THE BEST OF SCOTTISH BOOKS

THE UNPUTDOWNABLE, UNMISSABLE NEW THRILLER FROM THE NUMBER ONE BESTSELLING AUTHOR.It was supposed to be an easy job.All Detective Constable Edward Reekie had to do was pick up a dying prisoner from HMP Grampian and deliver him somewhere to live out his last few months in peace.From the outside, Glenfarach looks like a quaint, sleepy, snow-dusted village, nestled deep in the heart of Cairngorms National Park, but things aren’t what they seem. The place is thick with security cameras and there’s a strict nine o’clock curfew, because Glenfarach is the final sanctuary for people who’ve served their sentences but can’t be safely released into the general population.Edward’s new boss, DI Montgomery-Porter, insists they head back to Aberdeen before the approaching blizzards shut everything down, but when an ex-cop-turned-gangster is discovered tortured to death in his bungalow, someone needs to take charge.The weather’s closing in, tensions are mounting, and time’s running out – something nasty has come to Glenfarach, and Edward is standing right in its way…******Praise for Stuart MacBride:’A magnetic mix of creepy places, dark humour, horror and violence’ Sun’Dark and brilliantly written’ Linwood Barclay’MacBride is a damned fine writer’ Peter James’MacBride’s thrillers just keep getting better’ Express’Crime fiction of the highest order’ Mark Billingham***AVAILABLE TO PRE-ORDER NOW***

A fresh start …with an old friend!After a bad break-up, doctor Sadie is offered a new job in Scotland with her best friend. It sounds like the perfect escape! Sadie’s never worked with Owen before, but why would that be an issue? She loves him, but has never been tempted to date such a committed playboy. Yet suddenly she wants to shove him out of the friend zone-straight into her bed!A nurse to save him!When neurosurgeon and notorious bachelor Seth becomes guardian to his nephew Noah, for the first time in his life he has no idea what he’s doing. Noah hasn’t spoken since his mother’s passing, so when nurse Andrea gets him to talk Seth enlists her help. Andrea brings the sparkle back into both their lives…could she be the bright future this fledgling family deserves?

Based on real people and events, Rivet Boy blends fact and fiction to tell the story of one boy’s role in the building of the iconic Forth Rail Bridge-Scotland’s greatest man-made wonder-in 1889.When 12-year-old John Nicol gets a job at the Forth Bridge construction site, he knows it’s dangerous. Four boys have already fallen from the bridge into the Forth below. But John has no choice-with his father gone, he must provide an income for his family-even if he is terrified of heights.John finds comfort in the new Carnegie library, his friend Cora and his squirrel companion, Rusty. But when he is sent to work in Cain Murdoch’s Rivet Gang, John must find the courage to climb, to face his fears, and to stand up to his evil boss.

Global TikTok baking sensation The Hebridean Baker is back, serving up a fresh selection of exciting new recipes, charming stories and breathtaking photography from the Hebridean Islands.

Fàilte, I’m Coinneach, the Hebridean Baker, and welcome to my Scottish island kitchen.

The landscapes, stories, history and culture of the Outer Hebrides of Scotland are what make our islands unique. In this book, I’m sharing recipes filled with tradition, Scottish flavours and local ingredients that you will love to make in your kitchen – from hearty dishes and comforting desserts to delicious cakes and perfect biscuits to dunk in your tea!

The book is jam-packed with the stories behind the recipes; some I’ve found in my much-loved old cookbooks, others I’ve persuaded friends and family to share, as well as lots of new recipes which put a twist on a classic dish. So, get the oven on and choose your first recipe!

Everyone’s favourite Glaswegian girl is back!

After having her heart well and truly broken, Zara Smith is more interested in fun than forever. But she’s starting to wonder if she’s slept with every (somewhat) eligible bachelor in Glasgow… and if there’s such a thing as too much fun?!

With competition ramping up in Glasgow, Zara and her friends at Individualise can’t pass up an opportunity to promote their aesthetics clinic – especially not when it involves an all-expenses-paid quick getaway to Dubai! It’s THE summer destination for the sexy, rich and famous. Cue sun, sand and disastrous flirtations for everyone. But it’s okay because once they get back to Glasgow, what happens in Dubai stays in Dubai, right?

Warning: this is NOT a romcom. It’s dating in the 21st century and Sophie Gravia is about to give you all the toe-curling, cringe-worthy, laugh-out-loud details.

I have lived many lives
I was a man, I was a woman
I was a hunter, I was a farmer
I was both free and a slave, rich and poor
a sailor, a soldier, a fisherman, a merchant and a priest.
And once when the world was young, I was a king.

Born in the year 2089, Theo finds himself reliving lives from prehistoric to modern times. Sometimes a king, sometimes a slave, he finds the experience casts a strange light on his own disintegrating world.

AN ADVENTUROUS ECO-THRILLER FROM AWARD-WINNING CHILDREN’S AUTHOR VICTORIA WILLIAMSON

On a remote Scottish island, fourteen-year-old Max’s life changes forever when he loses his hearing in a boating accident. Struggling to make sense of his new life and finding it hard to adapt in school, he begins to notice other — even stranger — changes taking place when a new wind farm appears off the island’s coast.

