THE BEST OF SCOTTISH BOOKS

In this darkly funny mystery Lexy Campbell’s first love turns up dead at the Last Ditch Motel on Thanksgiving . . . and she becomes the prime suspect!A mysterious object the size of a suitcase, all wrapped in bacon and smelling of syrup, can mean only one thing: Thanksgiving at the Last Ditch Motel. This year the motel residents are in extra-celebratory mood as the holiday brings a new arrival to the group – a bouncing baby girl.But as one life enters the Ditch, another leaves it. Menzies Lassiter has only just checked in. When resident counsellor Lexy Campbell tries to deliver his breakfast the next day, she finds him checked out. Permanently. Shocking enough if he was a stranger, but Lexy recognises that face. Menzies was her first love until he broke her heart many years ago.What’s he doing at the Last Ditch? What’s he doing dead? And how can Lexy escape the fact that she alone had the means, the opportunity – and certainly the motive – to kill him?

‘A romance like no other . . . this book has it all’ NetGalley Reviewer’A brilliant read and a perfect ending . . . best read of the year’ NetGalley ReviewerThe brand new seasonal novel from the author of the bestselling book, A Secret Scottish EscapeWhen Leonie Baxter finds herself out of a job and out of a relationship, she’s at her wits end. Her life has just been turned upside down and she needs a plan, fast.By chance, on a walk with her rescue puppy, Leonie stumbles across a striking house in the woods; fully furnished but unoccupied. As a journalist, she is determined to find out more, after all, reporting is in her nature.But her attempts are thwarted by Lily Cruickshank who lives in the cottage next door. Why won’t Lily help Leonie? And who is the mysterious Flynn Talbot, whose letter Leonie finds inside the house?And in uncovering the secrets of the abandoned house, will Leonie open her own heart and let love back into her life?The brand new escapist story from the bestselling author of A Secret Scottish Escape and A Scottish Highland Surprise, for fans of Jo Thomas, Trisha Ashley and Cathy Bramley.Readers can’t get enough of The Cottage in the Highlands’Mesmerising, magical and moving”A really lovely book about friendship, romance and second chances”Fabulous . . . a page-turner of a book”Has a lot of heart, a story about all the different types of love”A feel-good story”A lovely read . . . I highly recommend this book”Just the right amount of mystery, a bit of adventure and a slow romance”An excellent cosy mystery and romance”I was transported to the lives of these characters”Heartwarming and sweet, a story about second chances”A surprisingly little twist’

THE 12 MILLION COPY BESTSELLING AUTHOR OF THE LEWIS TRILOGY, THE ENZO FILES AND THE CHINA THRILLERSAWARD WINNING AUTHOR OF THE CWA DAGGER IN THE LIBRARY 2021’Peter May is one of the most accomplished novelists writing today.’ Undiscovered Scotland’No one can create a more eloquently written suspense novel than Peter May.’ New York Journal of BooksFIVE DREAMS OF FAMEGlasgow, 1965. Jack Mackay dares not imagine a life of predictability and routine. The headstrong seventeen-year-old has one thing on his mind – London – and successfully convinces his four friends, and fellow band mates, to join him in abandoning their homes to pursue a goal of musical stardom.FIVE DECADES OF FEARGlasgow, 2015. Jack Mackay dares not look back on a life of failure and mediocrity. The heavy-hearted sixty-seven-year old is still haunted by the cruel fate that befell him and his friends some fifty years before, and how he did and did not act when it mattered most – a memory he has run from all his adult life.London, 2015. A man lies dead in a bedsit. His killer looks on, remorseless. What started with five teenagers five decades before will now be finished.LOVED ENTRY ISLAND? Read the first book in Peter May’s acclaimed Lewis Trilogy, THE BLACKHOUSELOVE PETER MAY? Buy his new thriller, THE NIGHT GATE

