THE BEST OF SCOTTISH BOOKS

One of the most famous queens in history, Mary Stuart lived in her homeland for just twelve years: as a dauntless child who laughed at her friendsʼ seasickness as they sailed to safety in France and later, on her return as a 18-year-old widow to take control of a nation riven with factions, dissent and religious strife. Brief though her time in Scotland was, her experience profoundly influenced who she was and what happened to her.

In this book, Rosemary Goring tells the story of Mary’s Scottish years through the often dramatic and atmospheric locations and settings where the events that shaped her life took place and also examines the part Scotland, and its tumultuous court and culture, played in her downfall. Whether or not Mary Stuart emerges blameless or guilty, in this evocative retelling she can be seen for who she really was.

Locations included: 

Linlithgow Palace * Stirling Castle * Dumbarton Castle * Leith * Holyrood Palace * Crichton Castle * Darnaway Castle * Huntly Castle * Spynie Palace * Falkland Palace * Seton Palace * St Andrews and Fife * Dunbar Castle * Edinburgh Castle * Traquair House * Hermitage Castle * Jedburgh, Mary Queen of Scots House * Craigmillar Castle * Edinburgh and Kirk o’ Field * Borthwick Castle * Carberry Hill * Lochleven Castle * Langside * Dundrennan Abbey

1964. A hoard of the finest Scotch whisky ever made – the legendary Dalziel Double Proof – goes missing.

2023. Albie, youngest son of the wealthy Dalziel family, vanishes. His desperate mother turns to Robbie Gould, a disgraced reporter with a reputation as a ‘psychic crimebuster’.

Broke and unemployed, Gould is in no position to turn down the job. He throws himself into a twisted chain of criminals, bent cops and Japanese gangsters, but when someone fires a shotgun through his door, he realises he doesn’t need supernatural powers to see how deadly the situation has become.

* A Scotsman ‘Best Book of 2023’ *

From an award-winning Scottish poet, an unforgettable novel about memory and radical forgiveness

How far would you go to overcome the limits of your own forgiveness?

Quinn is serving a life sentence for a crime he’s convinced he hasn’t committed. Surely the authorities have got it wrong, and when they find his childhood sweetheart, Andrea, his name will be cleared. His parole date is drawing near when he receives an unexpected letter from Andrea’s mother, who invites Quinn to share her home.

It soon becomes clear that what appears to be a genuine act of forgiveness is influenced by more complex motivations. As the duo navigate the thorny terrain of guilt, justice and mutual need that underpins their relationship, the story of Quinn’s past is gradually revealed, setting in motion a final reckoning.

Em Strang’s first novel is a hypnotic rendering of an unravelling mind and a visceral story about the very limits of forgiveness.

BLACKWELL’S BOOK OF THE YEAR

‘Mesmerising’ Sunday Times
‘Magnificent’ Guardian
‘Monumental’ The Telegraph

Leigh grew up in Rotterdam, drawn to the waterfront as an escape from her unhappy home life and volatile father. Enchanted by the undersea world of her childhood, she excels in marine biology, travelling the globe to study ancient organisms. When a trench is discovered in the Atlantic ocean, Leigh joins the exploration team, hoping to find evidence of the earth’s first life forms – what she instead finds calls into question everything we know about our own beginnings.

Her discovery leads Leigh to the Mojave desert and an ambitious new space agency. Drawn deeper into the agency’s work, she learns that the Atlantic trench is only one of several related phenomena from across the world, each piece linking up to suggest a pattern beyond human understanding. Leigh knows that to continue working with the agency will mean leaving behind her declining mother and her younger sister, and faces an impossible choice: to remain with her family, or to embark on a journey across the breadth of the cosmos.

‘Utterly compelling’ The Times, Books of the Year
‘Profound and thrilling’ New Statesman, Books of the Year
‘A far-reaching epic’ Financial Times, Books of the Year

People from this house go down to the sea at night, and drown.

Tinna cannot remember the last words she said to her husband. Three whole months of her memories were stolen in the crash that killed him and left her scarred and suffering from chronic pain.

