THE BEST OF SCOTTISH BOOKS

Why is it that every book about winning in business seems to be written by a male CEO? Probably because over 90% of the leadership positions in the world are held by men.

Women are not winning at work – but Gill Whitty-Collins wants to change that. Women represent 50% of the world’s population, intelligence and competence: why should they not represent 50% of

its leadership?

My goal is that one day you will be one of the women in a room of leaders that is 50% women.

I know what women need to do to win at work. I share it in keynotes, in workshops, in coaching – now I’m going to share

it with you all here.

In this empowering book, Gill Whitty-Collins builds on her first acclaimed book Why Men Win at Work…and how we can make inequality history and fearlessly tackles all the invisible, unconscious forces that create the male dominant workplace that holds women back.

Gill draws on her extensive knowledge and experience as a leader, manager, workshop facilitator, coach mentor to equip working women to overcome the career barriers they face. She combines insights, strategies, action plans exercises that will empower and enable you to unleash your full potential and to win at work.

Think of The How to Win at Work Book as your personal Coaching Manual. Clear, practical and genuinely empowering, it is the career guide that belongs on every professional woman’s desk.

Too loud. Too emotional. Too ambitious. Too… powerful? What happens when you stop dimming your light and dare to shine?

Beyond Palatable is a manifesto for women who are done shrinking. For too long, we’ve been told to smooth our edges, soften our voices, and contort ourselves into versions of ‘good’ that leave us cut off from our true power. Sophie Lee calls time on bending to societal norms and exposes the lies that keep women small, compliant and exhausted.

Through somatic wisdom (a field that emphasises body awareness and mindful movement for wellbeing), cultural critique and practical tools, she shows readers how to unpick their stories, disrupt the systems that silence them, and remember who the f*ck they are.

Raw, unfiltered and unapologetically honest, Beyond Palatable is both a personal reckoning and a cultural intervention. It’s a book for every woman who has ever asked: Am I too much? Not enough? Too complicated to be loved as I am?

The truth is, you are more powerful than you’ve been led to believe.

I spent most of my life thinking there was something deeply wrong with me.

So, I sought validation and constantly outsourced my sense of worthiness to others.

It was only when I started doing the real work that I realised the lies we are told to keep us small and compliant, and the ways they destroy our lives.

I watched incredible women apologise for themselves in every moment.

This isn’t just a me thing, I realised. This is endemic; we’ve all just got really good at pretending.

This is for all of the women who have shrunk themselves to fit in. For us, our younger selves and the girls who are growing up in a world of filters, loud expectations and conflicting messages about what it means to be a woman.

It’s 1977, and punk rock has just hit Liverpool. The legendary Eric’s club is home to the city’s rebels, posers and misfits. It’s a place of attitude, adventure and new possibilities, and it changes lives. Some become pop stars; Penny Kiley becomes a music journalist.

The story traces Penny’s relationship with the music scene from the turbulent political 1980s into the changing culture of the 21st century. Throughout these years, she never stops being a misfit, and the question remains: how do you navigate normal life when punk is dead and you don’t know you’re autistic?

Atypical Girl begins as a coming-of-age story and ends as a midlife reinvention. What unites them is a search for identity and the role that music plays in all our lives.

 

Featuring encounters with Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark, Echo & The Bunnymen, The Teardrop Explodes,  Paul McCartney, The Cramps, Jonathan Richman, Tracey Thorn and more.

Cù Giobach is the Gaelic translation of the original bestselling French children’s series Chien Pourri that launched one of the most popular and endearing characters ever – a rather flea-bitten dog with a very big heart. He lives on the streets, unloved – his only friend is an equally abandoned cat, Piseag Phiollach.  Desperate to find an owner, and to be loved and cared for, he falls into various misadventures and meets a few unsavoury characters along the way.  Always optimistic, he’s not quite as street smart as he should be.  His eagerness to please gets him into some very awkward scrapes, but Cù Giobach always bounces back.

Sometimes quite dark, it’s ultimately an uplifting story of friendship and belonging.  An imaginative illustrated chapter book for children progressing beyond picture books.