Classic memoirs from the acclaimed English actor, author, playwright, and screenwriterAlan Bennett is one of the country’s most celebrated and best-loved authors. This unmissable collection of diaries and memoirs brings together for the first time Telling Tales, Diaries: 1980-1990, the autobiographical section of Untold Stories, which covers the period 1997-2004, and Keeping On Keeping On: The Diaries 2005-2014.In his earliest collection of diaries, Alan Bennett offers a fascinating insight into his life in the eighties, working on location for his early films and enjoying life at home in Camden. In the diaries of Untold Stories, he enjoys the simple pleasures of nature and wonders about the state of religion and politics at the end of the twentieth century. In Keeping On Keeping On, he looks back at a busy decade that saw him write four highly acclaimed plays, reflects on his life with his partner, Rupert Thomas, and considers his lately found status as ‘kindly, cosy and essentially harmless’. Telling Tales, meanwhile, provides ten childhood snapshots and reminiscences about his early years-charting his development from a schoolboy in Leeds to a doubtful agnostic teen, as well as his undergraduate life at the University of Oxford.With wit, wisdom, sharp social commentary and perceptive impressions, Alan Bennett’s memoirs and diaries are a joy to discover, and a delight to hear again. For those who want to listen to Alan Bennett read Untold Stories in its complete form, Alan Bennett: Untold Stories is also available from BBC Audio.Originally broadcast on Radio 4:4 June – 15 June 2001 (Telling Tales)10 October – 14 October 1994 (Diaries 1980-1990)10 October – 14 October 2005 (Untold Stories)24 October – 4 November 2016 (Keeping On Keeping On: The Diaries, 2005-2014)Production creditsRead by Alan BennettMusic by George FentonProduced by Liz Allard (Telling Tales)Abridged by Pat McLoughlinProduced by Gillian Hush (Diaries 1980-1990)Abridged and produced by Gordon House (Untold Stories)Abridged and produced by Gordon House (Keeping On Keeping On: The Diaries, 2005-2014)(c) 2022 BBC Studios Distribution Ltd (P) 2022 BBC Studios Distribution Ltd

A macabre massacre of a wealthy family brings DCI Christine Caplan to the Highlands in her first thriller in a new series!In the small Highland village of Cronchie, a wealthy family are found brutally murdered in a satanic ritual and their heirloom, ‘the devil stone’, is the only thing stolen. The key suspects are known satanists – case closed? But when the investigating officer disappears after leaving the crime scene, DCI Christine Caplan is pulled in to investigate from Glasgow in a case that could restore her reputation.Caplan knows she is being punished for a minor misdemeanour when she is seconded to the Highlands, but ever the professional, she’s confident she can quickly solve the murders, and return home to her fractious family. But experience soon tells her that this is no open and shut case.She suspects the murder scene was staged, and with the heir to the family estate missing, there is something more at play than a mythical devil stone. As she closes in on the truth, it is suddenly her life, not her reputation that is danger! Will Caplan’s first Highland murder case be her last?

The Irrawaddy Flotilla Company, known in colonial Burma as the ‘Fabulous Flotilla’, was the largest privately-owned fleet of ships in the world. It was an entirely Scottish enterprise with nearly all its investors, management and ship’s officers drawn from Scotland. Over 1,200 ships were ordered mainly from Clyde yards and each year carried the majority of the population of Burma on its river network without loss of life. The paddle steamers were amongst the largest in the world, innovative in design and technology, and very beautiful.The flotilla began as a naval task force in the 1820s, was commandeered in five wars, and was to end its life with the British evacuation of Burma in 1942, the greatest evacuation in British military history.Fascinating personalities emerge from Strachan’s descriptions of Irrawaddy commanders and the flotilla’s key players. The ships evolved over a hundred years into riverine versions of ocean liners with plush cabins, restaurants, shops and even post offices on board. The largest class of ships carried 5,000 passengers including royalty, celebrities of the day and famous writers like Somerset Maugham along with early tourists and big game hunters.In the second part of the book, the author who himself has spent much of his life running ships on the rivers of Burma, takes us on a journey 1,000 miles upriver to explore the different regions of the country often highlighting Scottish connections. The river is the thread through which Burma’s often tragic history, yet rich and glorious Buddhist culture, flows and only on a river journey can the country be understood.Renamed Myanmar in 1997, Burma is Scotland’s ‘lost colony’ and the Scottish connection is little remembered today due to Burma’s half a century of post-war isolation. In its 1920s heyday Burma had the highest concentration of Scots anywhere in the world, outside of Scotland, with the exception of Canada. Scots were everywhere in Burma, running everything, and even their Burmese servants spoke in ‘broad’ Scots.With the ‘opening up’ of Burma in the early 21st century the Irrawaddy watershed, where about 50 million people live in a primitive rural economy, is under threat. Deforestation on a vast scale has resulted in the silting up of once navigable channels. China, with its ‘belt and road’ system that is a euphemism to a recolonisation of the country, plans to build one of the world’s largest dams in the river’s headwaters that would devastate the country’s agriculture and fisheries.The Fabulous Flotilla provides a revealing record of this remarkable era in Burma’s history and past Scottish endeavour – a jewel of a story that may soon be lost.

