THE BEST OF SCOTTISH BOOKS

From the award-winning author of The Seafarers and Wintering comes a fascinating exploration of the most miraculous substance on Earth: water.

It falls in a moment. When the heaviest droplets of ice can no longer be held, the first raindrop slips from the sky and plunges, down through the damp, cold air, thawing as it plummets. Splashing into the sodden hillside, rainfall merging with river source, it flows for the first time.

The Waterlands is a new story of water, revealing its natural rhythms and miraculous power. Follow a raindrop as it flows through diverse waterscapes: river sources in the upland moors; saltmarsh-flanked firths and estuaries; serene and spectacular lochs; crystal-clear chalk streams; blanket bogs that are both land and liquid, a thin skin of peat over millennia-old water.

On this epic journey, award-winning writer Stephen Rutt visits these places where life flourishes, revealing how water shapes the land, shapes our lives – and how we shape it in return. Beautifully blending geography, ecology, climate writing and social history, The Waterlands is a captivating retelling of the water cycle, and an urgent call to protect our most essential resource.

You’ll never see a raindrop the same way again.

Devour Everything is a love letter to heroic failure, to creation in the face of destruction, to the mundane made sacred. Ranging from New York to small-town Aberdeenshire, from pop culture to Norse Valkyries, and wrestling with issues of motherhood, memory and loss, Sarah Stewart’s deftly illuminating debut collection reminds us that as humans ‘we are animals / and our bodies remember things.’

Germaine only accepted the job at the Kenmar allotments for a fresh start. Far from anyone who knows her history she can focus on work and tending to her own plot. Most of the other plot-holders keep to themselves and that suits her just fine.

But when the local council announces plans to turn the allotments into luxury housing, Germaine finds herself leading a battle to save the place that has become a sanctuary for fractured souls.

Amidst crumbling sheds and overgrown paths, the rag-tag band plan protests, forge alliances and uncover long-buried secrets. Soon they’ll learn that the allotments aren’t just plots of land but a place to belong.

A love letter to community and the power of activism, from the author of Ginger and Me and Graffiti Girls.

When a troubled woman discovers her birth father was a serial killer, she’s forced to confront a terrible question. What if the darkness in her own soul is a direct inheritance from him?

Despite having made a promise never to do so, Joanne Marshall sets out to trace her birth parents when her adoptive mother dies. She’s always felt unable to connect with other people, even her family, and her lack of history is a black hole that only the truth can fill.

Her search unearths increasingly shattering information, however, and when she discovers her birth father was imprisoned for murder – and that he’s still alive – she decides she has to contact him to lay her fears about her own nature to rest.

But she finds, instead, a strange connection to him. And, as their relationship deepens, she doesn’t realise that she’s making herself vulnerable to a potentially still very dangerous man. Will she finds the strength to stop another tragedy taking place?

1593, Scotland. King James VI launches a bloody witch hunt across the length and breadth of the country. But the women he fears most are already within his court.

Elspet is a spae-wife, a wise woman and healer from the isles of Orkney. Some might call her a witch.

When the king’s new bride, Anna of Denmark, summons her to deliver her baby and cast a binding spell over the child, Elspet is trapped between two impossible choices – for she cannot refuse the queen, and she cannot be discovered by the king.

While Elspet struggles to hide her secret identity in a court that wishes her dead, another woman seeks her aid: Kitty Muirhead, outcast, persecuted and desperate to escape the shadows of her past. Kitty and the queen could not be more different, but they may yet be each other’s salvation.

The hunt is closing in on the three women. They must concoct a reckless plan to save one another before that fearful death sentence is cast upon them – witch.

Two teenage girls. One murdered classmate.
And a modern-day witch trial that will divide the nation . . .

When 18-year-old Christian Shaw is found dead in an Edinburgh park, the city reels – and the shock only deepens when police charge her best friends, Eliza Lawson and Isobel Smyth, with her murder.

