THE BEST OF SCOTTISH BOOKS

Hamza has always loved the outdoors.

Hamza Yassin loves being outdoors in nature. As a child who struggled with dyslexia at school, he always longed to be in the world outside the classroom. Thankfully, due to a forward-thinking teacher who encouraged him to run outside before a lesson, Hamza embraced his love of nature from an early age. There he discovered that his dyslexia allowed him to see the world in a special way.

Homeward Bound tells the story of Hamza’s fascination with the outdoors. From learning to ring birds in Wales to chasing orca in Scotland – Hamza explores wildlife across the British Isles and delights in the hidden life that is found there. Throughout his journey, he shows us the wonder of wildlife and how mother nature is a home for us all.

Packed with charming personal stories, including life in the Scottish Highlands, and his adventures as a wildlife cameraman – Hamza shares the joy of nature and shows us how it has made him who he is today.

Gabriel Dax, travel writer and accidental spy, is back in the shadows. Unable to resist the allure of his MI6 handler, Faith Green, he has returned to a life of secrets and subterfuge. Dax is sent to Guatemala under the guise of covering a tinderbox presidential election, where the ruthless decisions of the Mafia provoke pitch-black warfare in collusion with the CIA.

As political turmoil erupts, Gabriel’s reluctant involvement deepens. His escape plan leads him to West Berlin, where he uncovers a chilling realisation: there is a plot to assassinate magnetic young President John F. Kennedy. In a race against time, Gabriel must navigate deceit and danger, knowing that the stakes have never been higher . . .
In The Predicament, Britain’s most beloved storyteller returns with a twisting adventure of obsessive love and elegant espionage from, from Sunday Times bestseller William Boyd.

A gorgeous Edinburgh-set story about love: loving another, loving yourself and loving life.

Maggie should be living life to the full. She should be travelling the world, jumping out of planes, skiing in the mountains. Everything she dreamed of doing. But a year ago she fell ill and needed a heart transplant, losing all her confidence. This new heart is a gift, and Maggie believes that the best way to honour it is to be careful, cautious, safe.

Then something impossible happens. Maggie wakes up one morning in a flat that’s not her own, in pyjamas that aren’t her own and when she looks in the mirror – she sees another woman’s face looking back at her. Somehow, magically, Maggie has been given another chance at life, and another chance at love…

They promised to be best friends forever . . . but what if they could be more?

Of all of Gabby’s terrible mistakes, losing Austin may have been the worst one.

As children, they were inseparable best friends – until golden girl Gabby publicly broke Austin’s heart and set fire to their friendship. She hasn’t seen him since.

Now Gabby is a college drop-out with a crappy apartment, her promising future rapidly slipping through her fingers. In her own words, she’s nothing. So, she’s got nothing to lose when she sets out to fix her life and the many mistakes she’s left in her wake.

Austin is the one who got away, and she’s never forgiven herself for hurting him. But can he forgive her now?

From the award-winning author of A Kind of Spark comes a new heartfelt and timely novel for middle-grade and teen readers.

Aeriel Sharpe doesn’t want to be anyone’s role model. But, when her mother is elected to be the most important politician in the country (yes, that one), she is thrust into the spotlight. With the world’s eyes on her, friends don’t seem that friendly and she feels trapped by everyone’s expectations.

They want her to be the voice of every autistic teenager, but Aeriel must find a way to speak for herself…

It’s not easy being thirteen… and it’s even harder when you’re the most famous teenager in the country

Caithness, October 1871.

The Ordnance Survey are charting Scotland’s most remote north-easterly county, a bleak landscape of endless moorland and lonely crofts. When a strange vision leads cartographer Robert Sutherland out onto the moor, an accident leaves him inches from death. He is taken to Leask House, to recuperate under the care of Mrs Sinclair and her beautiful daughter Isabel.

