THE BEST OF SCOTTISH BOOKS

The Deeside Way is a long-distance path running for 66km (41 miles) from Aberdeen, the oil capital of Europe, to Ballater in Royal Deeside in the Cairngorms National Park. Mainly following the course of old Royal Deeside Railway line, it is suitable for cyclists as well as walkers. There is much to be seen along the Way of scenic beauty, historical interest and thriving wildlife. There are fascinating links to the Romans, to Queen Victoria and Balmoral and even to bodysnatchers! This new Guide covers all of these, with a wealth of practical information on preparation for the walk, accommodation, transport and much else. As well as describing the Way itself, Peter Evans includes six additional walks in and around Deeside, varying from short low-level walks to mountain summits.

June 1945. Hitler has triumphed, Britain is under German occupation and America cowers under the threat of nuclear attack.In the dead of night, a figure flits through the ruins of Dryburgh Abbey, searching for a hidden document he knows could change the course of history. The journal he discovers, by a young soldier, David Erskine, records an extraordinary story.When the Allies drive the Germans out of France and victory seems imminent, Erskine is in Antwerp, where he witnesses a world-changing reversal of fortune. From a high vantage point, he watches a huge mushroom cloud rise over London: an atomic bomb has been detonated by the Germans in a last desperate roll of the dice.Captor becomes captive and Erskine is held as a POW in his own land. As the brutal grip of the occupying forces tightens, he is determined to join the resistance. A daring escape leads him and his fiancee Katie on a breathless chase to the university town of St Andrews, where the Germans have established a secret research laboratory. When it becomes clear what its purpose is, David, Katie and their small, trusted band must adopt a desperate and audacious plan to thwart Nazi domination . . .

Polly Pullar has had a passion for red squirrels since childhood. As a wildlife rehabilitator, she knows the squirrel on a profoundly personal level and has hand-reared numerous litters of orphan kits, eventually returning them to the wild.In this book she shares her experiences and love for the squirrel and explores how our perceptions have changed. Heavily persecuted until the 1960s, it has since become one of the nation’s most adored mammals. But we are now racing against time to ensure its long-term survival in an ever-changing world.Set against the beautiful backdrop of Polly’s Perthshire farm, where she works continuously to encourage wildlife great and small, she highlights how nature can, and indeed will, recover if only we give it a chance. In just two decades, her efforts have brought spectacular results, and numerous squirrels and other animals visit her wild farm every day.

In 1752, Seamus a’Ghlynne, James of the Glen, was executed for the murder of government man Colin Campbell. He was almost certainly innocent.When banners are placed at his gravesite claiming that his namesake, James Stewart, is innocent of murder, reporter Rebecca Connolly smells a story. The young Stewart has been in prison for ten years for the brutal murder of his lover, lawyer and politician Murdo Maxwell, in his Appin home. Rebecca soon discovers that Maxwell believed he was being followed prior to his murder and his phones were tapped.Why is a Glasgow crime boss so interested in the case? As Rebecca keeps digging, she finds herself in the sights of Inverness crime matriarch Mo Burke, who wants payback for the damage caused to her family in a previous case.Set against the stunning backdrop of the Scottish Highlands, A Rattle of Bones is a tale of injustice and mystery, and the echo of the past in the present.

Gangland boss Zander Finn is so sickened by the brutal murder of his son in a Paisley pub, he decides to change his life. Following the advice of his priest and mentor, he moves clandestinely to London and becomes an ambulance driver.But when his old second-in-command Malky Maloney tracks him down on a London street, Finn knows he must return. Both his real family and his crime family face an existential threat from Albanian mobsters determined to take control of the Scottish underworld.Under the watchful eye of his charismatic mother, he must try to look after his lovelorn younger daughter and her older sister who is pregnant to his old enemy Joe Mannion’s son. His estranged wife, who has more than just a business relationship with Mannion, and his remaining son, crippled while serving in Afghanistan also require his attention. But most of all, he must take back what is his.Facing the forces of law and order under Detective Chief Superintendent Amelia Langley, a ruthless gang of Albanians and a beautiful but deadly Italian woman, Zander Finn struggles for survival in a rollercoaster ride of brutality, tenderness, misplaced loyalties and the utterly unexpected. The path to redemption is a bumpy one, and it begins to look like Finn should have stayed in London.

