THE BEST OF SCOTTISH BOOKS

Everyone deserves a chance of happiness – right? All NEW from bestselling author Lisa Hobman. Glentorrin bakery owner, and lone parent, Caitlin Fraser, is single and finally ready to mingle. With her daughter, Grace, about to become a teenager, and her friends all settling down, Caitlin decides she deserves a shot at happiness too. Resisting the pull of dating apps, Caitlin embarks upon a series of disastrous singles events where she bumps into fellow villager, and astronomy buff, Archie Sutherland, who is nursing his own past secrets. When Grace’s best friend’s father, handsome Lyle Budge, asks Caitlin to dinner, things progress quickly and she has a taste of what their future as a family could be, much to both their daughters delight! But when Archie makes a shocking discovery, and he turns to Caitlin for help, she soon discovers Lyle isn’t the sharing type, meaning prickly ultimatums loom for everyone. Will wishing upon the stars over Glentorrin help Caitlin to figure out her way forward? Or is her hunt for romance like a once in a lifetime comet, easily missed in the blink of an eye?

‘To tell the story of a country or a continent is surely a great and complex undertaking; but the story of a quiet, unnoticed place where there are few people, fewer memories and almost no reliable records – a place such as Glen Conach – may actually be harder to piece together. The hazier everything becomes, the more whatever facts there are become entangled with myth and legend. . .’Deep in the mountains of north-east Scotland lies Glen Conach, a place of secrets and memories, fable and history. In particular, it holds the stories of three different eras, separated by centuries yet linked by location, by an ancient manuscript and by echoes that travel across time.In ancient Pictland, the Christian hermit Conach contemplates God and nature, performs miracles and prepares himself for sacrifice. Long after his death, legends about him are set down by an unknown hand in the Book of Conach.Generations later, in the early nineteenth century, self-promoting antiquarian Charles Kirkliston Gibb is drawn to the Glen, and into the big house at the heart of its fragile community.In the present day, young Lachie whispers to Maja of a ghost he thinks he has seen. Reflecting on her long life, Maja believes him, for she is haunted by ghosts of her own.News of the Dead is a captivating exploration of refuge, retreat and the reception of strangers. It measures the space between the stories people tell of themselves – what they forget and what they invent – and the stories through which they may, or may not, be remembered.

Nancy Mitford’s first novel, a set of completely incompatible and hilariously eccentric characters collide in a Scottish castle, where bright young things play pranks on their stodgy elders until the frothy plot climaxes in ghost sightings and a dramatic fire.Inspired in part by Mitford’s youthful infatuation with a Scottish aristocrat, her story follows young Jane Dacre to a shooting party at Dulloch Castle, where she tramps around a damp and chilly moor on a hunting expedition with formidable Lady Prague, xenophobic General Murgatroyd, one-eyed Admiral Wenceslaus, and an assortment of other ancient and gouty peers of the realm, while falling in love with Albert, a surrealist painter with a mischievous sense of humour.Light-hearted and sparkling with witty banter, Highland Fling was Mitford’s first foray into the delightful fictional world for which the author of The Pursuit of Love and Love in a Cold Climate later became so celebrated.’A delightful comedy of manners’ – The Times

Penguin Readers is an ELT graded reader series. Please note that the eBook edition does NOT include access to the audio edition and digital book. Written for learners of English as a foreign language, each title includes carefully adapted text, new illustrations and language learning exercises.Titles include popular classics, exciting contemporary fiction, and thought-provoking non-fiction, introducing language learners to bestselling authors and compelling content.The eight levels of Penguin Readers follow the Common European Framework of Reference for language learning (CEFR). Exercises at the back of each Reader help language learners to practise grammar, vocabulary, and key exam skills. Before, during and after-reading questions test readers’ story comprehension and develop vocabulary.Jekyll and Hyde, a Level 1 Reader, is A1 in the CEFR framework. Short sentences contain a maximum of two clauses, introducing the past simple tense and some simple modals, adverbs and gerunds. Illustrations support the text throughout, and many titles at this level are graphic novels.Dr Jekyll is a good person. He is nice, and he has lots of friends. But Mr Hyde is a bad person. He walks in the streets of London at night and does bad things. Why are the two men friends?Visit the Penguin Readers websiteRegister to access online resources including tests, worksheets and answer keys. Exclusively with the print edition, readers can unlock a digital book and audio edition (not available with the eBook).