Adrift and struggling to reconcile herself to this dual loss, Tinna accepts her aunt’s invitation to return to her childhood home on a remote Icelandic coast. Perhaps the solitude and the sea will help her recover her memories.

But a greater grief has already taken hold here, one that has haunted the women of Tinna’s family for generations. When her secretive aunt forbids Tinna from going down to the shore in the dark, she still cannot resist. Then she hears whispers on the tide offering her the answers she so desperately needs. If she can bear the price.

Maggie survived an apocalypse of hungry shadows by becoming invisible, only to drown during a violent telepathic assault.

Living on the edge of Bloemfontein, in South Africa, Maggie scavenges for scraps and grapples with the unreality, a collection of strange visions and slippery thoughts caused by the attack. When she’s approached by strangers who claim she can destroy the shadow monsters, Maggie faces a dilemma: are these people real, and if so, how can she ensure they stay with her forever?

The Invisible Girl is about seeing the world differently, and society’s tendency to ‘other’ people who make them uncomfortable. Many different ideas and experiences inspired this story: life in a backwater city, victim shaming and the stigma surrounding mental health issues, and the search for community in a world that doesn’t tolerate strangeness well.

Aoife Ni Coillte is the eldest daughter of an Irish Indentured family, living in a poor village near the estate of Tanglewood Manor. In love with George Oliver Williams, the eldest son of the wealthy Williams family to whom the manor belongs, Aoife is rejected as an unsuitable match in favour of the heiress, Dido Dubois. Pride and bigotry drive her to unkindness towards Dido’s younger sister, Bellouise, until one fateful evening, when she is jointly punished by the African ancestral spirit, Belloko, and Pouq, the Irish phantom faerie. Transformed into the monstrous Steel Donkey, Aoife is condemned to haunt and terrorise the area, until she can learn to love that which she hates.

Ten years later, the Williams family hires John Jack, a discerning and kind freed slave to help maintain the family property. An unlikely bond takes root between Aoife and John, followed by rumours of Steel Donkey sightings spreading like bushfire across the hills.

‘Packed with brilliantly drawn characters, laugh-out-loud humour, and lots of blood – what’s not to love? Caz Frear, author of Sweet Little Lies

‘I knew within a page that I was in good hands’ Chris Brookmyre

‘An amazingly accomplished debut’ The Times Crime Book of the Month

Half the Glasgow copshop think DI Alison McCoist is bent. The other half just think she’s a fuck-up. No one thinks very much at all about carwash employee Davey Burnet, until one day he takes the wrong customer’s motor for a ride. One kidnapping later, he and the carwash are officially part of Glasgow’s criminal underworld, working for a psychopath who enjoys playing games like ‘Keep Yer Kneecaps’ with any poor bastard who crosses him. Can Davey escape from the gang’s clutches with his kneecaps and life intact? Perhaps this polis Ally McCoist who keeps nosing around the carwash could help. If she doesn’t get herself killed first.

A detailed study of the life, work and faith of the famous Scottish scientist James Clerk Maxwell.

It is 1893: Yokohama is a melting pot of international influence and opportunity as well as Japan’s portal to the world. Its air hangs thick with an intoxicating miasma of loneliness and desire, but fails to mask the emerging stench of death.

When a young woman is found drowned in Yokohama Harbour under suspicious circumstances, downtrodden Korean eel salesboy Han compels the eccentric Glaswegian artist Archie Nith to seek the truth, though it requires more of them than just naïve integrity to paint a picture of what actually happened. Written from the perspectives of both Han and Nith, The Hotel Hokusai follows their twisting journey as it snakes all the way from Yokohama’s harbour to its red-light district. Can they grasp reality when the truth is as slippery as a basket of eels?

Set in a world of the near future, the celebrity elite have access to a technology that allows them to make perfect copies of themselves, known as Portraits. These Portraits exist to fulfil all the various duties that come as the price of fame.

Our protagonist is the thirteenth copy made of the actress known as Lulabelle Rock. Her purpose is very simple: to track down and eliminate her predecessors.