‘Well, this is a belter of a book! A hugely entertaining and gripping read!’ NetGalley reviewer,Don’t miss the next gripping thriller in the DS Max Craigie series!He’ll watch you.A lawyer is found dead at sunrise on a lonely clifftop at Dunnet Head on the northernmost tip of Scotland. It was supposed to be his honeymoon, but now his wife will never see him again.He’ll hunt you.The case is linked to several mysterious deaths, including the murder of the lawyer’s last client – Scotland’s most notorious criminal… who had just walked free. DS Max Craigie knows this can only mean one thing: they have a vigilante serial killer on their hands.He’ll leave you to die.But this time the killer isn’t on the run; he’s on the investigation team. And the rules are different when the murderer is this close to home.He knows their weaknesses, knows how to stay hidden, and he thinks he’s above the law…Max, Janie and Ross return in the third gripping novel in this explosive Scottish crime series. Pre-order now!Readers LOVE The Night Watch!’Wow! Max Craigie and his team are back in this amazing book and they bring with it a little bit of everything! A murder, a suicide, some suspense, intrigue, action, police, dead lawyers, twists, turns, a bit of corruption and serial killers!’ NetGalley reviewer,’This is the book that you are desperate to finish so you know ‘who did it’, but on the other hand you don’t want it to come to an end.’ NetGalley reviewer,’Once again Neil Lancaster has written an absolute blinder. It starts off at a furious pace and doesn’t let up.’ NetGalley reviewer,’A brilliant addition to the series and Neil is now an auto-buy author for me. Roll on the next one…’ NetGalley reviewer,’The pace doesn’t let up at all and Neil keeps you guessing with his clever dialogue and excellent plot. Loved it. You won’t be disappointed with The Night Watch.’ NetGalley reviewer,’A very enjoyable read… I was engrossed until the very last page!’ NetGalley reviewer,

From acclaimed author Quintin Jardine comes the latest gripping mystery in his bestselling Bob Skinner series.Amidst a family celebration, a cataclysmic storm uncovers long-buried horrors – and a team of detectives struggle to solve a thirty-year-old double murder.The police are also searching two countries for traces of a mysterious crime novelist who appears to have vanished. Has the faking of his own death been his masterpiece?Alongside each inquiry as it evolves is former Chief Constable Sir Robert Skinner, relishing his new role as a media magnate, but drawn into reluctant action and towards a chilling discovery of his own.With evil on one hand and intrigue on the other, will Skinner escape with either his integrity or career intact . . . or is it open season on him?’The legendary Quintin Jardine . . . such a fine writer’ DENZIL MEYRICKPraise for Quintin Jardine’s Bob Skinner series:’Scottish crime-writing at its finest, with a healthy dose of plot twists and turns, bodies and plenty of brutality’ SUN’Well constructed, fast-paced, Jardine’s narrative has many an ingenious twist and turn’ OBSERVER(P) 2022 Headline Publishing Group Ltd