As social media explodes and headlines scream for justice, rumours of bullying spiral into something darker: whispers of rituals, obsession, and a teenage pact gone wrong.

Matthew Phillips, a respected heart surgeon, is reluctantly called for jury duty. But as the trial unfolds – and the girls reveal a chilling defence no one saw coming – he begins to question everything: the motives, the evidence, even his own judgement.

Who’s telling the truth? Who can be trusted?
And what really happened to Christian Shaw?

Let the Witch Trial begin . . .

Secret Agent Nessie and her team of friends — genius inventor Bea the Beaver and quick-stinging Jelly the jellyfish — are on a mission to keep Loch Ness safe!

When a gang of squabbling seagulls pulls off a heartless fish-and-chip heist, Nessie and her W.E.T. (Water Espionage Team) pals spring into action. But what monstrous master plan is their bird-brained enemy plotting from the ruins of Urquhart Castle?

Chock full of water fights, bird puns, larger-than-life characters and at least one stolen tractor, Secret Agent Nessie is a laugh-out-loud, full-colour graphic-novel adventure. This bold and wacky tale of underwater espionage and feathered felons is perfect for children aged 6 and up. From the brilliant brain of author Gary Chudleigh (LEGO comics) and the playful pen of illustrator Laura Howell (The Beano).

A murder at sea, a killer below deck?

BELOW DECK meets KNIVES OUT in this breathless voyage into murder and mayhem on the high seas…

Howie Temple is down on his luck and desperate for cash. Once an action movie star, he now lives off a crumbling reputation. On his way to film a new reality TV show, which casts a team of c-list celebrities as crew aboard a luxury yacht, he meets fellow contestant, influencer-of-the-moment Cassandra Troy. The duo take an immediate dislike to each other.

After a hectic first day of filming, the pair are shocked discover that the captain of the ship has been murdered – locked in his control room, slumped over the wheel, a knife in his back. Convinced by the show’s ever-opportunistic director to keep the cameras rolling, the pair team-up to hunt the murderer.

Will the show make Howie and Cassandra bigger stars than they could ever dream of? And can they crack the case before the killer strikes again, or will they go down with this sinking ship?

A RAGTAG CREW. A PERILOUS QUEST.

A pirate faces the gallows drop. A farmer is given a terrible ultimatum to save her daughter. An acolyte ascends to priestesshood, only to find that a blessing really can be a curse. These unlikely bedfellows band together with an inscrutable pickpocket and a talking ottercat in pursuit of the most hopeless of causes: to sail into the Maelstrom, a raging whirlpool from which no one has ever escaped, and find the mysterious treasure hidden within it.

The quest will test their fragile allegiance to its limits, but there is more at stake here than getting rich: the magic of the world is in peril, and the barrier between life and death has never been so thin. And in the Bastion, the seat of power in Paranish, the queen has an unquenchable thirst that threatens the world and everyone in it.

Can there be honour amongst thieves? Without it, they might never see another sunrise.

Lush and lyrical, Saltswept is a vibrant debut – the first book in an epic fantasy duology based on Southeast Asian mythology. Perfect for fans of The Adventures of Amina al-Sirafi, The Bone Ships, and Godkiller.

The heartwarming rhyming story of Pete, a lonely, scruffy pooch who was born with enormous feet which are always getting in the way of all he tries to do.

With all of the chaos he leaves behind because of his big feet no one wants to be his friend and he longs to find his place in the world. It’s not until he discovers a music shop, and it’s helpful owner, Henry Large, that he finds his own song and the place where his heart truly belongs.

A fabulous rhyming tale full of heart, with themes of individuality, creativity, friendship, bravery and joy.

Edi is facing a disciplinary since her ‘incident’ at work. Forty-seven years in Admin processing the newly dead is not how she foresaw eternity.

In Arrivals, the newly dead must take the stages in order: first, extract delusion; second, answer HR’s questionnaire truthfully. Yet who among them can truly face who they are? Who may never pass at all? As leaderboard numbers begin to rise at unprecedented rates, rumours begin to fly. Humans are about to become a banned race. The earth is going to be repossessed.

