THE BEST OF SCOTTISH BOOKS

12 decades, 9 lives, 1 cat

Early morning, 1902. In a gloomy Edinburgh tenement, Eilidh the charlady tips coal into a fire grate and sets it alight. Overhearing, a cat ambles over to curl up against the welcome heat.

This is to be the cat’s last day on earth. But he is going to return… as The Ghost Cat, a spirit-feline destined to live out his ghostly existence according to the medieval proverb of “The Cat with Nine Lives” – For Three He Plays, For Three He Strays, For Three He Stays.

Follow The Ghost Cat as he witnesses the changes of the next two centuries as he purrs, shuffles and sniffs his way through the fashion, politics and technological advances of the modern era alongside the ever-changing inhabitants of an Edinburgh tenement. As we follow our new spirit-feline friend, this unique story unearths some startling revelations about the mystery of existence and the human condition and provides a feel-good read full of charm for any fan of history, humour and fur-ridden fun.

In her first Carcanet collection, Lesley Harrison looks north to the sea, the heat of the land at her back. In inventive arrangements of sound and page, Harrison meditates on whale hunts, lost children, cities seen and remembered, and the sound of the gamelan in the Gulf of Bothnia.

Everyone’s favourite Wee Granny is back with her magic bag, and Emily and Harry are desperate to see what she’s got inside it today.

It’s the day of the school ceilidh, and they have to pick up last-minute supplies before the celebrations and dancing can begin. But things don’t go smoothly — they miss their bus and then a flood closes the road. Does Wee Granny have something in her magic bag to save the day?

This brilliant follow-up to the hugely popular Wee Granny’s Magic Bag, starring a tartan Mary Poppins, offers a wonderful mix of colourful illustrations and an engaging story with surprises on every page!

Being paid to explore sounded like a dream job.

From Norway to Madagascar, by campervan, taxi, boat and small plane, Amelia Dalton hunted down remote archipelagos, deserted beaches and tiny local museums to create expedition holidays with a difference. On the way she was abandoned on an unpopulated island and escaped a hotel fire – and worse.

Pages from my Passport is a memoir of adventures, disasters and occasional triumphs, all infused with Amelia’s unquenchable enthusiasm.

Mary is the great-niece of Victor Frankenstein. She knows her great uncle disappeared in mysterious circumstances in the Arctic but she doesn’t know why or how…

The 1850s is a time of discovery and London is ablaze with the latest scientific theories and debates, especially when a spectacular new exhibition of dinosaur sculptures opens at the Crystal Palace. Mary, with a sharp mind and a sharper tongue, is keen to make her name in this world of science, alongside her geologist husband Henry, but without wealth and connections, their options are limited.

But when Mary discovers some old family papers that allude to the shocking truth behind her great-uncle’s past, she thinks she may have found the key to securing their future… Their quest takes them to the wilds of Scotland, to Henry’s intriguing but reclusive sister Maisie, and to a deadly chase with a rival who is out to steal their secret…

Benny and his robot friends are back with a fantastic new adventure in this third book in the award-winning One Button Benny picture book series – this time there is a very unhappy dinosaur to contend with.

It’s Friday and that means it’s party time in robot town. Benny and his friends decide they need a bit more “robot dancing” practice before the big night. They bounce and boogie, jump and twirl, then disaster strikes when they tumble into a huge sinkhole and come face to face with a large angry dinosaur, who is not happy about being woken up.

Will Benny have to press his “Emergency Button”? Can they escape being crushed and eaten by the dinosaur? Will they make it back in time for the party?

With beautiful retro-style illustrations by award-winning illustrator Chloe Holwill-Hunter, this is a story about friendship, working together, coping with problems and the uniqueness of us all as individuals.

From acclaimed poet Nadine Aisha Jassat comes a gripping mystery… “Grandma Farida is losing her memory – but I’m going to help her remember a huge secret.”

Twelve-year-old Nyla’s dad died when she was four, or that’s what she’s been told. So when Grandma Farida insists she saw him in the supermarket, Nyla wonders if she is ‘time-travelling’ again – the phrase she uses when Grandma forgets.

But when Grandma asks Nyla to find her dad and bring him home, Nyla promises that she will.

As Nyla sets out on her journey, she hopes that uncovering the past will help her to understand the mystery at the heart of her family … and to work out who she is.

A page-turning verse novel about memory and identity, and a bond that soars above all else.

Ellis’s life has crumbled without warning. Her boyfriend has fallen in love with someone else, her job’s insecure, her bank account’s empty and she has a mouthful of unreliable teeth. Forced back to her childhood home, there is little in the way of comfort. Her mum is dating a younger man (a dentist, no less) and is talking of selling the house, her sister, Lana, is furious all the time, and a distant cousin has now arrived from the States to stay with them.