The unmissable new work from Ali Smith, following the dazzling Man Booker-shortlisted Seasonal quartet

‘A story is never an answer. A story is always a question.’

Here we are in extraordinary times.

Is this history?

What happens when we cease to trust governments, the media, each other?

What have we lost?

What stays with us?

What does it take to unlock our future?

Following her astonishing quartet of Seasonal novels, Ali Smith again lights a way for us through the nightmarish now, in a vital celebration of companionship in all its forms.

‘Every hello, like every voice, holds its story ready, waiting.’

‘Magisterial … Immensely readable’ Douglas Alexander, Financial TimesA compelling history of catastrophes and their consequences, from ‘the most brilliant British historian of his generation’ (The Times)Disasters are inherently hard to predict. But when catastrophe strikes, we ought to be better prepared than the Romans were when Vesuvius erupted or medieval Italians when the Black Death struck. We have science on our side, after all. Yet the responses of many developed countries to a new pathogen from China were badly bungled. Why?While populist rulers certainly performed poorly in the face of the pandemic, Niall Ferguson argues that more profound pathologies were at work – pathologies already visible in our responses to earlier disasters.Drawing from multiple disciplines, including economics and network science, Doom: The Politics of Catastrophe offers not just a history but a general theory of disaster. As Ferguson shows, governments must learn to become less bureaucratic if we are to avoid the impending doom of irreversible decline.’Insightful, productively provocative and downright brilliant’ New York Times’Stimulating, thought-provoking … Readers will find much to relish’ Martin Bentham, Evening Standard

Tina Rossi, the world’s leading coloratura soprano has travelled to Edinburgh, ostensibly to sing in the Festival, but in reality to meet her lover, top scientist Kenneth Holmes. Instead of finding Kenneth at their rendezvous, she discovers an unknown corpse.At this moment Johnson Johnson, a famous but enigmatic portrait painter turns up. Dolly is about to sail in a race to the Hebrides where Holmes was conducting his top-secret research to discover more about his disappearance.Soon they are sailing the high seas together, but as Dolly nears Rum, the race becomes one for life rather than prize money…***PRAISE FOR THE DOLLY SERIES***’The Dolly novels are… delicious, funny, ingenious, glamorous, clever.’ Listener’Dunnett tempts her fans with buried clues and red herrings that keep them reading and rereading the books.’ New York Times'[Dunnett’s] women are among her strongest characters.’ Guardian

SHORTLISTED FOR THE BAILLIE GIFFORD PRIZEIn this astonishing collection of essays, the award-winning poet and novelist Kei Miller explores the silence in which so many important things are kept. He examines the experience of discrimination through this silence and what it means to breach it: to risk words, to risk truths. And he considers the histories our bodies inherit – the crimes that haunt them, and how meaning can shift as we move throughout the world, variously assuming privilege or victimhood.Through letters to James Baldwin, encounters with Liam Neeson, Soca, Carnival, family secrets, love affairs, white women’s tears, questions of aesthetics and more, Miller powerfully and imaginatively recounts everyday acts of racism and prejudice.With both the epigrammatic concision and conversational cadence of his poetry and novels, Things I Have Withheld is a great artistic achievement: a work of beauty which challenges us to interrogate what seems unsayable and why – our actions, defence mechanisms, imaginations and interactions – and those of the world around us.

In this ground-breaking study of the medieval parliament, Roland Tanner gives the Scottish Parliament a human face by examining the actions and motives of those who attended. In the past, the Scottish Parliament was seen as a weak and ineffective institution – damned because of its failure to be more like its English counterpart. But Roland Tanner shows that the old picture of weakness is far from accurate. In its very different way, the Scottish Parliament was every bit as powerful as the English institution. The ‘Three Estates’ (the clergy, nobility and burgh representatives who attended Parliament) were able to wield a surprising degree of control over the Crown during the fifteenth century. For instance, they threatened to lock James I’s taxation in a box to which he, the king, would have no access, made James II swear not to alter acts of Parliament, and prevented him from using his own lands and wealth as patronage for his supporters, and forbade James III to leave the country.Roland Tanner has avoided a dry constitutional approach. Instead he has sought to bring Parliament to life through the people who attended, the reasons why they attended, and the complex interactions which occurred when all the most wealthy, powerful and ambitious people in the kingdom gathered in one place.