As chaos descends, Edi hopes this might finally be the moment she has waited for, so she might see her son again who she was forced to leave on Earth when she died. Edi wants to be the one waiting for him, even if HR protocols forbid it. Looking out at the millions of newly dead arriving, Edi has one question – what might any of us truly be willing to do for those we love at the doors of eternity?

Against a spectacular backdrop of stars, constellations and comets, a mass extinction event begins to unfurl watched by the entire universe as Processing, the largest soul terminus in existence, decides it is now time to take matters wholly back into its own hands. With reflections on love, defiance and light, The Delusions is a story of profound human connection, on an unprecedented scale.

An explosive modern novel from the award-winning writer of The People’s Act of Love

Mr Burman is unmoored. Still reckoning with the death of his wife Ada, and struggling to understand his grown-up daughter Leila, he finds himself on a train to London, at the invitation of the police.

He is to meet Raf, a young man suspected of trying to blow up St Paul’s cathedral – and a man once intimately connected with the Burman family. Have the police laid a trap?

Compelling and compassionate, this novel follows Mr Burman’s journey towards the mystery of a radical act and into the true nature of his own family. It asks what a person leaves behind when they’ve gone, and how much of the past we can carry with us into the future.

What happened to the dog walker who found the body?

Glasgow, 1979.

Twelve-year-old Janey won’t take her dog, Sid Vicious, for a walk. Not anymore. It’s Sid’s fault she found the murdered woman.

Janey claims she can’t remember what she saw at the abandoned railway, but the police think she’s hiding something. And they’re not the only ones interested.

Fear and rumour rip through the tight-knit community of Possilpark. Janey and her nana, Maggie, are dragged into the hunt for a murderer. And Maggie’s struggle to keep her beloved granddaughter safe becomes ever more desperate.

Because Janey’s memories can’t stay hidden forever.

And neither can the killer…

Within the walls of Winterbourne dwells a secret room, with an unspeakable collection of books.

Librarian Anne Adams has found the perfect escape: a job cataloguing the library of Winterbourne, an architectural masterpiece on a remote island off the west coast of Scotland. Surrounded by an awe-inspiring landscape, the library is magnificent, with priceless first editions, a librarian’s dream.

However, Anne’s early weeks in her new job are beset by obstacles – no internet, a house plunged into darkness every night and unexplained mysteries on the island. After weeks of isolation, upon meeting the mysterious owner Lucien Broussard, Anne is puzzled. Eloquent and well-travelled, his reclusive nature seems uncharacteristic. But after finding a cryptic clue within the pages of a book, Anne discovers that Broussard’s collection includes everything from the mundane to the books no one should ever open . . .

Cùil: Scots Gaelic n. Nook, nest or corner

Cafe Cùil faces the sea just outside stunning Carbost in the Isle of Skye. In this idyllic setting, award-winning chef Clare Coghill celebrates Highland produce, reimagines traditional Scottish dishes and puts a Hebridean twist on some global ones – think tattie scone tacos, langoustine and whisky bisque, Highland shakshuka, seaweed sauerkraut and Bloody Mhairi.

The Cafe Cùil story began when Clare entered the Channel 4 series, My Kitchen Rules with an old friend in 2017. When they won, she started thinking that cooking might not be just a thing she did for fun, and in 2019 she opened the first Cafe Cùil in Hackney. It quickly became a hotspot for brunch lovers around London, until the covid lockdown forced a move home to Skye.

So welcome to the Cafe Cùil Cookbook. This isn’t a book that demands fancy techniques, instead it shows how easy it can be to cook delicious dishes without taking things too seriously, using many of the ingredients we have on our doorstep, whether you’re in Skye or Dalston.

From the cosmic sneeze that birthed the universe to the microscopic marvel that was Kevin, 100,000 Birthdays is a dazzling exploration of the improbable, chaotic, and wondrous journey of life itself.

