THE BEST OF SCOTTISH BOOKS

Queerness weaves through Scotland’s past, but it is largely intangible and absent from accounts of what came before us. By making invisible stories visible, who will be remembered here captures something of the richness, complexity and beauty of a history that belongs to all of us.

In this collection, 14 authors explore the places and spaces which define their queer history – wherever has meaning for them. From theatres and hillsides to amusement arcades and libraries, who will be remembered here reconsiders and reimagines the built and natural environment through a queer lens, to uncover stories full of hope and humanity.

What does it mean to be a woman who dares to challenge the status quo? Whether by wielding power in patriarchal societies or rallying for peace, fighting for change has always put women in danger, but also led to remarkable stories of resistance. Gathering 46 essays from writers around the globe, this collection explores the twin themes of women and daring through the lives of monarchs, prophets, suffragists, soldiers, scientists, activists and artists. From the infamous to the forgotten, these trailblazers have much to tell us about the dynamics, conflicts, identities and power relations with which women live today.

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.

To the Women is a celebration of the beauty, strength and joy of being a woman. A love letter to our deep capacity to love, rage, fear and rebuild, Donna Ashworth reminds us that we are stronger when we come together and unstoppable when we accept ourselves. With poems such as ‘Be That Woman’, ‘Take Up Space’, ‘When One Woman Screams’, ‘There Will Be Days’ and ‘To the Woman Who Thinks She Isn’t Good Enough’, Donna helps us find comfort, inspiration and courage in the many roles we play in life as daughters, guides, mothers and friends.

Originally self-published in 2020 with 48 poems, this beautiful gift hardback edition has been fully revised and updated complete with over 70 new poems. Full of wisdom and comfort every woman needs to hear, Donna helps us see that we’re never walking alone.

The first of two volumes of the letters of Muriel Spark, one of the greatest and most fascinating writers of the twentieth century.

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.

Never underestimate a librarian.

Fifty-something librarian Shona McMonagle is a proud former pupil of the Marcia Blaine School for Girls with a deep loathing for The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, which she thinks gives her alma mater a bad name.

After a visit from Miss Blaine herself, involving a bad-tempered exchange about Robinson Crusoe and improper book shelving, Shona is sent spinning through time and space for another mission. She finds herself on an island, with little in the way of clues to help her decipher the purpose of her trip. Despite initially wondering if this might be a rare treat from Miss Blaine, she soon realises this is no holiday. Her island is not tropical; it’s in the Baltic Sea and it’s the fifteenth century.

Luckily she’s kitted out for all eventualities and finds her local languages are not too rusty, which is useful when she encounters pirates, Krakens and other monsters. As always, she’s nothing if not resourceful – after all, she is a librarian.

Gu Leòr / Galore is an imaginative and innovative collection of poems in both Gaelic and English. The voice of the work here is lyrical and cogent, achieved through stratagems such as intertextuality; near-translation; bilingual sensibility; classical allusion; lists; and exotic vocabulary. This is an intelligent, measured and powerfully resonant collection, with a maturity far beyond that of a poet publishing his first full collection.

A powerful yacht, a warring family, the unforgiving deep…

Caught in a terrorist explosion on the London Underground, inner-city schoolteacher Helen is pregnant and lost until a stranger leads her to safety then vanishes. Obsessed with finding him, she begins to lose her grip on reality – and her family.

As their marriage fractures, her husband Frank proposes a daring plan: sell up and sail the Atlantic with their son Nicholas and troubled foster daughter Sindi on the Innisfree, the very boat where the couple first fell in love.

What begins as a daring bid for salvation turns into an epic journey. The ocean proves as wild and unpredictable as the heartbreak Helen is trying to outrun. Will the voyage meant to save them destroy them instead?

With a fiercely funny and maverick heroine at its helm, Ocean is a powerful exploration of the uncharted waters of the human heart. The award-winning author of Larchfield takes us on a gripping, beautifully written voyage into the depths of what it means to heal – and to live

Hope House is more than just a building – it’s a place of magic and mystery. . .