Andy Murray: tennis player, sports icon, Olympian.Get the inside track on one of history’s most spectacularathletes!A Life Story: this thrilling series throws readersdirectly into the lives of modern society’s most influentialfigures. With stunning black-and-white illustrations alongwith timelines and fun facts.Also in the series:Katherine Johnson: A Life StoryAlan Turing: A Life StoryStephen Hawking: A Life StoryRosalind Franklin: A Life StoryDavid Attenborough: A Life StoryKamala Harris: A Life StoryCaptain Tom Moore: A Life Story

Seven years after her mother’s death, Leonie Charlton is still gripped by memories of their fraught relationship. In May 2017, Leonie trekked through the Outer Hebrides in the company of a friend and their Highland Ponies in search of closure. When Leonie’s pony has a serious accident, she begins to realise that finding peace with her mother is less important than letting go.Leonie Charlton blends travel and nature writing with intimate memoir in this beautifully written account of grief and acceptance.

An island can be a source of escape or return, of solace or threat.In Other Worlds, editor Stewart Conn has sought poems to set the readers’ heart racing, through a sharpening of memory or in opening new vistas and evoking new worlds and states of mind, from Barra and Eriskay to Luing, Mingulay and the Isle of May; Inchcape and the Torren rocks to Taransay and Tiree.In this anthology rich depictions of island flora and fauna sit alongside sightings of croft dwellers and ferry-lowpers. Expressions of affection and accounts of imprisonment and bereavement sit cheek-by-jowl with evocations of drowned sailors, corporeal and ghostly. Praise poems alternate with diary entries and holiday postcards. Others cover stretches of water: Corrievrecken, say, or the Minch. And while there is a recurring sense of island heritage, and of belonging, the poet’s feet need not be actively on island soil or on the deck of a fishing-boat.

Three hundred years ago Scotland entered into an extraordinary bargain with its English neighbour. Like all the best deals it involved giving away little – the tokens of sovereignty – in exchange for major gains: economic, political and cultural. Control over key domestic matters was retained. Today that Bargain, updated for the democratic era, is better than ever.In this incisive book, Tom Miers – a Conservative councillor for the Scottish Borders – sets out his stall in the debate over Independence and calls for Unionists to equip themselves with a full understanding of this Bargain and how it applies in today’s world. The Union is not just about money, or even sentiment about a shared past, but a canny and sophisticated arrangement that benefits all nations of the UK and is the foundation of Scotland’s success and unique place in the world.Cutting through the rhetoric, the author lays out the information required to counter the Scottish Nationalist argument.

Book 3 in the MILA trilogy by Estelle MaskameIt’s been two years since Mila and Blake last saw each other. Much has changed for both of them. Mila is back in LA, but no longer in her dad’s shadow, she is busy carving her own path in life. Blake is at college studying music, while working tirelessly to make a name for himself as a singer-songwriter on the local Country scene.Mila has fought to put her feelings for Blake behind her and feels confident of her own emotional balance as she heads to Tennessee to spend the summer with her family. But she’s not the only one making their way back to their small hometown – Blake is, too, and there is no avoiding one another.The two clash as the hurt from their explosive break-up rises to the surface. They have grown up and moved forward in their lives, but are they as over each other as they once thought? Or is there still too much unfinished business between them to ignore?Mila and Blake is the fierce finale to Estelle Maskame’s addictive MILA trilogy – full of heart and drama and set to the beating pulse of Nashville summer nights, raw country music and an intense romance that won’t be denied . . .

