THE BEST OF SCOTTISH BOOKS

Whisky is a bloody business . . .

When a dilapidated distillery comes up for sale in rural Kintyre, Eilidh and her wife Morag jump at the chance. But their ambition to run the first women-owned whisky distillery in Scotland seems to be scuppered when a grisly, decades-old secret is revealed: two dead bodies have been stuffed into barrels, perfectly preserved in single malt.

To add to their woes, a TV crew has just arrived and the townsfolk will not leave them alone. Eilidh becomes obsessed with solving the murders while juggling whisky tastings, ceilidhs, protests and scandals – everything you’d expect from a wee Scottish town imprisoned by its own geography. And no matter how hard you try, the locals will always find out your secrets.

The History Trees is the ultimate photographic collection of the most historic trees on the planet.

Uncover remarkable trees from around the world, many of which have borne witness to key moments in history or reached a scale and age that have allowed them to become a part of history themselves.

First meet ‘Methuselah’, a bristlecone pine in the White Mountains of New Hampshire, believed to be 4,900 years old. Learn about trees which have inspired great events, such as the Isaac Newton apple tree in Lincolnshire, where the famous scientist observed an apple falling from a tree (which still stands in the family garden). Other flora has withstood historic events such as in Japan, where the Hibaku jumoku still grows as a survivor tree from the Hiroshima bombing and the 9/11 Survivor Tree in New York City.

Many trees continue to inspire our world today including the long avenue of beech trees in Northern Ireland known as the Dark Hedges which Game of Thrones fans will instantly recognise as the road to Kings Landing, the Robin Hood’s oak in the Sherwood Forest or the J. R. R. Tolkien trees in Avebury, which inspired the Ents in TheLord of the Rings.

Rest a while beside the oldest trunks and witness the enthralling stories nestled within the branches of these gentle giants.

Can ‘no’ be a declaration of love? What happens when love is savage, dangerous and all-consuming? In this gorgeous and unsettling collection, women navigate the complexities and cruelties of desire across time and place, from a medieval convent to a Victorian parlour to a 1990s high school.

An expectant mother feeds raw meat to the wasp’s nest in her shed.
A pair of sapphic lovers use ghost possession to fleece money from lecherous men.
One woman in wartime London discovers that she loves her husband much more as a ghost.
A teenage girl becomes infatuated with a bloodthirsty succubus.

Intensely atmospheric, surprising and darkly funny, this collection is a richly flavoured feast from a brilliant writer in full command of the form.

Because some doors should never be opened.

New York bookseller Cassie Andrews is not sure what she’s doing with her life. She lives quietly, sharing an apartment with her best friend, Izzy. Then a favourite customer gives her an old book. Full of strange writing and mysterious drawings, at the very front there is a handwritten message:

This is the Book of Doors. Hold it in your hand, and any door is every door.

Cassie is about to discover that the Book of Doors is a special book – a magic book. A book that bestows extraordinary abilities on whoever possesses it. And she is about to learn that there are other magic books out there that can also do wondrous – or dreadful and terrifying – things.

Because where there is magic there is power and there are those who will stop at nothing to possess it.

Suddenly Cassie and Izzy are confronted by violence and danger, and the only person who can help them is Drummond Fox who has a secret library of magical books hidden in the shadows for safekeeping, a man fleeing his own demons. Because there is a nameless evil out there that is hunting them all . . .

Because this book is worth killing for.

Addictive, brilliantly written and utterly irresistible, The Book of Doors is the spell-binding, mind-bending, heart-pounding new adventure that is perfect for fans of The Binding, The Midnight Library and A Discovery of Witches . . .

How do we live at the end of the world?

Over the course of one claustrophobic week, in an eerie, sweltering English summer somewhere in the near-future, Anna meets Ava. As Anna grieves her dead daughter, a dying landscape and a future they might have shared, Ava’s mysterious pull swallows her whole. But what does Ava really want? Who are they both, really? And what are they to each other?

Braiding climate chaos, lust, politics, poetry and violence, Ava Anna Ada is a contemporary, dystopian fable, which asks us: what if the apocalypse has been and gone, and nobody noticed?

Will DI Clare Mackay end up with blood on her hands?

A young man is found dead near a nightclub. He has marks on his neck, the signature of the Choker, a killer who has been targeting gay men across the country. Now, it seems he’s in DI Clare Mackay’s territory.

She discovers this victim has links to notorious criminals in the area. Is it possible his death was at the hands of someone else?

