THE BEST OF SCOTTISH BOOKS

KAREN PIRIE RETURNS. A MASTERFUL THRILLER BY THE NO.1 SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER VAL MCDERMID__________Edinburgh, haunted by the ghosts of its many writers, is also the cold case beat of DCI Karen Pirie. So she shouldn’t be surprised when an author’s manuscript appears to be a blueprint for an actual crime.Karen can’t ignore the plot’s chilling similarities to the unsolved case of an Edinburgh University student who vanished from her own doorstep. The manuscript seems to be the key to unlocking what happened to Lara Hardie, but there’s a problem: the author died before he finished it.As Karen digs deeper, she uncovers a spiralling game of betrayal and revenge, where lies are indistinguishable from the truth and with more than one unexpected twist . . .The Queen of Crime Val McDermid is at the top of her game in her most gripping and fiendishly clever case yet.Praise for Val McDermid’McDermid is at her considerable best’ GUARDIAN’Irresistible’ PATRICIA CORNWELL’A brilliant novel by a supremo of the genre’ PETER JAMES’Outstanding’ SPECTATOR’Another masterpiece’ DAVID BALDACCI’Sensational. One of Britain’s most accomplished writers’ SUNDAY EXPRESS

This compact, pocket-sized Snowdonia & North Wales travel guidebook is ideal for travellers on weekend trips or shorter breaks in the UK. It includes ready-made walking and driving itineraries that allow you to organise your visit to Snowdonia & North Wales without losing time planning.The Snowdonia & North Wales guide book covers: The North Coast and Carneddau Mountains, A Tour of Anglesey, Beddgelert and Porthmadog, Snowdon from Caernarfon, The Lleyn Peninsula, Tremadog Bay to the Mawddach Estuary, Wrexham to Bala – and Back, Dolgellau to Cadair Idris and the Aran Mountains, Cadair Idris to Machynlleth.Inside this Snowdonia & North Wales travel book you will find:- 9 ready-made walks and tours – easy-to-follow walking and driving tour itineraries featuring the best places to visit, as well as what to do and where to eat along the way- Walks and tour highlights – short lists highlight the best of each walk or tour- Things not to miss in Snowdonia & North Wales – Blaenau Ffestiniog and Slate Caverns, Centre for Alternative Technology, Portmeirion, Snowdon, National Slate Museum, Llandudno, Ffestiniog Railway, Caernarfon, Harlech, Conwy- Curated recommendations of places – main attractions, off-the-beaten-track adventures, child-friendly family activities, chilled-out breaks in popular tourist areas- Rainy day recommendations – plenty of options, whatever the British weather throws at you- Insider recommendations – tips on how to beat the crowds, save time and money and find the best local spots- Historical and cultural insights – learn more about Snowdonia & North Wales’ rich history with fascinating cultural insights.- Trip tips – outdoor activities and themed holidays- Practical information – how to get there and how to get around, facts for visitors,- Handy mapping – practical full-colour maps, with clearly numbered sights relating to major points of interest in the main text.- Free download of the eBook – available after the purchase of the printed guidebook Snowdonia & North Wales- Fully updated post-COVID-19

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.

LONGLISTED FOR THE BOOKER PRIZE 2023A dazzling story of modern Nigeria and two families caught in the riptides of wealth, power, romantic obsession and political corruption.Eniola is tall for his age, a boy who looks like a man. His father has lost his job, so Eniola spends his days running errands for the local tailor and begging, dreaming of a big future.Wuraola is a golden girl, the perfect child of a wealthy family. Now an exhausted young doctor in her first year of practice, she is beloved by Kunle, the volatile son of family friends.When a local politician takes an interest in Eniola and sudden violence shatters a family party, Wuraola and Eniola’s lives become unexpectedly intertwined. In this breathtaking novel, Ayobami Adebayo shines her light on Nigeria, the gaping divides in its society, and the shared humanity that lives in between.

A FINANCIAL TIMES BEST SUMMER BOOK OF 2023: SCIENCEA NEW SCIENTIST BEST POPULAR SCIENCE BOOK 2023A NEXT BIG IDEA CLUB MUST READ 2023A STYLIST BOOK TO BRING YOU WISDOM IN 2023Discover the next frontier of scientific understanding: your body’s electrome.Every cell in your body – bones, skin, nerves, muscle – has a voltage, like a tiny battery. This bioelectricity is why your brain can send signals to your body, why it develops and how it heals itself.In We Are Electric, award-winning science writer Sally Adee explores the colourful history of bioelectricity and journeys into the remarkable future of the discipline, through today’s laboratories where real-world medical applications are being developed.