Written by Colas Gutman with striking illustrations by Marc Boutavant, over 2 million books have been sold in France alone and the series is available in 15 languages worldwide. It also inspired a successful animated tv series.  Jenny Rosenstrach of the New York Times “There’s more than a hint of Lemony Snicket’s dark hilarity in Gutman’s writing.”  This is the first Gaelic translation of this modern French classic by well-known performer and academic Gillebrìde Mac ‘IlleMhaoil.  Publication is supported by the Gaelic Books Council.

‘This book really blows my mind. I haven’t been this excited about a pâtisserie book in a long time’ – Jenny Hartin, Eat Your Books

Have you ever stood gazing at the window of your local pâtisserie, in awe at what top-level pastry chefs can achieve? Imagine if you could make your own little cakes that look and taste just as good! Pâtisserie Made Simple: The Art of Petits Gâteaux is the perfect introduction to creating your own exquisite confections at home.

Complete with simple-to-follow recipes, broken down into achievable steps, and stunning photography that will make you salivate, this book is perfect for every wannabe Dessert Boss. For the airiest mousses, melt-in-your-mouth cheesecakes, fantastically tart compotes, perfectly tempered chocolate and impressively vibrant gels, this book will help you take your baking and dessert-making to a whole new stratosphere.

And the wonder of it all is that every recipe is made in a single brownie tin.

Carnegie Medal winning author Tanya Landman delivers an eerily captivating and accessible retelling of Robert Louis Stevenson’s classic Gothic novel of murder and monstrosity.

Evil Mr Hyde stalks London’s streets, leaving a trail of destruction in his wake.

Good Dr Jekyll keeps protecting him.

Why? Is Hyde blackmailing Jekyll for some shameful past sin? Or is something stranger and more sinister going on?

Respected scientist Dr Henry Jekyll is fascinated by the human capacity for evil. But his experimentation into the darker side of his own character has horrific and dangerous results.

Robert Louis Stevenson’s Gothic masterpiece continues to fascinate readers 140 years after its first publication, and it is now made accessible to an even wider audience in this compelling retelling by award-winning author Tanya Landman.

Particularly suitable for readers aged 11+ with a reading age of 9.

What is North Coast 500: Where to Eat and Stay official guide about?

A DEADLY BOMBING

When renowned author Dr. Daniel Solomon is killed in a devastating explosion in York, authorities quickly attribute the attack to Islamic extremists. But as the investigation unfolds, it becomes clear that all is not as it seems.

A DARK CONSPIRACY

DS Max Craigie uncovers a chilling connection between a series of brutal murders, each victim linked by a secret that someone is determined to protect.

A DANGEROUS GAME

With the number of victims growing and an elusive figure known as The Cashier operating in the shadows, Max must navigate a web of corruption and hatred. Can he unravel the truth before more lives are lost?

Discover the adventures of Knobble, a real-life Minke Whale, as he explores Scottish seas, meeting some amazing animals along the way! Knobble has been encountered by many people on whale watching trips since 2002.

Packed with fascinating facts aimed to captivate adults and children alike, this book will encourage you to ‘make a splash’ about the magical minke whale!

Home can be the most dangerous place.

They had cameras, alarms, lights, even guard dogs. They had storm doors and locks on their windows. They knew martial arts, they had knives to hand, and one of them even had a gun. And he still got in . . .

A terrifying killer is haunting Glasgow’s affluent suburbs – invading homes and smothering people left on their own. The tabloids have a name for the murderer based on his method of folding the bodies into tiny spaces, as well as his uncanny knack of seemingly springing out of nowhere: Jack-in-the-Box.

Inspector Lomond has an impossible case to crack. The houses involved have state-of-the-art security systems and were all securely locked at the time of death. There is no evidence of forced entry, and video footage shows no sign of any intruders. How is he getting in? How is he getting out? And who will be next?

From the author of the prizewinning As the Women Lay Dreaming comes an evocative and highly original fictional rendering of a Hebridean island across the centuries. Continuing his elegiac Lewis novels, Donald S. Murray offers a remarkable new work that sweeps from the eighth century to the present day.