While initially easy, her task is made difficult by the labyrinthine confusion of Bubble City and the unfortunate stirrings of a developing conscience. When she makes the mistake of falling in love with one of her targets, the would-be assassin faces the ultimate question; when you don’t want to kill yourself, what’s the alternative?

Drawing on a decade of teaching at Mexican universities, Ricardo Victoria-Uribe has teamed up with pharmaceutical chemist Martha Elba González-Alcaraz to create an introductory guide
to sustainability, in an accessible way.

Tapping into Science Fiction and Fantasy across several media formats, examining anime, books, movies, and TV, the authors have created a practical resource for students, writers, and readers
alike, who want to know more about just how big a part sustainability plays in everyday life. And, most importantly, how the future of humanity on this planet depends on our engagement with it.

Charismatic career criminal and Edinburgh antihero Aldo returns in this riotous, gritty, action-packed sequel to A Working Class State of Mind. Aldo is determined to become a better person. His best pals Dougie and Craig and the four-legged love of his life, Bruce the Staffy, do their best to keep him on the path to redemption, but his lawless nature and chaotic home life propel him into a series of comical, exhilarating, occasionally brutal adventures. On the way, he encounters a host of memorable characters and finds a new love. Trying to balance this romance, the expectations of his family and life on the streets turns out to be a bigger challenge than Aldo anticipated. Can he turn over a new leaf and still keep his title as the toon’s number one gangster? Who’s Aldo is captivating, tender, and laugh out loud funny. Imagine if James Kelman, Irvine Welsh and Frankie Boyle collaborated to produce the ultimate Scottish working-class character – that’s Aldo!

This laugh-out-loud picture book follows Kevin the Orange, who is really tired of being orange. With the help of his friend, Brian the Pear, Kevin tries being lots of different colours with hilarious consequences, only to find out that being the best version of yourself is the greatest thing of all.

A story about the uniqueness of us all, friendship and being happy as you are. Full of fun and quirky humour and bright and bold illustrations by debut illustrator Olla Meyzinger.

‘Prepare to be engulfed. Chan has superbly created a world as real and complex as our own, where oppression has no easy solutions and there is no success without sacrifice. Fast-paced action combined with true social depth make this an unforgettable, must-read fantasy’
Shelley Parker-Chan

Revolution is brewing in the semi-submerged city of Tiankawi, between humans and the fathomfolk who live in its waters. This gloriously imaginative debut fantasy, inspired by East Asian mythology and ocean folk tales, is a novel of magic, rebellion and change.

Welcome to Tiankawi – shining pearl of human civilization and a safe haven for those fleeing civil unrest. Or at least, that’s how it first appears. But in the semi-flooded city, humans are, quite literally, on top: peering down from shining towers and aerial walkways on the fathomfolk – sirens, seawitches, kelpies and kappas – who live in the polluted waters below.

For half-siren Mira, promotion to captain of the border guard means an opportunity to help her downtrodden people. But if earning the trust and respect of her human colleagues wasn’t hard enough, everything Mira has worked towards is put in jeopardy when Nami, a know-it-all water dragon and fathomfolk princess – is exiled to the city, under Mira’s watch. When extremists sabotage a city festival, violence erupts, as does the clampdown on fathomfolk rights. Both Nami and Mira must decide if the cost of change is worth paying, or if Tiankawi should be left to drown.

In the chilly early spring, Ben and Grandpa are busy in the garden. Ben spots a fuzzy bumblebee in a cosy coat, just like him.

As spring turns to summer, Ben learns all about the lives of the bumblebees — how they grow from eggs into hungry larvae, spin cocoons and finally emerge as bees — and notices what he has in common with his buzzy friends. When Grandpa explains that bees carry pollen that helps juicy strawberries grow in their garden, Ben asks if they can help the bees in return.

The Bumblebee Garden is a charming, lyrical story that teaches young children about the life cycle of bees, and their importance to the balance of the natural world. The luminous illustrations will inspire readers to celebrate these remarkable, vital insects and help them thrive in their own gardens and nearby green spaces.