During a long, hot Edinburgh summer, Ellis’s world spins out of control. She’s dogged by toothache, her ex won’t compensate her for the flat and somehow she’s found herself stalking his new lover on Facebook.

Will Ellis realise before it’s too late that the bite she was born with is worth preserving?

Jamesina Ross is long finished with men. But one night a stranger seeking lodgings knocks on the door of her tenement flat. He doesn’t recognise her, but she remembers him at once. Not that she plans to mention it. She has no intention of trusting anyone enough to let herself be vulnerable again.

A lifetime ago Jamesina Ross was bent on becoming a writer. She had a facility with words. She made up songs about the Highland glen where she lived and the kin who had worked that land for generations. When her community was threatened with eviction, she gave voice to that too. The women stood together, defiant and determined, but Jamesina’s music was no match for one of the most brutal confrontations of the Highland Clearances.

Jamesina has borne the disfigurements of that day ever since, on her face and inside her head. It marked the end of a life of promise and the beginning of a very different one. Her lodger thinks that if she would only dare to open the past, she might have the chance of a future.

A beautiful exploration of unlooked-for love in later life, its contrariness and its awkward, surprising joys, this is a story about resilience, memory, resurrection – and those parts of who we are that nobody can take away.

In an island community facing extinction, can hope rise stronger than grief?

Sisi de Mathilde lives on a remote island in the Indian Ocean. With the seas rising, the birth rate plummeting and her community under threat, she works as a scientist, reporting on local climate conditions to help protect her island home. But her life is thrown into turmoil when she finds herself newly widowed and unexpectedly pregnant.

When a group of outsiders arrive and try to persuade her community to abandon the island, Sisi is caught between the sacred ‘old ways’ of her ancestors and the possibilities offered by the outside world. As tensions rise and the islanders turn on one another, Sisi must fight to save her home, her people and her unborn child.

Churches are all around us. Their steeples remain landmarks in our towns, villages and cities, even as their influence and authority has waned. They contain art and architectural wonders – one huge gallery scattered, like a handful of jewels, across these isles.

Award-winning writer Peter Ross sets out to tell their stories, and through them a story of Britain. Join him as he visits the unassuming Norfolk church which contains a disturbing secret, and London’s mighty cathedrals with their histories of fire and love. Meet cats and bats, monks and druids, angels of oak and steel. Steeple Chasing, though it sometimes strikes an elegiac note, is a song of praise. It celebrates churches for their beauty and meaning, and for the tales they tell. It is about people as much as place, flesh and bone not just flint and stone. From the painted hells of Surrey to the holy wells of Wales, consider this a travel book . . .with bells on.

A MISSING PERSON MYSTERY LIKE NO OTHER

I am not gone. Mum is not gone. We are here. We are hidden.

A father who is trying to rescue his lost wife.

Their child, desperately searching the wild forests and dangerous mountains of the Scottish Highlands, not knowing what’s out there.

An abandoned cottage in the remote wilderness, filled with thousands of confusing, terrifying handwritten notes.

And a dark, looming voice who threatens to destroy everything…

In Another Word for Home is Blackbird, Catherine Wilson Garry examines the nature of solace and escapism from grief and loss. Through retracing her personal losses, people-watching, magpies and olive oil offer small moments of transformational joy. Objects and belongings are also given a poetic power: binoculars, shoes, books and flowers help bring the deceased back to life – both in memory and on the page. Wilson Garry explores grief and loss on a wider, political scale, including examinations of climate change, industrial action, isolation – advocating for a world where happiness thrives.

Play My Game is a sampler of short poems, a wide-ranging anthology of ‘dailiness’, spanning two decades of innovative poetic practice.

Well known for his work as a visual artist and poet, here Alec Finlay playfully expands the possibilities of traditional short forms, such as the haiku, poetic aphorism, and question and answer (after Celan). play my game features examples of Finlay’s verbal game-play, poetic mottos, proverbs, and inscriptions, as well as place-aware versions of Gaelic place-names and Highland tour diaries, guided by Boswell & Johnson. Other poems illustrate his love of wry or fond overhearings, in numerous, occasionally numinous, found poems.

The front cover features some of Finlay’s rubber stamp artworks on paper-rock-scissors, and the book includes his new variant, cloud-paper-mountain.