At first, Robert thinks the dreadful visions that plague him at Leask House are the result of the laudanum he has been prescribed. But as events take ever stranger and more terrifying turns, Robert begins to wonder whether his presence at Leask House is really a coincidence at all.

Someone – or something – has summoned him here.

And they don’t intend for him to leave.

Three generations of women. Three life altering events. As they discover the truth of their heritage, they’ll discover what makes the pieces of us…

At fifty-eight Minnie McAllister isn’t an old woman. But as Alzheimer’s ravages her mind, her brain says otherwise.

Cat McAllister is tackling everything life can throw at her. And just when she thinks it can’t get any worse, she’s faced with the discovery that Minnie might not be the mother she once knew.

Meanwhile, Cat’s daughter, Ruby McAllister, who is staring at a two very blue lines, faces a decision that will change the course of her life.

As three generations of women are pulled in three different directions, each are forced to learn lessons about themselves that they never could have imagined.

From a critically acclaimed biographer, an engrossing narrative of Robert Louis Stevenson’s life, a story as romantic and adventurous as his fiction

‘This magnificent biography of Robert Louis Stevenson reveals much about a writer that we think we knew. . . . Dazzling.’–Kirkus Reviews

Robert Louis Stevenson (1850–1894) is famed for Treasure Island, Kidnapped, and Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, but he published many other novels and stories before his death at forty-four. Despite lifelong ill health, he had immense vitality; Mark Twain said his eyes burned with ‘smoldering rich fire.’

Born in Edinburgh to a family of lighthouse engineers, Stevenson set many stories in Scotland but sought travel and adventure in a life as romantic as his novels. ‘I loved a ship,’ he wrote, ‘as a man loves burgundy or daybreak.’ The adventures were shared with his free-spirited American wife, Fanny, with whom he moved to the South Pacific.   Samoan friends named Stevenson ‘Storyteller.’ Reading, he said, ‘should be absorbing and voluptuous; we should gloat over a book, be rapt clean out of ourselves.’ His own books have been translated into dozens of languages. Jorge Luis Borges called his stories ‘one of the forms of happiness,’ and other modernist masters as various as Proust, Nabokov, and Calvino have paid tribute to his greatness as a literary artist.   In Storyteller, Leo Damrosch brings to life an unforgettable personality, illuminated by many who knew Stevenson well and drawing from thousands of the writer’s letters in his many voices and moods–playful, imaginative, at times tragic.

A dismembered corpse is discovered in the vault of a silver shop. The police initially believe it to be that of a convicted armed robber – but not everyone agrees with that theory. One of them is Decima Mullins, who calls on the help of private detective Cormoran Strike as she’s certain the body in the silver vault was that of her boyfriend – the father of her newborn baby – who suddenly and mysteriously disappeared.

The more Strike and his business partner Robin Ellacott delve into the case, the more labyrinthine it gets. The silver shop is no ordinary one: it’s located beside Freemasons’ Hall and specialises in Masonic silverware. And in addition to the armed robber and Decima’s boyfriend, it becomes clear that there are other missing men who could fit the profile of the body in the vault.

As the case becomes ever more complicated and dangerous, Strike faces another quandary. Robin seems increasingly committed to her boyfriend, policeman Ryan Murphy, but the impulse to declare his own feelings for her is becoming stronger than ever.

A gripping, wonderfully complex novel which takes Strike and Robin’s story to a new level, The Hallmarked Man is an unmissable read for any fan of this unique series.