Layering interlinked stories of successive generations like blankets of peat, he allows echoes of ancient lives to surface in the present. This is a novel that mirrors the shifting rhythms of wind and tide, where the struggles and joys of past lives are refracted in the heartaches and hopes of modern-day islanders.

As in his award-winning previous novels, the ordinary is suffused with quiet wonder; every place and gesture carries memories and meaning. Ultimately, this is a novel about continuity. The land holds its secrets, letting the past break surface in sometimes surprising ways. Murray’s compassionate gaze reminds us that time can be viewed as a circle, where the living are in constant conversation with those who came before.

In remote Assynt, where the past is recreated from rock and bone, a crofter and her estranged daughter search for some common ground in their annual week together. Rooted in the landscape and geology of North-West Scotland, this beautifully written and heart-breaking novel-in-verse is an original and powerful exploration of how our lived experience weighs on us, intimately told through the fracturing and repair of a mother and daughter relationship. Powerful, spare and heart-breaking, Jim Carruth’s new narrative poem centres on geology and fossils as he explores the deep emotional life of two women confronting their past amidst the savage beauty of Assynt. Layered and astute, it shows the crofter’s elemental struggle to survive alongside their livestock and how the scars of the past will keep breaking open until its effect on the present is acknowledged. Flora and fauna shine out of the snowy expanse of the page as Carruth mines that white space to express the silences around his acute observations. – Martina Evans The words worked like the scant intimate points we connect with in an otherwise overwhelming landscape. It left me with a quiet, moving confirmation that love – like the land – is shaped and misshaped not by ideals but by pressure and accumulation. – Cynan Jones Jim Carruth’s poems sing off the page in a ballad taken up by two voices, crackling with a tension that is echoed in the land, ‘ice-gripped./ Gripped but not static’. As the earth shows its scars and as conversations turn jagged, the music changes with them.

‘Each crystal note in ‘Knockan’ is precise and local but reverberates across geographies and into the far reaches of the human heart.’ – Imtiaz Dharker

Spot Nessie the Loch Ness Monster and her colourful cousins in all sorts of fun and surprising places. Find all eight Loch Ness Monsters in twelve amazing locations: splashing in the water park, whizzing around on funfair rides, investigating an old castle and exploring a museum.

Hide and Seek Nessie is bursting with bustling scenes to pore over. This fantastic activity book is a perfect gift, giving children hours of search-and-find fun.

Rory, a young red deer calf, loves playing with his best pal Ruby, having friendly competitions to discover who is the best: Rory can jump the highest, but Ruby can run the fastest. But when a game of treasure hunt goes wrong, can the little deer use their strengths, and those of their friends, to save the day?

Written in Lynne Rickards’ signature rhyme, this is a playful tale of friendship, teamwork and appreciating others’ strengths. Jonna Dempsey’s characterful illustrations of Scottish animals and landscapes are full of charming details to spot.

From the author of best-selling Skye the Puffling and Rowan the Red Squirrel, Rory the Little Red Deer is a fun and lively celebration of one of Scotland’s most famous animals.

“A house is not a home for wild things; wild things need to run, and soar, and swim.”

In the quiet dawn of the spring forest a boy finds an orphan fawn, hungry and alone. He carefully carries her home, caring for her while she grows strong. The boy and the fawn become inseparable.

But the young deer is a wild thing and soon she is ready to discover a home of her own.

When a big storm threatens, the boy worries for the young deer. Can the friends find each other again? Are some bonds stronger than goodbye?

Lyrical and atmospheric, this beautiful picture book by award-winning author Louise Greig and illustrator Júlia Moscardó is an uplifting story of belonging, the enduring connection between humans and nature, and a tender lesson in learning when to let go.

When Second World War bombs start falling, twelve-year-old Eilidh Flett is evacuated to a place she’s never heard of, to live with family she’s never met. Stuck on a remote Orkney island, Eilidh’s aunt gives her just two rules: don’t touch anything that washes up on the shore, and never ever enter the island’s lighthouse.

