THE BEST OF SCOTTISH BOOKS

Meet Molly the hare, Olive the owl and Dexter the fox, stars of a delightful new series for toddlers from Kate Greenaway Medal-winning artist Catherine Rayner.

Molly the hare loves hide-and-seek. “You two hide,” she tells Olive the owl and Dexter the fox, and then she begins to count: “5, 4, 3, 2, 1 – ready or not here I come.” But when she opens her eyes, Molly finds the pair straight away! Soon Molly announces Olive and Dexter have to hide properly. Now she has the opposite problem: her friends have hidden too well… Wherever can they be?

This is the first in Catherine Rayner’s adorable new picture-book series – delivering the charm of the 100 Acre Wood in an irresistible package for toddlers.

“Catherine Rayner has a marvellous gift for capturing the souls of animals in a few, rich washes of colour.” Daily Telegraph

The latest in the hugely popular 44 Scotland Street series from the worldwide bestselling author, Alexander McCall Smith

It’s the most anticipated event of the decade: Big Lou and Fat Bob’s wedding and everyone is invited! After a wonderful day, Big Lou crashes back down to earth and finds that she is a victim of her own success. The lure of those famous bacon rolls is preventing her from leaving hungry customers without their daily dose of deliciousness – even to go for a long-awaited honeymoon. Will Big Lou find the happiness she so richly deserves? Everyone in Scotland Street hopes so, but, as Burns warned, the best laid plans…

The relative peace and tranquillity of 44 Scotland Street is about to be disrupted. Irene is to return for a two-month stay, consigning Bertie to a summer camp. Not satisfied with that, she somehow manages to come between the enigmatic nun, Sister Maria-Fiore dei Fiori di Montagna, and her friend, the hagiographer, Antonia Collie.

Can a person really change, even after being struck by lightning? Bruce’s metamorphosis and new-found outlook on life is put to the test as he prepares to leave his creature comforts for the monastic simplicity of Pluscarden Abbey. His house sitter, meanwhile, gets a little too comfortable in his new life and discovers that the talented Bruce Anderson’s shoes are all too easy to slip into. With great taste comes great responsibility.

Come and discover The Enigma of Garlic and join the delightful denizens of Edinburgh’s most famous address. This latest instalment of the much-loved 44 Scotland Street series is wise, witty, and full of warmth.

In Three Fires, award-winning author Denise Mina re-imagines the ‘Bonfire of the Vanities’, a series of fires lit throughout Florence at the end of the fifteenth century – inspired by the fanatical Girolamo Savonarola.

Girolamo Savonarola was a Dominican friar living in Florence at the tail end of the fifteenth century. An anti-corruption campaigner his hellfire preaching increasingly spilled over into tirades against all luxuries that tempted people towards sin. These sermons led to the infamous “Bonfire of the Vanities” – a series of fires lit throughout Florence for the incineration of everything from books, extravagant clothing, playing cards, musical instruments, make-up and mirrors, to paintings, tapestries and sculptures.

Railing against the vice and avarice of the ruling Medici family, he was instrumental in their removal from power, and for a time became the puritanical leader of the city. After turning his attention to corruption in the entire Catholic Church, he was first excommunicated and then executed by a combination of hanging and being burnt at the stake.

Denise Mina brings a modern take to this fascinating historical story – drawing parallels between the febrile atmosphere of medieval Florence and the culture wars of the present day. In dramatising the life and last days of Savonarola she explores the downfall of the original architect of cancel culture and in the process explores the neverending tensions between wealth, inequality, and freedom of speech that so dominate our modern world.

A SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER

A WATERSTONES BEST BOOK OF 2022: ENTERTAINMENTA MAIL ON SUNDAYS BOOK OF THE YEAR 2022

Alan Rickman remains one of the most beloved actors of all time across almost every genre, from his breakout role as Die Hard’s villainous Hans Gruber to his heart-wrenching run as Professor Severus Snape, and beyond. His air of dignity, his sonorous voice and the knowing wit he brought to each role continue to captivate new audiences today.But Rickman’s artistry wasn’t confined to just his performances. Rickman’s writing details the extraordinary and the ordinary in a way that is anecdotal, indiscreet, witty, gossipy and utterly candid. He takes us behind the scenes on films and plays ranging from Sense & Sensibility, the Harry Potter series, Private Lives, My Name Is Rachel Corrie and many more.

The diaries run from 1993 to his death in 2016 and offer insight into both a public and private life. Here is Rickman the consummate professional actor, but also the friend, the traveller, the fan, the director, the enthusiast: in short, the real Alan Rickman. Here is a life fully lived, all detailed in intimate and characteristically plain-spoken prose. Reading the diaries is like listening to Rickman chatting to a close friend.

Madly, Deeply also includes a foreword by Emma Thompson and a selection of Rickman’s early diaries, dating from 1974 to 1982, when his acting life first began.

This collected editon of Sorley MacLean brings together published poetry from MacLean’s own edited volumes of poetry, poetry previously published in various magazines, literary journals and anthologies, and poetry which has never been published before. The poems are given in their original Gaelic with English translations.The volume opens with a biographical summary of Maclean’s childhood on Raasay, his life at university and war experiences, and examines MacLean’s effect on Gaelic and Scottish literature, and his literary, political and philosophical influences, which included Gaelic traditional song, Romanticism and Modernism, as well as Communism and Fascism.

We come from the mist, and to the mist we will return . . .

A memorial service witnessed in the historic Black Wood of Rannoch sets Rebecca Connolly on the trail of a baffling story. Fergus MacGregor told people he was going to Pitlochry for the day. He was never seen again. Five years later his deeply religious mother stills holds a memorial in the place Fergus loved because of its connections to the outlawed MacGregor clan, the Children of the Mist.What happened that day in this last vestige of the great Caledonian forest?

Does a family feud hold the key? Does an old recluse have the answers?

Or is there something malevolent hiding among the ancient trees?

An estimated 100 million people worldwide are homeless.1.6 billion live in sub-standard housing. But how can such a simple game like football tackle such a complex problem? Mel Young and Peter Barr tell the story of the million homeless people in 70 countries who have taken part in the Homeless World Cup since it was founded in 2003 and the positive impact it has on the players and everyone else involved, including spectators. From refugees to drug addicts, orphans and the poorest of the poor, to homeless people from the world’s richest countries, we read about the moving human drama behind the event and find out how a ball can change the world. Home Game provides an insight into the birth of the Homeless World Cup and how it has become such a global phenomenon, by looking at more than just facts. It shows how the power of sport can help excluded people transform their own lives and how the event has transformed attitudes to homelessness.

The John Muir Way is one of Scotland’s Great Trails. It runs for 134 miles (215 km) coast-to-coast across central Scotland, from Helensburgh on the Clyde to Dunbar on the North Sea. The route is as suitable for cyclists as for walkers, and it can be tackled as a coast-to-coast expedition or in sections – typically ten for walkers or five for cyclists. Our all-new 2023 third edition includes the latest route updates and features improved mapping with mileage markers along the route and a km grid. The mapping is at 1:75,000 and appears on 20 of its pages. The John Muir Way’s appeal ranges from the Charles Rennie Mackintosh architecture of Helensburgh through the scenic grandeur of Loch Lomond, along two famous canals and past the amazing Falkirk Wheel, beside the Roman Antonine Wall, passing Linlithgow Palace, Blackness Castle and the Forth Bridges to the capital glories of Edinburgh. It goes beside the Firth of Forth to reach North Berwick, then heads inland to finish at Dunbar with its ruined castle and the John Muir birthplace.