Sectarianism (anti-Irish racism) has been a blight on modern Scotland. Today, it is blamed on the lower orders, particularly football fans. Sectarianism like other forms of racism, however, originates at the top of society and travels down the ladder. It is intertwined with Scotland’s role in subjugating Ireland and began as a reaction to the mass migration of Irish people fleeing the Great Famine. Sectarianism subsequently gained traction as the Conservative Party – rebranded as the defender of the British Empire – led mass resistance to three Irish Home Rule Bills promising devolution to Ireland. The Tories were quick to ally with the Orange Order in Glasgow and Scotland’s industrial belt. In 1913 and 1914, Glasgow saw the Conservative leader, Andrew Bonar Law, sharing platforms with Orange Order leaders, and armed units of the Ulster Volunteer Force parade in the city. During the interwar period, sectarianism reached new heights, with a full-scale pogrom in Edinburgh. The Scottish elite faced an uncertain future, and the Church of Scotland led a crusade against supposed mass immigration from Ireland. Today, Glasgow hosts more Orange Order marches than Belfast. Chris Bambery argues these marches are about territorial control and, in Ireland, have a bloody history extending to today. Although we do not live in the 1930s, sectarianism remains. ‘The Old Divide’ looks at the roots of this problem and its toxic record and concludes that unless we understand and confront this history, it will remain a stain on Scottish society.

Gaelic translation of Paddington and the Christmas Surprise

Paddington’s journey through the Christmas Grotto of a grand London department store is full of surprises. But the best surprise is from Santa. After all, who else could find the perfect present for a bear like Paddington?

Scottish Gaelic translation of Louise Greig’s stylish new adaptation of Antoine de Saint-Exupery’s children’s classic bestseller The Little Prince. Beautifully illustrated by award-winning creative, Sarah Massini and translated by well known Gaelic singer songwriter and academic Gillebride Mac ‘IlleMhaoil.

Join an extraordinary space traveller on a journey through the stars…

An enchanting fable of a pilot crashed in the desert who wakes one morning to discover a most extraordinary boy standing before him with stories of remarkable worlds and characters, each offering an insight into what is important in life. As he describes his journey to the stranded pilot he meets, they uncover the secrets of love, friendship and compassion. This adaptation has created a wonderful picture book that should delight younger readers.

Adapted by award-winning Scottish poet Louise Greig with spellbinding illustrations by Sarah Massini.

Perhaps Donald Michael MacDonald invented the round mile, all 2,240 yards of it. Donald and his seven cows, walking the same steps each day through the past and the future, the fairy knoll and the poison pool, the eternal truths and the unknowable possibilities. Rarely does Donald venture beyond the round mile, for he has no need to: all of history can be found on his land.

Yet the wind farms, the spaceport, and the American billionaire with his Big House all threaten the peace Donald has cultivated and guarded as fiercely as he protects his animals. He loses a part of himself – and most of his herd – before an unexpected old friend helps Donald and his seven cows to reclaim their path, even as their island is transformed by a new age.

Fox and Mole live alone on a headland, in two houses, side by side. Mole is carefree and self-centred. Fox is responsible and self-sacrificing.

As autumn draws in, the friends read a spooky story together (that Mole keeps interrupting) about a racoon who transforms into a scuffling monster (a slightly spooky bit) while Mole eats Fox’s cookies (all of them). Fox’s anger with Mole’s lack of consideration builds, and when Mole forgets Fox’s birthday, Fox too begins to transform…

Can Mole recognise what’s wrong and fix things before it’s too late?

This humorously hair-raising gothic tale, told in four chapters, is perfect for older picture book lovers to curl up with on long, dark evenings.

A lively, sharp and thought-provoking exploration of the enduring stereotype of the dangerous single woman in popular culture.

From the obsessive ‘bunny boiler’ of Fatal Attraction to the tabloid frenzy over Taylor Swift’s relationship status, Caroline Young explores how single women have so often been portrayed as unstable, dangerous, or incomplete.

Blending cultural criticism with her own personal experience, Young examines how these stereotypes have been shaped by broader social trends, including the antifeminist backlash of the 1980s and the current renaissance of the ‘trad-wife’.

Through her analysis of books, movies, and TV shows, she reveals how these narratives reflect deeper anxieties about women’s independence. Engaging, witty, fun and feminist, Single and Psycho is a timely critique of how society views single women – and a celebration of their complexity and resilience.