Perched on a beautiful Scottish island measuring just two miles across, Café Canna is one of the remotest restaurants in Britain. By necessity, and also out of love, Gareth Cole and his team make the most of local ingredients from the island and its shores.

Justly famous for its seafood, landed from the clear, sparkling Hebridean waters, foraged seaweed is also a mainstay of the restaurant’s imaginative menu. Meat comes from the fields next door, vegetables from the garden plot, fruit from the orchard, fresh bread is baked daily and beer brewed on the premises.

This book is a magnificent celebration of Café Canna and the close-knit island which is its lifeblood. Over 70 recipes showcase the enormous range of dishes produced locally – all of which can be replicated by cooking enthusiasts at home. The range of starters, main courses, puddings, accompaniments and baking is rich and varied, from dulse seaweed croquettes, crab bisque, and Beef, Skye Black ale and Blue Murder Pie to Wild gorse crème brulee, Nettle and spinach spanakopita and Singapore chilli Canna crab.

**The spellbinding, bold new retelling of the story of Lord Byron and the Shelleys, from the perspective of Claire Clairmont, the incredible woman that history tried to forget.**

‘Beautifully written, Clairmont tells the sensuous hidden story of an influential historic woman.’ Sara Sheridan, author of The Fair Botanists Waterstones Scottish Book of the Year

‘An absorbing, intoxicating page-turner about a woman who deserves to be remembered.’ Jennifer Saint, author of Ariadne and Atalanta

‘An intimate and enlightening tale of one of Romanticism’s forsaken muses – an artfully told story that lingers in the mind far beyond the last page’ Susan Stokes-Chapman, author of Pandora

1816. A massive volcanic eruption has caused the worst storms that Europe has seen in decades, yet Percy and Mary Shelley have chosen to visit the infamous Lord Byron at his villa on Lake Geneva. It wasn’t their idea: Mary’s eighteen year old step-sister, Claire Clairmont, insisted.

But the reason for Claire’s visit is more pressing than a summer escape with the most famous writers in the world. She’s pregnant with Byron’s child – a child Byron doesn’t want, and scarcely believes is his own.

Claire has the world in her grasp. This trip should have given her everything she ever dreamed of. But within days, her life will be in ruins.

History has all but forgotten her story – but she will not be silenced.

From the author of the prize-winning As the Women Lay Dreaming comes a poignant and deeply evocative novel of the 20th-century emigrant experience in the New World.

When Finlay and Mairead board the SS Metagama in 1923, leaving the Scottish island of Lewis for Canada, their lives – along with those of the islanders they leave behind – are changed forever. The pair are young, filled with hope, and bound together by a shared past, even as their lives will soon diverge on the other side of the Atlantic.

From Toronto to Detroit, they face the realities of an uncaring industrial society. The effects of the Great Depression are inescapable, and prejudice and division are rife. Fate will bring them back together, but not before they are both transformed. In an adopted country that is tense with both opportunity and loss, social progress and violent backlash, can Mairead and Finlay keep their promises to one another, to look only forward, and resist the constant pull of home?

With lyrical prose and masterful storytelling, Murray paints a vivid portrait of the resilient Hebrideans-in-exile who struggled between holding on and letting go.

Sleekit: Contemporary poems in the Burns stanza collects recent poetry in the form by some of the most exciting poets writing in Scotland today. Here are poems which conform to the structure of the Burns stanza alongside poems which seek to stretch and twist it; poems in Scots, English, and JavaScript; poems on topics as diverse as buffalypso, sex toys, and Robert Burns himself. The work in Sleekit shows the vital role the Burns stanza plays in contemporary Scottish poetry.

Sleekit is edited by Lou Selfridge and features poetry by Katie Ailes, Craig Aitchison, Janette Ayachi, Stephen Dornan, Roshni Gallagher, Harry Josephine Giles, W.N. Herbert, David Kinloch, Simon Lamb, Iain Morrison, Jeda Pearl, Calum Rodger, Stewart Sanderson, Gill Shaw, Maria Sledmere, Taylor Strickland & Kate Tough.