When Amal and her family unexpectedly inherit the enchanted clifftop home, they can’t believe their luck. But their joy is short-lived when a mysterious couple arrives, claiming the house is theirs and giving Amal’s family just thirty days to pack up their stuff and leave before they demolish it completely.

The clock is ticking, and Amal is determined to save Hope House from destruction. How will she unravel the secrets of the house and its mysterious benefactor in time to save it?

A page-turning, lyrical mystery with a magical twist, perfect for fans of Matt Goodfellow, Onjali Q. Raúf and Disney’s Encanto. Featuring accessible text in verse and beautiful illustrations throughout.

James Kelman has made use of the short form all of his writing life, calling on the different traditions where such stories are central within the culture, beginning and ending in freedom, the freedom to create. People should know that their stories count, no matter how personal, how emotional, how eccentric, how trivial, how stupid or how self-centred they may appear. Just make them, and make them your own, in spite of hostility, of negativity, of the threat of punishment: go to it. Language is with the user and you are the user. Take these stories and make them your own

CAN FRIENDSHIPS CHANGE THE WORLD?

For the first time since university, James and Roland’s paths through life – one drawn in straight lines, the other squiggled and meandering – began to cross…

James Drayton has always found things too easy. By the time he leaves university, he’s still searching for a challenge worthy of his ambitions, one that will fulfil the destiny he thinks awaits him.

Roland Mackenzie, on the other hand, is an impulsive risk-taker, a charismatic drifter with boundless enthusiasm but a knack for derailing his own attempts to get started in life.

When a chance encounter in a pub reunites these old acquaintances, it sets them on an unpredictable course through the upheavals of the 21st century, and triggers an unlikely alliance. Against the backdrop of the financial crash and its aftermath, they strive to create something that outlasts them, something that will matter.

Drayton and Mackenzie is a stunningly ambitious, immediately engaging and ultimately deeply moving novel both about trying to make your mark on the world, and about how a friendship might be the most important thing in life.

A beautiful celebration of Scottish malt whisky and the illustrious lands that produce it.

A classic since its original publication in 1935, Whisky and Scotland will enlighten and entertain all who delight in the amber spirit that evokes ‘the world of hills and glens, of raging elements, of shelter, of divine ease’.
Whisky and Scotland takes us on a journey through the Highlands of Scotland to uncover the traditional techniques whereby barley grains become liquid gold. Written by one of Scotland’s most acclaimed early twentieth-century writers, Whisky and Scotland examines whisky history, production and tradition that remains unchanged after hundreds of years. Witty and informative, this is Neil M. Gunn’s lyrical toast to uisge beatha, the Celtic ‘water of life’.

It is the late 1980s, the closing years of Thatcher’s Britain. For the Trainspotting crew, a new era is about to begin – a time for hope, for love, for raving.

Leaving heroin behind and separated after a drug deal gone wrong, Renton, Sick Boy, Spud and Begbie each want to feel alive. They fill their days with sex and romance and trying to get ahead; they follow the call of the dance floor, with its promise of joy and redemption.

Sick Boy starts an intense relationship with Amanda, his ‘princess’ – rich, connected, everything that he is not. When the pair set a date for their wedding, Sick Boy sees a chance for his generation to take control at last.

But as the 1990s dawn, will finding love be the answer to the group’s dreams or just another doomed quest?

If you were responsible for a miscarriage of justice would you admit it?

The truth can set you free. Or destroy your life.

Blood spatter expert Doctor Claudia O’Sheil’s evidence put a killer behind bars – or so everyone thinks. Since the trial, Claudia has learned a horrific truth: her evidence and her testimony were wrong.

Now as she takes the stage to give a speech before London’s elite specialists, Claudia has to choose: keep lying and leave the wronged killer behind bars or stand up, tell the truth and rip her life apart.

What would you do?

Lies, seduction and secrets await under a Spanish sun…

When Camille Fontaine arrives on the sun-drenched island of Majorca, she’s running from a shattered love affair. But even amongst the palm trees and the golden sands, she can’t forget her past.