‘A delicious trip through the geography, history and culture of the region’ ? Sunday TelegraphEver since the days of the Grand Tour, Tuscany has cast its magic spell on foreign vistiors. Attracted by the perfect combination of history, art, architecture, superb natural beauty and weather ? not to mention magnificent traditions of food and drink ? British visitors and residents have been at times so numerous that the local word for foreigners was simply ‘gli inglesi’ ? ‘the English’.What is it that makes this exquisite part of Italy so seductive? Alistair Moffat embarks on a journey into Tuscany?s past. From the flowering of the Etruscan civilization in the seventh century bc through the rise of the powerful medieval communes of Arezzo, Luca, Pisa and Florence, and the role the area played as the birthplace of the Renaissance, he underlines both the area?s regional uniqueness as well as the vital role it has played in the history of the whole of Italy. Insightful, readable and imbued with the author?s own enthusiasm for Tuscany, this book includes a wealth of information not found in tourist guides.’A sun-drenched meditation on the character of the place and its people’ ? The Scotsman

The Perfect Passion Dating Company at No. 24 Mouse Lane in Edinburgh’s New Town is run by Katie Donald who has an innate instinct for bringing people together. She has developed a skill for finding out what it is that people really want. Along the way, Katie learns profound lessons about her own desires as she works at better understanding others. Although Katie has little in the way of direct experience, with the help of her amiable and handsome office neighbour William Kidd, she soon finds herself making matches for the lonely hearts tired of meeting online ? and who want a more personal touch.For fans of Alexander McCall Smith’s many beloved series and romantic standalone novels, The Perfect Passion Company shows him at his most perceptive, playful, and generous. In the way that only McCall Smith can, these tales offer a glimpse inside the psychology of matchmaking, the search for love and companionship, and the mysterious spark of attraction that can, at times, catch hold of us all.Contains two previously published eBook novellas: COOK FOR ME and A LABOURER IN THE VINEYARD OF LOVE The third and concluding story, THE SOUND OF SILENCE is published here for the first time.

Rebellion was recurrent in the Highlands because the Gaels (Scoti) were an often-oppressed indigenous minority in the nation, Scotland, to which they gave their name. They spoke a language, Gaelic, few outsiders would learn, and had their own family and social system, the clans. Warfare was bloody, culminating in the catastrophe of Culloden Moor during the doomed quest to restore the Stuart kingship to all of Britain. Economic hardship, including the near-genocidal Clearances, in which tenant farmers were replaced with sheep, drove the Gaels from the glens and islands, so that most today live in the diaspora, including millions in North America. Although the Gaels lack a single genetic identity, they clearly draw from distinct roots in the Irish, Norse and Picts. Despite their hardship, the Gaels are also presented in romantic portrayals by the artistic elite of other nations. This book offers ways in which the reader might find roots and ancestry in unfamiliar terrain. Chapters discuss the landscape and language of the Highlanders, the rise of clans, feuds and invasions, and eventual emigration.

Push, pull and slide the moving mechanisms to meet all your favourite characters from the deep dark wood and bring the story to life. This brilliant board book is based on the bestselling classic picture book, The Gruffalo, which celebrates it’s 25th anniversary!Discover what happens when a quick-witted mouse comes face to face with a fox, an owl, a snake . . . and a hungry Gruffalo! Move the magical push, pull and slide mechanisms on every spread to join in the fun.With a short, simple rhyming text based on the original story, The Gruffalo: A Push, Pull and Slide Book is the perfect introduction for preschoolers to The Gruffalo by Julia Donaldson and Axel Scheffler, and a great gift for fans of the bestselling picture book to say happy birthday to the Gruffalo!

The Perfect Passion Dating Company at No. 24 Mouse Lane in Edinburgh’s New Town is run by Katie Donald who has an innate instinct for bringing people together. She has developed a skill for finding out what it is that people really want. Along the way, Katie learns profound lessons about her own desires as she works at better understanding others. Although Katie has little in the way of direct experience, with the help of her amiable and handsome office neighbour William Kidd, she soon finds herself making matches for the lonely hearts tired of meeting online ? and who want a more personal touch.For fans of Alexander McCall Smith’s many beloved series and romantic standalone novels, The Perfect Passion Company shows him at his most perceptive, playful, and generous. In the way that only McCall Smith can, these tales offer a glimpse inside the psychology of matchmaking, the search for love and companionship, and the mysterious spark of attraction that can, at times, catch hold of us all.Contains two previously published eBook novellas: COOK FOR ME and A LABOURER IN THE VINEYARD OF LOVE The third and concluding story, THE SOUND OF SILENCE is published here for the first time.