Warfare between the clans of the Highlands in the late Middle Ages determined the course of history in this region of Scotland, and Chris Peers’s gripping account of it – and of the rivalry between the strongest clans – gives the reader a deep insight into this bloody, turbulent phase in the development of the far north of the British Isles. The battles he describes, all of them fought between the 1430s and the 1540s, were flash points in the long struggle for dominance between the leading clans of the region.The battles are reconstructed in vivid detail. The first, Druim n Coub, was fought in 1433 between the Mackays and the Sutherlands. Then came Bloody Bay, a sea fight between rival MacDonald factions, Blar na Parc between the MacDonalds and the Mackenzies, Creag an Airgid between the MacDonalds and the MacIains, Glendale between the MacDonalds and MacLeods, and Torran Dubh between alliances headed by the Mackays and Sutherlands. The final battle, Blar na Leine, fought between the MacDonalds and the Frasers in 1544, marked the end of an era. The subsequent fate of the leading clans, principally the MacDonalds and Mackays, is also covered in a narrative that gives the reader a fascinating new perspective of clan loyalties and conflict which still resonates today.As well as covering the fighting Chris Peers explains the way war in the Highlands was organized by the contending clans during the period – the strategies and tactics, weapons and armour they employed. The result is an absorbing all-round account of the military history of the Highlands before the clans eventually lost their independence.

The story of a man coming into his own by coming home. Since he was a boy, Bill Eville knew he wanted two things in life: to be a writer and a father. Being a minister’s husband had not been on this list, having left the church as a teenager as soon as his parents stopped making him go each Sunday. In Washed Ashore, Eville’s life changes when his wife Cathlin takes a job as the first female pastor of a 350-year-old church on Martha?s Vineyard, the island that was once home to generations of his ancestors. With their two small children in tow, the couple begins a new life eight miles out at sea. Readers follow Eville’s journey from stay-at-home-dad to newspaper editor as he discovers what it means to be a writer, a father, and – after his wife’s devasting breast cancer diagnosis -what it truly means to be a minister’s husband. Washed Ashore, told in a series of linked essays, is poignant and funny, filled with faith, struggle, and light.

Could you leave behind the bustle of modern life and spend a lifetime immersed in nature? In The Way of the Hermit, Ken Smith recounts a life he has chosen to spend alone with the wilderness. Seventy-four-year-old Ken Smith has spent the past four decades in the Scottish Highlands. He lives alone, with no electricity or running water. His home is a log cabin nestled near Loch Treig, known as ‘the lonely loch’, where he lives off the land: he fishes for his supper, chops his own wood, and even brews his own tipple. He is, in the truest sense of the word, a hermit. For the first time, Ken shares the story of his life. From his working-class origins in Derbyshire, to the formative years he spent travelling in the Yukon and finally how he came to be the Hermit of Loch Treig. Looking back through decades of diary entries, Ken reflects upon the reasons he turned his back on society, the vulnerability of old age and the awe and wonder of a life lived in nature. The Way of the Hermit is a humourous, transcendant and life-affirming memoir.

Could you leave behind the bustle of modern life and spend a lifetime immersed in nature? In The Way of the Hermit, Ken Smith recounts a life he has chosen to spend alone with the wilderness.Seventy-four-year-old Ken Smith has spent the past four decades in the Scottish Highlands. He lives alone, with no electricity or running water. His home is a log cabin nestled near Loch Treig, known as ‘the lonely loch’, where he lives off the land: he fishes for his supper, chops his own wood, and even brews his own tipple. He is, in the truest sense of the word, a hermit.For the first time, Ken shares the story of his life. From his working-class origins in Derbyshire, to the formative years he spent travelling in the Yukon and finally how he came to be the Hermit of Loch Treig. Looking back through decades of diary entries, Ken reflects upon the reasons he turned his back on society, the vulnerability of old age and the awe and wonder of a life lived in nature. The Way of the Hermit is a humourous, transcendant and life-affirming memoir.