In this darkly funny mystery Lexy Campbell’s first love turns up dead at the Last Ditch Motel on Thanksgiving . . . and she becomes the prime suspect!A mysterious object the size of a suitcase, all wrapped in bacon and smelling of syrup, can mean only one thing: Thanksgiving at the Last Ditch Motel. This year the motel residents are in extra-celebratory mood as the holiday brings a new arrival to the group – a bouncing baby girl.But as one life enters the Ditch, another leaves it. Menzies Lassiter has only just checked in. When resident counsellor Lexy Campbell tries to deliver his breakfast the next day, she finds him checked out. Permanently. Shocking enough if he was a stranger, but Lexy recognises that face. Menzies was her first love until he broke her heart many years ago.What’s he doing at the Last Ditch? What’s he doing dead? And how can Lexy escape the fact that she alone had the means, the opportunity – and certainly the motive – to kill him?

A failed writer connects the murder of an American journalist, a drowned 80s musician and a Scottish politician’s resignation, in a heart-wrenching novel about ordinary people living in extraordinary times.Renowned photo-journalist Jude Montgomery arrives in Glasgow in 2014, in the wake of the failed Scottish independence referendum, and it’s clear that she’s searching for someone.Is it Anna Mason, who will go on to lead the country as First Minister? Jamie Hewitt, guitarist from eighties one-hit wonders The Hyptones? Or is it Rabbit – Jude’s estranged foster sister, now a world-famous artist?Three apparently unconnected people, who share a devastating secret, whose lives were forever changed by one traumatic night in Phoenix, forty years earlier…Taking us back to a school shooting in her Texas hometown, and a 1980’s road trip across the American West – to San Francisco and on to New York – Jude’s search ends in Glasgow, and a final, shocking event that only one person can fully explain…

Brought to you by Penguin.A teenage girl finds unexpected sexual freedom on a trip to Amsterdam. A woman trapped at a dinner party comes up against an ugly obsession. The stories in Free Love are about desire, memory, sexual ambiguity and the imagination. In the harsh light of dislocation, the people in them still find connections, words blowing in the street, love in unexpected places. Ali Smith shows how things come together and how they break apart. She disconcerts and affirms with the lightest touch, to make us love and live differently.(c) Ali Smith 1995 (P) Penguin Audio 2022

This is the journal of Ignatz Himmelsputz, survivor, dwarf and entertainer. It is 1974 and Ignatz lives in Frankfurt with Giselle,who is the singer in his band, his teacher and a transvestite survivor of the Vietnam War. A chance meeting with Hermann, the son of Von Buhler, an SS Officer under whose control he was kept in the Nazi period, triggers in Ignatz a desire to get his story down: how he was forced to be the companion to Von Buhler’s sister who had Down’s Syndrome and how he witnessed the sister’s descent into the hell of the Nazi euthanasia programmes. He writes down his story interspersed with the detail of his struggles in helping Giselle to cope with her own past. He befriends Hermann and finally reconnects with the man who caused him so much suffering and is now a successful Child Psychologist. Together they are forced to confront their pasts… This compelling story of man’s inhumanity to man and the liberating elation of forgiveness, is a worthy parable for the twenty-first century.