Surrounded by the glamorous and the guilty, Camille isn’t the only one with secrets to hide.

Is one sunseeker hiding a dark revelation?

Will a Hollywood actress risk her glittering career?

Can a broken-hearted lover take a last chance at happiness?

As the sun sets on their island paradise, can they escape a lifetime of secrets?

Four close friends.
One big secret.

On a hot midsummer day in the Surrey countryside, close friends Kristin, Vee, Bibi and Hailey are celebrating their Ladies’ Team victory at the exclusive Royal Oaks Tennis Club.

But when their oh-so-charming coach, Jeremy, collapses after tucking into a carefully decorated sponge cake, it seems the season isn’t just ending with a championship trophy – but with a murder.

Off the court, it’s clear that each of the four women has been keeping a dark secret, but surely no one would wish Jeremy dead? Or perhaps revenge truly is a cake best served cold…

A delicious new murder mystery from household name Judy Murray, perfect for fans of Richard Osman, Shirley Ballas and Reverend Richard Coles.

Don’t miss this gripping crime thriller, perfect for fans of Stuart MacBride, Val McDermid and Angela Marsons.

A DEADLY DISCOVERY

Enjoying a rare day off, DS Jazzy Solanki’s peaceful spring walk is interrupted when a body is discovered along her path. Instinct tells her it’s not a coincidence.

A HIDDEN THREAT

Could Jazzy’s estranged, vengeful stepsister – consumed by grief over their brother’s death – be sending her a deadly message?

A RACE AGAINST TIME

Then a child goes missing. The crimes appear unrelated, but Jazzy’s gut insists there’s a sinister connection, one that points straight at her. With time running out, Jazzy and her team must uncover the truth before the killer finds them.

Ken Currie: Paintings and Writings provides a unique insight into the thought-world of Ken Currie’s challenging and enigmatic art. For over four decades Currie has created some of the most confrontational and intriguing paintings in the contemporary art world. Throughout this period, he has been acclaimed for the artistry of his technique and the cryptic quality of his imagery.

This book explores his writings, both public and private, to open-out the discourse on his visceral creativity. For the first time Currie has made available his studio journals. These intimate writings, coupled with personal letters and published statements, are juxtaposed to his esteemed artworks. The result is a fascinating dialogue that explores the motives and aspirations of his inscrutable paintings.

Within the field of ‘artist’s writings’ this book offers an inspirational presentation. Compiled and edited by the art historian Tom Normand, it penetrates the creative imagination of a truly visionary artist. Fundamentally, it reveals the intense passions of a primordial human heart.

Published to accompany the major, large-scale exhibition by Andy Goldsworthy (organised by the National Galleries of Scotland) at the Royal Scottish Academy from 26 July 2025 to 2 November 2025.
A wide-ranging interview between Andy Goldsworthy and curational team Patrick Elliott and Tor Scott gives readers personal insight from the artist into the highlights, challenges and processes behind his work, in his own words.
The book is illustrated with works from the breadth of Goldsworthy’s career – from his student days to beautiful proposal drawings for the retrospective exhibition at the Royal Scottish Academy in 2025.

Andy Goldsworthy tells the story of his career in his own words – from school art classrooms to the ambitious retrospective exhibition this book accompanies. In a wide-ranging and personal conversation, Goldsworthy recalls the triumphs and tribulations that have shaped his journey to become an artist of global renown. Illustrated by many of his iconic installations and ephemeral works, this book also includes previously unseen drawings for new creations. This is an unmissable account of the life and work of an artist pushing the boundaries of the art world.

Speak Still confronts colonial silencing by asking aloud: why do we, as speakers of English as a second language (ESL), feel estranged from the language, despite having known it since childhood? Taking the author’s bilingual experience in Hong Kong and the UK as a point of departure, the book reimagines a more inclusive sense of belonging for all through a fusing of personal narrative and cultural criticism, reclaiming silence as an interlocutor that interrupts cultural homogeneity, and opens up the time and space for subdued voices to be heard. Speak Still shows that this silence, indeed, speaks volumes.