More men, including ones linked to the victim, are attacked and left injured. It’s only a matter of time before someone else is killed. But Clare’s desire for justice leaves her with blindspots which put her job – and her life – at risk.

 

Book 9 of 9 in the DI Clare Mackay series

YOU CAN’T SAVE YOUR KIDS… BUT CAN YOU STOP THEM?

It’s a week before the presidential elections when a bomb goes off in an LA shopping mall…

In London, armed police storm Heathrow Airport and arrest Sajid Khan. His daughter Aliyah entered the USA with the suicide bomber, and now she’s missing, potentially plotting another attack.

But then a mysterious woman called Carrie turns up at Sajid’s door after travelling halfway across the world. She claims Aliyah is with her son Greg, and she knows where they could be.

Back in the US, Agent Shreya Mistry is closing in on the two fugitives. But the more she investigates, the more she realises this case is far from as simple as it seems.

Hunted by the authorities, the two parents are thrown together in a race against time to find their kids before the FBI does and stop a catastrophe that will bring the world to its knees.

Peri LOVES dancing and dinosaurs. So when she tags along to her sister’s ballet class and the teacher asks everyone to pretend they are dancing with a beautiful creature, Peri knows the perfect partner. But Miss Tippytoes is furious! “Never dance with a dinosaur!” she says.

But does Peri listen? She does NOT – and what happens next is a boogying, bashing, shimmying, crashing, waltzing whirlwind!

The stunning debut picture book from Jackie Kay, one of the UK’s foremost poets, rooted in familiar folk songs, and injected with gloriously lyrical old Scots.

When Shona was a wee bit bairn
Her daddy would sing Coorie Doon,
Till she cooried doon and fell asleep
Under the huge eye o’ the moon.

Every night, Shona is tucked into bed by her loving parents, who sing her old and familiar folk songs: Tiree Love Song; Goodnight, Irene and Will Ye Go, Lassie, Go? And as Shona sleeps, we follow the people and places that drift into her dream world: her best “fiere”, Ali, her dog, Marley, her cat, Flo… Then, years later, we meet Shona when she is sixty – actually sixty years old! – as she tucks her daddy, now an old man, into bed. And it is her turn to sing to him: “Coorie Doon, Coorie Doon, wee Daddy”. Magnificently illustrated by Jill Calder, this is a truly original picture book that celebrates the small, perfect rituals of childhood and how they become a vital part of who we are. The book also includes a QR code to scan that will link through to a video from Jackie Kay and free audio recordings of songs from the book from legendary folk singers Peggy Seeger, Claire Brown and Suzanne Bonnar.

A memoir and investigation exploring loss, community and the climate crisis in the Shetland Islands by environmental journalist Marianne Brown.

How do we balance our needs with the needs of the natural world around us?

How can we have nuanced conversations and debate in a time of extreme activism or extreme denial?

How can we begin to understand the complexities of a subject as enormous as climate change?

And how can we change the way we live to save our lives?

In A Conventional Boy, the fate of the world will depend on a roll of the dice… twenty-sided dice, that is.

In 1984, Derek Reilly was just another teenage nerd growing up in middle England. But his love of D&D caused him to fall afoul of the Laundry, a government agency tasked with suppressing supernatural threats. It turns out that sometimes ninth level wizard spells drawn on the back of your maths textbook can look suspiciously like actual magic…

Decades later, Derek is a long-term inmate at Camp Sunshine, a centre for deprogramming captured cultists. But Derek finally has reason to escape, and an escape plan to out into action: he wants to attend his first gaming convention. While Derek’s D&D games were fictional, a game at the con really is a dread ritual designed to summon a great evil into our world, and it’s up to Derek and his players to stop them.

The fate of the world may depend on the contents of Derek’s dice bag.

The Laundry Files series follows an agency of British spies who deal with supernatural threats; they also have to deal with chronic underfunding, government ministers, rival agencies and worst of all, each other. Think Slow Horses crossed with the monsters from Stranger Things, this series is funny, nerdy, and a cult classic.

***Publishing ahead of the final Laundry Files novel (The Regicide Report), this new collection includes the never before published Laundry Files novel A Conventional Boy – inspired by the 1980s Satanic Panic – and two other short stories in this joyous celebration of all things Laundry Files.***

In this collection:
*A CONVENTIONAL BOY (53.3k words)
*DOWN ON THE FARM (12.7k words)
*OVERTIME (8.7k words)
also includes exclusive afterword from Charles Stross

Will they get a second chance at first love?