In Touching Air, Gill Shaw tenderly examines intimate connection, its transience and the searing ache of heartbreak, loss and longing.  Her work includes poems which explore expansive themes within the boundaries of established poetic form and concrete structure. Others adopt fresh and novel lenses to reflect on intimate connection and the loss of it – intimacy as a legal contract, connection as an assault of fencing, loss as a projection of linguistic devices onto conversations with her young son.  These poems draw on the transient beauty of nature within the Highland landscape, forming reflective meditations on love, loss and longing.

The astonishing story of William Neilson continues.

New Year’s Eve, 1746. A castle in the depths of France. A thunderstorm. A pair of lovers in a hay-loft. A wounded soldier toppling from his horse.

So begins the second instalment of the life of William Neilson, Scottish soldier in French service and Jacobite agent against his will. Around his neck, William carries the most precious jewel on the surface of the earth, but it is not his, and he must carry it to the exiled King of England, Scotland and Ireland in Italy. Before that, he wishes to see for a last time the woman he has loved for more than half his life.

The scene shifts from the wastes and marshes of the Sologne, to the disorderly houses and prisons of the Most Serene Republic of Venice and the desolate court-in-exile of James Stuart in Rome. Along the way are sword-fights, love stories, intrigues, assassinations, blasphemies, kidnappings, musical performances, and treacheries.

The eighth book in a thrilling, magical, and action-packed new fantasy series, illustrated throughout and perfect for 7-9 year olds!

In the land of Draconis, there are no dragons.

Once, there were. Once, humans and dragons were friends, and created the great city of Rivven together. But then came the Dragon Storm, and the dragons retreated from the world of humans. To the men and women of Draconis, they became legends and myth.

When Princess Skye returns to Rivven she discovers a city in chaos. After an attack by the fearsome dragon Firedreamer, everyone is preparing to go to war with the Dragonseer Guild! But Skye knows the Guild is not a threat, and something is terribly wrong. Can she stop it before the dragons disappear forever and in doing so find her own dragon, Soulsinger?

The eighth book in an exciting new fantasy series from the highly acclaimed author of Orion Lost, brilliantly illustrated throughout, and perfect for fans of Beast Quest and Dragon Mountain.

Voted the top crime novel of all time by the UK Crime Writers’ Association, The Daughter of Time is Josephine Tey’s last and most successful book.

Complete and unabridged. Part of the Macmillan Collector’s Library; a series of stunning, clothbound, pocket-sized classics with gold foiled edges and ribbon markers. These beautiful books make perfect gifts or a treat for any book lover. This edition is introduced by writer David Stuart Davies.

Inspector Alan Grant is laid up in hospital with a spinal injury and he’s bored. Renowned for his ability to read a face, he passes the time looking at old portraits and one which particularly grabs his attention is of Richard III, the supposed arch villain who killed his own nephews, ‘the princes in the tower’. But Grant doesn’t accept the face in the portrait is the face of a villain so he sets out to investigate what really happened. An unusual premise for a crime novel perhaps, but nevertheless an extremely clever and engrossing one, brilliantly plotted and written with enormous charm and erudition.

I’ve always been better with plants than people . . .

Eustacia Rose is a Professor of Botanical Toxicology who lives alone in London with only her extensive collection of poisonous plants for company. She tends to her garden with meticulous care. Her life is quiet. Her schedule never changes. Until the day she hears a scream and the temptation to investigate proves irresistible.

Through her telescope, Professor Rose is drawn into the life of an extraordinarily beautiful neighbour, Simone, and nicknames the men who visit her after poisonous plants according to the toxic effect they have on Simone. But who are these four men? And why does Eustacia Rose recognize one of them?

Just as she preserves her secret garden, she feels inexplicably compelled to protect her neighbour. But when her precious garden is vandalized and someone close to Simone is murdered with a toxin derived from a rare poisonous plant, Eustacia finds herself implicated in the crime and decides to take matters into her own hands . . .

Part of Nosy Crow’s list of publishing in collaboration with the British Museum, developed in consultation with some of the world’s leading experts on Viking history.

A kid’s life as a Viking might sound like fun, what with all those cool battles and awesome longships, but actually life for kids could be pretty hard. In this hilarious book, children will learn just how tough life really was, from spending years on a raid and sharing your bedroom with farm animals, to being poked full of holes . . . and even eating extremely watery porridge.

Probably the first book about Viking times to feature children walking polar bears and rubber ducks, this is a must read for kids with a passion for horrible history!

Brought to life with rich, humorous illustrations by super-talented Marisa Morea.Other titles in the series include: Ancient Egypt, Ancient Rome, Ancient Greece, Aztec Age, Prehistoric Times, and Medieval Castle.