THE BEST OF SCOTTISH BOOKS

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.

Richard Holloway has been the archetypal ‘turbulent priest’. Having risen to be the Primus (Head) of the Scottish Episcopal Church, he abandoned religion and ecclesiastical office to fight for the rights of minorities and to write a string of best selling books, most famously Leaving Alexandria. He also became Chairman of the Scottish Arts Council.

In this, his last book, he reflects deeply on his life, most especially as a child of desperately poor parents in Dumbartonshire in Scotland. He tells the story of how he found faith but then abandoned Christian orthodoxy after leaving office as Head of the Scottish Episcopal Church, and discovered a new life as a writer, broadcaster, journalist and public intellectual.

This book opens and ends with chapters of a philosophical kind in which he explains how he lost belief in a loving God and became true to himself.

In 1944, on her return to England after a disastrous marriage, Muriel Spark was unknown as a writer except to a handful of close friends; by 1963 she was the internationally renowned author of seven critically acclaimed, bestselling novels.

Her letters – witty, affectionate, sharp, mercurial – reveal the turbulence of her early career in postwar London: her struggles to earn a living as a writer, her difficult love affairs, a terrifying breakdown, and her conversion to Catholicism. They also trace her development from little-known poet to celebrated novelist, with glittering insights into the emergence of her unique literary voice, as well as her relationships with friends, lovers, writers and publishers.

Selected from her extensive correspondence and insightfully edited and annotated, this is an essential read for anyone interested in Spark’s work and world.

Beginning with the origins of distilling in 1200BC by alchemists in China and India, journey through whisky’s early origins as an illicit alcohol made in the hills of Scotland and Ireland, to the exciting small batch whiskies being produced today by craft distillers and master blenders all over the world.

Through over 100 stories, legends and anecdotes, discover the origins of the quaich, whisky glass and corkscrew: and look inside iconic distilleries from around the world with stunning photographs and historic images.

Award-winning writers Charles MacLean and Gavin D. Smith offer a rollocking narrative; describing the adventures of the legendary characters who shaped the whisky industry. With flavour influenced as much by history, craft and tradition as it is by science, in The Story of Whisky, find out why your drink tastes the way it does, where whisky flavours come from and how they are changing to embrace the future.

Foreword by Alexander McCall Smith.

Lennox, Vonnie and Ava head to Greenland to meet up with Heather, Sandy and the Enceladons, commencing an epic showdown that will change everything … The emotive, devastating yet ultimately life-affirming conclusion to the bestselling Enceladons Trilogy, as seen on BBC2’s Between the Covers…

It’s been eighteen months since the Enceladons escaped the clutches of an American military determined to exterminate the peaceful alien creatures.

Lennox and Vonnie have been lying low in the Scottish Highlands, Ava has been caring for her young daughter Chloe, and Heather is adjusting to her new life with Sandy and the other Enceladons in the Arctic Ocean, off the coast of Greenland. But fate is about to bring them together again for one last battle.

When Lennox and Vonnie are visited by Karl Jensen, a Norwegian billionaire intent on making contact with the Encedalons again, they are wary of subjecting the aliens to further dangers. But when word arrives that Ava’s daughter has suffered an attack and might die without urgent help, they reluctantly make the trip to Greenland, where they enlist the vital help of local woman Niviaq.

It’s not long before they’re drawn into a complex web of lies, deceit and death. What is Karl’s company really up to? Why are sea creatures attacking boats? Why is Sandy acting so strangely, and why are polar bears getting involved?

Profound, ambitious and immensely moving, The Transcendent Tide is the epic conclusion to the Encedalons Trilogy – a final showdown between the best and worst of humanity, the animal kingdom and the Encedalons. The future of life on earth will be changed forever, but not everyone will survive to see it…

A powerful exploration of life and death, illness and grace, wonder and beauty, in the posthumous collection from one of our greatest contemporary poets

‘It’s impossible not to love the world more when reading Burnside’ GUARDIAN

‘A master of language’ HILARY MANTEL

John Burnside’s last collection of new poems gathers around a single theme – mortality – and draws on his faltering health and earlier glances with death, creating a powerfully moving exploration of memory, forgetting and the seven ages.

