THE BEST OF SCOTTISH BOOKS

Kip is a Scottish bear cup. He practices martial arts and lives by the guiding principles of Taekwondo: Courtesy, Integrity, Perseverance, Self-Control, and Indomitable Spirit.

This is a heart-warming pre-school children’s picture book series that addresses inclusivity, sharing, resilience, diversity and bullying through values learned in martial arts, whilst also focusing on topical themes aimed to educate including cultural awareness, migration and climate change.

 

’S e cuilean-mathain Albannach a th’ ann an Kip. Bidh e a’ dèanamh ealain mhàirsealach, a’ tighinn beò is a’ trèanadh a rèir nan luachan: Modh, Trèibhdhireas, Fèin-smachd, Leanaltas agus spiorad Daingann.

An Stàball is the first-ever original Gaelic board book and a transatlantic collaboration.

Who is in the stable with Iain? Lift the flaps to find out!
An original Gaelic boardbook for babies and toddlers.

Cò tha anns an stàball aig Iain? To gach flap gus faicinn!
Leabhar-bùird do chloinn òga sgrìobhte sa Ghàidhlig bho thùs.

At the start of the summer holidays, Eilidh is disappointed that all the girls have gone on holiday to interesting places. Only the boys are left in town. And Eilidh never plays with boisterous wee boys. But she and her dog, Peasan, meet Patrick, a strange little boy, and they fall through time on many adventures in a charming week. Will Eilidh learn to be a little more kind and patient with boisterous wee boys?

 

Aig toiseach saor-làithean an t-samhraidh tha Eilidh tàmailteach gu bheil a’ chlann-nighean uile air falbh air saor-làithean ann an àiteachan inntinneach. Chan eil air fhàgail sa bhaile ach na balaich. Agus cha bhi Eilidh uair sam bith a’ cluich còmhla ri “balaich bheaga, bhrogach”. Ach tha i fhèin agus a cù, Peasan, a’ coinneachadh ri Pàdraig, balach beag annasach, agus iad a’ tuiteam tro thìm ann an iomadh dàn-thuras ann an seachdain seunta. An dùil an ionnsaich Eilidh a bhith beagan nas dòigheile agus nas fhoighidnich le balaich bheaga, bhrogach?

This is a Gaelic deep-dive into place-names. It explains all the most common elements that appear in place-names accross Scotland: words like “ach”, “baile”, “cill” and many more. By the end of the book, readers will be able to piece together the meaning behind place-names just from understanding a few key words.

This book is a companion for anyone with an interest in place-names. Dr Iain Taylor has previously published a book on Gaelic place-names, but this is the first book of his aimed at those with Gaelic, from learners to fluent speakers alike.

 

Thathar a’ toirt sùil air na h-eileamaidean no na facail a nochdas ann an ainmean-àite Gàidhlig, agus cuid dhiubh nach eil cho cumanta ann an còmhradh tuilleadh, mar dobhar, gasg is sàilean, agus bheirear sùil air eileamaidean cumanta ann an ainmean à cànanan eile a leithid na Lochlannais is na Breatannais. Tha caibideil ann mu ainm-eòlas anns an fharsaingeachd agus eachdraidh ainmean-àite na h-Alba. Aig an deireadh tha liosta a rèir na h-aibideil de na h-ainmean uile a tha a’ nochdadh san leabhar.

Ma tha ùidh agaibh ann an ainmean-àite ach ceist oirbh mu na tha corra ainm a’ ciallachadh, seo an leabhar dhuibhse.

‘Things are so difficult for spiders,’ thought Donaidh, ‘our wobbly legs are always in the way!’
But – Mamaidh doesn’t think so!
Read what happens!

 

‘Tha rudan cho doirbh do dhamhain-allaidh,’ smaoinich Donaidh, ‘bidh na casan cugallach againn daonnan anns an rathad!’
Ach –– chan eil an aon bheachd aig Mamaidh!
Leugh mar a thachras!

Dòmhnall Mac na Ceàrdaich (Donald Sinclair, 1885–1932) is a crucial writer in the development of Gaelic literature in the early twentieth century. His work across multiple styles and categories, including poetry, drama, and prose, covers a range of issues and concerns, including Scottish Nationalism, the Celtic Revival, land reform, migration, and a newly self-confident Catholic identity.
Mac na Ceàrdaich reinvigorated Gaelic literature across multiple genres, and helped to introduce entirely new ideas and forms. He was proud to write in a minoritised language, and his writing remains a treasure trove for Scottish Gaelic communities. This Scotnote Study Guide is an excellent starting point for those wishing to study his work and understand his role in the history of modern Gaelic writing.