Could you leave behind the bustle of modern life and spend a lifetime immersed in nature? In The Way of the Hermit, Ken Smith recounts a life he has chosen to spend alone with the wilderness.Seventy-four-year-old Ken Smith has spent the past four decades in the Scottish Highlands. He lives alone, with no electricity or running water. His home is a log cabin nestled near Loch Treig, known as ‘the lonely loch’, where he lives off the land: he fishes for his supper, chops his own wood, and even brews his own tipple. He is, in the truest sense of the word, a hermit.For the first time, Ken shares the story of his life. From his working-class origins in Derbyshire, to the formative years he spent travelling in the Yukon and finally how he came to be the Hermit of Loch Treig. Looking back through decades of diary entries, Ken reflects upon the reasons he turned his back on society, the vulnerability of old age and the awe and wonder of a life lived in nature. The Way of the Hermit is a humourous, transcendant and life-affirming memoir.

The American military presence in Scotland during the Cold War was greater than in either of the World Wars, bringing with it the largest peace-time number of foreign military personnel in Scotland’s history. This military power was delivered by individuals – the forgotten heroes. They worked to high standards of professionalism and most had no true concept of the danger they faced from the Soviet threat. This reality was only ever confronted during the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962. The author, a former Cold War special forces officer, brings his personal expertise into play, examining this intriguing story by reaching out to more than one hundred veterans and expert witnesses. Their contributions cover the nitty-gritty end of history, not high-end diplomacy. This fast-moving account of their endeavours, often in long working conditions, highlights the value of teamwork, training and determination. It is clear that Scotland would have been a Soviet target of necessity once the American bases were established. Scotland was of great importance to the United States during the Cold War and this research shows that, for more than thirty years, Scotland was the capstone in Washington’s early Cold War strategy. Scotland was an active centre of US strategic operations and the vital importance of its geographic position is clearly demonstrated as each location is examined, and its benefits listed. There were six significant bases, the most important being America’s only nuclear-armed submarine squadron in the Holy Loch. He details the operations which were carried out by the large radio spy stations (SIGINT) at Kirknewton, Thurso and Edzell. And he reveals for the first time America’s most bizarre intelligence gathering activity of the early Cold War, which also took place in Scotland. Overall, this book provides an important addition to the conventional US/UK Cold War narrative. The United States desperately needed the assistance Scotland provided and the author presents a convincing narrative that Scotland was at the epicentre of the Cold War’s most terrifying episode – the Cuban Missile Crisis. Kennedy’s success was greatly assisted by these Scottish bases which provided him with the firepower and intelligence to outwit Khrushchev. One section of the book deals with the visit of JFK?s top advisor to Holy Loch – a story that has never been revealed before. It emphasises the simple fact that Scotland’s role was a game changer. An interesting theme throughout the book is the espionage effort mounted by the KGB against these bases. The author has interviewed senior intelligence officers and their input is revealing. These were exciting times for the young Americans who crossed the ocean to serve their country and this is their Cold War story.

Architecture takes many forms. At one extreme, these forms may be seen as an international exchange, while at the other they can be viewed as distinctly national. In Mousa to Mackintosh, Frank Arneil Walker examines the recognisable and recurring features evident in Scotland’s structures across the centuries. This chronological history presents a broad view of architecture in Scotland, from brochs and country houses to castles and New Towns. Walker considers the influences and connections between them to ask: what is the “Scottishness” of Scottish architecture?

Amid the heat of Brazil, explosives expert Jaq Silver has one goal: vengeance. When her enemies take what she treasures most, she will do anything to make them pay. But a series of betrayals leave Jaq unsure of those she can trust, and she realises she’ll need to complete the mission solo. And as everyone hunts down the same mysterious box, Jaq becomes increasingly embroiled in a web of far-reaching consequences. It seems there’s a hidden agenda, but can Jaq be sure she is chasing down the right target? And who is pursuing her?

Amid the heat of Brazil, explosives expert Jaq Silver has one goal ? vengeance. When her enemies take what she treasures most, she will do anything to make them pay. But a series of betrayals leave Jaq unsure of those she can trust, and she realises she?ll need to complete the mission solo. And as everyone hunts down the same mysterious box, Jaq becomes increasingly embroiled in a web of far-reaching consequences. It seems there?s a hidden agenda, but can Jaq be sure she is chasing down the right target? And who is pursuing her?