‘A romance like no other . . . this book has it all’ NetGalley Reviewer’A brilliant read and a perfect ending . . . best read of the year’ NetGalley ReviewerThe brand new seasonal novel from the author of the bestselling book, A Secret Scottish EscapeWhen Leonie Baxter finds herself out of a job and out of a relationship, she’s at her wits end. Her life has just been turned upside down and she needs a plan, fast.By chance, on a walk with her rescue puppy, Leonie stumbles across a striking house in the woods; fully furnished but unoccupied. As a journalist, she is determined to find out more, after all, reporting is in her nature.But her attempts are thwarted by Lily Cruickshank who lives in the cottage next door. Why won’t Lily help Leonie? And who is the mysterious Flynn Talbot, whose letter Leonie finds inside the house?And in uncovering the secrets of the abandoned house, will Leonie open her own heart and let love back into her life?The brand new escapist story from the bestselling author of A Secret Scottish Escape and A Scottish Highland Surprise, for fans of Jo Thomas, Trisha Ashley and Cathy Bramley.Readers can’t get enough of The Cottage in the Highlands’Mesmerising, magical and moving”A really lovely book about friendship, romance and second chances”Fabulous . . . a page-turner of a book”Has a lot of heart, a story about all the different types of love”A feel-good story”A lovely read . . . I highly recommend this book”Just the right amount of mystery, a bit of adventure and a slow romance”An excellent cosy mystery and romance”I was transported to the lives of these characters”Heartwarming and sweet, a story about second chances”A surprisingly little twist’

The unlikely story of how Americans canonized Adam Smith as the patron saint of free marketsOriginally published in 1776, Adam Smith’s The Wealth of Nations was lauded by America’s founders as a landmark work of Enlightenment thinking about national wealth, statecraft, and moral virtue. Today, Smith is one of the most influential icons of economic thought in America. Glory Liu traces how generations of Americans have read, reinterpreted, and weaponized Smith’s ideas, revealing how his popular image as a champion of American-style capitalism and free markets is a historical invention.Drawing on a trove of illuminating archival materials, Liu tells the story of how an unassuming Scottish philosopher captured the American imagination and played a leading role in shaping American economic and political ideas. She shows how Smith became known as the father of political economy in the nineteenth century and was firmly associated with free trade, and how, in the aftermath of the Great Depression, the Chicago School of Economics transformed him into the preeminent theorist of self-interest and the miracle of free markets. Liu explores how a new generation of political theorists and public intellectuals has sought to recover Smith’s original intentions and restore his reputation as a moral philosopher.Charting the enduring fascination that this humble philosopher from Scotland has held for American readers over more than two centuries, Adam Smith’s America shows how Smith continues to be a vehicle for articulating perennial moral and political anxieties about modern capitalism.

A lonely damsel imprisoned within a castle or convent cell. The eavesdropping of a prisoner next door. The framed image of a woman with a sinister past. These familiar tropes from 1790s novels and tales exploded onto the English literary scene in ‘low-brow’ titles of Gothic romance. Surprisingly, however, they also re-emerged as features of major Victorian poems from the 1830s to 1870s. Such signature tropes inquisitional overhearing; female confinement and the damsel in distress; supernatural switches between living and dead bodies were transfigured into poetic forms that we recognise and teach today as canonically Victorian. The Gothic Forms of Victorian Poetry identifies a poetics of Gothic enclosure constitutive of high Victorian poetry that came to define key nineteenth-century poetic forms, from the dramatic monologue, to women’s sonnet sequences and metasonnets, to Pre-Raphaelite picture poems.

Following on from Class 47s: Inverness to Penzance: 1982-85, this volume picks up the story and runs to the end of the summer 1986 timetable. It was a period of change, as the first 47s to be withdrawn started to fall by the wayside in the spring of 1986, since seriously damaged crash victims were no longer likely to be rebuilt. The first non-crash-damaged locos were withdrawn – sacrificed to provide a spares pool for the others. It was also a time of change with regard to how trains were heated, as steam heat became rare south of Hadrian’s Wall. Christmas 1985 was a watershed as the relief trains were now routinely electrically heated, with the latest ETH conversions emerging from Crewe Works from November 1985. In 1986, regular trips to Scotland were required to sample the delights of steam heat. Further changes came in summer 1986 as InterCity started to operate some routes in Kent, and Dover Western Docks was now on the map. With over 200 images, this volume provides a visual journey of the Class 47s in 1985-86.

George Orwell’s timeless novel Animal Farm, one of Time magazine’s 100 best English-language novels of all time, has been translated by Thomas Clark into Scots for the very first time.When the animals of Manor Farm revolt and take control from Mr Jones, they have hopes for a life of freedom and equality. However, when the pigs Napoleon and Snowball rise to power, the other animals discover that they may not be as equal as they had once thought. A tragic political allegory described by Orwell as being ‘the history of a revolution that went wrong’, this book is as relevant now – if not more so – as it was when it was first written.