Can Annie find her missing bunny before it?s caught by the neighbourhood fox? A gentle and heartwarming animal story from worldwide bestseller Holly Webb.Annie is really excited about her new pet rabbits and can?t wait to welcome them into the amazing new home her dad has built for them.But when Annie is in a rush to get to school the next morning, she doesn?t check that the door to the hutch is shut properly, and one of the rabbits, Humbug, escapes.Can Annie find Humbug in time to save her from the neighbourhood fox ??

Janette Ayachi’s second collection moves away from the personal and delves into the universal with poems often taking flight from the page to parachute into performance. Her hypnotic voice lifts from a keen observing stance to one that probes the chemical reactions in nature, and especially in the body. Fire is seen as an element; as something environmental, a natural disaster. But Ayachi also plays with fire as a fuel in relationships; a heat felt and subject to synergy within the cells and flesh, a cardiac pulse, a love that comes quickly and burns slowly, constantly rekindling hope for change, peace and renewal. There is a mystic undertow that exposes the materials, the lore of bones and anatomy, pilgrimages and prayers, superstitions and super galaxies that she explores with language. Lost landscapes and lost loves merge as she confronts loneliness at the same time as showing us new bloom is on the horizon – that nature will always will us another spark.

1843. On a remote Scottish island, Ivar, the sole occupant, leads a life of quiet isolation until the day he finds a man unconscious on the beach below the cliffs. The newcomer is John Ferguson, an impoverished church minister sent to evict Ivar and turn the island into grazing land for sheep. Unaware of the stranger’s intentions, Ivar takes him into his home, and in spite of the two men having no common language, a fragile bond begins to form between them. Meanwhile on the mainland, John’s wife Mary anxiously awaits news of his mission.

Against the rugged backdrop of this faraway spot beyond Shetland, Carys Davies’s intimate drama unfolds with tension and tenderness: a touching and crystalline study of ordinary people buffeted by history and a powerful exploration of the distances and connections between us. Perfectly structured and surprising at every turn, Clear is a marvel of storytelling, an exquisite short novel by a master of the form.

An extraordinary and playful debut collection by one of Granta‘s Best of Young British Novelists, exploring the joy and fluidity of queer love.

An interrogation of the erotic and romantic becomes refracted, as though through a prism, towards beings, lovers, states, objects, landscapes, systems, in K Patrick’s ground-breaking debut book of poems. These are notes towards a contemporary queer experience that emerge from the body, dodging and playing with logic to create a brand new poetics. Patrick’s subversive and distinct poetic manoeuvres through a marriage and a subsequent divorce, nature writing and 20th Century literary figures with agility, delicacy, candour, and humour.

By turns both innovative and empathetic, Three Births documents the absurdity of obsessive desires, giving room to states of flux and flow in the body, relationships, ecology and place. George Michael, the history of inches, the ache that lives behind a ‘rigid seam’: a high-wire linguistic utopia is put forward in Patrick’s easy-going, cool and ironic tone, which zaps with syntactic-synaptic wildness. Three Births culminates in the subtle but powerful message that we should be able to inhabit the body we want to inhabit and love freely within this.

War is coming, godkiller.

Gods are forbidden in the kingdom of Middren. Now they are stirring, whispering of war. Godkiller Kissen sacrificed herself to vanquish the fire god Hseth and save her friends, but gods cannot be destroyed so easily – and neither can godkillers.

Reeling from the loss of Kissen, young noble Inara and her little god of white lies, Skedi, seek answers to the true nature of their bond. The secrets they uncover could determine the outcome of the war.

Meanwhile, Elogast, no longer a loyal knight of King Arren, has been charged with destroying the man he once called friend. The king vowed to eradicate all gods, but has now entered into an unholy pact with the most dangerous of them all.

The kingdom is on the brink of destruction. What will they each sacrifice to save it?