I felt that Mary was there, pulling at my sleeve, willing me to appreciate the artistry, wanting me to understand the dazzle of the material world that shaped her.At her execution Mary, Queen of Scots wore red. Widely known as the colour of strength and passion, it was in fact worn by Mary as the Catholic symbol of martyrdom.In sixteenth-century Europe women’s voices were suppressed and silenced. Even for a queen like Mary, her prime duty was to bear sons. In an age when textiles expressed power, Mary exploited them to emphasise her female agency. From her lavishly embroidered gowns as the prospective wife of the French Dauphin to the fashion dolls she used to encourage a Marian style at the Scottish court and the subversive messages she embroidered in captivity for her supporters, Mary used textiles to advance her political agenda, affirm her royal lineage and tell her own story.In this eloquent cultural biography, Clare Hunter exquisitely blends history, politics and memoir to tell the story of a queen in her own voice.

Treasure island is an adventure story full of pirates, maps, treasures and a courageous hero.

As the battle of words over the future of Scotland as a democary, antion and society continues, A Better Nation: The Challenge of Scottish Independence aims to go beyond the superficial divisions and noise and to address the substance. Drawing on a range of original thinkers from a wide range of backgrounds, it tackles key issues about money, culture, equality, energy, borders, jobs, Europe and other ‘big questions’ head on.

‘A cracking story told at breakneck speed’ – Scotland on SundayThe Killing Tide by Lin Anderson sees forensic scientist Rhona MacLeod investigating a mysterious abandoned ship which has swept ashore in the Orkney Isles.After a fierce storm hits Scotland, a mysterious cargo ship is discovered in the Orkney Isles. Boarding the vessel uncovers three bodies, recently deceased and in violent circumstances. Forensic scientist Dr Rhona MacLeod’s study of the crime scene suggests that a sinister game was being played on board, but who were the hunters? And who the hunted?Meanwhile in Glasgow DS Michael McNab is called to a horrific incident where a young woman has been set on fire. Or did she spark the flames herself?As evidence arises that connects the two cases, the team grow increasingly concerned that the truth of what happened on the ship and in Glasgow hints at a wider conspiracy that stretches down to London and beyond to a global stage. Orcadian Ava Clouston, renowned investigative journalist, believes so and sets out to prove it, putting herself in grave danger.When the Met Police challenge Police Scotland’s jurisdiction, it becomes obvious that there are ruthless individuals who are willing to do whatever it takes to protect government interests. Which could lead to even more deaths on Scottish soil . . .

Tracing the shifts and moods of four seasons along Scotland’s River Tweed, Andrew Douglas-Home weaves a story of a close relationship with salmon. Threaded through the year are stories too of one of the country’s oldest families; stories of politics, military service, culture and the stewardship of our natural world.

Through vivid vignettes and family memories, Andrew Douglas Home spins a homely, yet forthright and dryly witty narrative; both the perfect companion for those who love river fishing and a detailed and informative take on preservation and conservaion; looking back at age-old practices and traditions and looking forward to what we must do to secure the future of the Atlantic salmon and their rivers.

I’m from a small town in the highlands of Scotland called Tain where I lived until I was 19 before moving to Glasgow, chasing city life and a bright future.I’ve written poetry all my years, having found the passion when I was in primary school and it’s something I’ve never put down. In my early 20’s and wrote a lot of poetry in private, never sharing with people other than family members and annoying my friends with them, regularly asking, “do you want to hear another poem?”I lived in Glasgow up until I was 26, enjoying the party lifestyle that Glasgow had to offer. I then moved to Barcelona and got involved with many things, one being the Barcelona Poetry Workshop where I attended weekly poetry meetings and jointly released a group anthology, “Together and Apart.” my first publication. It was in Barcelona where my confidence for poetry grew. I returned to Glasgow 4 years later I was ready to start attending poetry events and immersed myself in the Glasgow poetry scene, where I found Tell It Slant poetry bookshop and where I organised and hosted my own monthly events as part of Tell It Slant poetry bookshop, Express Yourself. I then started my own poetry radio show with Sunny Govan Radio and called the radio show Express Yourself too.The poems in this book are inspired by life, spirituality and fun and family.I enjoy making something from simple everyday things and creating poetry.