 

’S e sgrìobhadair air leth chudromach do litreachas na Gàidhlig a bh’ ann an Dòmhnall Mac na Ceàrdaich. Bha sgrìobhadh aige ann an iomadh gnè is cuspair, a’ gabhail a-teach bàrdachd, dealbhan-cluiche agus rosg. Bha ùidh aige ann an Nàiseantachas na h-Alba, ath-leasachadh fearainn agus a’ chreidimh Chaitligeach.
Tha an leabhar Scotnotes seo na dheagh toiseach thòiseachaidh air barrachd ionnsachadh mu obair Mhic na Ceàrdaich and am buaidh a bh’ aige air sgrìobhadh Gàidhlig san fhicheadamh linn.

Christmas is coming, and the lights are excited! But this year, everyone wants to be the star on top of the tree. And so, the great Christmas tree race begins . . . Who will win?

Join these shiny friends as they race to the finish line.

 

Tha àm na Nollaige gu bhith ann, agus tha na loinnearain air bhioran! Ach am-bliadhna, tha a h-uile duine ag iarraidh a bhith na rionnaig air mullach na craoibhe. Agus mar sin, tha rèis mhòr craobh na Nollaige a’ tòiseachadh . . . Cò a nì a’ chùis?

Thigibh còmhla ris na caraidean gleansach seo is iad nan deann-ruith chun na crìche.

A TRAGIC DEATH
When the body of Leanne Wilson is found at the bottom of a Scottish mountain, it is classified as a tragic accident. There is no evidence to suggest otherwise.

A RISING BODY COUNT
Then DS Max Craigie discovers that five other women in the last year have died by falling off mountains, and something feels very wrong. They were all experienced climbers and alone when they died. This can only mean one thing: there’s a killer on the loose.

A KILLER IN THE SHADOWS
The more Max investigates, the more he believes that they are dealing with something much bigger than a lone serial killer. With five victims and conflicting clues, how do you catch someone committing the perfect crime?

The gripping new thriller in the Sunday Times-bestselling phenomenon that is the Inspector McLean series, from one of Scotland’s most celebrated crime writers

A macabre ancient secret. An innovative biotech company connected to the highest levels of government. And the trail of bloodshed in its wake.

Detective Chief Inspector Tony McLean is called to investigate a break-in at Drake BioTech, a trendsetting Edinburgh start-up. It’s well below McLean’s pay grade, but given the extensive political connections of its eccentric owner Nathaniel Drake, he doesn’t have a choice. Even if nothing appears to have been stolen.

A missing person case turns complicated for DI Janie Harrison when a body is found half-buried in woods outside the city. The missing man shows no signs of trauma, the cause of his death a mystery. But when another man – linked to the break-in – is discovered dead in similarly mysterious circumstances, the police suspect there may be some connection between the two.

McLean is convinced the answer lies with the strange ancient artefact clutched in the second dead man’s hands. But when the two bodies are stolen from the mortuary, and the artefact goes missing from evidence, the race is on to prevent yet more death.

The Granite City is ready to burn, and all it takes is a single spark . . .

In the heat of a blistering summer, Aberdeen’s police are struggling: half the force is off sick, leave has been cancelled, someone’s firebombed a hotel full of migrants, and there’s a massive protest march happening this Saturday.

With officers dropping like flies, Detective Inspector Logan McRae is forced to juggle cases and run a major murder investigation with a skeleton staff of misfits, idiots and malingerers until the top brass can arrange back-up from other divisions.

It doesn’t help that the Aberdeen Examiner has just been bought by Natasha Agapova, a tabloid media tycoon hell-bent on blaming local police for everything. And she’s more than happy to fan the flames.

But, as bad as everything seems, it’s all about to get much, much worse . . .

A case shrouded in secrets.
It’s just before Christmas, 1953. Grasby and Juggers are investigating a puzzling murder in the remote village of Uthley’s Bay. A fisherman has been found dead on the beach, with a stocking wound tight round his throat.