With the help of three school friends with additional support needs, Max discovers that a sinister scientist, Doctor Ashwood, is using wind turbines to experiment on the islanders. They must find a way to shut down the government’s secret test before it spins out of control…

The Wee Kirkcudbright Centipede is a fabulous dancer but when her neighbour Jenny Long Longs asks her to explain how she does it, they both end up in a terrible fankle. Based on the popular song by Matt McGinn this lovely picture book also features the music so everyone can join in at the end.

Leyla Josephine dances between her private and public lives, her inner thoughts and outer performance, dipping into each side of herself with humour and reverence. In Public/In Private ends up in a stranger’s flat on a one night stand, an awkward lunch with a politician, raves in dark sweaty clubs and midnight mass in Ireland. Some poems read like public proclamations but in others we are invited to listen through the crack of a bedroom door. There is a sense that everything firmly belongs here, the opposing sides of herself do not discount each other. Leyla Josephine’s first collection of poetry unmasks secrets, faith, shame, lust,and death unapologetically. She fearlessly reaches through every page and asks ‘Have you felt this too?’.

The story of an American businessman sent to buy the Scottish village of Ferness with the aim of turning it into an oil refinery, Local Hero is one of Scotland’s most beloved, and most misunderstood, films.

When Bill Forsyth’s incredible success with the low-budget That Sinking Feeling and Gregory’s Girl found him collaborating with Britain’s best-known film producer, David Puttnam, he soon found his independent ethos clashing with Hollywood’s desire for superstar actors and a happy ending.

Jonathan Melville checks into the MacAskill Arms and looks back at Bill Forsyth’s career with the help of new and archive interviews, before spending time with the cast and crew, including stars Peter Riegert and Denis Lawson, who made Local Hero on location in Houston and Scotland in 1982.

With access to early drafts of the Local Hero script (including hand-written notes) that reveal more about Mac and mermaids, excerpts from a previously unpublished interview in which Bill Forsyth explains why he refuses to call his film ‘feel-good’, and a look at long-lost deleted scenes with exclusive commentary from those involved, this is the definitive history of the Scottish classic.

HellSans is set in a fictional UK, where HellSans is a ubiquitous typeface, enforced by the government in all communications and in all public spaces. It is the ultimate control device. The majority of the population experience bliss when they see the typeface, but there’s a minority who are allergic to it. The HellSans Allergic (HSAs) are persecuted, and live on the streets or in a ghetto on the outskirts of the capital city. Jane Ward, CEO of the company that manufactures the Inex (a cyborg doll-like creature that has replaced the smart phone as the essential aid and accessory) has everything: fame and fortune, until she falls ill with the allergy and becomes embroiled in the government’s internal power struggles. She loses her job and her wealth, ending up in the ghetto until she is rescued by Dr Icho Smith.  Icho is a scientist who has developed a cure for the allergy, but she is on the run from the government and the Seraphs (the ghetto ‘terrorist’ group), who all have their own agenda for the cure. Jane and Icho work together, aiming to expose government corruption and bring the cure to the HSAs. HellSans is written in three parts. Parts one and two can be read in either order which provides a unique approach to the perspectives of the haves and have-nots in the run-up to the revolutionary conclusion.

Stick Mannie bides in the faimly tree
Wi his Stick Wifie Love and their stick bairnies three . . .

After his morning jog goes horribly awry, this is the tale of Stick Man’s epic journey to find his family, through the wilderness and seasons of the year. Can he make it past the playful puppy, through the river, past the nesting swan and even survive fiery flames in time for Christmas? It’s not easy being a stick man, but with a bit of bravery, a touch of luck and a little help from a festive friend, he might just succeed!

Full of fun rhymes, adventurous twists and turns plus endlessly charming illustrations, Stick Man is a modern Christmas classic sure to entertain the whole family.

Eric abandons his fiancé, Eleanor, at the Edinburgh Christmas market, following a mysterious woman back to the hotel she owns in the Highlands. Here he meets the men that staff the vacant rooms. Men like him. Men with something to hide…

By day, the men carry out their domestic chores in the hotel, cut off from the rest of the world by the snow. At night, they tell horror stories beside the fire, hoping to entertain the woman they serve. They do not ask why there are no guests, why it always snows, why they can’t go home. Seeds of doubt begin to plague Eric and, as he delves deeper into the lives of the men at the hotel, secrets are uncovered.

The Gingerbread Men mixes Shining-esque mystery with dark fairy-tales, serving up a perfect Highland hotel horror. Joanna Corrance’s nightmarish novel explores the quiet corridors of desire that pull us, and the places occupied by men and women in the tales we’re all familiar with.

And never brought to mind?

Millie Partridge desperately needs a party. So, when her (handsome and charming) ex-colleague Nick invites her to a Hebridean Island for New Year’s Eve, she books her ticket North.