When newly divorced Tara McTaigh spots an advert for a studio to let in Castle Coorie’s craft centre, she packs up her Edinburgh life and moves to the Isle of Skye, eager for a fresh start.

Little does she know that the castle’s estate manager, single dad Calan Fraser, is the man who broke her heart back at university. Even as the two overcome past hurts, their present lives don’t allow for romance. Cal’s focus is on his young daughter, while Tara is healing from her recent divorce.

When a surprise storm puts Tara’s life at risk, will Cal make it to her in time? And will Tara learn too late that she can’t spend her days afraid of love?

Book 1 of 2 in the Coorie Castle Crafts series.

Meet Tommy Bruce – he’s washed-up already, marooned in a ramshackle hotel inherited from dead parents in the armpit of Perthshire, that’s just too far off the main tourist trail to be viable. He’s too young to be middle-aged, but too old to be what you could call young (and too lazy to care about it, really). Saddled with debt, grotty premises that are falling down around him and a crippling loneliness, Tommy is slowly but determinedly drinking himself and his business out of existence. Until one day into the lounge-bar, and out of the blue, walks Fiona McLean. And before long she’s moved behind the bar, into the hotel and (remarkably) into Tommy’s bed. Fiona blows into Tommy’s life and through the hotel, and with the light she brings, Tommy’s fortunes might just be turning around; but in her wake has also slipped in darkness – names and faces from the past who mean Tommy no goodwill at all, criminal forces that threaten to ruin him, the hotel and what little happiness he’s managed, haplessly, to cobble together.

This, dear reader, is the story of my Resurrection.

Edinburgh, Scotland, 1828. Naïve but determined James Willoughby has abandoned his posh, sheltered life at Oxford to pursue a lifelong dream of studying surgery in Edinburgh. A shining beacon of medical discovery in the age of New Enlightenment, the city’s university offers everything James desires–except the chance to work on a human cadaver. For that, he needs to join one of the private schools in Surgeon’s Square, at a cost he cannot afford. In desperation, he strikes a deal with Aneurin “Nye” MacKinnon, a dashing young dissectionist with an artist’s eye for anatomy and a reckless passion for knowledge. Nye promises to help him gain the surgical experience he craves–but it doesn’t take long for James to realize he’s made a devil’s bargain . . .

Nye is a body snatcher. And James has unwittingly become his accomplice. Intoxicated by Nye and his noble mission, James rapidly descends into the underground ranks of the Resurrectionists–the body snatchers infamous for stealing fresh corpses from churchyards to be used as anatomical specimens. Before he knows it, James is caught up in a life-or-death scheme as rival gangs of snatchers compete in a morbid race for power and prestige.

James and Nye soon find themselves in the crosshairs of a shady pair of unscrupulous opportunists known as Burke and Hare, who are dead set on cornering the market, no matter the cost. These unsavory characters will do anything to beat the competition for bodies. Even if it’s cold-blooded murder . . .

Exquisitely macabre and delightfully entertaining, The Resurrectionist combines fact and fiction in a rollicking tale of the risks and rewards of scientific pursuit, the passions of its boldest pioneers, and the anatomy of human desire.

Newly assigned to CID, Detective Constable Elizabeth Burnet needs to prove herself more than most. In an era rife with misogynistic attitudes, some see her as little more than a pretty face hired to make the department more palatable to the public, giving her the nickname ‘The Friday Girl’.

So when she stumbles across evidence of a nascent serial killer – dubbed “The Werewolf” by the local press – her theories are dismissed as the product of an overactive imagination, and the more she tries to persuade people of the truth, the more she’s alienated from her colleagues. But the killer is out there, hunting for their next victim in the Templeton Woods.

The only person who believes Burnet is a recently dismissed detective with his own agenda: exposing corruption within Tayside Police. Working together, they soon realise that some within the police force may have their own reasons for covering up the recent deaths. And as the killer is exposed, Burnet uncovers the mind of a monster pushed to the edge.

The second Ally McCoist thriller.

DCI Alison McCoist is back: newly promoted and even less popular. Chuck Gardner is the proud owner of both a confidential paper-shredding business and a serious betting habit. When Chuck finds some scandalous paperwork and McCoist investigates a rat-nibbled corpse under a flyover, they are both sucked into a deadly stramash of gangland wars and police corruption. Can Chuck solve his gambling and gangster problems before some heed-banger feeds him into his own shredder? And can McCoist claw herself out of this latest shitemire without her own shady dealings coming to light? It might depend on how far she’s prepared to go…

The debut cookbook from Scottish bakery Twelve Triangles.