‘A romance like no other . . . this book has it all’ NetGalley Reviewer’A brilliant read and a perfect ending . . . best read of the year’ NetGalley ReviewerThe brand new seasonal novel from the author of the bestselling book, A Secret Scottish EscapeWhen Leonie Baxter finds herself out of a job and out of a relationship, she’s at her wits end. Her life has just been turned upside down and she needs a plan, fast.By chance, on a walk with her rescue puppy, Leonie stumbles across a striking house in the woods; fully furnished but unoccupied. As a journalist, she is determined to find out more, after all, reporting is in her nature.But her attempts are thwarted by Lily Cruickshank who lives in the cottage next door. Why won’t Lily help Leonie? And who is the mysterious Flynn Talbot, whose letter Leonie finds inside the house?And in uncovering the secrets of the abandoned house, will Leonie open her own heart and let love back into her life?The brand new escapist story from the bestselling author of A Secret Scottish Escape and A Scottish Highland Surprise, for fans of Jo Thomas, Trisha Ashley and Cathy Bramley.Readers can’t get enough of The Cottage in the Highlands’Mesmerising, magical and moving”A really lovely book about friendship, romance and second chances”Fabulous . . . a page-turner of a book”Has a lot of heart, a story about all the different types of love”A feel-good story”A lovely read . . . I highly recommend this book”Just the right amount of mystery, a bit of adventure and a slow romance”An excellent cosy mystery and romance”I was transported to the lives of these characters”Heartwarming and sweet, a story about second chances”A surprisingly little twist’

Creative genius, war artist, adventurer, lover. These are just some of the words that can be used to describe Aberdeenshire-born painter and printmaker James McBey (1883-1959).McBey was a Scottish superstar amongst the creative spirits that fuelled the Etching Revival of the late nineteenth century and Etching Boom of the early twentieth century, and in an historical context, was the acknowledged heir to Whistler and Rembrandt.But after his death in Tangier, Morocco, in 1959, his renown as one of Britain’s most accomplished artists – who took the art world by storm – faded from public consciousness.Born illegitimately in the tiny parish of Foveran, Aberdeenshire, in the late Victorian era, he was brought up by his blind mother and elderly grandmother amid the rigid Presbyterian confines of Scotland’s north-east. Tragedy, dreary work as a bank clerk and a craving for success on his own terms all precipitated his leaving Aberdeen to live the life of an artist in London where he quickly became one of the most-talked about creatives of his generation.At the heart of this biography – the first ever to be published on McBey – is his time as a war artist in the Middle East during the Great War – where he would meet and paint T. E. Lawrence – his many love affairs, marriage to the beautiful American, Marguerite Loeb, and his enduring passion for Morocco.Drawing on his many diaries and letters and artistic creations, this is the story of one man who – clever, kind, intrepid, dashing, insecure and flawed – triumphed against the odds.

Vegan literary studies has been crystallised over the past few years as a dynamic new specialism, with a transhistorical and transnational scope that both nuances and expands literary history and provides new tools and paradigms through which to approach literary analysis. Vegan studies has emerged alongside the ‘animal turn’ in the humanities. However, while veganism is often considered as a facet of animal studies, broadly conceived, it is also a distinct entity, an ethical delineator that for many scholars marks a complicated boundary between theoretical pursuit and lived experience. This collection of 25 essays maps and engages with that which might be termed the ‘vegan turn’ in literary theoretical analysis via essays that explore literature from across a range of historical periods, cultures and textual forms. It provides thematic explorations (such as veganism and race and veganism and gender) and covers a wide range of genres (from the philosophical essay to speculative fiction, and from poetry to the graphic novel, to name a few). The volume also provides an extensive annotated bibliography summarising existing work within the emergent field of vegan studies.