On a hillside near Ballachulish in the Scottish Highlands in May 1752 a rider is assassinated by a gunman. The murdered man is Colin Campbell, a government agent travelling to nearby Duror where he’s evicting farm tenants to make way for his relatives. Campbell’s killer evades capture, but Britain’s rulers insist this challenge to their authority must result in a hanging. The sacrificial victim is James Stewart, who is organising resistance to Campbell’s takeover of lands long held by his clan, the Appin Stewarts.James is a veteran of the Highland uprising crushed in April 1746 at Culloden. In Duror he sees homes torched by troops using terror tactics against rebel Highlanders. The same brutal response to dissent means that James’s corpse will for years hang from a towering gibbet and leave a community utterly ravaged.Introducing this new and edition of his account of what came to be called the Appin Murder, historian James Hunter tells how his own Duror upbringing introduced him to the tragic story of James Stewart.

Taking inspiration from the Scandinavian, Nordic and Celtic regions, this book contains 20 charming and modern projects, based on traditional knitting styles and techniques.Exploring the iconic colourwork of Fair Isle or Scandinavia, or the chunky cables of Aran knitting, the intricacies of Shetland lace knitting or the cosiness of a Guernsey style pillowcase, these are knitwear items that are made to last.Jenny shares the inspiration and history behind each thoughtful project, as well as easy-to-follow patterns, colourwork charts, and atmospheric photography. She uses a serene and calming colour palette which, combined with beautiful soft yarns and stylish designs, makes for a collection of highly desirable items including garments and home accessories.Whether you’re a relative beginner or already an experienced knitter, with her guidance, you’ll soon be creating truly special and one-of-a-kind pieces that can be cherished for generations.

The long-awaited sequel to ‘Errant Blood’ , a second crime thriller set in the Scottish Highland village of Duncul. Eamon’s new found happiness is shattered by the type of murder that the government doesn’t want to believe happens anymore. Detective Maclean thinks he has the killer, but something worse than a body has been found beneath the waters of The Minch, something that should never have been boring too the surface, and now its not just TV crews that are watching the village.

The Glasgow Enlightenment is widely regarded as the first book to explore the nature and accomplishments of the Enlightenment in eighteenth-century Glasgow in a comprehensive manner. In addition to a general introduction by the editors, there are seven chapters devoted to Glasgow University professors, such as Adam Smith, Francis Hutcheson, Thomas Reid, John Millar, William Leechman, and John Anderson. At a time when the Glasgow economy was booming in the strength of its trade with America, these and other Glasgow men of science and learning were making major contributions to the European world of philosophy, law, political economy, natural philosophy, medicine, and religious toleration. There are also five chapters on other individuals and topics, including the physician and author John Moore, James Boswell during his student days, images of Glasgow in popular poetry, and Popular party clergymen who challenged the dominant views of the academic Enlightenment with an alternative vision of liberty and piety.This edition features a new bibliographical preface by Richard B. Sher that discusses the substantial secondary literature on eighteenth-century Glasgow and the Glasgow Enlightenment since the original publication of this book more than a quarter of a century ago.

The second book in Charles Cumming’s gripping new thriller series surrounding BOX 88 – a covert intelligence organization that operates beneath the radar.A young spy in one of the most dangerous places on Earth…1993: Student Lachlan Kite is sent to post-Soviet Russia in the guise of a language teacher. In reality, he is there as a spy. Top secret intelligence agency BOX 88 has ordered Kite to extract a chemical weapons scientist before his groundbreaking research falls into the wrong hands. But Kite’s mission soon goes wrong and he is left stranded in a hostile city with a former KGB officer on his trail.An old enemy looking for revenge…2020: Now the director of BOX 88 operations in the UK, Kite discovers he has been placed on the ‘JUDAS’ list – a record of enemies of Russia who have been targeted for assassination. Kite’s fight for survival takes him to Dubai, where he must confront the Russian secret state head on…Who will come out on top in this deadly game of cat and mouse?

This is a story of gardens and how people can grow well in them. Through a lifetime’s experience of award-winning work in community gardens and in mental health care and training, Cameron shows us how tending green spaces can bring tremendous benefits to mental health.Using the garden’s annual cycle, she reveals how stages of the growing year can act as a powerful metaphor and even mirror healing mechanisms that can help in times of distress, anxiety or depression. By exploring practices used in therapeutic and community garden settings we learn techniques that can be applied whatever your circumstances. The Garden Cure is full of ideas and tools that will help support your own and others’ physical and mental well-being, especially when life is challenging. How, in other words, gardening helps us all grow and thrive.

Femke, her mother Trijn and her grandfather have very different ideas about how to run their family farm. Tensions between mother and daughter are growing; Femke wants to switch to sustainable growing principles, whilst her mother considers this an attack on tradition. To make matters worse, their home province of Groningen is experiencing a series of earthquakes caused by a fracking operation near their farm. While the cracks and splinters in their farmhouse increase, the authorities and the state-owned gas company refuse to offer the local farming community any help. In Shocked Earth, Saskia Goldschmidt investigates what it means to have your identity intensely entwined with your place of birth and your principles at odds with your closest kin. And how to keep standing when the world as you know it is slowly falling apart.