Here, as always, there is a clear-eyed curiosity; a sense of wonder at the beleaguered natural world and its endless mutability – its hidden beauty, often suddenly disclosed – and a deep faith in its old gods. Burnside was always as much a spirit-guide as a poet, and here, in the Empire of Forgetting, we are never far from a fresh alertness to the world, to epiphany – a sudden, spiritual manifestation.

There is a sense, too, in these last poems, of a man having found a ‘dwelling place’ – a sense of rest and peace and settlement with the world. A state of grace.

‘Among the best writers of his generation, fully voiced and perfectly pitched’ ANDREW O’HAGAN

‘A titan of literature’ KATHLEEN JAMIE

The world of unknowable objects – magical items that most people have no idea possess powers – has been quiet for decades . . .

But three current members of a secret society have remained watchful, meeting every six months in the basement of a bookshop in London. They are pledged to protect their archive of magical items hidden away, safe from the outside world – and keep the world safe from them. But when Frank Simpson, the longest-standing member of the Society of Unknowable Objects, hears of a new artefact coming to light in Hong Kong, he sends the Society’s newest member, author Magda Sparks, to investigate.

Within hours of arriving in Hong Kong, Magda is facing death and danger, confronted by a professional killer who seems to know all about unknowable objects, specifically one that was stolen from him a decade before. Magda is forced to flee, using an artefact that not even the rest of the Society knows about.

Returning to London, Magda learns hers is not the only secret being kept from the other two members. And that the most pernicious secret is about the nature of the Society’s mission. Her discoveries will lead her on a perilous journey, across the Atlantic to the deep south of the United States – not in pursuit of an unknowable object, but an unknowable person: the killer she first faced in Hong Kong. In doing so, Magda begins to understand that there are even more in the world who are chasing these magical items, and that her own family’s legacy is tied up in keeping all these secrets under wraps.

Magic has always been too powerful to reveal to the world. But Magda will learn there might be something even more powerful: the truth.

New Writing Scotland is the principal forum for poetry and short fiction in Scotland today. Every year it publishes the very best from both emerging and established writers, and lists many of the leading literary lights of Scotland among its past (and present) contributors. A Chaos Of Light: New Writing Scotland 43 is the latest collection of excellent contemporary literature, drawn from a wide cross-section of
Scottish culture and society, and includes new work from thirty-seven authors – some internationally renowned, and some just beginning their careers.

For fans of M.C. Beaton’s Hamish Macbeth novels—the inspiration behind the cult BBC drama—this is the ultimate look behind the curtain at a cosy crime classic with a wild Highland twist.

Welcome to the Wild West of Scotland

In 1995, BBC One’s Hamish Macbeth broke all the rules of Sunday night TV. This behind-the-scenes look at the beloved Scottish drama reveals how the picture-postcard Highlands became the setting for a genre-defying series that brought cannibalism and ceilidhs, marijuana and murder, love triangles and lobster tanks to millions of viewers each week.

With Robert Carlyle starring as the laid-back Highland detective who preferred poaching to paperwork, producers transformed the tiny village of Plockton into the fictional Lochdubh. While they attempted to evade BBC bureaucracy, they couldn’t escape the tourists who soon flocked to see Hamish’s home.

Drawing on dozens of new interviews with cast, crew and local residents, this book reveals how they crafted a vision of Highland life that was part Western, part modern fable and wholly original. Discover the battle over Wee Jock’s fate, the mystery of the ‘lost’ musical episode and how the real-world return of the Stone of Destiny forced last-minute rewrites of the epic series finale.

Jonathan Melville, author of A Kind of Magic: Making the Original Highlander and Local Hero: Making a Scottish Classic, blends oral history and archive material into the definitive account of how this subversive BBC series became a timeless classic.