In this memoir of place, memory and motion, Linda Cracknell reels in the hidden lives of the women who went before her, crystallising her connection to them and to the sea.

When Linda Cracknell’s quest to connect herself and her mother to a seafaring family history finds her in a harbour, bracing herself to throw a line, she is struck by the parallel of this physical action to her years-long mission of reeling the past closer to the present—finding her place in a family tree full of mariners and ship-owners, whose lives were defined by the ebb and flow of tides.

She travels the Scottish and South-West England coast—where many of her ancestors lived—by boat and foot; journeys on a 121-year-old sailboat; joins a community effort to build and launch a rowing boat on a Highland loch; and lays a family palimpsest in the footsteps of her ancestors across marshes and clifftops.

She finds that it is the women in her family who reach across the decades and centuries to catch the line she throws, and begins to understand them more clearly as the linchpins of the coastal communities they lived in—and as the undertow of her own identity. All the while, she is slowly untangling her complex relationship with her own elderly mother.

What begins as a quest for legacy becomes something much deeper, as she grows to understand an elemental and unconscious pull to the sea, imagining her blood as salt-saturated, sea-marked.

There isn’t a timescale for how you should heal
Your bad days are valid, your heartache is real
But so is the day that your smile will return
That fire within you continues to burn
You will overcome this and continue to thrive
You are here, you are loved, you are whole, you’re alive.

A formidable follow-up to her award-winning debut poetry collection, Len Pennie’s poyums annaw is just like her: defiant, angry and trailblazing. These poems are a call to arms, confronting ideas of patriarchy, gender-based violence and societal injustice with equal parts tenderness, quick-wit and righteous fury. Incisive and fiercely honest, poyums annaw firmly underscores Len’s place as a defining voice in contemporary poetry.

In 1997 Anne’s eighteen-year-old son Torran walked out of his hotel in the notorious Himalayan town of Manali – and disappeared.

Seven years later Anne is still searching, haunted by the idea that someone must know something, following every tenuous lead, obsessed with potential sightings. She’s ridden with guilt at the way she failed Torran as a mother. Though, unlike her husband, she’s never stopped believing her son is alive.

When her estranged niece Esther arrives with new information, Anne is convinced that her tenacity will finally be rewarded. Forging an uneasy truce, they venture deep into the lush but unpredictable Himalayas, hunting for answers and the secluded community living in the Sunshine House.

It is a journey that will test them in ways they couldn’t have imagined. And the closer they get to discovering the truth, the more Anne begins to question everything she thought she wanted.

One evening, Gillis – a young Scottish minister who technically doesn’t believe in god – falls into a hole left by a recently dug up elm tree and discovers an ancient disembodied hand in the soil. He’s about to rebury it when the hand… beckons to him. He spirits it back to his manse and gives it pen and paper, whereupon it begins to doodle scratchy and anarchic visions. Somewhere, in the hand’s deep history, there lies a story of the Scottish reformation, of art and violence, and of its owner long since dead. But for Gillis, there lies only opportunity: to reinvent himself as a prophet, proclaim the hand a miracle and use it for reasons both sacred and profane… to impress his ex-girlfriend, and to lead himself and his country out of inertia and into a dynamic, glorious future.

As children, we made things: snowmen, paper boats, eccentrically costumed plays. That making fired our minds and imaginations – it altered our small worlds and shaped who we became. But as adults, it is hard to find to find the space for creativity and to remember its power.

Exploring craft traditions and forms of making from across centuries and cultures, Clare Hunter encourages to engage with the world afresh. To use our hands again, to see beauty in unexpected places, to play and protest and embrace imaginative possibilities. From paper crafts to wonders made from light and snow, she searches for creative delight – making lanterns, puppets and pinhole cameras.

Inspiring and fascinating, Making Matters celebrates individual and collective creativity. It blends history, culture and politics with rich storytelling, wonderful characters and tales of remarkable objects. Read this, and then make something.