‘We want this book to be a well-thumbed friend that feels safe and comforting and from which you know you can always make something delicious that feels like home. Our love of food and cooking began at our kitchen tables and we want to share this passion with you, to bring to yours.’

This beautiful book weaves together recipes and stories – inspired by Emily and Rachel’s cookery journey, relationships with producers and communities, and their love of food since they were small. The recipes lovingly compiled in this book are all truly accessible for the home cook, inspiring the reader to learn new skills if they wish, or simply return to comforting classics, always ensuring quality ingredients and delicious results that you’ll want to share!

With over 90 sweet and savoury recipes, the book is built around the kitchen table – for creating, feasting, coming together, having quiet moments and joyous celebrations. Structured around key ingredients and techniques, the chapters cover: Butter, Milk and Cream, Bread, Fruit, Olive Oil, Chocolate, Nuts, Spices, Herbs & Coffee, Eggs, Salt & Vinegar.

With recipes including: Brown Butter Apple Buns, Dauphinoise pie, Focaccia, Whey Brined Roast Chicken, Honey Tart with Apricot Jam, Kimchi, Tiramisu, Cocoa Roasted Squash, Pickles, Burnt Honey Custard, Salsa Verde, Fresh Peas, Broad Beans, Almonds & ricotta, Coffee & Cardamom loaf cake and many more.

‘Simple things made well’ will always come back to the best possible ingredients you can get your hands on, then with a little time and care, creating food that isn’t showy, but tastes incredible.

Gerard is twelve. He hates his name, but loves flying round the streets of Glasgow on his bike, or mucking about with his gang, the Broncos. He’s a bright kid, but trouble seems to follow him. No one really knows what it’s like at home for Gerard; he’s used to carrying a lot on his small shoulders.

Gerard doesn’t always make good decisions. And on one April morning, in the blink of an eye, he makes a very bad one – one that will upend his whole world.

Now, he faces a bewildering stream of concerned adults clutching files, unfamiliar streets to navigate, a strange bed to sleep in, and the very real chance he won’t see his wee brother and sister again.

Heartbreaking and yet brimful of humour, compassion and hope, This Bright Life is a story about messy lives, second chances and the many hands it takes to build a boy.

The first book in the Raskine House Trilogy.

The deaths of a series of young Eastern European women in Glasgow leads to a stately home in the Scottish countryside, and back to the Second World War, where a group of young soldiers made their own, shocking rules…

Glasgow, 1966: Stevie ‘Minto’ Milloy, former star footballer-turned-rookie reporter, finds himself trailing the story of a young Eastern European student whose body has been found on remote moorland outside the city. How did she get there from her hostel at the Sovereign Grace Mission, and why does Stevie find obstacles at every turn?

Italy, 1943: As the Allies fight Mussolini’s troops, a group of young soldiers are separated from their platoon, and Glaswegian Jamesie Campbell, his newfound friend Michael McTavish at his side, finds himself free to make his own rules…

Glasgow, 1969: Courtroom sketch artist Donald ‘Doodle’ Malpas is shocked to discover that his new case involves the murder of a teenage Lithuanian girl he knows from the Sovereign Grace Mission. Why hasn’t the girl’s death been reported? And why is a young police constable suddenly so keen to join the mission?

No one seems willing to join the dots between the two cases, and how they link to Raskine House, the stately home in the Scottish countryside with a dark history and even darker present – the venue for the debauched parties held there by the rich and powerful of the city who call themselves ‘The Weekenders’.

Painting a picture of a 1960s Glasgow in the throes of a permissive society, pulled apart by religion, corruption, and a murderous Bible John stalking the streets, The Weekenders is a snapshot of an era of turmoil – and a terrifying insight into the mind of a ruthless criminal…

At a Scottish manor house requisitioned as a temporary hospital during the First World War, Esther works as a volunteer nurse while dreaming of becoming a poet. With her husband and beloved father both dead, she knows that if the war ever ends she must build a very different life for herself.

Meanwhile, on the coast beyond her new home lies Gallondean Castle, a gloomy near-ruin that has been unhappily inherited by Jacob. Jacob is already haunted by his own demons but as he uncovers details of the castle’s past, the shadows only seem to be growing darker around him.

However it is Daniel, one of the soldiers who appears to have received only a minor, yet mysterious, injury, whose life will come to connect with both Esther and Jacob in horrifying and unexpected ways…

Unsettling and evocative, deeply atmospheric and brilliantly engaging, The Unrecovered is an unforgettable historical debut inspired by a real life legend and marks the arrival of an outstanding new talent.