Aoife Lyall’s The Day Before beautifully captures the ordinary moments in life that crystallise in the face of crisis and threat. Focusing on the earliest weeks and months of the pandemic, these intimate and meticulous poems mark the lived experience of someone who must navigate a world she no longer understands, exploring first steps and last breaths, milestones, millstones, emigration, fly-tipping and the entire world to be found in the space behind the front door. Tender, challenging, and historically significant, The Day Before asks what it means when home is the one place you cannot leave, and the one place you cannot go. The Day Before is Aoife Lyall’s second collection, following her widely praised debut, Mother, Nature, which was shortlisted for the Scottish First Book Award in Scotland’s National Book Awards in 2021.

1770. Delphine lives in the shadows of London: a secret, vibrant world of smugglers, courtesans and small rebellions. Four years ago, she escaped enslavement at great personal cost. Now, she must help her brother Vincent do the same.

While Britain’s highest court fails to administer justice for Vincent, little rebellions are no longer enough. What’s needed is a big, explosive plot – one that will strike at the heart of the transatlantic slave trade. But can one woman, one fuse and one match bring down an Empire?

An incendiary alternative history, Remember, Remember is a gripping story of conscience, conspiracy, queer identity and courage in the face of injustice.

The third book in Janet McGiffin’s Empress Irini Series. Constantine’s father, Co-emperor Leon, dies unexpectedly, making Constantine emperor at age nine with Irini as Regent. Abbess Thekla’s loyalty to Irini shifts to Constantine as she watches Irini block his authority and keep the power herself. Irini makes Constantine wed the disliked Maria, prevents the Senate from naming him emperor in his own right at age 18, and imprisons him when he tries to stop her henchmen from amassing wealth and power. Constantine’s army friends free him, arrest her, and raise him to the throne. Resourceful as ever, Irini will not be thwarted. Can Thekla prevent them from murdering each other?

Berlin, 1944. ‘No! Not my child!’ Annaliese screams, her voice breaking as she pounds the window uselessly. But no-one looks up as the man in the SS uniform cradles her precious baby and strides away…

She lies unmoving on the threadbare cot, her throat hoarse from long hours of screaming but her tears keep falling. Her heart has been cleaved in two, now the Nazis have taken the only thing she has left – her child. She is utterly powerless against them. But as Annaliese cries herself to sleep, she makes a vow – she will find her precious baby again. Whatever it takes.

Berlin, 1979. Lawyer Evie has come to the city to investigate the horrifying stories of infants torn from their mothers during the war. One of the cases is Sebastian, whose yellowing birth certificate tells a heartbreaking tale. Evie is drawn to this lost man, and vows to do all that she can to help him.

But poring through old records, it is Evie who recognises the faded photo in a newspaper article. Her heart stops as she realises her whole life has been a devastating lie – and that her and Sebastian’s pasts are impossibly, unimaginably connected…

Fans of The Book of Lost Names and The Tattooist of Auschwitz will be swept away by this absolutely gripping and heartbreaking World War Two novel about the extraordinary power of a mother’s love.

SHORTLISTED FOR SCOTLAND’S NATIONAL BOOK AWARDS 2023
A SCOTTISH BOOK TRUST BOOK OF THE MONTH
THE TIMES BOOK OF THE MONTH (HISTORICAL FICTION)
A CHURCH HOUSE BOOKSHOP BOOK OF THE WEEK

An astounding debut, both epic and intimate, about grief, trauma, revelation, and the hidden lives of women – by a major new talent

‘Miraculously conjured … Brilliantly done’ THE TIMES, Book of the Month
‘A beautiful book … It warmed my heart’ MAX PORTER
‘Electrifying … A pocket epic’ GUARDIAN
‘The best first novel I’ve read in years … So full and so vivid; it is amazing’ RODDY DOYLE
‘A vibrant portrait of female courage’ OBSERVER

In the year of 1413, two women meet for the first time in the city of Norwich.

Margery has left her fourteen children and husband behind to make her journey. Her visions of Christ – which have long alienated her from her family and neighbours, and incurred her husband’s abuse – have placed her in danger with the men of the Church, who have begun to hound her as a heretic.

Julian, an anchoress, has not left Norwich, nor the cell to which she has been confined, for twenty-­three years. She has told no one of her own visions – and knows that time is running out for her to do so.

The two women have stories to tell one another. Stories about girlhood, motherhood, sickness, loss, doubt and belief; revelations more the powerful than the world is ready to hear. Their meeting will change everything.

Sensual, vivid and humane, For Thy Great Pain Have Mercy On My Little Pain cracks history open to reveal the lives of two extraordinary women.