A festive mystery for one and all.
Hundreds of pairs of stockings, in neat cellophane bags, soon wash up on the shore. A blizzard cuts off Grasby and Juggers from help, and the local innkeeper is murdered. Any remaining Christmas cheer goes up in smoke as the villagers refuse to talk, leaving the two detectives chasing false leads in the snow.

A winter wonderland with no escape.
To make matters worse, Grasby can’t stop thinking about stockings. Why does everyone seem to be enjoying strangely high standards of hosiery, even beneath their oilskins? Who is the sinister bespectacled man snooping around their hotel? And how can they solve the murder when everyone in the village is a suspect?

Originally published in 1945, The Green Years is one of A. J. Cronin’s best-loved novels. It tells the story of Robert Shannon, a young Irish Catholic boy, who is orphaned at the age of seven and sent to live with his mother’s estranged family in Scotland. As he grows up in a dour Presbyterian town, only his great-grandfather, an incorrigible, swaggering, charming, larger-than-life character, seems able to rescue him from the narrow interests of the people who try to shape his life in their own image.

Disappointed in love and in his burning ambition to study medicine, the eighteen-year-old Robert sees his future as a blank wall. But, once again, he is saved from despair by his fiery relative, much to the chagrin of the rest of the family.

This compassionate story of a boy’s growth to manhood, set against the harsh reality of life at the turn of the century, shows A. J. Cronin at his masterly best, creating a vivid gallery of characters with his customary blend of imagination, insight and tenderness.

In the magnificent narrative tradition of The Citadel, The Stars Look Down and Cronin’s other classic novels, The Green Years is a great book by a beloved author.

The sea doesn’t forget.
It knows all of this has happened before.
And will happen again…

1840
As a vast ship loses its way in the night-time mist, shattering against the cliffs of Crescombe, North Devon, a daring young artist dives into the murky sea. But it’s not for heroism he is risking all: something – or someone – is drawing him into those dark, perilous waters . . .

By dawn, only his legacy will survive.

Now
When Finley arrives in Crescombe for the summer, he suspects he’s not alone in his attic bedroom. Before long, he is uncovering secrets the remote seaside town has kept for almost two centuries: about ghosts and curses, about a ruthless old smuggling family, and about the young women whose bodies have washed up along the town’s rocky shoreline, just below his porthole window.

Yet the more Finley learns, the further he’s bonded to those who have gone before him – and the closer he comes to meeting the same watery end . . .

But this is not just a story about death. It’s about love. It’s about fate. And how, ultimately, the past can pull you under . . .

Colour your way through these inky pages bursting to life with wildflowers both real and imagined. Alongside familiar lush bluebells, tangles of honeysuckle, and cornflower meadows, you’ll find some new and rather curious species: fluffy pom-pom flowers, speckled poppies, and miniature buttercups―all awaiting your colors.

As you adventure through these wild pages peppered with bees, birds, and berries, keep an eye out for the twelve magical wildflowers featured in the Plant Hunter’s list. Can you find them all and complete the floral quest?

Winter is the time to snuggle indoors without guilt; to curl up on the sofa with a good book or a box set, a hot drink or a wee whisky to hand.

Val McDermid has always had a soft spot for winter: the bitter clarity of a crisp cold day, the vivid skies over the Firth of Forth, the crunch of frost on fallen leaves and the chance to be enveloped in big jumpers and thick socks.

In Winter, she takes us on an adventure through the season, from the frosty streets of Edinburgh to the windblown Scottish coast, from Bonfire Night and Christmas to Burns Night and Up Helly Aa. She remembers winters from childhood, the thrill of whizzing over a frozen lake on skates, carving a ‘neep’ (swede) for Halloween and being taken to see her first real Christmas tree in the town square, lights twinkling bravely in the dark Scottish winter night.

Above all, she shows us that winter is a time of rest, retreat and creativity, for scribbling in notebooks and settling in beside the fire. This is a charming and cosy celebration of the winter season from one of Scotland best-loved writers.

Glasgow, Scotland: When a man’s body is pulled from the River Clyde, Strathclyde Police initiate a murder investigation that exposes deadly links to organised crime gangs. And when the matriarch of the notorious Shepherd family disappears, DCI Andy Gilchrist of St Andrews CID and his associate, DS Jessie Janes, are called upon to find her. But their investigation uncovers a historical trail of missing persons, now all presumed dead.