A collection of vibrant essays to inform, stimulate and inspire every nature lover. Through unparallelled expertise as a field naturalist, Roy Dennis is able to write about the natural world in a way that considers both the problems and the progress in ecology and conservation. Beginning with cottongrass, whose snow-white blooms blow gently in the wind across the wetter moors and bogs, this is a year-round trove of insight and knowledge for anyone who cares about the natural world – from birdsong and biodiversity to sphagnum and species reintroduction. Written by one of our most prominent advocates for rewilding, the essays have a clear message: “Never give up on trying to conserve and restore wildlife and the wild places you cherish. It’s essential to try and to succeed. And remember, it’s never ‘if’, but ‘when’ – and with climate chaos closing in, the time is now.

How would any of us feel if we could meet our teenage selves, a ghost on the road? Everything Passes, Everything Remains is a confluence of journeys, made by Chris Dolan, his friends, and writers before him. It’s a bit about cycling, a bit about walking, and a bit about buses. It’s a kind of travelogue, over time, and through some lesser-known parts of Spain. It’s an obsession with Spain’s writers and its history, from the Inquisition to the Civil War to the questions it faces as a country today. What makes a nation, or a family for that matter, or a group of friends? In many ways it’s as much about Dolan’s native Scotland as Spain.But mostly, it’s about the highs and lows of growing up and growing older – how the past plays merry hell with the present. About friendship, loss, music, memory, and the demons that follow us as we try to make sense of our history and our place in the world.

Her rugged Highlander…is the gallant son of a laird!Travelling alone through the treacherous Scottish Highlands, Madeleine d’Evremont is saved by rough-looking soldier Grant Rathmore. Attraction flares between them as he escorts Madeleine on her perilous escape to France – until she discovers he’s the heir of a respected laird! Madeleine knows she must let him go…surely the daughter of a humble adventurer could never be a suitable match for him now?

‘We story-tellers have a delightful time playing with history, perhaps finding something fascinating, perhaps making dreadful mistakes.’Here, in The Oath-Takers, the ‘central maypole round which the people … must swing and fall’ is Charlemagne, and one of ‘the people’ a young man who makes his journey to manhood in a world of feudalism and a powerful Church. In the second short novel, Sea-Green Ribbons, the reader enters the political, religious and social tumult of the English Civil War through the story and choices of a young woman, Sarah, from a radical Leveller family in London.

Originally published in 1978, this book explores the relationship between the Gaelic and English spheres of life, from the life of the bilingual Gael, in the confrontation of Highland and Lowland Scotland and the literary expressions of these. It is argued that the picture of Gaelic society that is popularly accepted does not owe its form to any simple observation, but to symbolic and metaphorical requirements imposed by the larger society. Beginning with the birth of the Romantic movement and moving on to modern Gaelic literature and anthropological studies, aspects of the relationship of a dominant to a ‘minority’ culture are raised. The racial stereotypes of Celt and Anglo-Saxon that were widely accepted in the 19th Century are also discussed, and the understanding of how a dominant intellectual world has used Gaelic society in the process of seeking its own definition is pursued through a study of the concepts of ‘folklore’ and the ‘folk’.

Originally published in 1985, this book examines the extent of Scottish migration and Scottish involvement in the process of development. Although there are many books written on the Scots abroad, this volume is unique in that it has a unifying theme: each contributor has concentrated on the role played by the Scots in the economic development of their relevant country or area which include England, Canada, the USA, Australia, New Zealand, India, Latin America and Japan. This will be of interest to both social and economic historians.

Originally published in 1986, this book creates a vivid portrait of the interaction of Scottish ideas and early Victorian English society over 50 years, illuminated by detail and substantial in its range. The book delineates certain ideas of the so-called Scottish Enlightenment and the education that purveyed them. It considers those who taught and received that learning and how it was taken to England. There, through the mediation of politicians, lawyers, economists, doctors and others, the intellectual life of later 18th Century Scotland had a profound impact on many areas of historical development in early 19th Century England. The book concentrates on the influence of Scottish social thought and medical practice, high Whig politics and political economy, as well as the professional experience and socio-cultural significance of Scottish-trained physicians.

Originally published in 1966, this was the first book on this subject to be published for over a hundred years. It covers all facets including little-known types of Gaelic song, the bagpipes and their music, including the esoteric subject of pibroch, the Ceol Mor or ‘Great Music’ of the pipes. It gives a comprehensive review of the fiddle composers and their music, and of the Clarsach and its revival, with an example of all-but-extinct Scottish harp music. A chapter is devoted to the music of Orkney and Shetland and the book contains over 100 examples of music many of which were from the author’s own collection and published here for the first time.