But this seemingly dull island is full of surprises. With the help of a ghostly new friend, Eilidh begins to unravel the lighthouse’s mysteries: long-kept family secrets, a hidden order of Nightkeepers, and a darkly dangerous magic that could change the world as she knows it.

Does Eilidh have what it takes to become a Nightkeeper’s Apprentice?

This enthralling upper middle grade mystery explores destiny, loss and hope. Jude Reid’s lyrical debut children’s novel is inspired by the wild places and magical folklore of Scotland.

Two central decisions  – firstly to become a mother and secondly to step back to look after her elderly mother – shape the author’s life. She stands fast behind the choices she has made with both moral courage and integrity, often in the face of opposition from the patriarchy in its many guises. Heart warming, uplifting and funny these books share an unconventional journey, unique life choices and the celebration of the freedom to tread a different path. Dealing head on with the dilemmas and sorrows of women’s lives Yarns celebrates determination and survival. And the importance of hope. The author argues that success in life is about doing our best for those we love, living in accordance with our principles and valuing what truly matters – families in all their diversity.

Life on a remote island is turned upside down by a stranger’s arrival, testing bonds of family and tradition and leaving a young dreamer’s future hanging in the balance.

It’s no ordinary existence on the rugged isle of Muckle Flugga. The elements run riot and the very rocks that shape the place begin to shift under their influence. The only human inhabitants are the lighthouse keeper, known as The Father, and his otherworldly son, Ouse. Them, and the occasional lodger to keep the wolf from the door.

When one of those lodgers – Firth, a chaotic writer – arrives from Edinburgh, the limits of the world the keeper and his son cling to begin to crumble. A tug of war ensues between Firth and the lighthouse keeper for Ouse’s affections – and his future. As old and new ways collide, and life-changing decisions loom, what will the tides leave standing in their wake?

In 1743, according to legend, the last wolf in Scotland was killed by a huntsman near Inverness. Long regarded in folk takes and history as a slayer of babies, a robber of graves, a devourer of battlefield dead, its extinction was widely celebrated. But since then, deer have multiplied, destroying the vegetation on which an array of wildlife depends, and it is clear that the entire Highland ecosystem has been thrown off balance by the elimination of a top predator.

Jim Crumley believes the old stories are pure fiction – a distortion of reality which prevents people from thinking rationally about the huge benefits wolves could bring. With reference to wolves in other cultures and places, from the south-west of England to Scandinavia and North America, this is a passionate polemic which argues for the return of the wolf to heal the damaged land.

‘Moving and masterful . . . transports you to 18th-century Scotland and says as much about modern life as it does about those harrowing times’ – Janice Hallett, bestselling author of The Appeal

Inspired by an infamous real-life case, The Mourning Necklace is the unforgettable original feminist historical novel from the Women’s Prize-longlisted author of The Maiden, Kate Foster.

They said I would swing for the crime and I did . . . I wear the rope-mark like a mourning necklace.

1724. In a tavern just outside Edinburgh, the family of Maggie Dickson – hanged for the murder of her newborn child – drown their sorrows, mourning her death yet relieved she is gone. Shame haunts them; passers-by avert their eyes from her cheap coffin on its rickety cart.

But as her family pray her soul rests in peace, a figure appears at the door.

It is Maggie. She is alive.

Bruised and dazed, Maggie has little time for her family’s questions. All that matters to her is answering one: will they hang her twice?

Praise for Kate Foster:

‘Riveting . . . The tension persists until the last page’ – The Times

‘Tense, thrilling . . . with a decidedly feminist slant’ – Daily Mail

‘Kate excels at bringing the forgotten women of history back to life and giving them the attention they deserve’ – Claire Evans, author of The Fourteenth Letter

‘Captivating . . . Scratch beneath the surface of a Kate Foster novel and all of life is there in the most elegant prose’ – Marion Todd, author of the bestselling DI Clare Mackay series

‘Brilliant . . . the new Hilary Mantel’ – Tina Baker, author of What We Did In The Storm