Through wit, whimsy and the grand sweep of science, Cynthia Rogerson traces the absurd yet miraculous lineage that leads to us all. Alongside musings on asteroids, carbon’s quiet supremacy and the serendipity of tortoiseshell glasses rediscovered, she invites readers to reflect on life’s strangeness, brevity, and unexpected beauty.

This book celebrates every fragile, fleeting heartbeat in the grand tapestry of existence. Part memoir, part philosophical musing, and part ode to the universe, 100,000 Birthdays will leave you marveling at the interconnectedness of all things—and profoundly grateful to Kevin.

For fans of Bill Bryson, Carl Sagan, and anyone who has ever wondered, ‘What on Earth am I doing here?’

‘By God! I don’t think it would have been done if I had not been there!’ So said Wellington after Waterloo, the victory he called ‘a near-run thing’. Nor, perhaps, would the Edinburgh Military Tattoo have been done in 1995 if Brigadier Mel Jameson had not been there – in Perthshire, with a brigade to command too, as if that weren’t enough. But he was willing to say ‘Yes’ when asked to take over when the producer suddenly fell ill – not conveniently at the last minute, but seven months out, when little had been settled, or even begun. Needless to say, the 1995 Tattoo was a triumph, and two years later Mel Jameson became its official producer. Recognising that after the horrors of the Second World War the Edinburgh Tattoo had always been meant to show off the ‘scarlet, gold, musical and ceremonial’ image of the British Armed Forces, he concluded that his mission must be to find the most interesting and exciting acts and bands from home and from overseas. This is the story of his decade in that quest – the ups and downs, the pleasures and the pains, the dramas, delights and disappointments; the travel, the people, the sights and sounds. Few can have seen or heard what Sir Melville Jameson has. And all recounted with the lightest of light touches that has always been his trademark. The Show Must Go On is a rare treat indeed.

Fall in love with the brand new escapist Scottish romance from bestselling author, Julie Shackman!

Daisy’s career hasn’t exactly been going to plan and the last thing she wants to do is stay home and wallow in self pity. So when an opportunity arises to escape her London home, and make some money working a fancy event at a stately home, she jumps at it.

Determined to make the most out of the situation, she decides a road trip to the Scottish Highlands would be the perfect way to reset and take control of her life.

When devilishly handsome Evan finds himself stranded at the event following a cancelled flight to Scotland, Daisy does the kindest thing she can think of and invites him to join her. As they embark on their journey north, will the scenic trip help them rediscover themselves, and possibly even find something they weren’t expecting…

DCI Jim Daley is charged with murder – and everyone saw him do it – in the gripping final thriller in the series, from the bestselling author Denzil Meyrick.

In the middle of the night in Kinloch, the phone rings…

Detective Sergeant Brian Scott answers. It’s a message from his old friend and partner, DCI Jim Daley, which chills him to the bone:

‘She’s dead, Brian. I couldn’t take it anymore – I killed her! You have to help.’

Daley has been arrested for murder, and everyone saw him do it. The police have all the evidence they need to put him behind bars for life, but Scott still believes he’s innocent.

Is someone trying to frame him?

The search for answers takes Daley and Scott on a dark journey into their past, putting the people closest to them in immediate danger. And as the heartbreak takes its toll, Scott begins to wonder if this might be the end of the road.

Is it time to call last orders?

Cross the moat, pass through the gatehouse and dodge flying arrows as you journey back in time on a search-and-find history adventure!

Blaze the Dragon guides you through the fascinating world of medieval times – where lords, ladies and even wizards roam. Discover how castles were built, how knights fought and the secrets of magic and medicine.

From the grand fortress of Dragon Castle to the bustling castle kitchens, the dark dungeon and beyond the castle walls to noble hunting grounds, there are 12 illustrated scenes to search, and ten medieval characters to spot in every location.

Written by a real castle steward and told by a real dragon, this book will spark curiosity in the youngest squires.