Why pull in Gilchrist and Janes for a murder in Glasgow? Can they locate the missing bodies? As they dig deeper, they expose an illegal body disposal gang and a murderous plot to change the balance of criminal power in Scotland and beyond.

But the organised crime gangs won’t give up quietly, and they put in motion murderous acts of retribution, with their sights set firmly on Gilchrist. Leading the pack is Bully Reid, a career criminal and brutal killer who Gilchrist put away years ago, and who still pulls the strings from behind bars in Barlinnie prison.

Can Gilchrist and Janes survive Bully’s revenge? Or will they end up like all the others – just two more missing bodies?

In the Burning Ghats of Calcutta where the dead are laid to rest, a man is found murdered, his throat cut from ear to ear.

The body is that of a popular patron of the arts, a man who was, by all accounts, beloved by all: so what was the motive for his murder? Despite being out of favour with the Imperial Police Force, Detective Sam Wyndham is assigned to the case and finds himself thrust into the glamorous world of Indian cinema.

Meanwhile Surendranath Banerjee, recently returned from Europe after three years spent running from the fallout of his last case, is searching for a missing photographer; a trailblazing woman at the forefront of the profession. When Suren discovers that the vanished woman is linked to Sam’s murder investigation, the two men find themselves working together once again – but will Wyndham and Banerjee be able to put their differences aside to solve the case?

Nothing, on earth or below it, freezes faster than the worthless heart.

Before she was a hideous monster, the queen of the underworld was simply Hel. But cast as a girl out of lofty Asgard, realm of the gods, by Odin the Allfather, Hel’s fate as the terrible goddess of death is sealed. Half beauty, half crone, she has reigned for aeons in the starless darkness of Niflheim, grimly welcoming the most pitiful of death’s travellers to her ice-locked prison. Until one day a memory shifts, and she is forced to seek out the sun in Midgard, where humans have made their home.

Faced with a terminal cancer diagnosis, Helen Firth makes the impulsive decision to return to Orkney after forty years to make peace with her past. Under the wintering solstice sun, she reconnects with the ungainly but affable Thorfinn Coffin, who helps her address the real reason she has returned to the islands: to die.

As Helen draws closer to death and ever closer to Thorfinn, Hel in turn is intrigued by Helen. She, too, has a past to confront and a lesson to learn: that perhaps who she believes herself to be isn’t who she really is.

A powerful reimagining of the Norse myth of Hel, The Shapeshifter’s Daughter celebrates the joy of reclaiming our stories.

It’s been seventeen years since the internet crashed and left the world broken…

Auli lives on the Bellwether, a floating college safe from the conflict of the mainland, where she studies the Oracle – an uncanny girl who channels dangerous ghosts and provides lost information about the world’s seas.

Her peaceful world is shattered when her beloved mentor, Boudain, is found dead. While most aboard believe it was due to natural causes, Auli discovers hints that suggest he was not the benign leader he seemed – and that his death might be deliberate.

Surrounded by people with their own motives and secrets, Auli doesn’t know who to trust. Worse, the Oracle is attracting dangerous, mutating ghosts that threaten everyone aboard. With the Bellwether fracturing from internal and external pressures, she is forced to wrestle with a life-changing decision: save the Oracle or save the Bellwether – and all the lives that depend on it.

Immerse yourself in an ocean of great literature. Gasp at the cold with Amy Liptrot. Be transfixed by Iris Murdoch’s monster rising from the waves. Learn how to swim like the frogs with John Muir. Come on, dive in.

A selection of joyful, immersive and life-affirming writing about wild swimming.

From gentle dips in calm waters to fights for survival in stormy seas. From the erotic charge of a streamlined body to moments of revelation amidst the waves . . . Take Me to the River is an anthology not just of wild swimming writing, but of stories of how a jump into deep waters can change us.

Open water swimming plays a pivotal role in many great narratives, taking us on an immersive journey, from Homer’s Odyssey to contemporary poetry and memoirs. There is adventure here and aquatic playfulness. Grief and anguish, too; heartbreaks displaced and healed by watery spaces. Love and desire spark between characters at the edge of the water, as does freedom from constraint and the glorious energy of possibility and hope.

Take Me to the River entices with a dip into the deep sea of words. Slide in.