploring identity, creativity and the environment, echo and connect throughout the different narratives, sometimes carried in snatches of song.

The author leads us outward from her native Scottish Borders to Edinburgh, Glasgow and the Gàidhealtachd, south to England, across the Atlantic to Apartheid South Africa and, finally, to the melting Arctic.

Praise for Letting Go:

What is instantly striking – apart from the breathtaking, page-turning fluency with which Stevenson writes both in English, and in a powerful and lyrical Border Scots – is how many of the stories are explicitly about love; both the radical, life-changing force of romantic and sexual love, and the equal weight of love that binds a woman to a grown child with special needs, and special insights. – JOYCE MCMILLAN, THE SCOTSMAN

Fully revised and updated with a new chapter.With the flair for narrative and the meticulous research that readers have come to expect, in The Diamond Queen Andrew Marr turns his attention to the monarch, chronicling the Queen’s pivotal role at the centre of the state, which is largely hidden from the public gaze, and making a strong case for the institution itself.Arranged thematically, rather than chronologically, Marr dissects the Queen’s political relationships, crucially those with her Prime Ministers; he examines her role as Head of the Commonwealth, and her deep commitment to that Commonwealth of nations; he looks at the drastic changes in the media since her accession in 1952 and how the monarchy has had to change and adapt as a result. Under her watchful eye, it has been thoroughly modernized but what does the future hold for the House of Windsor?This edition, fully revised and updated, features a new introduction and a new chapter that sets out to answer that crucial question. In it, Marr covers the Queen’s reign from the Diamond Jubilee to the run-up to the Platinum Jubilee in 2022, taking in the death of the Duke of Edinburgh, Prince Charles’s plans for the future of the monarchy and examines what Elizabeth II’s lasting legacy might be.

The gripping new mystery in Quintin Jardine’s bestselling Bob Skinner series, not to be missed by readers of Ian Rankin and Peter May.Sir Robert Skinner’s stock is rising – after retiring from the police service he’s been promoted to head an international media organisation. Yet a series of unexplained deaths on his home turf in Scotland threaten to bring him crashing back down to earth.As Skinner helps the elderly in his local community, several residents seem to die of natural causes. But when a gruesome discovery is made in a Glasgow flat and one of Skinner’s long-time friends – an aspiring politician – emerges as the prime suspect, things become very murky indeed.After unpicking clues that go nowhere, Skinner and his team are left grappling the most baffling conundrum they have ever encountered – is there a mystery at all?Praise for Quintin Jardine’s Bob Skinner series:’The legendary Quintin Jardine . . . such a fine writer’ DENZIL MEYRICK’Scottish crime-writing at its finest, with a healthy dose of plot twists and turns, bodies and plenty of brutality’ SUN’Another powerful tartan noir that packs a punch’ PETERBOROUGH EVENING TELEGRAPH’Incredibly difficult to put the book down . . . a guide through a world of tangled family politics, hostile takeovers, government-sanctioned killing, extortion and the seedier side of publishing . . . Quintin Jardine should be . . . your first choice!’ SCOTS MAGAZINE’Well constructed, fast-paced, Jardine’s narrative has many an ingenious twist and turn’ OBSERVER

The #blacklivesmatter movement has put prejudice under the microscope and made everyone examine the issue of race from all angles – Dreaming the Impossible is the definitive book of racism in British sports which answers the question as to whether we can get to a truly non-racial sports world.The British, who are rightly, proud of the sports the world plays, are now having to come to terms with the dark past of racism in sport. This conscious and unconscious racism has for decades blighted the lives of talented black and Asian talent and prevented them from fulfilling their potential as competitors, coaches and administrators. In Formula One, despite Lewis Hamilton’s stellar achievements barely one per cent of the 40,000 people employed in the sport come from ethnic minority backgrounds. In football, Britain’s premier sport, the number of managers in the professional game remains pitifully small. And in cricket Azeem Rafiq’s testimony to the Commons select committee has exposed the scandal of racist prejudice faced by Asian cricketers in the game.Drawing on his extensive knowledge of sport and his own personal experience of racism Mihir Bose examines the way racism has affected black and Asian sportsmen and women and how attitudes have evolved over the past fifty years.

The story begins with Campbell, aged 14, in a police cell in Glasgow. He’s been charged with stealing books – five Mickey Spillane novels and a copy of Peyton Place. At 15, he became an apprentice printer, but gave that up in order to ‘go on the road’, fulfilling the only ambition he ever had while a pupil at King’s Park Secondary School in Glasgow – to be what RLS called ‘a bit of a vagabond’.On his hitchhiking journeys through Asia and North Africa, an interest in music, reading and writing grew. Campbell also took a keen interest in learning from interesting people. In 1972 he worked on a kibbutz, living in the neighbouring cabin to Peter Green, the founder and lead guitarist of Fleetwood Mac, with whom he formed a two-man musical combo. At the same time, he was part of a group of aspiring writers in Glasgow, including Tom Leonard. His literary heroes of the time were Alexander Trocchi and John Fowles: Campbell tracked them down to their homes and wrote extensively about both. The stories Campbell are recounted in this book.A crowning moment of his life was forming a friendship with the American writer James Baldwin. Campbell visited him more than once at his home in the South of France, and persuaded him to come to Edinburgh for the Book Festival in 1985. Campbell later wrote the acclaimed biography of Baldwin, Talking at the Gates.