AN INSTANT SUNDAY TIMES AND NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER

‘A rewarding mix of markers, both personal as Heughan reflects on his life and geographical as he leads the reader along the West Highland Way’ – The Scotsman

‘A deeply personal and warmly entertaining memoir that fans of Sam – and Scotland – will have a joyful time devouring’ – Heat

‘From both his walk and his career, the common lesson is the power of persistence.’ – The Times

‘A pleasure for fans of the author, whisky, and Scotland.’ – Kirkus

‘Waypoints is a memoir with a difference! I wanted to tell the stories and share the experiences that have shaped me, but to do that I needed to challenge myself and spend some time in my own company, away from the distractions of everyday life. And for me there’s no better place to reflect than in the wild Scottish Highlands.’

In this journey of self-discovery, Sam Heughan sets out along the West Highland Way to explore his heritage and reflect on the personal waypoints that define him. The result is a love letter to the wild Scottish landscape that means so much to Sam, and a charming, funny, wise and searching insight to the world through his eyes.The walk itself is the backdrop for this narrative, which tells the story of Sam’s life while exploring his outlook, values and interests. Sam is a figure of fascinating contrasts, a Hollywood star with deep roots in rural Scotland, he’s both outgoing and content in his own company. He has strong connections with his fans while recognising the fragility and value of anonymity, and in My Peak Challenge he has created a network that brings people together as they chase individual goals. In his new book, while charting a path through a stunning wilderness, Sam maps out the moments that shaped his views on dreams and ambition, family, friendships, love and life.Waypoints is a deeply personal journey that reveals as much to Sam about himself as it does to his readers.

‘Authentic social history at the birth of the NHS, an intriguing murder, a strong and convincing central character, and McPherson’s wonderful story-telling skills make this a very classy mystery’ ANN CLEEVES

Helen leaned close enough to fog the mirror with her breath and whispered, ‘You, my girl, are a qualified medical almoner and at eight o’clock tomorrow morning you will be on the front line of the National Health Service of Scotland.’ Her eyes looked huge and scared. ‘So take a shake to yourself!”

Edinburgh, 1948. Helen Crowther leaves a crowded tenement home for her very own office in a doctor’s surgery. Upstart, ungrateful, out of your depth – the words of disapproval come at her from everywhere but she’s determined to take her chance and play her part.She’s barely begun when she stumbles over a murder and learns that, in this most respectable of cities, no one will fight for justice at the risk of scandal. As Helen resolves to find a killer, she’s propelled into a darker world than she knew existed, hardscrabble as her own can be. Disapproval is the least of her worries now. IN PLACE OF FEAR is a gripping new historical crime novel that is both enthralling and entertaining, and perfect for fans of AJ Pearce and Nicola Upson.

Readers love IN PLACE OF FEAR:

‘What a wonderful book this is!”I loved [it] … Helen is another cracker of a heroine from McPherson and I hope to read much more of her story in future’

‘Historical crime from a talented pen. Intriguing and compelling in equal measure’

‘An excellent read’

Richard Hannay is the star of John Buchan’s original spy thriller, The Thirty-Nine Steps. Spanning five novels and crossing paths with many of Buchan’s other characters, Hannay has stood the test of time. Towards the end of John Buchan’s last novel Sick Heart River, Edward Leithen reflects that, with the outbreak of a second world war, all his companions of old will be called to action once more. In Robert J. Harris’s critically acclaimed tributes The Thirty-One Kings and Castle Macnab, the tales of their adventures is finally told. From evading German spies on the street of wartime Paris to the rescuing an unlikely prisoner among the castles of the Scottish Highlands, Richard Hannay returns with a bang in these exciting, page-turning adventures. A perfect fit for both existing fans of John Buchan and first-time readers.

Titles included in this eBook bundle are: The Thirty-One Kings; Castle Macnab