But things go wrong the moment the ferry drops her off. The stately home is more down at heel than Downton Abbey. Nick hasn’t arrived yet. And the other revellers? Politely, they aren’t exactly who she would have pictured Nick would be friends with.

Worse still, an old acquaintance from Millie’s past has been invited, too. Penny Maybury. Millie and Nick’s old colleague. Somebody Millie would rather have forgotten about. Somebody, in fact, that Millie has been trying very hard to forget.

Waking up on New Year’s Eve, Penny is missing. A tragic accident? Or something more sinister? With a storm washing in from the Atlantic, nobody will be able reach the group before they find out.

One thing is for sure – they’re going to see in the new year with a bang.

Tense, moody and claustrophobic, Auld Acquaintance is the unputdownable debut by Sofia Slater.

After being repeatedly beaten, shot at, blown-up, and tortured, Hoon is looking forward to spending a quiet Christmas drinking heavily in front of the TV, while pointedly ignoring the older sister who has invaded his home.

The world, however, has other plans.

When a routine trip to an Inverness shopping centre is interrupted by a squad of heavily armed Santas, Hoon, his sister, and an old army colleague find themselves trapped alongside several hundred terrified hostages.

With so much potential for bloodshed, the police gathering outside the centre can only wait, watch, and try to negotiate with the terrorists within.

But patience has never been Hoon’s strong point.

And so, if he and everyone else in the centre are going to make it home for Christmas, Hoon is left with only one choice.

He’s going to Die Hard the **** out of this thing.

For over 30 years Peter Drummond has roamed Scottish fishing harbours armed with at least one camera. Here then are the best monochrome images taken over that period showing a wide variety of vessel types ranging from former ring netters and drifter/seiners through more modern designs to the latest 21st Century pelagic vessels, with brief histories of the boats illustrated.Covering waters around Scotland both east and west, from Kirkcudbright to Mallaig and from Eyemouth to Burghead, as well as a detailed appendix of vessels, this photographic collection is something special for the maritime enthusiast.

A lighthearted and informative narrative about the history of herring and our love affair with the silver darlings.Scots like to smoke or salt them. The Dutch love them raw. Swedes look on with relish as they open bulging, foul-smelling cans to find them curdling within. Jamaicans prefer them with a dash of chilli pepper. Germans and the English enjoy their taste best when accompanied by pickle’s bite and brine.Throughout the long centuries men have fished around their coastlines and beyond, the herring has done much to shape both human taste and history. Men have co-operated and come into conflict over its shoals, setting out in boats to catch them, straying, too, from their home ports to bring full nets to shore. Women have also often been at the centre of the industry, gutting and salting the catch when the annual harvest had taken place, knitting, too, the garments fishermen wore to protect them from the ocean’s chill.Following a journey from the western edge of Norway to the east of England, from Shetland and the Outer Hebrides to the fishing ports of the Baltic coast of Germany and the Netherlands, culminating in a visit to Iceland’s Herring Era Museum, Donald S. Murray has stitched together tales of the fish that was of central importance to the lives of our ancestors, noting how both it – and those involved in their capture – were celebrated in the art, literature, craft, music and folklore of life in northern Europe.Blending together politics, science, history, religious and commercial life, Donald contemplates, too, the possibility of restoring the silver darlings of legend to these shores.

Atmospheric, chilling and often witty tales from the storytellers of ancient and modern phantom appearancesFrom the misty air of the highlands, to the reekie streets of Edinburgh’s underground city, comes an entertaining selection of classic and mysterious Scottish ghost stories, including ‘The Screaming Skull of Greyfriars’, ‘Mary Burnet’, ‘Wandering Willie’s Tale’ and ‘Glamis Castle’, from the pen of John Buchan, Elliott O’Donnell, Margaret Oliphant, Robert Louis Stevenson, Walter Scott and more.From myth to mystery, the supernatural to horror, fantasy and science fiction FLAME TREE 451 offers tales, myths and epic literature from the beginnings of humankind, through the medieval era to the stories of imagination and dark romance of today.

Neil Gaiman’s award-winning masterpiece The Sandman continues here, filled with the art from the medium’s most gifted talent. Sandman Book Five collects Sandman Midnight Theatre, Sandman Endless Nights, and Sandman: The Dream Hunters! Sandman Midnight Theatre takes place in the late 1930’s. A mysterious suicide leads the Golden Age Sandman (Wesley Dodds) to a dark circle of mystics known as the Order of Ancient Mysteries. The Order holds a number of disturbing secrets…and the greatest of these is Morpheus, the imprisoned Dream King! In Sandman Endless Nights Neil Gaiman explores the seven brothers and sisters of the Endless, Destiny, Death, Dream, Desire, Despair, Delirium, and Destruction. Sandman: The Dream Hunters is a love story, set in ancient Japan. Telling the story of a humble young monk and a magical, shape-changing fox who find themselves romantically drawn together. As their love blooms, the fox learns of a devilish plot by a group of demons to steal the monk’s life. With the aid of Morpheus, the King of All Night’s Dreamings, the fox must use all of her cunning and creative thinking to foil this evil scheme and save the man that she loves.